California voters may get a second chance at high-speed-rail

Voters approved the initial construction of the high speed rail seven years ago. At the time, voters were promised a ‘low-cost’, high speed bullet train that would transport riders from L-A to San Francisco in about 2 hours.

The initial cost estimate in 2008 for the rail was $33 billion, and has since gone up to $68 billion with some projections up to $100 billion. Recent studies even show the entire project could cost as much as $200 billion dollars.

The bill’s author, Senator Andy Vidak, a Republican from the Central Valley, says this effort has bipartisan support. Assembly member Rudy Salas, a Democrat from Bakersfield, is a co-author of the bill. They say voters deserve to be able to vote the project down, because now more of the cost will be shouldered by taxpayers.

I remains to be seen just how much ‘bipartisan support’ this measure has.

Tax expert Jon Coupal with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association says the legislation to allow voters to reconsider the project, will likely not pass. “One of the reasons this legislation probably will not move forward, unfortunately, is because the proponents of the high speed rail know that the voters would reject it because everything that we’ve now learned about this project is really bad news.”

Coupal is not a proponent of high speed rail, “All the promises that were made about the high speed rail train have been broken. The ridership projections, the costs, everything about it, this is not the same project the voters approved many years ago and that’s the purpose of this legislation, let’s give voters a second chance to express their view.”

There has been talk of using Cap and Trade funds toward the high speed rail, but Coupal says that further reason to allow a new vote, “The voters of the State of California were told that this project would receive no taxpayer subsidies and what they are now talking about is diverting the Cap and Trade funds which ends up really being a government imposed taxes, to fund this thing.”

The bill must pass committee hearings before it goes to a vote on the Assembly and Senate floors.