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Dive brief:
- California launched a new state website this week to track $180 billion in infrastructure projects over the next 10 years, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
- Build.ca.gov tracks projects that have benefited from the Jobs and Infrastructure Investments Act, including fast-track work aimed at building a 100% clean electricity grid, increasing the state’s water supply and modernizing its system of transport
- Newsom signed an executive order last May to establish one Infrastructure strike team to remove barriers to project development in California’s notoriously slow permitting process.
Diving knowledge:
The website includes a map highlighting numerous projects, from a solar energy storage site in Kings County north of Los Angeles to a new border crossing in San Diego and Bosch’s $1.5 billion investment in a chip factory in Northern California, which was spurred in part by a $25 million state tax credit.
But while the Newsom administration has managed to speed up some projects, fire damage on the I-10 freeway in Los Angeles was tackled in days, rather than the months originally estimated: Other large-scale projects have suffered the torment of Golden State politics.
For example, California’s high-speed rail project between San Francisco and Los Angeles was originally estimated to cost $9 billion and be completed by 2020. The project’s price tag has since risen to $128 billion of dollars, with the first trains now scheduled for passenger service. from 2030 to 2033 at the earliest.
However, the new website does not mention these costs and instead emphasizes that the project will “boost our economy and connect more regions than ever before”.
Still, while more details are available on some projects than others, the links on the site’s high-speed rail reference page to other pages with more information — provides an interactive, single-screen view of projects taking place in the state.
California isn’t alone in highlighting projects that have benefited from infrastructure dollars. Wisconsin has also launched a place to track your IIJA benefitshow has Massachusetts. The The White House presented a tracker and a map of the projects financed last year.
