Last week, former California governor Jerry Brown, 87, defended the state’s non-functional high-speed rail project, better known as the bullet train. “We’ve got the money. We’re a rich state,” Brown proclaimed. “We got $4 trillion in gross domestic product. Spain has less domestic product. They got one. France has a lower domestic product. They’ve got one. So I think we have to rise to the occasion.” The four-term governor and three-time candidate for president seemed to have forgotten a few realities.
“Governor Jerry Brown will leave office next month with a legacy of presiding over one of the biggest public policy failures in the state’s history,” wrote UCLA economist Lee Ohanian in 2018. After significant scale-backs, the original cost of $39 billion had soared to nearly $100 billion. (RELATED: Jerry Brown’s Rail Fantasy Keeps Getting Pricier)
The first passengers on the Los Angeles-San Francisco route were projected to board in 2022, “a four-year delay over and above previous delays.” California had spent $5.4 billion, and the High Speed Rail Authority’s $12.7 billion was not enough for the first two legs of the route. Despite $1 billion in legacy funding from the Obama administration, “there is no realistic funding source for the remainder of the project,” wrote Ohanian, who continued to monitor the project. (RELATED: Biden, Buttigieg, and Bullet Trains)
“Fifteen years after the bond issue, three years after the expected completion date, not one train has left the station,” the economist explained in 2023. “Not one route has been completed, even though nearly all the $9.95 billion seed money has been spent.” The budget for the entire system was now inadequate for the route from Bakersfield to Merced, and that wasn’t the worst of it.
According to the state’s Legislative Analyst, the project’s original business plan was not released until after the vote on the bond issue. So the voters “approved $9.95 billion in bond financing for a dream, not a vetted project.” All told, California’s high-speed rail project was “perhaps the greatest infrastructure failure in the history of the country” and “the only reasonable decision is to end a project that should never have begun.”
Two years later, with the federal government cutting off funds for the bullet train, Jerry Brown is still on board. While running figures on France and Spain, the former governor neglected to calculate what California has already wasted. This lapse should not be blamed on Brown’s advanced age.
From 1999-2007, Brown served as mayor of Oakland and supported the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. For this major infrastructure project, California rejected U.S. funding and hired a Chinese company that, until then, had never built a bridge. The project came in 10 years late, $5 billion over budget, and riddled with safety issues such as broken bolts and corroded rods.
When reporters brought the safety issues to Brown’s attention, the governor said, “I mean, look, shit happens.” Nothing like that from Brown on the bullet train, and Californians might note a problem with his comparisons.
France may have a lower domestic product than California, but France also deploys 57 nuclear reactors, putting out 61,370 megawatts. California is down to a single nuclear power plant, in a state known for blackouts. In 2022, Californians were told not to charge electric cars during peak hours.
California’s High-Speed Rail Authority contends that the bullet train “will be fully solar powered,” but the people have cause to wonder. The project was a fantasy from the start, but there’s another way to look at it.
“I’m enjoying the fight over the California High-Speed Rail boondoggle,” wrote John Seiler of CalWatchdog back in 2012. “It’s also called the Browndoggle because it’s Gov. Jerry Brown’s attempt to surpass the public-works projects, such as the California State Water Project and the state higher brainwashing system (the universities), of his father, Gov. Pat Brown. I’ll leave it to the Freudians to figure that one out.”
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Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.