Eighteen years. Tens of billions of dollars. Not one mile of working rail.
California’s high-speed rail project now carries an estimated price tag of $126 billion, according to a state rail authority board member who told CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday that costs have ballooned to nearly four times what voters approved back in 2008.
“Today, we estimate with the right optimization just over $125 billion,” said Anthony Williams, a board member of the California High Speed Rail Authority. “I think $126 billion is the current estimate for that.”
Voters in 2008 passed a $33 billion bond measure for a line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The latest estimate is $126 billion. No trains run. No track has been laid.
Rep. Vince Fong, a Republican from California’s Central Valley, didn’t mince words. “We’re now in 2026: There are no trains; there’s no track laid; it was a complete bait and switch,” Fong told CBS. He wants the project killed. “It needs to stop.”
The state’s own transportation secretary admitted the critics are right, at least partly. “There were mistakes made,” Toks Omishakin told CBS. “Some of the criticisms on this project, I think, are very fair.” He added that neither voters nor state officials fully grasped what completing the project would actually require.
President Trump called it “the worst cost overrun I’ve ever seen.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the administration had “defunded Newsom’s disaster” and put the redirected money toward rail safety projects that will actually get built.
“What this administration won’t stand for is boondoggle projects like Newsom’s Train to Nowhere that wasted billions in taxpayer dollars yet delivered nothing to the American people,” Duffy said.
