SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Dori: Even liberal California has abandoned high-speed rail
Feb 12, 2019, 5:19 PM | Updated: 6:22 pm

Could a high speed rail work in Washington? (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
Something incredible has just happened in California, a state that is about as radical as Washington in terms of greed for tax dollars. We just found out that California Governor Gavin Newsom has suspended a $77 billion high-speed rail line from Northern California to Bakersfield.
Why? It’s too costly. I didn’t know that politicians on the Left knew the meaning of the phrase “too costly.”
Here at home, Governor Jay Inslee is pursuing high-speed rail between Vancouver, B.C. and Portland.
RELATED: Millions more to be spent on studying high-speed rail between Washington, B.C.
It will cost far more to take the train from Seattle to Portland than it costs to fly. It will be much more infrequent. And it will be slower. So, it is inferior to air travel in every single way.
Last year, Inslee called the proposed Puget Sound high-speed rail a “monument to optimism.” No, it’s a testament to failure. And even far-Left California has abandoned its efforts for high-speed rail.
The only thing I feared about the California rail system was that it would have bumped Sound Transit from the most criminally corrupt enterprise in the U.S. to the number-two spot. But thanks to the California announcement, Sound Transit retains its lead for the foreseeable future as the most corrupt and wasteful public agency in the country
The only possible threat on the horizon is Inslee’s Portland to British Columbia bullet train.