Steve Hilton has the only good idea for California’s failed fake train dreams

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Steve Hilton is right: California’s high-speed rail project belongs in a museum, not on a map — and certainly not on the state’s budget.

The “bullet train to nowhere” was supposed to link San Francisco to Los Angeles in under three hours at a cost of $33 billion by 2020.

Instead, it will only link a couple of towns in the Central Valley, at a cost of over $200 billion, by 2032 at the earliest. 

The Republican candidate for governor says he will end the project and “turn it into the Government Failures National Monument.” That might actually be a profitable idea. One can imagine something like the statue parks that sprang up in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. 

These were monuments to the vanity of “proletarian” leaders who claimed to rule in the name of the working classes, while enriching themselves and crushing the freedom of other human beings.

Even Gavin Newsom understood that the high-speed rail project was a disaster — and that was eight years ago. 

When he took office, he told the state legislature that he was canceling the overall plan — because, as he said, “The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency.”

But like every other failed project he attempted in two terms as governor, Newsom left that job unfinished. He didn’t cancel the whole high-speed rail project — just the part that connected the big cities where people actually wanted to go.

Today, Democrat Xavier Becerra says he wants to continue the failing high-speed rail project. When asked during a primary debate if he would keep it going, Becerra said: “The slow-speed delivery of high-speed rail, no; the high-speed delivery of high-speed rail, yes.”

“What does that mean?” Hilton asked.

Exactly.

High-speed rail is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist: Californians can already travel easily and cheaply between San Francisco and LA.

Past governors have touted high-speed rail as an answer to climate change. But the construction process alone has emitted huge amounts of carbon, and involves other environmental challenges.

Even private sector versions of high-speed rail, like the Brightline project between Las Vegas and Southern California, have run into trouble. 

Stop the madness. Turn the bullet train into the “Government Failures National Monument” — so that future generations of Californians can learn what the state cannot do with taxpayer money.

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