By Jeff Davis, Senior Fellow and Editor, Eno Transportation Weekly; February 13, 2019
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D)’s announcement yesterday that he was curtailing plans to construct a statewide high-speed rail system – instead only completing the Merced to Bakersfield section for which funding is already in hand and construction is underway – leaves a lot of people wondering if the failure of this project in the richest state in the U.S. means that high-speed rail is doomed to failure throughout America.
However, many of the problems that have led to the apparent failure of the California project are unique and don’t necessarily apply to other projects.