I’m a relative newcomer to the Golden State and just recently learned about the $114 million “butterfly bridge.” I thought it must have been a joke.
Nope. Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC) broke ground four years ago and, like seemingly every other infrastructure project in this state, it is way over budget and well behind schedule.
That’s bad enough. But California has been on a bridge-to-nowhere building binge for more than a decade, even as its existing bridges crumble.
In the Central Valley, there are roughly two dozen bridges, viaducts, and overpasses, either finished or under construction, that currently connect to nothing and may never be used.
For example, the state started building the 1,600-foot Fresno River Viaduct back in 2015 and finished it in 2018. Eight years later, anyone traversing it would fall off the end. Same with the 4,741-foot San Joaquin River Viaduct, which has been sitting unused for more than five years. (See below.)
The 4,741-foot San Joaquin River Viaduct, which has been sitting unused for more than five years.
There’s the Tied Arch Bridge south of Fresno, which will look grand when it’s done. But it doesn’t tie into anything. There’s just dirt on either end of it.
And this doesn’t count all the bridges being built to carry auto traffic over what is now empty space, some of them in the middle of nowhere.
All told, there are 58 such structures underway or completed between Merced and Bakersfield, with construction costs in the billions.
The expectation is that all these will eventually service high-speed trains along a 119-mile stretch between the two cities, the first section of the California High Speed Rail project in the works.
But at best, that won’t happen for another four years. And given the history of this beleaguered project, it likely will take far longer, if the service ever does get off the ground. And when and if the Merced to Bakersfield line does open, ridership will be less than 2 million per year, according to the California High Speed Rail Authority.
Meanwhile, the state has more than 1,200 existing bridges that have been deemed structurally deficient, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. And these carry humans across them nearly 22 million times a day.
There are 150 structurally deficient bridges just in the five sparsely populated Central Valley counties where work on the high-speed rail is currently underway.
Fast-moving trains might one day use all those bridges and viaducts and overpasses being built. And mountain lions might one day happily traverse the WAWC bridge.
But right now, they are nothing more than monuments to the folly of government planning and misplaced priorities.
After all, think about all the other transportation projects that this money could have supported. Projects that could right now be making travel easier for humans and safer for endangered animals.
John Merline is a veteran journalist who was editor of Consumers’ Research magazine, Washington bureau chief of Investor’s Business Daily, member of the editorial board of USA Today, and is currently publisher of Issues & Insights.
All photos courtesy California High-Speed Rail Authority