On November 4th, 2008, the people
of California voted to fund this: A high-speed rail line. Many countries around the world have
had high-speed trains for decades. And this would be the US's attempt
to finally catch up. The train would whisk passengers from
LA to San Francisco in under 3 hours. And it was all set to open in 2020. Today, it's 2022. And California's high speed rail project
is famous. For being a disaster. "...will be the most expensive project in
state history..." "...a train that's going to nowhere..." "...train to nowhere..." All that's there today is this one section,
still under construction from Bakersfield to Merced. But the failure of this rail line isn't just
California's problem. It's an ominous sign for big projects
all over the US. We see other advanced economies all around
the world that are able to do this. So they can do it. So why can't we? In other words, what is it about the US that
made California's high-speed rail line so hard to build? Just to be clear; this was a pretty good idea. A lot of people travel between
San Francisco and LA. But the trip takes at least 6 hours by car. It’s less than an hour by plane but that’s not counting time in two
of the country’s busiest airports. So a 2-hour and 40 minute trip
by high-speed rail made sense. California just needed to design a route
that connected its big cities efficiently. It's really about population density and how quickly you can serve areas
of high population density. This is Ethan Elkind director for the climate program
at UC Berkeley Law School and host of the local “State of the Bay”
radio show. You really want those centers where there's a lot of people
working and living within a few kilometer range
of the station. If you don't have that, then it's not worth
a high speed rail stop. But that’s easier said than done. In the early 2000s, the California High-Speed
Rail Authority considered two routes in Southern California. This one went straight up the I-5 highway. While this one, looped eastward and stopped
in Palmdale. It was 34 miles longer and studies estimated
it would be 12 minutes slower. Yet, ultimately, this was the route they chose. So what happened? So the Palmdale stop was really added at the
behest of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that wanted to see a stop for high speed rail
in Palmdale. If you have the county that the high-speed
rail line is going through opposing it that can create real political problems can create litigation problems,
can create permitting problems. Palmdale politicians understandably wanted
the train’s riders and business opportunities to come to their district. The problem was that they had the power to
hold up the entire project to do so. They have this power because the US government
gives it to them. The US is a federal system meaning power is divided between the
federal government and state governments which in turn grant some power
to local governments. When it comes to infrastructure, a lot of
the power and responsibility is often on this local level. That's the compromise that we make here in
the United States. We believe in local control to some extent,
you know, representative democracy. The downside of that is when you're trying to
get a project at this scale built, you know, it does take a lot of compromise. And in order to build a 1300-kilometer
high-speed rail line the State High-Speed Rail Authority had to
compromise with a lot of local governments. In the Bay Area, politicians pushed for this
route, instead of this one, even though it was much more expensive and
slower for travelers coming from San Francisco. And in the Central Valley, the route stops
in all these cities instead going up this faster route in order to ensure support
from the politicians here. All of these little compromises began adding
up, making the route slower. And more expensive. Which was a problem. Because the funding was already on shaky ground. When California voted in 2008 the state estimated it would need
$33 billion to complete by 2020. But voters were told that California taxpayers
would only have to pay 9 billion. That’s because the planners were counting
on the federal government to chip in $12-16 billion. And it made some sense: The federal government spends tens of billions
of dollars a year on transportation infrastructure. The problem was only a fraction of it goes
to trains. Partly because, unlike most countries with
high-speed rail the US has a stark political divide on whether
we even need it. By 2010, the Democrat-controlled Congress
had allocated just over $3 billion for the project. Not nothing, but not nearly as much as the state wanted. But by 2014, the Democrats had lost control
of Congress to the Republicans who opposed this kind of mass-transit project. "More money for California’s
high-speed rail." "I call it high-cost rail, is a terrible idea." "None of these funds can be used
for high speed rail." They made it very difficult for any further
federal money to reach this project leaving it well short of funding. It’s an example of how, in the US long-term projects can be at the mercy of
