Poll: Voters Turn Against California Bullet Train
LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) — A new poll finds a majority of California voters want the $68-billion bullet train project stopped and consider it a waste of money.
A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times survey published Saturday found that 52 percent of voters say the project to link Los Angeles and San Francisco by high-speed trains should be halted. Only 43 percent said it should go forward.
The findings mirror a poll last year. At the time state rail officials argued that public support would increase as improvements were made to the plan. But the support hasn't materialized.
Poll: Voters Turn Against California Bullet Train
Instead, many voters want the project put back on the ballot to hopefully kill it, according to Dan Schnur, who heads the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.
"When Californians voted to pass the ballot measure, they were promised that it would cost a certain amount of money and not take that long a time to get implemented. Now the state is struggling out of a recession and Californians are saying, 'Wait a minute. We want a second chance to vote on this,'" Schnur told KNX 1070's Bob Brill.
The project has fallen a year behind schedule and is facing multiple lawsuits.
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