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Yesterday, newly elected governor Gavin Newsom surprised Californians by announcing the end of plans for the high-speed train that would have linked San Fran to SoCa. “Let’s be real, the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were.” More from the L.A. Times.
Inez Fletcher Reports in The Federalist:
Newsom is framing the whimpering end of the high-speed rail dream as a boon for California’s neglected central agricultural region, to which a million guys in pickup trucks immediately yelled back at Sacramento, “Forget the train and turn on the d-mn water!”
Lest anyone forget, the California high-speed project was supposed to be a model for the country; a vision of an America where flyover country could be relabeled by Californians and New Yorkers as pass-by country. In his 2011 state of the union address, President Obama called for a network of high-speed railroads to crisscross the country within 25 years.
Not to worry, though, there are always grander projects for government to attend to. Instead of running 400 miles of track through farmland in the Central Valley, Rep. Alexandra Oscasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal promises the same boondoggle on a bicoastal scale. Like the Donner party’s wintertime excursion, laying $500-million-per-mile railroad track can only be improved by cutting through the Sierra Nevada.
Read more here.
