Biden infrastructure bill could be California high-speed rail’s ‘lifeline’

California's bullet train will have a hard time ever reaching the Bay Area without billions of dollars from new federal infrastructure spending.

The $2.3 trillion infrastructure package President Joe Biden rolled out last week has backers of the California bullet train dreaming of what could be.

The torrent of federal funding could provide the beleaguered project with billions of dollars needed to bring high-speed rail to the Bay Area or even Los Angeles. Or its share could be much, much less.

One thing is for sure: Without a whole lot more federal money, it could end up being a costly, controversial train with only five stops between Merced and Bakersfield.

“It’s really a lifeline for the system,” UC Berkeley professor Ethan Elkind said of Biden’s infrastructure package.

But Elkind, the director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, cautioned that even the massive spending plan Biden is proposing will not be enough to deliver the whole project. The cost of building the electrified high-speed San Francisco-to-Los Angeles train voters were sold on back in 2008 has soared to as much as $100 billion.

“High-speed rail is going to have to compete with a whole bunch of other infrastructure projects,” Elkind said. “It’s not going to (get) the tens of billions of dollars that are actually needed to complete the line.”

Exactly how much money the new administration wants to give California High-Speed Rail isn’t clear.

Biden’s infrastructure proposal, which kicks off lengthy negotiations with Congress, calls for $80 billion in new federal spending on passenger and freight rail. But it’s light on key details: A White House fact sheet said the money would go toward addressing Amtrak’s repair backlog, improving that railroad’s Northeast Corridor, connecting new cities with rail service and funding “grant and loan programs that support passenger and freight rail safety, efficiency, and electrification.”

Unlike Amtrak, there is no specific mention of California’s HSR, and a White House spokeswoman did not respond to questions last week about whether the project would receive funding. Those managing the project don’t know either.

“We’re in a bit of a wait-and-see moment,” said Boris Lipkin, the Northern California regional director of the High-Speed Rail Authority.

Still, he downplayed the idea that the package represents a make-or-break moment for the project.

“I look at this as the next opportunity for us to do more,” Lipkin said.

The authority should already have enough money to finish a 171-mile starter system from Merced to Bakersfield and launch passenger service by the end of this decade without any new federal funding, Lipkin said.

His pledge rests on several optimistic assumptions. For it to happen, California’s Legislature would have to approve the authority’s request to use $4.1 billion in bond money to pay for the segment — rather than diverting that funding to other rail projects in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, as some members have called for. The state’s market for carbon emission credits, another revenue source for the project, would have to perform well. And, perhaps most crucially, the $23 billion price tag for the segment would need to stop going up, up and up.

Completing the Merced to Bakersfield segment could help rebuild public support for the project while improving transportation options for the 3 million people who live in the six counties it would touch.

“What you would have then is essentially better San Joaquin Valley rail service,” Elkin said, “but not anywhere near the high-speed rail network that voters were promised in 2008.”

The rail authority does not at this point have the money to build high-speed connections between the Central Valley line and the Bay Area or Los Angeles.

Those two bookends are as important as they are difficult: the segment running from San Jose to the Central Valley requires boring a long tunnel through the Diablo Range east of Gilroy and is estimated to cost $13.6 billion, and reaching Los Angeles will require blasting through two more mountain ranges.

We have a suggestion in mind. #BuildHSR https://t.co/cOG1zSaH7e pic.twitter.com/kX9qQ5kPwO

— CA High-Speed Rail (@CaHSRA) March 30, 2021

While construction crews are at work on towering new bullet-train viaducts along Highway 99 in the Central Valley, the rail authority’s “building block” strategy has been to keep developing plans for the Bay Area and Los Angeles segments, so it can one day pounce on new federal funding — like what Biden is proposing.

The final version of the federal infrastructure bill may not include a line item for the California project, forcing the authority to apply for new funding that would be distributed through grant programs. Lipkin pointed out that was how the project received its first round of federal funding more than a decade ago.

The “reasonable optimistic” hope for Bay Area bullet train supporters, according to Elkin, would be for Congress to pass an infrastructure bill that ultimately delivers perhaps $6 billion to $8 billion in new federal funding for the San Jose to Central Valley segment.

That piece — when combined with electrification work already underway along the Caltrain corridor up the Peninsula — would mean someone could ride from San Francisco to Bakersfield.

And even if service to Los Angeles remains farther in the future, Elkin said, “That’s a pretty big chunk of the state.”

If the money never materializes, rail authority officials would probably ask California voters for more money to build the Bay Area or Los Angeles segments, likely with new taxes or bonds. That could be a tough sell if all they have to show for their work is a stretch between Merced and Bakersfield beset by cost overruns and delays.

Those problems led former President Donald Trump to declare California High-Speed Rail a “green disaster.” In 2019, his appointees in the Federal Railroad Administration canceled $929 million in previously approved federal funding for the project and sought to claw back another $2.5 billion it had already spent, prompting the authority to sue the administration.

But with a president known as “Amtrak Joe” in the White House, Lipkin and other rail supporters are feeling optimistic.

Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have talked about building a nationwide high-speed rail network, and the current FRA administrator put out a statement supporting California’s bullet train in February. California officials and the new administration are now in settlement negotiations over the money Trump sought to revoke.

“It has been night and day,” Lipkin said. “We’re working collaboratively now, and there are almost daily conversations with our federal partners on how we move forward.”