SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Even liberal California has abandoned high-speed rail

Feb 12, 2019, 5:19 PM | Updated: 6:22 pm

High speed rail, Cascadia rail,...

Could a high speed rail work in Washington? (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

Something incredible has just happened in California, a state that is about as radical as Washington in terms of greed for tax dollars. We just found out that California Governor Gavin Newsom has suspended a $77 billion high-speed rail line from Northern California to Bakersfield.

Why? It’s too costly. I didn’t know that politicians on the Left knew the meaning of the phrase “too costly.”

Here at home, Governor Jay Inslee is pursuing high-speed rail between Vancouver, B.C. and Portland.

RELATED: Millions more to be spent on studying high-speed rail between Washington, B.C.

It will cost far more to take the train from Seattle to Portland than it costs to fly. It will be much more infrequent. And it will be slower. So, it is inferior to air travel in every single way.

Last year, Inslee called the proposed Puget Sound high-speed rail a “monument to optimism.” No, it’s a testament to failure. And even far-Left California has abandoned its efforts for high-speed rail.

The only thing I feared about the California rail system was that it would have bumped Sound Transit from the most criminally corrupt enterprise in the U.S. to the number-two spot. But thanks to the California announcement, Sound Transit retains its lead for the foreseeable future as the most corrupt and wasteful public agency in the country

The only possible threat on the horizon is Inslee’s Portland to British Columbia bullet train.

Please follow our Community Guidelines

FILE - Cargo containers line a ship at the Port of Oakland on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, in Oakland, ...

Associated Press

A forced-labor crackdown or an end-run around Congress? Dissecting Trump’s new tariffs

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration has imposed double-digit tariffs on more than 60 countries, using a legal justification that permits the president to levy import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices. The new tariffs announced in recent days take effect just as temporary […]

33 minutes ago

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters ahead of an address by President...

Associated Press

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries kicks off 100 days till midterms with affordability agenda

The stage is in battleground Pennsylvania. The stakes are control of the House. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday will unveil the party’s Fighting for an Affordable America agenda, as he kicks off 100 days until the midterm elections and works to focus voter attention ahead of November. In Pennsylvania’s 7th District, tucked in […]

34 minutes ago

Firefighters spray water in a burning forest near Lacanau, southwestern France, Saturday, July 25, ...

Associated Press

Wildfire forces another 55,000 people to evacuate in southwest France

LEGE-CAP FERRET, France (AP) — A raging wildfire in southwest France forced the evacuation of 55,000 people overnight Sunday, taking the total forced out of their homes to 220,000 as the flames have crept ever closer to the wine region city of Bordeaux. Authorities in the Gironde region, where Bordeaux is located, issued overnight evacuation […]

4 hours ago

Two people embrace near others wearing thermal blankets as they stand near emergency personnel in B...

Associated Press

Authorities in Germany issue a wanted notice for suspect in the Berlin Pride van ramming

BERLIN (AP) — German authorities on Sunday issued a wanted notice for a fugitive suspect in the van ramming near Berlin’s Pride festival that left one person dead and injured at least 16 others. Police and prosecutors asked for help in finding the 21-year-old, whom they identified as Abdul B. Police had said earlier that […]

6 hours ago

Visitors at the booth for Chinese AI Startup Moonshot's Kimi K3 during the World AI Conference in S...

Associated Press

Cheaper, open and intelligent: Chinese AI models gain ground, as they make inroads in the US

HONG KONG (AP) — China has a hot new product in the United States: artificial intelligence. San Francisco-based Raffi Krikorian, the chief technology officer at Mozilla, which runs the Firefox browser, switched to Chinese AI startup Moonshot’s Kimi K3 for many of his day-to-day activities within days of the new, powerful model’s launch more than […]

7 hours ago

This GOES-19 GeoColor satellite image provided by NOAA shows Tropical Storm Genevieve in the Easter...

Associated Press

Hurricane Genevieve moves through the Pacific off Mexico, but no direct threat to land is forecast

MIAMI (AP) — Tropical Storm Genevieve has strengthened into a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Mexico. It is forecast to pick up even more steam and become a major hurricane in the coming days but stay well out to sea on a course roughly parallel to the shore. Genevieve had maximum sustained winds […]

7 hours ago

Dori: Even liberal California has abandoned high-speed rail