Present administration only sees a viable path to destruction of the aims set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
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CaHSRA has responded to the possibility of losing the national gov’t grant:
“To that end, the Governor’s budget proposal, which is currently before the Legislature, extends at least $1 billion per year in funding for the next 20 years, providing the necessary resources to complete the project’s initial operating segment.”
I’m not an expert, but that sounds like they are saying that a train will not be running for twenty years. Is that right?
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Would certainly be consistent with their track record… 
I don’t see much point to a 220mph electric interurban railway, though, especially one with all those political stops, and which has to compete for peak-demand electricity with all the prospective increases in California. There are certainly wayside-storage solutions that would allow for cost-effective high acceleration… but they would have to be budgeted for, and built, on a priority basis, and in a state that’s already decided its intrrurban electric railway has to be single-track, that might not be likely enough.
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Both the Biggest and Smallest of projects begin with the first step.
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Just like California they’ll never admit that they might be weong at something. CA lawmakers, regulators clash over upcoming closure of oil refineries
When the mainstream democrats in Sacramento are starting to demand the government literally stop their regulations against oil there’s a problem.
Those refineries represent 20 percent of all oil refining in California and if the close as expected gas prices will jump to an estimated 8 bucks a gallon. Not sure how many people will want more of the same thing going in there when they are forced to decide between gas for work or eating for the week.
It’s like the HSR project in California they never really had a plan just wanted to keep spending money and hope people forget about the costs of it.
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Very true!! The thin ice, that is. You Balt and of course Shadow are posting into tangential politics. You should delete yours posts so as to forestall the thread getting locked again.
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Railroads and Politics are nearly inseparable, just a nature of the industry. It should be not only possible, but allowed to be discussed in Civilized and Relevant ways.
What needs to stop is the Partisan Jabs.
The vast majority of my controversial posts are in response to other posts, that are either irrelevant or simply wrong
It is definitely lopsided, as to which way the partisan jabs lean, and I usually hold my tongue, but sometimes I can’t let something go unchallenged
Doug
California has the money to continue without the Feds. There are other options as well. The question is will the state continue the project. My guess at this point is they will find a way to do so. I can’t see the state abandoning the project entirely.
As for the Federal Government they do need a more balanced approach to transportation which includes all modes.
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Philosophy of many people these days:
My mind’s made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.
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[WARNING] This article concerns the underlying politics. Ignore if that offends you.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/04/trump-california-high-speed-rail-00388315
The ominous thing for ‘politics as usual’ with the cap-and-trade funding is the disaster unfolding around the two refineries closing. The usual claim appears to have been “soak the fat-cat oil companies” obscenely profiting off ‘expensive’ California motor fuel… but whoops! here’s not one, but two alleged gougers giving up the whole idea as a loss. And people from the relevant agencies testifying that they did not consider California drivers in their planning and requirements.
One appalling thing is that Tutor Perini and the European front companies have supposedly had 15,000 union laborers at work in the past decade. With that kind of manpower and a couple of those billion in modern ROW and TLM equipment, much more than completion of the electric interurban railway ought to be possible well within a 20-year timeframe… if the Californians actually prioritize railroad-building.
And then, there’s always 2028, although the project already had support from 12 years of friendly HSR-spendthrift administrations and has wound up in this parlous state regardless.
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Don’t you think the decline in world oil prices might have had something to do with closures, especially if the plants in question are older and less efficient?
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Not in this case. California prices for ‘wholesale’ fuel are wildly higher than most comparable ‘world’ prices, and of course the post-refining storage and distribution costs as well as any latency are much less. The old joke about ‘New York, New York’ that “if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere” would apply in spades to the California market… to put it another way, most of the gas prices in the Memphis area (where we have 3 older refineries but are laughably far from crude producers) have been in the $2.69 range for many months. Common sense will tell you that there’s some combination of how California regulates and taxes its businesses and how California taxes its motor fuel that accounts not only for the price difference but the willingness to continue production.
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Per CARB itself effective July 1 the new Carbon offset tax per gallon of gasoline is 61 cents and will be a dollar a gallon on diesel plus the 90 cents a gallon in fuel taxes on gasoline and 96 cents on diesel fuel. So thrown in the federal level taxes over 2 dollars a gallon of every gallon in California on July for diesel will be for taxes alone. BTW the railroads are also paying that carbon tax in California on all their diesel fuel they burn. CARB doesn’t give them any exception from their taxes unlike the federal government from fuel taxes for the most part.
Some sources suggest that the cost of refining can range from $3-4 per barrel in large refineries like Exxon Baytown (Texas) to $10-12 per barrel in smaller California refineries.
California crude is heavy, meaning more costly to refine. That is the most relevant factor, along with higher labor costs, not per gallon RETAIL taxes for in-state purchase and consumption.
California is increasingly exporting energy to other states. So the electric trains should not impact the grid.
How much State, Local and Federal taxes are being applied to each gallon in each location where a retail price is being quoted.
Exporting in the middle of the day when solar production exceeds local demand. Not so much in peak demand time (about 7PM) when the solar output is close to zero. Batteries provide some make-up capability, but numerous battery facilities have caught on fire - which may be reduced with LFP.
Then there is the problem with most renewable generation and battery facilities not having the capability of providing inertia and reactive power support that is present with rotating synchronous generators along with power/frequency control. My experience has been that very few people outside of electric utilities understand the issues - check out Russ Schussler’s posts on the Climate ETC website for more details. (FWIW, I have taken a couple of power systems courses with associated labs (those were fun) along with an electrical machinery course and lab during my undergraduate years at UC Berkeley.)
On a related note, this morning I passed a gas station that was selling #2 diesel for about $4.70 gallon and regular gas for about $5.20 a gallon. These prices will be going up on July 1st.
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As is pertains to railroads - rest assured BNSF and UP are sourcing their fuel from the lowest cost options available to them - fueling outside California whenever possible.