California leaders are ready to lay high-speed rail tracks through the Central Valley, and on Monday they signaled where the tracks are headed: south toward Palmdale, to make connections into Las Vegas.
When they’ll arrive at the Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco remains uncertain.
The new map would plug California high-speed rail into a regional network with two other bullet train lines — the High Desert Corridor in Los Angeles, and the privately owned Brightline West route from Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga.
Officials began promoting the western desert network amid growing uncertainty for California’s bullet-train project , long a subject of derision for Republicans who now have control of Congress. Many, including Vivek Ramaswamy, an advisor to President Donald Trump, have decried the project for delays and skyrocketing costs. Funding for the original idea — 463 miles of track from Los Angeles to the Bay Area — has for years been in jeopardy.
Despite the challenges ahead, Gov. Gavin Newsom struck a sanguine tone as he planned to hammer a symbolic spike into the ground in Kern County Monday afternoon. The first segment, 22 miles from the border of Tulare and Kern counties to Poplar Avenue in Wasco, is the southernmost part of a section from Merced to Bakersfield. Passenger service could start as early as 2030, spokespeople for the governor’s office said.