California will need to double down on support of the bullet train by digging deeper into the state’s wallet and accepting a three-year delay in completing the project’s initial leg, a new business plan for the 220-mph system shows.
Rail planners have turned their construction plans upside down, attempting to fit the mega-project within the state’s limited budget.
The 2016 business plan, released last month, shows that the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco rail link has proved to be politically and technically more complicated to build than foreseen in 2008, when voters agreed to help finance the project with a $9-billion bond.
The plan acknowledges the biggest of those problems: The costly and geologically complex crossing of the Southern California mountains cannot be completed by 2022, as the rail authority had long contended.
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