Opinion: After 17 years, ‘we have no plan’

Assemblyman Steven Bennett told KCRA television news, “We have no plan; we have a good likelihood it’s going to get worse, and we have a short time to solve the problem.” He was speaking about the possibility of completing the High-Speed Rail line from Merced to Bakersfield. Currently, the California High Speed Rail Authority (CAHSRA) is struggling to complete the section from “somewhere north of Madera to Shafter.” As of this writing, there are no funds to extend the line in either direction.

Why was this not a surprise? The CAHSRA has been as effective as “The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” the subject of a satirical novel (1969) by Jimmy Breslin about the Brooklyn Mafia and consequent film, starring Jerry Orbach and Jo Van Fleet (1971).

The high-speed-rail project, which was initiated by the passage of Proposition 1A in 2008, sounded like a good idea. At that time, California voters approved nearly $10 billion in bonds to construct a “bullet train,” connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles. But the job has been bungled since Day One, like a Do-It-Yourself project, undertaken by incompetent people using the wrong tools. Citing the KCRA news story, Nick Pope — writing for the Daily Caller News Foundation — states, “California’s oft-delayed and over budget high speed rail project will need billions of dollars in additional funding by the summer of 2026 in order to avoid being postponed further.”