In 2009, voters approved an obligation of $ 10 billion to build a high -speed rail line that would connect San Francisco in Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes. The Californians were informed that they would make their first trips along the line from 2020. The total costs were estimated at $ 45 billion.
As it seems picturesque now. In 2025, only part of the first segment – a 171 -thousand section from Merced to Bakersfield – was built. This section is now planned for the completion between 2030 and 2033, and this alone would cost $ 35 billion. The entire 776 miles project could cost $ 128 billion, according to the latest estimates by California Speed Rail Authority.
What happened? The growth in labor and equipment costs is only partially to blame. There was another major obstacle – California Environmental Quality Act.
The criticism of the law underlines the irony that a train system intended to reduce carbon emissions and to help the State achieve its high climatic objectives has been paralyzed repeatedly by a law intended to protect the environment.
Adopted in 1970, the CEQA was supposed to force public agencies to examine how a proposed project could harm the environment and explain how it would attenuate such impacts. But the scope of the law has developed over time. Now, almost anyone with a lawyer can bring legal action claiming that the agency’s environmental impact report has not been sufficiently deepened, forcing them to return to the drawing board or – in some cases – to stop a project on their traces.
Dozens of groups – farmers of the central valley to rich enclaves of the peninsula – continued the rail authority under the CEQA. To resolve these challenges, authority had to change its route, redo the conceptions of the station and pay expensive colonies.
Environmental defenders and special interest groups claim that CEQA CIMENTS for the environment and public health. The changes that the authority has made, they support, will finally lead to a better high-speed rail.
But each trial is expensive – not only in the legal costs spent by the high speed rail to defend itself, but also the funds it spends to modify complex plans. It takes time – a critical time – during which the costs of labor and equipment increase more.
Consider, for example, all CEQA question the Authority rail after having published its final plan for the Bakersfield itinerary in Merced:
• The city of Bakersfield, dissatisfied with the planned route of the authority, passing through the city center, continued the CEQA. The rail authority has agreed to consider a new route, as well as a new location for the Bakersfield station.
• Three legal proceedings of the farmers of the counties of Madera and Merced made that the rail authority promising to consider alternative routes, creating a fund of $ 5 million to buy agricultural “preservation” and crush $ 1 million in legal costs.
• Three other prosecutions came from the county of Kern, Dignity Health, which has a hospital along the planned road, and the first Baptiste church in free will, which manages a school next to the high -speed rail. All have reached colonies – the church made the rail pay for $ 500,000 in renovations to help them mitigate noise during construction. DIGNITY Health has paid seven -digit regulations and change his route, said George Martin, the company’s lawyer.
• Coffee Brimhall, a developer, had land in Bakersfield where he planned to build retail, offices and houses. He continued authority in June 2014 under the CEQA, arguing that the railway would cause “serious effects on noise vibrations on residents”. The rail authority has settled, accepting to consider an itinerary which would avoid property.
• The city of Shafter, a city of 16,988 in the county of Kern Rural, continued. To settle, the rail authority agreed to put the railroad on its own raised route, so that it did not stop traffic during the transmission of the city.
• After continuing under the CEQA, the County of Kings obtained the rail authority to pay a settlement of $ 10 million to cover the cost of moving a fire station moved by the railway. The rail authority also paid $ 1 million to Corcoran, a city of 24,813 in Kings County, to “compensate for the aesthetic effects of the railway road”.
Authority took years to resolve these prosecution for years. The authority finally inaugurated the first segment in 2015, three years after publishing the environmental impact report.
Meanwhile, groups in the Bay region were making their own war on the road between San Francisco and San Jose:
• In 2010, a group of rich cities along the peninsula – Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto – gathered to challenge authority under the CEQA. Their motivation? Concern about the noise generated by the train whisking in their cities at 110 mph. After several cycles of revision at its environmental report and its discussions on a regulation, the trial advanced to the courts, which confirmed the environmental examination of the authority.
• The rail authority intended to build a maintenance installation in Brisbane and planned to use an eminent domain to acquire 121 acres of land belonging to Universal Paragon Corp., a developer from San Francisco. But the UPC did not want to sell these 121 acres, which he had considered in the context of a planned community of 580 acres called Brisbane Baylands. The project would provide essential accommodation for Brisbane (and considerably widened its tax base). Brisbane continued the rail authority. He settled, agreeing to reduce the imprint of his maintenance center by almost half.
The southern California segment has also seen its own set of prosecution. Hollywood Burbank airport filed CEQA prosecution in 2022, for example, arguing that construction plans and a nearby station would have an impact on airport operations. The authority has also settled this prosecution, agreeing to compensate for the airport for $ 250,000 in legal and technical costs.
In 2024, the Authority rail had received a complete environmental approval from the Los Angeles road in San Francisco.
However, it could be decades before its construction.
California Daily Newspapers
