In rulings that threaten the future of California’s bullet train, a Sacramento judge on Monday ordered the state to draft a new budget for the multibillion dollar project and prove there’s enough money to finish the job before it is started.

Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny found the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority failed to follow voter-approved requirements designed to prevent reckless spending on the $68 billion project. Those safeguards are a key piece of the ballot measure voters approved in 2008 allowing the state to sell $10 billion in rail bonds to help build the nation’s first high-speed rail line, from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, an opponent of the project, said Kenny’s decisions mark a major setback for the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

“It’s a victory for common sense,” Coupal told Reuters. “I’m not sure how they salvage this.”

Critics of California’s high-speed rail effort say money will run dry before its network can be completed and that it is uncertain federal and private funds will be available for it over the long haul.

A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll in September found seven out of 10 California voters want another vote on whether the high-speed rail project should continue and 52 percent say it should be stopped, compared with 43 percent who want it to move forward.

1. The proposed California High Speed Rail line would be more expensive than every other active HSR proposal in the country put together. While subsidized by everyone who pays the regressive sales tax, its users would have a higher than average income, so it is a subsidy from the poor to the rich. It would cost about $600-$1000 person or $2000-$3000 per California household before a single trip is made. This money could support about 20,000 teachers or police perpetually. For every $1 spent by the passenger, it would entail $4 in public subsidy, twice the annual expenditure of the State Transportation Improvement Program/

2. HSR is slower than air travel in the main Bay Area to Los Angeles market. While proponents claim fewer delays at train stations than airports, that assumes lessened security precautions. Rail systems are at least as vulnerable to terrorism as air systems.

3. The HSR system will take less than one lane of traffic off the major North-South highways. Airports will soon have extra capacity as they increase operations in bad weather with instrumented flight controls.

4. Other modes are steadily getting cleaner, for instance fuel cell powered vehicles will emit only water and carbon dioxide. Any benefits from HSR depend on unproven forecasts. The energy for HSR must come from somewhere, if electric than probably coal or nuclear, both of which have some problems.

5. What is the best use of $20,000,000,000 to $30,000,000,000 ? For that amount of money it would be very easy to provide improvements to air travel into the central valley, along with many other things. HSR is the least cost effective way to provide transportation services between the Valley and the coastal cities.