{U} nder the cover of night (i.e., the dark corridors of federal bureaucracies), the Biden administration handed California $6 billion for two high-speed-rail projects. The Golden State’s high-speed-rail hubris has been a big, black, cash sinkhole since the Obama administration.
Earlier this month, the office of California governor Gavin Newsom gleefully announced that California High-Speed Rail Authority “will receive nearly $3.1 billion for construction in the Central Valley, supporting the overall end goal of connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles,” while the rail project, Brightline, “will receive $3 billion to connect Los Angeles to Las Vegas with 80% of the project’s construction in California benefiting the state’s economy and labor market.”
Governor Newsom declared, “California is delivering on the first 220-mph, electric high-speed rail project in the nation. This show of support from the Biden-Harris Administration is a vote of confidence in today’s vision and comes at a critical turning point, providing the project new momentum.” The $3.1 billion grant from President Biden’s historic Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is the single largest grant received by California’s High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA).
The CHSRA, which was first founded in 1996, has faced criticism from every corner imaginable — fiduciary conservatives, environmentalists, indigenous tribes, farmers, and even a younger Phil Klein have joined the disparaging chorus. Such condemnations have been well-deserved. The first phase of train construction is estimated to cost $35 billion. Costs to build the train from Los Angeles to San Francisco are projected to rise above $100 billion. The U.S. could fund the entire Trumpian border wall — or secure victory in Ukraine — with that kind of money.
The most recent funding is for the initial phase of the project: installing a high-speed train line between the cosmopolitan center of Merced and the Paris of the West, Bakersfield. So, with the flick of a wrist, the Biden administration has approved $6 billion for a high-speed train to . . . Merced? A town with barely 90,000 inhabitants? Don’t get me wrong, I love trains. I wish American trains were better, faster, cheaper, more efficient, etc. I’ve said all of this before. But if the federal government is going to spend billions of dollars on a rail project, the recipient clearly ought to be the Northeast Corridor line, which accounts for more Amtrak users than all other lines across the country combined.
The Northeast Corridor Regional line is the only passenger line that made a profit in fiscal year 2022. (I should mention that Amtrak has one other profitable line, the Auto Train, which made $22 million last year transporting cars and their drivers to and from the D.C. area and Florida. Americans love their cars so much that a train built to ferry cars is Amtrak’s most profitable.)
The Northeast Corridor line primarily offers rides between Boston and Washington, D.C., stopping in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore along the way. The NEC line operates in the most densely populated section of the United States, which accounts for the train’s millions of annual users — nearly 10 million of them. Lord knows it could use the money.
Rather than investing in the most-utilized — and thus most-necessary to the average American — train line, Biden is giving California $6 billion dollars for a project that looks doomed to regular profit loss and low usage when compared to the litany of unprofitable, long-distance Amtrak lines currently serving the West Coast state.
According to a report by the Eno Center for Transportation, Amtrak’s worst-performing lines are all connected to California.
By orders of magnitude, the nation’s most money-losing train line in 2022 was the Sunset Limited, which takes passengers from Los Angeles to New Orleans, with stops in Phoenix, Tucson, and San Antonio. The Sunset Limited posted an operating loss of $566 per passenger in fiscal year 2022. The Sunset Limited also boasted the lowest ridership among all of Amtrak’s lines. In 2022, only 73,900 passengers rode the line, resulting in a total adjusted loss of nearly $41,800,000.
Right behind the Sunset Limited in the list of failed Amtrak lines is another train that serves California: the Southwest Chief. This line, which travels from Los Angeles to Chicago and makes stops in Flagstaff, Albuquerque, and Kansas City, posted the second-highest loss per passenger in 2022, at $288.33. The Southwest Chief also posted gory overall losses in fiscal year 2022 — amassing $64,500,000 in profit loss.
But let’s not forget the California Zephyr! In just 51 hours, passengers on the California Zephyr can ride from San Francisco to Chicago, with stops in Salt Lake City, Denver, and Omaha.
Compared with every other Amtrak line, the Zephyr costs the most to operate, at $120,800,000 per year. With under 300,000 riders in fiscal year 2022, the Zephyr posted the greatest loss of profit among all of Amtrak’s lines: $65,700,000 in the hole.
There is something perverse about so much federal funding going straight into the pockets of one state — and one of the wealthiest states at that. While the proposed project also includes the aforementioned “Brightline,” a line that would connect Los Angeles to Las Vegas — and thus cut Nevada a share of the federal funds — the majority of the $6 billion is set to enrich Gavin Newsom’s playground.
While high-speed trains within the state would doubtlessly offer a service that is not available via the current train lines, the utter wasteland that is Amtrak in California should have given officials a pause before sinking another $6 billion into a utopian dream.