California’s Governor Gavin Newsom intends to scale back California’s $77 billion bullet train project, according to NBC News, saying there is “no path” currently for a high-speed rail network connecting all of the state’s population centers. The project will proceed with work on a 160-mile stretch in the state’s Central Valley, where construction is already underway.
"For those who want to walk away from this whole endeavor, I offer you this," he told NBC. "Abandoning high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises and lawsuits to show for it."
According to NBC News, he is open to completing the state-spanning system at some point in the future.
Newsom also said he was “not interested” in returning the $3.5 billion in federal funding allocated to the project back to President Trump.
As of now, Newsom said the fully fledged project would cost too much money, and take too long to finish. While several Central Valley Republicans have celebrated this project “extinction,” Democrats have seen this as a first step to eventual completion of the entire line.
According to NBC, State Sen. Scott Weiner, a Democrat who represents part of the San Francisco Bay Area, said that Newsom hadn't killed the statewide plan.
"He said we must focus on completing [the] Central Valley segment and then move forward from there," Weiner said on Twitter, adding: "The Bay Area and Los Angeles must be—and will be—part of California's high speed rail network."
Source: NBC & the San Francisco Chronicle
