{"id":373845,"date":"2026-06-25T01:45:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T01:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/373845\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T01:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T01:45:11","slug":"california-high-speed-rail-drops-downtown-bakersfield-station-shifts-north-of-7th-standard-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/373845\/","title":{"rendered":"California high-speed rail drops downtown Bakersfield station, shifts north of 7th Standard Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

California\u2019s high-speed rail project is changing course again in Bakersfield, abandoning plans for a downtown station and shifting the proposed stop to a site north of 7th Standard Road.<\/p>\n

The California High-Speed Rail Authority said the Bakersfield station will not be at the proposed downtown \u201cF Street\u201d location for now. Michael Turnipseed, the board chairman of the Kern County Taxpayers Association, said the downtown station plan \u201cwas doomed from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this will probably go down in history as the worst public works project in the history of the United States,\u201d Turnipseed said.<\/p>\n

Turnipseed said money was a major factor in preventing the downtown plan, pointing to engineering challenges at the site.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll you had to do was talk to any engineer in town and they would tell you, you can\u2019t build a 20-story building there because of the sand. It\u2019s river sand. It\u2019s flood plain. It would cost so much,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asked what prompted the change, the California High-Speed Rail Authority did not provide an explanation. A spokesperson said the agency was unable to comment before the newscast.<\/p>\n

The project\u2019s Capital Cost Basis of Estimate report<\/a> describes the 7th Standard Road location as \u201cinterim\u201d and says it will provide strategic access to Meadows Field Airport. The report also says the location will not block the future track alignment that will continue to downtown Bakersfield and Palmdale.<\/p>\n

The report does not say when the 7th Standard Road location is set to be completed, but some media outlets report it will not be until 2033.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeven years from now. That\u2019ll be when the next governor will be going out of office and you have to think they\u2019re going to come to Bakersfield,\u201d Turnipseed said.<\/p>\n

Turnipseed called the high-speed rail a great idea, but said there is not enough intellectual capability to handle such a complex problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California\u2019s high-speed rail project is changing course again in Bakersfield, abandoning plans for a downtown station and shifting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-373845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}