whichever party is in power, since they have often have the power
to stall it at any time. And it's not just the federal government. Private citizens can also hold things up. It took less than a year for people
to start suing the California high-speed rail project. Many cases were based on a law called
the California Environmental Quality Act. Known as CEQA. CEQA requires the government to study the environmental effects of any
government project, explore alternatives, and release the findings
in a report. It's very easy to find a hole in that assessment
and then file a lawsuit. It's essentially target practice for lawyers. Many of these lawsuits had legitimate concerns. Some farmers in the Central Valley worried about the train damaging their agricultural land irrigation systems, and crops. But others, simply used CEQA to try and keep
the project from being built in their neighborhood. This is a common way in the US for private
citizens to block important projects like housing or infrastructure. It's not cheap to bring a CEQA lawsuit. Sometimes you've got very powerful homeowners
groups that have sued and force changes or at least delayed the project and run up costs. For the high-speed rail line, these lawsuits
were like roadblocks. And to clear them, the state had to hire legions
of expensive lawyers. Which added time and costs. I think you do want to have
a participatory system. You do want to have people able
to say their piece and you want policymakers to respond. Just that you don't want to get to the point where a hyper-local interest has veto
over a project of really statewide importance. But take away local politicians, and federal
drama, and lawsuits, and this project would’ve still faced problems. The state body in charge of designing and
managing this project was the California High-Speed Rail Authority. There was just one problem. The high speed rail authority had never built
anything like this. Whoops. Obviously it's a tried and true technology
globally but it was new in North America
when California tried it. Certainly we didn't have the competence in-
house how to build it here. When Japan and France were building their
high-speed rail networks they had legions of experienced engineers
inside their governments. But the California High-Speed Rail Authority
had to hire consultants and contractors to handle the design and construction. These consultants were four times the cost
in some cases of what it would have cost to hire someone just to do it in-house. Another reason why the Authority had to keep
increasing the estimated cost of the project. Which today, is up to $113 billion
to complete the whole line. But, the state only has enough money to build
this section in the rural Central Valley. Even if it can get the rest,
it will probably take a few more decades to finish this project. High-speed rail is a cautionary tale for really
big transformative projects in the US. We need all sorts of rail, transit, bus lanes, new renewable energy facilities, all the things
we need to do to have a more sustainable and vibrant
economy. But the US is falling further and further
behind its peers. Because the political compromises, under-funding,
lawsuits, and extra costs that hampered California's
high-speed rail can also happen to any other big project the
US takes on.
Didn’t Real Life Lore already make a (better) video about this? Didn’t Alan Fisher then critique that video for its shortcomings and assumptions? Didn’t Real Life Lore then take that critique to heart, and made a new better video?
What was the point of this video?
Awful video.
Following I-5 would have bypassed major cities like Fresno and it's incredibly insulting to write off the San Joaquin as "nowhere," when it is home to 6.5 million people who deserve better access to the rest of California.
And they're still seriously suggesting that we tunnel through the Grapevine??? You know, the 76-mile steep mountain pass that would probably require the longest tunnels on earth. Yeah, sure. It's totally worth it to save 12 minutes and spend $100 billion more dollars while the current route still makes it from SF-LA within the required 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Vox has made some good content but the obvious lack of research here makes me question the quality of their journalism.
They're interviewing a guy saying "Oh it's not worth putting a stop in places without a lot of people" meanwhile China is actually building HSR and whole-ass cities without people already there because they, you know, are thinking about and preparing for the future.
I know, crazy idea, building infrastructure for future generations! What a concept!
Alan Fisher debunking these types of videos
What? The USA is the best and richest country in the world (spoiler: it isn't the best and wealth is divided well... completely disproportionate), so for sure they can build a few 13000 km's of rail... how hard can it be...
This video hurt to watch. The united states will never catch up: it doesn’t want to.
So basically, nothing will ever change until we destroy the current system?