ByAlan Ohnsman,
Forbes Staff.
California’s legislature is moving ahead with plans to provide as much as $20 billion in additional funding for the state’s financially challenged high-speed rail system, which will help complete the initial Central Valley portion and start work connecting it to San Francisco and Los Angeles. The move comes as the state also sues the Trump administration for attempting to claw back $4 billion of federal funds.
State legislators are reauthorizing California’s Cap-and-Trade program, which requires the biggest industrial emitters of greenhouse gases to buy pollution credits, through 2045, with plans to direct $1 billion a year from that source to the rail project for the next two decades, a plan pushed by Governor Gavin Newsom. It's the biggest funding commitment in the project’s history, which got underway after voters approved a $10 billion bond measure in 2008. Though the estimated cost to build the system has tripled since then to more than $100 billion and construction timetables have lengthened dramatically, work on the first 171-mile phase is extensive and has accelerated in the last few years.
“Today’s agreement has made a big, bold statement about California’s future—one that will create jobs, cut pollution and connect and transform communities across the state,” CEO Ian Choudri said in a statement. “This funding agreement resolves all identified funding gaps for the Early Operating Segment in the Central Valley and opens the door for meaningful public-private engagement with the program.”
