California’s bullet train has once again become a flashpoint in Sacramento, as Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers weigh whether to keep funneling roughly $1 billion a year into a project that, after nearly two decades, still hasn’t laid track for actual passenger service.
The debate arrives just as a pointed comparison has been making the rounds: California journalist Joe Mathews recently rode Morocco’s high-speed rail line and came away stunned by how far ahead the North African nation is compared to the Golden State, despite having a fraction of California’s wealth.
Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mathews noted that Morocco and California are strikingly similar in geography and population — both are long, narrow regions with coastlines, deserts and farmland, and both have populations near 38 to 40 million. The difference, he pointed out, is money. California’s economy is nearing $4 trillion, while Morocco’s sits at about $182 billion, ranking it as a lower-middle-income country.
Yet Morocco managed to build a 201-mile high-speed rail line — complete with 286 engineering structures and 13 viaducts, including the massive Hachef Viaduct near Tangier — while California continues to struggle with a project voters approved back in 2008.
That year, Californians backed a $9.95 billion bond measure with the promise that a bullet train would link Los Angeles and San Francisco by 2020 for roughly $33 billion. Eighteen years later, the state has yet to complete even its first segment: a 171-mile stretch between Merced and Bakersfield, now projected to cost at least $35 billion and unlikely to carry passengers until sometime in the next decade, if ever.
Finishing that limited segment depends on the state continuing to direct $1 billion annually from its cap-and-invest program, which auctions off greenhouse gas emission allowances. It also assumes the California High Speed Rail Authority can finally deliver on a construction schedule after years of missed deadlines and shifting promises.
What comes after Merced-to-Bakersfield remains even murkier. Extending the line to link Los Angeles and San Francisco would require roughly $100 billion in additional funding, along with construction of multiple long mountain tunnels along a route that critics say was shaped more by political considerations than sound engineering.
Ironically, both the Moroccan and California projects share a connection: France’s national rail operator, SNCF. Morocco leaned heavily on SNCF’s expertise to build its line efficiently and affordably. SNCF also advised California in the project’s early years, urging a more direct route that would avoid costly tunneling. State officials didn’t follow that advice, according to reporting by journalist Ralph Vartabedian in a 2022 New York Times article, and SNCF eventually withdrew from the project in 2011.
“There were so many things that went wrong,” former SNCF project manager Dan McNamara told Vartabedian at the time. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”
Mathews’ piece landed just as California policymakers face a critical funding decision. In recent years, the bullet train project has received about a quarter of the state’s cap-and-invest revenue, roughly $1 billion annually. Last September, lawmakers revised the program but preserved the rail project’s $1 billion yearly allocation for the next two decades.
This year, however, a broader restructuring by the California Air Resources Board — aimed at easing costs for refineries and other industries — is expected to cut overall program revenue roughly in half, down to about $2 billion a year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That leaves Newsom and legislators facing tough choices about where to trim spending.
Preserving the bullet train’s current funding level would likely mean deeper cuts elsewhere, adding yet another twist to a project that, for many Californians, has come to symbolize the gap between ambition and execution in state government.
Original source: CalMatters
