One Single State Set to Receive $6B in Federal Funding

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(Newsworthy.news) – The American government recently gave billions of dollars to the state of California to cover the costs of multiple railway projects.

The $6 billion was first announced early in December via a release from the wildly unpopular Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom. At the time, he said that “nearly $3.1 billion” for the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority to be able to construct more rails in the Central Valley, intending to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The project, known as Brightline, is going to receive another $3 billion to build rails connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Newsom emphasized that up to 80 percent of the construction project will benefit the economy and labor needs.

California’s project will be the nation’s first “220-mph, electric high-speed rail.” The $3.1 billion grant comes from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. It is the largest grant to ever be accepted under the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA).

But this is not the first time that the state agency has received criticism since its founding in 1996. One such complaint against expensive projects was that the first phase of the construction of the trains was expected to cost $35 billion. However, the project is now expected to exceed a total cost of $100 billion.

Critics have also pointed out that the money given to California for the rail projects could be better used on systems like the Northeast Corridor (NEC), which provides train service from Washington, D.C. up to Boston with stops in major cities like Baltimore and New York. Almost 10 million annual train users are those that use the NEC line.

However, the Biden administration instead sent the $6 billion to California, depriving the most popular line from funding that could be used to enhance the train system running along the East Coast. One report has even detailed that the least effective Amtrak lines are all connected to the state of California, which just received billions of dollars from the federal government for rail projects.