Once upon a time, Californians were told that by 2020 they would see a high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco for as little as $33 billion.
Well, it’s 2025 and if Californians are so lucky they might be able to experience the high-speed rail line from Bakersfield to Merced in 2033. You know, because that’s practically the same as what voters were promised. Oh and the project is set to cost more than $100 billion, not $33 billion.
If California’s leaders were rational, they would have cut our losses long ago and at minimum gone back to the drawing board. Instead, Californians have been treated to escalating direct costs, endless delays and even more critically, ballooning opportunity costs.
“We can’t go back. We just have to accept the responsibility of where we are, and that’s exactly what we are doing,” declared Gov. Gavin Newsom this past week, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Newsom pointed to all the jobs that have been created thanks to the boondoggle in defending the project.
This brings to mind a story from the 1960s when the great economist Milton Friedman was being given a tour of a canal project in China. After noticing that the workers were using shovels instead of machines, Friedman was told that the canal project was a jobs project.
“Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels,” replied Friedman.
When Californians voted for the high-speed rail project, it is most likely the case they expected they were voting for a high-speed rail system that they might be able to someday use. If the project was instead pitched as a jobs program, voters likely would have made different choices.
But “jobs” are what the supporters of the project have to fall back on. After all, when the state’s anti-business policies deter economic activity, what better to buffer against that than a government-sponsored jobs program?
What might be convenient for politicians, however, should not be accepted by the public. Not when we have pressing problems in this state, from wildfires to homelessness to inadequate water infrastructure.
Instead of pouring finite resources into a glorified job program, California needs to make better choices.
Californians must demand that the high-speed rail project be ended.
Keeping it going at this point is just a shining example of why those in power don’t belong in power.