In 2009, voters approved a $ 10 billion bonus to build a High -speed rail Line that would connect San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes. The Californians were told that they would make their first trips along the line from 2020. Total costs were estimated at $ 45 billion.
How the picturesques that seem now. From 2025, only part of the first segment, a stretch of 171 miles from Merced to Bakersfield has been built. That section is now Programmed to complete Between 2030 and 2033, and it is estimated that it will cost $ 35 billion. Complete the full 776 mile project could cost $ 128 billion, according to the latest estimates of the High Speed railway authority in California.
What happened? The growing labor of labor and material costs are only in part to guilt. There is another important obstacle – California’s Environmental Quality Law.
The critics of the law indicate the IONY that a trains system intended to reduce carbon emissions and help the State meet its high climatic objectives has been paralyzed again and again by a law destined to protect the environment.
Approved in 1970, CEQA intended to force public agencies to consider how a proposition project could damage the environment and explain how such impacts would mitigate. But the scope of the law has expanded over time. Now, almost anyone with a lawyer may file a demand To affirm that the agency’s environmental impact report has not been exhaustive enough, forcing them to return to the drawing board or, in some cases, stop a project on its way.
Group boxes, from farmers in the central valley to enclaves rich in the peninsula, have seduced the railway authority under CEQA. To solve these challenges, the authority has had to change its route, remake station designs and pay expense agreements.
Environmental defenders and special interest groups say that Ceqa cements protections for the environment and public health. They argue that the changes that the authority has made will lead to a better high -speed railroad.
But each lawsuit is expensive, not only in the legal fees spent by the high -speed rail to defend themselves, but also the funds you spend to alter complex plans. That takes time, critical time, duration that labor and material costs increase even more.
Consider, for example, all Ceqa challenges the faced rail authority After he launched his final plan for the Bakersfield route to Merced:
• The city of Bakersfield, discontent with the planned route of the authority that passes through the center, thirst under Ceqa. The rail authority agreed to consider a new route, as well as a new location for the Bakersfield station.
• Three demands of farmers in the Mada and Merced counties resulted in the railway authority promised to consider alternative routes, creating a $ 5 million fund to buy “agricultural” conservation easements and coughing $ 1 million.
• Three other demands came from Nucleus countyDignity Health, who has a hospital along the planned route, and the Baptist Church of First Free Will, which directs a school next to the high -speed railroad. All settlements achieved: the Church got the railroad to pay $ 500,000 In renovations to help them mitigate the construction of noise duration. Dignity Health caused the authority to pay a seven -digit agreement and change its route, said George Martin, the company’s lawyer.
• Brimhall CaféA developer, had land in Bakersfield, where he planned to build retailers, offices and houses. He thirsty authority in June 2014 under CEQA, arguing that the railroad would cause “serious noise vibration impacts on residents.” The rail authority activateAccept to consider a route that would avoid property.
• He Shafter cityA city of 16,988 in the rural county of Kern, sued. To resolve, the railway authority agreed to put the railroad in its Own high trackso that it would not interrupt traffic when passing through the city.
• After demanding under CEQA, Kings County obtained the railway authority to pay A $ 10 million agreement To cover the cost of moving a fire station displaced by the railroad. The railway authority also paid $ 1 million for CorcoranA 24,813 city in Kings County, to “compensate for the aesthetic effects of the railway route.”
It’s tok Years for authority to resolve Only those demands. The authority finally Broke in the first segment In 2015, three years after publishing the Environmental Impact Report.
Meanwhile, the bay area groups were moving their own war against the Route between San Francisco and San José:
• In 2010, a group of rich cities along the Peninsula – Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto – Bandados to challenge the Authority under Ceqa. Your motivation? Concern for the noise generated by the train whipping its cities at 110 mph. After multiple revision rounds to its environmental report and discussions on an agreement, the lawsuit advanced to the courts, which Confirmed the environmental review of the authority.
• The rail authority had plans to build a maintenance installation in Brisbane and planned to use the eminent domain to acquire 121 acres of land owned by Universal Paragon Corp., a developer of San Francisco. But UPC did not want to sell those 121 Acres, which he had imagined as part of a planned community of 580 acres called Brisbane Baylands. The project would bring very necessary homes to Brisbane (and would greatly expand its tax base). Brisbane headquarters the rail authority. He activateAgreeing to reduce the footprint of its maintenance installation in almost half.
The segment of southern California also has such a set of demands. He Hollywood Burban airport He filed a CEQA demand in 2022, for example, arguing that the plans to build clues and a nearby station would affect airport operations. He The authority established that demandAlso, agreeing to compensate for the airport for $ 250,000 in legal and technical expenses.
From 2024, the railway authority had Received complete environmental approval From the Los Angeles Route to San Francisco.
Even so, it could spend decades before it is built.
