While an infrastructure funding deal remains elusive in Washington, passenger rail transportation on both the east and west coasts is facing special challenges because some major projects in jeopardy. On the west coast, California’s High Speed Rail project continues to be constructed in the Central Valley, but plans to extend high speed rail to the State’s major population centers look as doubtful as ever. In February of this year, then newly inaugurated Governor Newsom offered a realistic assessment that plans to expand the line into Los Angeles and into the Bay Area were not at this time feasible and would require further assessment. He did not kill the project, as widely reported at the time, but rather said that the State would continue to build the Central Valley segment between Merced and Bakersfield, while continuing to study how to connect the ends of that segment with the major metropolitan areas. In fact, rail lines, albeit not high speed, already exist between Merced and the Bay Area, thus opening the possibility of some combined traditional rail/high speed rail service between San Francisco and at least Bakersfield.
