A major construction team on the California bullet train project notified the state rail authority this month that it will not complete a 65-mile section of the future route in Kings County until at least April 14, 2025 — nearly two years after the date that the state included in a business plan adopted Thursday.
The additional delay could again boost costs and jeopardize the state’s funding plan to complete a partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced by 2030. The project’s rising price tag has forced the state to repeatedly scale it back and delay indefinitely a goal to have the train running from Los Angeles to San Francisco — at speeds up to 220 miles per hour — by 2020.
The notification of the new delay came in a letter dated March 9 to the California High-Speed Rail Authority. A construction team led by the Spanish firm Dragados described a chaotic system for projecting future construction progress because of state delays in securing land for construction.
The Times obtained a copy of the letter, which complained that the rail authority’s failure to accurately predict land acquisition has tangled construction schedules and caused fitful conditions along the route.
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