◼ Four weeks after the news that the cost of California’s high-speed rail project has tripled since voters approved it, the struggling project is taking another hit: waning public support. - Ed Morrissey/HotAir
A new Field Poll shows that 64 percent of California voters would like a ballot measure giving them a chance to reconsider their 2008 decision to approve $9 billion in state bonds for the project.
Fifty-nine percent said they would reject the $98.5 billion project if it were put before them again. In 2008, 52.6 percent of voters approved plans for the rail line to connect San Francisco and Sacramento with Los Angeles.
◼ Poll: 59% Do Not Want California’s High-Speed Rail Project - Jammie Wearing Fools
This makes plenty of sense considering the state is in dire shape, they don’t have the money and this boondoggle would cost over $100 billion that they simply do not have.
“The Field Poll confirmed what I already had come to believe: The public patience for this project is about exhausted,” said state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.
DeSaulnier said he has long supported the bullet train service as a way to fight congestion and greenhouse gases.
But he said Tuesday that he could turn against the project unless the California High Speed Rail Authority soon can answer questions about spiraling costs and uncertainty over federal and private funding for the project.
“I think it’s time to fish or cut bait with this project,” he said. “It may be too late.”
◼ Poll casts cloud over high-speed rail project - Contra Costa Times
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a USC political scholar, said the struggling economy has made it a hard time to begin expensive public works projects -- especially when federal and private funding for the project is unclear.
"Voters are uncomfortable with large-scale expensive projects," Bebitch Jeffe said.
