FILE – In this Dec. 6, 2017 file photo, one of the elevated sections of the high-speed rail is under construction in Fresno, Calif.  (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

Former Governor Jerry Brown once defended the cost of the bullet train project by citing the need to sacrifice for the future. It took generations of sacrifices, he said, to finance medieval cathedrals.

In 2008, Californians voted for future generations to pay back $9.9 billion in debt to build the bullet train. It’s 13 years later, and a medieval cathedral still travels faster.

Not all of the money voters authorized has yet been appropriated by the Legislature, and the California High-Speed Rail Authority wants the remaining $4.2 billion right now. Gov. Gavin Newsom supports that request, but lawmakers in the state Assembly have other ideas. Speaker Anthony Rendon and others would like to move those funds to rail projects in the Bay Area and in Southern California. Talks between the two sides broke down recently, and it appears that nothing will be decided until January at the earliest.

This argument is less about California’s funds than the money that could come from the federal government as part of the multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure legislation. President Joe Biden, who helped to get $8 billion for high-speed rail into a federal stimulus bill when he was vice president during the Obama administration, is friendly to rail funding, and Democrats narrowly control both houses of Congress. Advocates think the window is open and the spigot should follow.

But that may not happen. California’s boondoggle project has lost the support of key state lawmakers including Assembly Transportation Committee chair Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, who has argued that high-speed rail funds should be re-routed from the Central Valley’s bullet-train construction site to commuter rail in Southern California.

If California lawmakers pull money away from the bullet train, it’s less likely that congressional appropriators will commit significant federal rail funds to the project.

If Democrats lose control of the House of Representatives or the Senate in 2022, it’s likely that the chances of federal funding for the bullet train will decrease.

And if Gov. Gavin Newsom is recalled, his replacement could move to cancel the high-speed rail project entirely.

So the race is on. In August, U.S. High Speed Rail Association president and CEO Andy Kunz called California’s bullet train “visionary” and predicted, “As soon as trains are operating, the criticism will quickly fade away like yesterday’s news, and everyone will be thrilled to have such a fast, easy, reliable mode of transport—not seen in America yet.”

What we have seen does not inspire confidence. The High-Speed Rail Authority is currently spending $500 million per year on building a bullet train from Merced to north of Bakersfield, and if there is a significant market for a 200-mile-an-hour trip between those Central Valley cities, it was not mentioned in the ballot measure that voters approved in 2008.

Something else that wasn’t presented to voters is the high-speed rail project’s current major funding source, which is 25% of the revenue that comes into the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund from the cap-and-trade program. Cap-and-trade is effectively a hidden tax that raises the price of gasoline and diesel fuel as well as electricity.

Current plans project that the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment can be completed in 4-5 years for $22.8 billion. That rests on the hope that there will be no delays or cost increases. Perhaps negotiators should hold their next meeting in a medieval cathedral.

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