By Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times; March 3, 2019
The California bullet train project will probably run out of money before it can fulfill Gov. Gavin Newsom’s modest plan to build a high-speed operating segment between Bakersfield and Merced, according to a Times analysis of the state rail authority’s financial records.
The governor declared his support for the scaled-back rail plan last month, saying that for the foreseeable future the original goal of a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco system would cost too much and had no path forward. Instead, Newsom said, the state did have the “capacity” to build a 171-mile route through the almond orchards, orange groves, vineyards and oil fields of the Central Valley.