![]() The process has delayed the project and driven the costs up significantly.īut the projects do share some similarities. When construction began, the state hadn’t acquired all of the land it needed, and land acquisition is currently ongoing. For miles and miles there was nothing there - no tracks, no rights of way. While, Wisconsin's rail project was what they called "shovel ready," meaning t he trains would have traveled along an existing rail corridor where land had already been purchased, California’s project essentially started from scratch. In 2010, the project received an additional $2.34 billion from the federal stimulus. While that was more than the total high-speed rail funding in the federal stimulus package, it was never enough to fund the full project. It authorized $9 billion in bonding for a high-speed rail line to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than three hours. It passed the same night Barack Obama was elected president. The state had a referendum, proposition 1A, on the ballot in 2008. A New TrajectoryĬalifornia's high-speed rail project predates Wisconsin's train debate. But California is where a majority of the money went. It's not a perfect comparison because Wisconsin's rail line would have been a different kind of project. The biggest chunk - $624 million - would go to California, for a high-speed line linking San Francisco and Los Angeles.Įven in 2019, Walker is still taking a victory lap, saying difficulties with the California project vindicate his decision to block Wisconsin's rail line. Department of Transportation, New York, Illinois and Washington would all get pieces of it. The money would be sent to other states almost immediately. Scott Walker talks about his legislative agenda in his office at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis on Jan. "I think the fact that we don't have a train between Milwaukee and Madison, and there's no other way the federal government nor anyone else can force it is a victory," he said. The day it became official, Gov.-elect Walker told reporters Wisconsin had won. “The cost of the high-speed rail project has ballooned over the decade and a half since voters first approved it - from $45 billion to $113 billion, and this only includes the LA to SF route, and not planned extensions to Sacramento and San Diego.” With the new funding in place, segments of the Bakersfield to Merced segment could begin service in the next four to five years, with the San Jose-to-Merced segment scheduled for completion in 2031.It didn't take long after the 2010 election before Wisconsin found out what would happen to its share of the high-speed rail funding in the federal stimulus package.ĭuring his campaign for governor, and even after he won, Scott Walker said he wanted to keep Wisconsin's $810 million to spend on roads and bridges.Ībout a month after the election, the Obama administration made clear it would take back all but $2 million of Wisconsin's money - redistributing it to other states. The embattled project has faced a series of cost overruns and delays, as well as criticism of the decision to build the Central Valley portion first. As Jay Barmann reports in SFist, “Governor Gavin Newsom said when he took office that, as a state, we had to focus on finishing this phase first, and hopefully funds for the complicated connection between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, and the also complex San Jose-to-Merced route, will materialize in the coming years.” The California High-Speed Rail Authority approved the 90-mile San Jose-to-Merced segment in April. California’s high speed rail project received a boost as its Central Valley segment, running from Bakersfield to Merced, was allocated $4.2 billion in the recently approved state budget.
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