The California High-Speed Rail Project, a multi-billion dollar plan to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles, has recently been under fire from the Trump Administration for its mismanagement and incompetence. Since then, the administration has pulled over $4 billion dollars from the project since last month.
The massive budget cuts will undoubtedly put a strain on the project, and while the future of the project is uncertain, the California High-Speed Rail Project still deserves a chance. The project provides jobs to thousands of people and if completed, will bring massive economic benefits to the state of California.
The amount of careers that the project has provided so far is undeniable: over approximately 14,500 jobs have been created since 2015, with more jobs being created everyday as the project continues to be developed. These careers provide income to thousands of people, and if the project were to be cancelled, all of these individuals would lose their jobs.
It’s not just a source of income that the California High-Speed Rail Project provides, though. The plan, if completed, will bring many benefits to the economic system of California. Since 2006, the project has brought over $20 billion dollars of economic output and over $8 billion dollars of income from labor to California, with more being put out every day. Overall, cutting the budget of the project would harm the economic benefits that this project brings.
Of course, despite the many advantages it brings, it’s no secret that the project has faced numerous obstacles and delays. The plan was originally proposed all the way back in 1979, and it still hasn’t had its first phase completed after it initially started construction in 2015.
Many people argue that the reason why the California High-Speed Rail Project has taken so long is due to poor management, and that as a result, the project is inevitably doomed to fail. However, this argument is misled; the real reason why the project has been taking a long time to come to fruition is because of issues with purchasing land.
To get the authority to start construction in most local areas, the California High-Speed Rail Authority needs to get permission from the people who own the land that they plan to build on. This creates a problem since many landowners don’t get much benefit from selling their land, which makes convincing them very difficult to do.
The California High-Speed Rail Project isn’t the only rail project that has been taking a long time to make either. The UK’s High Speed 2 project, a plan to connect most of the major parts of England together with a high-speed rail system, started production in 2019 and was originally supposed to be finished in 2033, but has since been delayed indefinitely for the foreseeable future because of how big of a project it is. High-speed rail projects have been proven to take a lot of time to make, and that shouldn’t be any reason to cut its budget or end it entirely.
While at a first glance the California High-Speed Rail Project might seem to be a mismanaged, over-budgeted plan that will eventually fail, this isn’t the case. The project is making steady progress and while it may take a while to see itself to completion, that is no reason to cut massive amounts of money from the project and put people’s careers at stake.
