Going Nowhere Fast: California’s Costly High-Speed Rail Project

Construction workers build the Hanford Viaduct over Highway 198 as part of the California High Speed Rail transit project in Hanford, California, on Feb. 12, 2025. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

In 2013, I called California’s high-speed rail (HSR) “the gift that keeps on taking.” Over a decade later, it remains the boondoggle that refuses to die—a zombified infrastructure dream that devours billions while going nowhere fast.

Back in 2008, voters passed Proposition 1A under the illusion they’d be boarding a bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles, with spurs to Sacramento and San Diego. Fast forward to 2025, and what do we have? Not the promised 800 miles of track. Not even the scaled-down 171-mile Merced-to-Bakersfield line. Instead, what’s under construction is a lonely 119-mile stretch from Madera to Shafter, not necessarily global transit hubs.

This project is a masterclass in cognitive dissonance. It was sold as a green dream and delivered as a fiscal nightmare. Despite repeated reassurances from the latest HSR leadership that “progress” is being made, costs have spiraled, timelines have vaporized, and the final completion date keeps getting moved further down the tracks.

Proponents still cling to the fantasy that HSR will solve everything from climate change to housing sprawl. But let’s be honest—this train isn’t taking anyone where they want to go, figuratively or literally.

Let’s do some accounting. The original cost estimate in 2008 was $33 billion for a significant portion of a purported statewide system. Today, we’re staring down a price tag north of $100 billion—and climbing. The so-called Initial Operating Segment (IOS), a rail line through the middle of nowhere, is projected to cost $35 billion. So far, $13 billion has been spent ... on what exactly, we’re still trying to figure out. This is where taxpayer money goes to die.

And who, exactly, is going to ride this train?

A 2023 HSR Authority report quietly slashed ridership projections by 25 percent. Even the Authority can’t deny what post-COVID trends and common sense make clear: When given the choice, Californians prefer the flexibility of their own cars or planes that actually take off and land in places they want to go. The Madera-to-Shafter corridor doesn’t connect major population centers, tourist attractions, or economic hubs. It’s like building a luxury cruise line between two puddles.

And it gets worse. Despite years of marketing this project as a climate savior, the emissions story is almost comical. A 2012 UC Berkeley study found that construction emissions—especially from cement production—would take decades to offset under optimistic ridership assumptions for the full system. Given that we’re not getting the full system, and that ridership numbers are tanking, the carbon payback for the IOS could stretch out to 2060 or beyond. In other words, most Californians alive today will never see any environmental benefit from this project. In the meantime, construction emissions may actually accelerate the very climate crises HSR claims to mitigate.

Meanwhile, billions continue to line the pockets of politically connected contractors, unions, and bureaucrats. As ever, follow the money. The winners aren’t commuters or taxpayers—they’re the consultants who write the reports, the politicians who chase photo-ops, and the unions that pocket project labor agreements while construction drags on for decades. It’s the great California grift, gift-wrapped in green rhetoric.

The comprehensive route from San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim is now estimated to cost up to $128 billion. Take that number and divide by the estimated distance of track to be laid, and the cost is more than $200 million per mile. That is nearly three times higher than the original total cost projected for the entire system.

The losers? Thousands of families who lost their homes, farms, and businesses to eminent domain—some without adequate compensation, others still mired in bureaucratic limbo. Their lives were uprooted so a handful of concrete pilings could stand in a field looking like tombs for common sense.

And don’t forget the financing trickery. The HSR Authority is propped up by California’s cap-and-trade program, which funnels roughly $1 billion a year to the project. That’s money siphoned from everything touched by carbon pricing—energy bills, gas prices, even food costs. In essence, Californians are paying more for their daily lives to bankroll a train they’ll never ride.

There’s also the “last-mile” problem that no one in Sacramento seems eager to solve. Let’s pretend, for a moment, that HSR actually reaches San Francisco and Los Angeles. Even then, riders would need to cobble together their journey with taxis, subways, rideshares, or rented bicycles just to get to their final destination. That’s not transit. That’s a scavenger hunt.

We were promised a European-style rail marvel. What we got is a taxpayer-funded endurance experiment in how long a state can keep throwing good money after bad while calling it visionary. The truth? California’s high-speed rail is not a people train. It’s a gravy train.

And like all gravy trains, it will keep running as long as there’s someone willing to foot the bill. Unfortunately, that someone is you.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.