This project remains crucial to California’s capacity to break free of spiking gas prices
Californians have been enduring the pain of spiking gas prices since the ’70s. When prices shot up in 2008, fed-up voters decided to do something about it. The result was approval of a landmark ballot measure to begin construction of the nation’s first high-speed rail system, envisioned as the backbone of an electrified, carbon-free economy that would help end the state’s dependence on fossil fuels.
It was a bold step in a long-term effort to alleviate ever-worsening traffic congestion, purge the air of toxic pollution and fight climate change. High-speed rail offered the opportunity to meet the demands of a population projected to reach 50 million statewide by 2050 while ensuring the health and prosperity of future generations of Californians.
Now, as in 2008, Californians are weathering another spike in gas prices. Only this time, given domestic and global political realities, they face the prospect of even more debilitating and long-lasting increases.
We must break free from oil dependency. To do that, we must finish the job voters called on the state’s elected leaders to carry out: building a high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco through the Central Valley.
Despite the early challenges the project faced, there is new evidence that voter support for high-speed rail remains robust. Fourteen years after voters approved Proposition 1A, a clear majority of registered voters remain supportive of the project, according to a recent survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times.
The poll found that registered voters support continued construction of the project, which is being built in phases, first connecting Bakersfield to Merced in the Central Valley by 2030 and then extending to the Bay Area by 2033. Support is overwhelming among Democratic voters and decisive among independents. Only registered Republicans, who represent a dwindling 24% of California voters, oppose the project, and even among that cohort, one in four favor it.
California’s high-speed rail has reached a critical inflection point that creates the opportunity for policymakers to step up and act on the political will of the state’s majority.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has submitted a $4.2 billion budget request to fund ongoing construction in the Central Valley. It’s the last portion of the original Prop. 1A bond measure, and I, along with the U.S. High Speed Rail Coalition, urge the Legislature to approve the appropriation. In addition, projections suggest the state’s budget surplus in the coming fiscal year could reach a staggering $68 billion. With the governor’s May budget revision expected Friday, followed by negotiations with the Legislature, even more funds could be made available to high-speed rail and to local transit needs.
This funding will help the California High-Speed Rail Authority complete construction in the Central Valley. More important, it will give the Biden administration an incentive to provide more federal investment in the project, including competitive grants through the bipartisan federal infrastructure package.
When it comes to allocating federal infrastructure spending, state-level funding and political leadership matter. As secretary of transportation under President Barack Obama, I counted strong support at the state level in the form of Prop. 1A as the primary reason I awarded $3.9 billion in competitive grants to the high-speed rail project in the first place.
A failure to move toward completion of the project would invite the dystopia that California’s most vociferous critics love to conjure: massive traffic gridlock, clogged airports, thickly polluted skies. Killing high-speed rail would put the clean, responsible growth of the world’s fifth-largest economy out of reach. Meanwhile, the march of global warming will continue.
We cannot allow this bleak scenario to become California’s future. We can rewrite history with the successful completion of statewide high-speed rail.