Update: The Debacle Formerly Known As The Bullet Train -- July 18, 2020

Updates

Later, 8:39 p.m. CDT: this is the reason Governor Newsom is playing games with the federal government, maintaining that the state is still building a high-speed rail, even if it only goes from Bakersfield to Merced.  With the California legislature again holding up funding for the bullet train, the federal government may act again.

Original Post

This story is traced at "Bullet Train Central."

What are they thinking? Putting all of the remaining bullet train funds into the single stretch of high speed rail between Bakersfield and Merced. Really?

Re-posting with some additional "stuff."

Which reminds me: what's the status of the California debacle previously known as the bullet train? From the LA Times: California high-speed rail board delays key finance plan after lawmakers push back.

Following a stunning rebuke by the State Assembly, the board of California’s high-speed rail authority this week put off approving a crucial 2020 business plan, a sign it has agreed to reassess the project’s current blueprint.

The authority’s board had planned to routinely approve the business plan at a meeting scheduled for Thursday and submit it to the Legislature as it has done every two years over the last decade.

The plan formally laid out a $20.4 billion blueprint to build a partial operating system in the San Joaquin Valley under a massive 30-year contract that would be issued this year.

But earlier this month, the Assembly approved a resolution that called on the rail authority to delay that contract and reassess the entire strategy of putting all of the remaining bullet train funds into the single stretch of high speed rail between Bakersfield and Merced.

Do You Know The Way to San Jose, Dionne Warwick

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, it wasn’t clear how California would pay for its dream of running 220-mph bullet trains from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Now, the project is as close to the precipice as it’s ever been. The California High-Speed Rail Authority faces two new threats: Its largest source of funding is evaporating and state legislators have attempted to derail the agency’s plans en masse.

The culmination of woes has cast new doubt on the viability of the rail plan and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s strategy to focus on building the system’s Central Valley segment first. [WHY?]

“The way this project has been managed is embarrassing, to say the least,” Assemblyman Jim Frazier, a North Bay Democrat who chairs the Transportation Committee, told legislators during a June 11 vote to challenge the plan.

“It is an unelected body, which has taken little input from us, obliging us to vote for dollars that will continue to dog us for the next 30 years,” said Rendon, a Democrat from Lakewood (Los Angeles County).

But the authority plans to push ahead this fall with awarding those contracts, including a 30-year maintenance deal. It will ask legislators to approve $4.2 billion in funding, the remainder of its voter-approved bonds, early next year.

A 30-year maintenance deal for an unfinished project? Only in California.