Iowa Senator Slams Wasteful California Rail Transportation Projects
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has issued a report identifying wasteful federally funded construction projects, and California’s rail projects are prominently featured. In addition to High-Speed Rail, Ernst’s “Off the Rails” report correctly singles out three transit projects in Northern California. While Californians may discount criticisms from a Red State Senator, Ernst’s report might ultimately benefit taxpayers in the Bay Area.
The report includes a list of cost overruns reported by the Department of Transportation. Under the previous Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, DOT failed to comply with a Congressional mandate to provide an annual report listing transportation projects that are $1 billion over budget and/or five years behind schedule. The new DOT Secretary, Sean Duffy, submitted an updated list which is included in the Ernst report.
Among the DOT-identified overruns is San Francisco BART’s Core Capacity project, whose cost escalated from $2.7 billion at federal approval to $4.0 billion recently. The Core Capacity project is intended to increase the capacity of BART’s transbay tunnel between Oakland and San Francisco from 23 to 28 trains per hour. The project was approved before COVID-19 slashed BART usage and eliminated the need for added capacity.
DOT also reported that the Core Capacity project is more than three years behind schedule and attributes that to problems acquiring additional storage yards for BART’s new subway cars. BART is in the process of acquiring a total of 1129 cars comprising its “Fleet of the Future”. However, BART’s current service requires a maximum of about five hundred cars at any given time. While BART needs more than this number to provide a buffer for cars requiring service, 1129 is far more than necessary, requiring excess storage.
More BART cars may be necessary to extend service through downtown San Jose, but this extension project is among those in Senator Ernst’s crosshairs. As Ed Ring and I previously discussed in National Review, even transit advocates admit that the BART San Jose project is terrible, having seen costs escalate to $12.8 billion for six miles of additional track. Project completion has also been delayed to the late 2030s raising the question of whether BART needs to buy and store additional train cars to serve the extended line now.
Finally, Ernst singles out another project I covered in National Review: the extension of Caltrain service to San Francisco’s overbuilt Salesforce Transit Center. This project would add just 1.3 miles of new passenger rail at a cost of $8.3 billion, making it the costliest project on a per mile basis ever.
Slashing federal funding for the BART and Caltrain extensions might be bad news for the few riders that will use them if these projects are ever finished, but it could be good news for area taxpayers.
BART, Caltrain, and other California transit systems are operating at huge losses. The state legislature has already agreed to give Bay Area transit systems up to $750 million in emergency loans ahead of their hoped for half cent sales tax increase, which will be on the ballot in November 2026.
But if the BART and Caltrain extension projects were cancelled, local sales tax money would be freed up. Potentially these funds could be reallocated to support operations, staving off the need for emergency loans and more tax hikes. Reallocating capital funds to operations raises legal complexities, but there is a partial precedent for it. The legislature allowed transit agencies to use state capital funds for operations in SB 125 (2023).
The natural inclination for many Californians will be to dismiss criticism from an Iowa Senator on the grounds that we live in a “donor state” and do not need to take advice from a representative of a state that receives more federal funds than it pays in taxes. But while California residents pay an enormous amount of tax money to the federal government, our state and local governments are too often careless in spending the grant money that comes back from Washington DC. If an out-of-state Senator can help eliminate wasteful programs that impose high costs on both the federal and local levels, we should welcome her intervention.
Marc Joffe is a Visiting Fellow at California Policy Center and the president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association.