FRESNO, Calif. (AP) – California broke ground Tuesday on its $68 billion high-speed rail system, promising to combat global warming while whisking travelers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours.
The bullet train project, the first in the nation to get underway, faces challenges from Republican cost-cutters in Congress and Central Valley farmers suing to keep the rails off their fields. Others doubt the state can deliver the sleek system as designed, and worry it will become an expensive failure.
But Gov. Jerry Brown said high-speed rail is essential to meeting his latest goal: Encouraging the nation’s most populous state to get half its power from renewable energy by 2030.
“It’s not that expensive. We can afford it. In fact, we cannot NOT afford it,” Brown said before signing a symbolic section of rail. “All these projects are a little touch and go. You’ll have these critics say ‘why spend all this money?'”
“On the other hand I like trains, I like clean air,” Brown said. “And I like to enjoy the comfort of trains. I like to get up and walk around and shake hands. You can’t do that in your little car as you look in your rear view mirror.”