CA High-Speed Rail Cost Explodes to $231 Billion, From Original $33 Billion

California’s High-Speed Rail boondoggle is now estimated to cost taxpayers $231 billion, up from its original $33.5 billion price tag in 2008 when voters passed Proposition 1A.

“Our country has never seen a fiscal disaster of this magnitude,” California Rep. Kevin Kiley said on X Monday.

Voters were deceived by the original ballot summary and language in Proposition 1A from 2008, but the state’s lawmakers seem to find that fact inconvenient.

And, the entire project is lacking in private, public and debt funding to complete even the most minor operating segment – nearly 20 years later.

“If it is built, California’s High-Speed Rail would be the largest public works project in state history. That fact alone appears to be intoxicating to state officials, in a perpetual quest to have California be the first state to do anything,” I reported in 2011. That’s how long California’s High Speed Rail has served only as a jobs program and a really bad joke on California voters and taxpayers.

“Even though high-speed rail has become nothing more than a pipeline project for grabbing big money and a big lie, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a rail bill Wednesday, sealing California’s economic fate. Because of the illegitimacy of the project’s intent, California taxpayers will be left holding the bill.”

I wrote that in 2012. Since then, the only thing that has changed is California Governor Gavin Newsom is now responsible for this High Speed Swindle.

The bill Brown signed in 2012 authorized $5.8 billion to start construction of only one high-speed rail line in the Central Valley, and included $2.6 billion in state rail bond funds, along with $3.2 billion in federal funds.

“But California will have to borrow every dime of that state money to build the high-speed boondoggle.”

“And that’s the only federal funding the state will receive for the entire $68-$135 billion project. The newest revised business plan claims to have reduced the cost  of the project to $68 billion from $98.6 billion by expanding the 130-mile line from Fresno to Bakersfield, to Merced to San Fernando Valley, for a 300-mile segment. But many economists and rail experts project that the project could cost as much as $135 billion.”

This could have been written today but it wasn’t – this also is from 2012.

As I wrote in 2013 about High Speed Rail:

“In July 2012, the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown passed legislation to approve the first $6 billion segment of high-speed rail tracks. This first segment starts with a $1.5 billion leg from Madera to Fresno in the Central Valley.

During Assembly and Senate floor debates and speeches, Democrats repeatedly said, “This is our moment.” They talked of the significance of voting for the biggest infrastructure project in California history. And they blathered incessantly of their own importance in voting for the project.

Republican Assemblywoman Diane Harkey of Dana Point warned of dire economic circumstances. “Gov. Brown and many Sacramento Democrats seem unable to set priorities even though the state is bankrupt, boasts the lowest credit rating in the nation, must borrow $10 billion for short-term cash flow needs, while cutting public safety dollars and practicing ‘catch and release’ for state prisoners,” Harkey said. “We rank near the bottom of the 50 states in public education achievement and the Sacramento solution is to realign that function and implement trigger cuts IF voters don’t agree to raise taxes in November. But, billions in debt funding for one hundred miles of track with no train, no ridership and no cost analysis is still on the table.”

Senator Tony Strickland posted to X Monday:

As I prepare for the Senate Transportation Committee hearing later today to discuss the California High Speed Rail Authority’s 2026 draft Business Plan, here are my thoughts. The nonpartisan LAO points out that the CHSRA has arbitrarily changed the scope of the program and costs, ignores specific requirements that the California State Legislature has imposed on the project, assumes significant changes in state law, and once again, dramatically changes cost estimates. Even if the Authority accounts for these requirements, it still lacks a clear funding plan to complete the project. The San Francisco–Los Angeles line is now estimated at $231 billion! Overall, the Authority has produced a completely unrealistic business plan. This is why we need to pull the plug on this wasteful spending project because it will go down as the worst public project in world history. Even Lou Thompson, former chair of the CHSRA Peer Review Group, agreed & wrote a critical letter to legislative leadership, stating that this project has reached a dead end. 

Lou Thompson’s letter:

In 2019, thousands of pages of public records were removed from the California High Speed Rail Authority website. Members of the media and anyone seeking information about rail authority spending are only able to access previously posted documents like detailed information on every project change order, board meeting materials and historical business plans, through a time consuming and unreliable California Public Records Act request according to the Rail Authority website.

The California State Auditor uncovered rail employees, contractors and consultants with wild conflicts of interest. Then-auditor Elaine Howle allowed the title of the audit to speak for itself: “California High‑Speed Rail Authority: Its Flawed Decision Making and Poor Contract Management Have Contributed to Billions in Cost Overruns and Delays in the System’s Construction.”

The warnings about this epic swindle of taxpayers have been there since its inception, but this has been done with the complicity of the California Legislature and Governors Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom.

If you thought the high speed rail swindle was going nowhere after 18 years of taxpayer funding without an operational train, it should be clear by now that High Speed Rail really serves no other purpose other than to provide jobs and salaries to green totalitarians, labor unions and consultants, courtesy of the California taxpayers.

What a swindle.

What Voters Approved in 2008

California voters approved Proposition 1A in 2008, the “Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century.” Here are some details:

* $33.5 billion cost. They approved a total cost of $33.5 billion for a high-speed rail system. The $33.5 billion was to be made up of a combination of 1/3 federal funds, 1/3 state funds and 1/3 private funds. Importantly, the investment from California taxpayers was limited to a $9.95 billion bond.

* S.F. to L.A. Voters approved a system connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles, with a trip time of two hours and 40 minutes, at a cost of $55 per ticket. But the plan has veered sharply inland from San Francisco to Los Angeles, over to the Central Valley, with a leg from Fresno to Bakersfield. And the cost of the trip jumped to $105.

* Ridership: 95 million. Even ridership numbers have been toyed with. Voters were told that there would be a ridership of 95 million passengers by 2030. Ridership estimates have decreased nearly three times since 2008, and they are still absurdly inflated. In the new report, they’re estimated to be as high as 36 million passengers by 2060 (page 5-17). That’s about a third of the Prop. 1A promise.

* Bond repayment. Repaying high-speed rail bonds will cost the state’s General Fund $647 million per year for 30 years, or approximately $20 billion for the $9.95 billion bond.

This is a cartoon created by cartoonist Ross Mayfield, after I called the High Speed Rail segment from Bakersfield to Madera “the Conjugal Express.”