Posted on 07/19/2025 1:20:39 PM PDT by DFG
California’s high-speed rail had a $9.95 billion bond measure back in 2008 that was supposed to link up LA, San Francisco and the Central Coast by 2020.
It’s 2025 and the budget has shot up to $128 billion. Sorry, let me correct that, it has shot up to $135 billion. By the time you read this, it’ll probably be up another few billion.
The Trump administration is pulling funding from the ‘train to nowhere’ because well, just look at the Gov. Newsom press release.
“The Authority has met every obligation, as confirmed by repeated federal reviews, as recently as February 2025. America’s only high-speed rail project underway is fast approaching the track-laying phase.”
After 17 years and cost overruns of 1300%, the train is ‘fast’ approaching the track-laying phase. Fast, like high-speed, being measured at the speed of government bureaucracy.
Forget the partisan politics and the animosity toward California, what kind of lunatic goes on funding a project that is off by this amount in time and money… and that has no rational purpose to begin with?
“Trump wants to hand China the future,” Gov Newsom declared. Does handing China the future somehow mean tricking it into spending 17 years on a $135 billion project that no one wants? If so, let’s hand China that future and it can pay for California’s train to nowhere.
Every resident of CA should be suing the state for fraud.
China already has the future in high speed trains.
Newsom needs to visit China one of these days and take a ride in the super fast Chinese high speed trains.
Laying down tracks, heavy iron hammer in hands, building he high shining steel rails across the land.
Recent cover by Van Morrison of the Leadbelly classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9r8kqAyXw8
The transcontinental railroad only took six years.
America’s first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the “Pacific Railroad” and later as the “Overland Route”) was a 1,911-mile (3,075 km) continuous railroad line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa, with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay.
There needs to be an investigation into where all the money went those 17 years. It only took six years to build the Transcontinental Railroad along 1,776 miles. And after 17 years, not one rail has been laid in what was to be a 776 miles rail line. Plenty of pockets got filled with cash these 17 years.
I think LA metro to SF metro travel might be done by electric STOL airplanes in the future.
Duffy moves to defund California high-speed rail after blistering federal review
Indonesia built a 142 kilometer high speed rail system in 8 years. Construction started in 2015. Operations began in 2023. Currently runs 62 daily trains with 37,000 passengers per day at 220 MPH.
https://www.newsweek.com/indonesia-first-bullet-train-high-speed-rail-2091570
California high speed rail isn’t really supposed to be built, but a little bit might eventually get built just to keep the graft coming.
Ca HSR is in need of about a 7 billion dollar infusion to keep building viaducts and grade crossings, which they must find by the end of summer more or less. They may never get to next year, when, they say, track laying will begin. This is the lethal error in the whole fiasco—no plan on how to find the 100 billion needed to complete the scheme. Maybe they just assumed federal dollars on a massive scale, maybe they just kicked the can down the road and said We’ll figure something out somehow. It’s not clear. But Trump sees through it all and he is right, not to spend good money after bad.
“Trump wants to hand China the future,”
Yeah. Because all those people traveling from Bakersfield to Merced are going to take on China’s industrial might.
Cars take you to your final destination. Trains take you to a train station. Which is better??
What button does the California Secretary of Transpotation push to lay track? Do they have an app for that?
After 17 years LOL, LOL to bad they didn’t lay it just a little quicker BECAUSE now they have NO MORE federal taxpayer money!! I would LOVE an audit of the contractors who are NewSCUM’s buddies!!!
Transcontinental railroad was built in six years, putting down 1,776 miles of track
Blasting through mountains, with black powder.
In other words, elections soon.
Pro tip, put the ties down first.
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