High-Speed Rail Official Groundbreaking Ceremony video of the ceremonies.
At noon today, Governor Jerry Brown will join other leaders as the California High Speed Rail Authority breaks ground on the project in Fresno. You can watch the ceremony live here.
Today’s groundbreaking represents the culmination of literally decades of work to bring high speed rail to California, going back to Jerry Brown’s first two terms as governor. But more importantly, it represents the end of six years of political and legal wrangling. After California voters approved the high speed rail project and gave $9 billion to fund it at the November 2008 election, NIMBYs living on or near the proposed route, did everything in their power to prevent HSR from being built. They sued at every possible opportunity, and lobbied the Legislature to deny authorization to sell the Prop 1A bonds.
Those efforts delayed the project’s groundbreaking, originally planned for 2012. But in 2014 the opponents were handed a series of decisive defeats. The Legislature had already voted to authorize the sale of the Prop 1A bonds in 2012. In June 2014 they agreed to give 25% of the cap and trade revenue to HSR, which gives a big boost to the project’s finances for years to come. NIMBY lawsuits also fared badly, with the state Supreme Court siding with the Authority and then the federal Surface Transportation Board ruling at the end of 2014 that their approval trumps CEQA.
So today’s groundbreaking is about more than just starting construction. It represents a very real turning point, the moment when HSR stops being an idea and becomes reality. That in turn will change the politics around HSR. No longer will it be realistic to talk about HSR as a possibility, as something that might not happen. And it will no longer be realistic to talk about major route changes, like bypassing the Central Valley cities by going along I-5. Instead the discussion will finally be about the details – whether to build a tunnel from Palmdale to Burbank, how to finish funding the project, and so on.
www.cahsrblog.com/2015/01/the-end-of-the-beginning
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