In the small town of Shafter just northwest of Bakersfield, Gavin Newsom’s dream of high-speed rail service has become a nightmare.
Residents and business owners in the Central Valley burg are outraged over a state proposal to run the train line smack through the middle of their quaint downtown — overtaking local businesses while costing state taxpayers about $215 million per mile.
Cameron Hunter, 31, the general manager of a local Chevy dealership run by his wife’s family since 1947, said that a recently revised proposal would mean the loss of an entire car lot to construction.
“There’s nowhere else for us to go,” he said, taking a swipe at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s for his stop Tuesday in nearby Wasco to tout the project’s progress.
“If it’s something that people approve of and support locally, why did he not even invite a single member of the city of Shafter or the city of Wasco to participate?”
In the 2018, Shafter came to an agreement with the California High-Speed Rail Authority to construct an elevated line about 30 feet above ground that would have a smaller impact on the town.
But the authority pulled an about-face in October, calling the original plan too pricey and opting instead to keep the tracks at ground level while constructing a series of overpasses and pedestrian bridges that expanded the project’s footprint.
Hunter said the state has been “grabbing every property they can” since then without fully finalizing its plans.
A representative for the California High-Speed Rail Authority did not respond to The Post’s request for comment. The governor’s press office did not immediately respond a request for comment.
“[Newsom] talks about transparency, that this is going to be good for everyone,” Hunter added. “Well then talk to the people that it’s directly affecting. Because we have told you and told you that we don’t agree with it. And their response is, ‘We don’t care, we are coming through like this.’”
Amanda Kirschenmann, owner of 50-year-old Sun Country Flowers in downtown Shafter, believes the rail line will ruin her business by cutting off customers’ access to the shop.
“I think it’s going to devastate our little small downtown,” she said. “This is people’s livelihood.”
Newsom has been desperately trying to keep key details of the multibillion-dollar project secret.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has spent the $15 billion on the projects over the past decade — with nothing to show for it but a series of bleak concrete viaducts, overpasses and other “structures.”
Along the 171-mile Central Valley route between Merced and Bakersfield, the Post found 58 separate construction projects over the past eight years — with one local lawmaker likenening the structures to ”Stonehenge.”
Alfred Campos, 50, who has lived in Shafter since 1995, called the entire project “a waste of money.”
“I would understand if, for example, we had the Amtrak being overwhelmed with people,” he said of the existing passenger line the runs through Shafter. “We don’t see that many people going into Amtrak.”
Campos suggested the state instead spend the money on diverting water to the area to help power its robust agricultural industry.
“For a long while we’d been in a drought and nothing was done. But yet we can go and afford a high speed rail?”
Read the full article here
