Work has officially begun on America’s first bullet train, which will take passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in under three hours, half the time it takes to drive between the two cities. Maybe.
A groundbreaking ceremony in Fresno on Tuesday marked the start of work on the first segment of a railway which in theory will have trains racing through California at 220mph by 2029.
The system is supposed to eventually include more than 800 miles of track and as many as 24 stations, and be extended to San Diego and Sacramento, showing that the United States can match Asia and Europe in high-speed rail.
Supporters hope the groundbreaking, though two years late, will uncork momentum and passion for the project after decades of political, financial and legal wrangling.
Opponents, however, scorned the event as the baptism of a white elephant that will waste public money and languish, unfinished, as a monument to hubris.
“It’s hard to celebrate breaking ground on what is likely to become abandoned pieces of track that never connect to a usable segment,” Jeff Denham, a Republican congressman from the Central Valley, which lines the proposed route, told the Associated Press.
Denham echoed critics who predict funding will dry up, marooning the project, or who say that if it is completed, it will be pricier, slower and less popular than advertised.
Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, has championed the idea since the 1980s and reiterated his enthusiasm at his inauguration for a historic fourth term on Monday.
In 2008 he persuaded voters to back a nearly $10bn bond in a ballot measure. In 2012 the Obama administration contributed $3.3bn worth of federal grants in stimulus spending.
Last year California’s legislature agreed to a one-off payment of $250m and, potentially much more significantly, to set aside 25% of future revenues from cap-and-trade fees, a carbon reduction scheme, to help underwrite the railway. Such fees could generate $250m to $1bn for the bullet project annually.
Dan Richard, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, told reporters advertising and real estate development rights would generate significant additional funds. Backers hope private investors will fund about a third of the cost.
“The voters are going to get exactly what they asked for,” he told reporters. “We have never ever stepped away from that vision, not one inch.”
The groundbreaking ceremony took place at Fresno’s proposed downtown station, part of the the project’s first phase, which will involve only 29 miles of rail.
The second phase will go south for more than 100 miles from Fresno to Bakersfield. By 2029 the train’s route is slated to extend 520 miles, north and south, linking San Francisco and the LA basin, with extensions to Sacramento and San Diego to come later.
Dignitaries at the groundbreaking included labour leaders, state officials and Gina McCarthy, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency. The train’s backers won a series of court challenges and a federal exemption from state environmental rules.
Ashley Swearengin, Fresno’s mayor and one of the few Republicans to back the project, told the AP it would provide short-term construction jobs and connect Central Valley farms with other parts of the state’s economy. “We’re stuck right in the middle, and it’s difficult to get in and out. It fills a deficit for central California.”
However, big technical, political and financial obstacles remain. Acquisition of private property is proving time-consuming and expensive. Talks with private freight rail companies over how the train will affect them remain unresolved.
The Republican takeover of Congress is likely to block further federal funds, according to the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, whose Bakersfield district is on the proposed route. It could end up like the skeleton of an unfinished building, he warned.
“Sometimes it shows greater leadership when someone can look at a problem and say … ‘This won’t pan out; I am going to have to change course,’” McCarthy recently said of Brown. “And I think that would be the best option knowing financially where we are in California.”
