Should have kept the lawsuit, even if they don’t need the money.
Sometimes it’s about sending a message.
It’s not always about the money Spiderman… It’s about the mets baby the mets
The only message this sends is: “Feel free to keep doing what you’re doing.”
That money was already set aside for this project. Dropping the lawsuit just means this administration will continue pulling this stunt with other projects. We have to tie them up in court until at least midterms.
Seems like the state did the math and decided it was more economical to drop it 🤔
“This action reflects the State’s assessment that the federal government is not a reliable, constructive, or trustworthy partner in advancing high-speed rail in California,”
Could have ended that sentence earlier…
Sounds like a bit of legalese
Yeah, laws do be like that 🤷
Planning for how to do green infrastructure without the federal government is a good idea but we should still sue and take the cash anyways. $4 billion is a lot of cash and there’s a lot of other transit projects that need funding
Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride is a neat little documentary that discusses the history of the Bay Area’s train system. One of the striking things an interview mentions is how a project of this size and complexity was extremely difficult to complete even in the less developed and less crowded Bay Area of the 70’s, and would be nigh on impossible today. The original design took 8 years of planning and cost 1.6 billion in 1970’s dollars. If built today, it’s estimated it could take over 12 billion just for the original layout without even accounting for the land required to snake all that track through dense urban sprawl.
CA’s high speed rail system was approved in 2008 and currently estimated for completion by 2031 at the earliest and estimated at 36.7 billion dollars for just 35% of the layout. If it ever begins reliable service it would be an incredible achievement of engineering, economics, and cooperation among all levels of government.
The Trump administration’s decision to cut funding to a technology that most other nations have long since achieved and mastered is telling of their corrupt stance on the American people and their lack of understanding of the benefits of this technology. We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard. We work and invest taxes towards an expensive and grandiose vision of the future because of the possibilities and the promise it offers. Today, it is hard to imagine the Bay Area without BART. I imagine the same for a high speed rail system of the future. They think we can’t do it, but we will do it despite them because we must.
