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It sounded too good to be true, and it was. Travel from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in two hours via high-speed rail. California voters in 2008 approved Proposition 1A, authorizing $9.95 billion in general obligation bonds to build this so-called “bullet train.” They were told not only that the total cost would only be $33 billion but also that the entire 500-mile system would be running by 2030. Fat chance. In March of this year, the California High-Speed Rail Authority released its latest progress report. The project is now projected to cost $127 billion, and there is...

ROBIN WEINEREarlier this month we learned that California’s ruinously expensive bullet train system had gone up in price once again. The full system is now expected to cost $128 billion and that’s if it’s completed sometime in 2040. The other bad news about the bullet train was just as worrisome. A new estimate of anticipated ridership for the finished system showed a drop of about 25%.Declining ridership isn’t just a problem for the rail system of the distant future. It’s also a huge problem for systems that already exist and none has been hit quite as bad as BART, the...

The French national railroad company intended to help California build its high-speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but ended up leaving the state to pursue projects in war-torn North Africa, which the company said was a less “dysfunctional” place. The New York Times published a lengthy essay on Sunday about how California’s “bullet train” failed — despite the fervent desire of Gov. Jerry Brown (D) that it be built, and the investments of both the Obama and Biden administration in its supposed construction. The Times noted: Now, as the nation embarks on a historic, $1 trillion infrastructure building...

The estimated cost of California’s High Speed Rail system connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles has been going up every year since it was launched. In February the latest estimates put the total cost at $105 billion. Very belatedly, the state has decided that what the project needs is a dedicated inspector general who can identify corruption in the system and try to bring the spending back under control.After a decade of cost, schedule, technical, regulatory, personnel and legal problems, the California high speed rail project will be getting an inspector general soon as part of a deal between Gov....

Ed Morrissey wrote a story about the costs of California’s high speed rail project going up back in August 2011. More than ten years later, we’re still seeing that story repeated over and over. Last January, we learned from a contractor’s letter that project delays were “beyond comprehension,” often thanks to failures by the state to buy needed property to build on. ... The cost to build California’s ambitious but long delayed high-speed rail line has once again risen, with rail officials now estimating it could take up to $105 billion to finish the line from San Francisco to Los...

California bullet train officials on Tuesday released a new draft project blueprint that acknowledges that costs have risen roughly $5 billion but seeks to address several issues that have generated blowback. The 2022 business plan estimates that the full, 500-mile, high-speed system between Los Angeles and San Francisco will cost as much as $105 billion, up from $100 billion two years ago. In 2008, when voters approved a bond to help build the railroad, the authority estimated that the system would cost $33 billion. In its latest blueprint, the California High Speed Rail Authority abandoned a plan to save money...

The California bullet train is facing at least another billion dollars of proposed cost increases from its contractors... The state’s High-Speed Rail Authority has mostly approved such increases in the past, and if it does so again, contractors could proceed with one of the biggest price escalations since bullet train construction began in the San Joaquin Valley. The state has budgeted $22.8 billion to build a partial segment from Bakersfield to Merced. Originally, construction of the Los Angeles to San Francisco system was pegged at $33 billion. But the surging costs will probably force the state to dig deeper into...

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A major construction team on the California bullet train project notified the state rail authority this month that it will not complete a 65-mile section of the future route in Kings County until at least April 14, 2025 — nearly two years after the date that the state included in a business plan adopted Thursday. The additional delay could again boost costs and jeopardize the state’s funding plan to complete a partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced by 2030. The project’s rising price tag has forced the state to repeatedly scale it back and delay indefinitely a goal to...

2014, when the rail authority awarded the contract, it went with the lowest bidder...which promised $300 million in cost savings by altering the design that the authority had proposed to regulators. Seven years later, these changes have been largely abandoned and have contributed to more than $800 million in cost overruns on the Kings County segment. That figure is 62% above the contract price tag, which the rail authority has agreed to pay, according to interviews and technical and contractual documents reviewed by The Times. In addition, the rail authority awarded the contract without first completing a scientific assessment of...

The fiasco of California’s pathetic attempt to build a high-speed rail (HSR) line between Los Angeles and San Francisco continues to generate far more embarrassment than actual completed track. Once again, for what seems like the umpteenth time, California is unable to meet the deadlines imposed by the federal government as a condition of receiving federal aid – in other words, subsidies from other states for building what should be commonly known as “Brown’s Folly,” after Jerry Brown, who go the itch to build it after riding bullet trains in Japan and Europe.Kathleen Ronayne reports for the Associated Press:California is...

Contractors for the rail authority are filing massive change orders and delay claims... Additional land is also needed, adding to costs. At the same time, the bullet train’s funding has taken several big hits. California’s cap-and-trade greenhouse gas auction system has provided about $3 billion to the rail project since 2015 and is counted on to provide at least $500 million annually until 2030. But as a result of COVID-19’s economic impacts, the last two auctions shorted the project by $140 million... The Trump administration last year terminated a $929-million grant, which is in legal dispute. But the money is...

A series of errors by contractors and consultants on the California bullet train venture caused support cables to fail on a massive bridge crucial to the project, triggering an order to stop work that further delayed a project already years behind schedule, the Los Angeles Times has learned. The bridge is longer than two football fields and is needed to shuttle vehicles over the future bullet train right of way and existing BNSF freight tracks in Madera County. Authorities have yet to finalize a plan to repair the bridge. Late last year, crews installed temporary steel supports to prevent it...

Federal Judge Dale A. Drozd temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts to send more water to Central Valley growers on Monday. Drozd issued a preliminary injunction in two lawsuits brought against the administration by California’s Natural Resources Agency and Environmental Protection Agency and a half-dozen environmental groups. Federal Pumping Can’t Increase During May The order bars the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation until May 31 from increasing water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta through the federal Central Valley Project. The suits argued that the exports would cause irreparable harm to species protected by state and federal law. “Today’s victory...

According to Alcoholics Anonymous, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward change. Political leaders at both the federal and state level can stand to learn from this philosophy, given their refusal to acknowledge massive boondoggles bilking taxpayers for billions of dollars. California, and the proposed Texas Central high speed train, show why state and federal officials need to be more vigilant and cautious when spending taxpayer money on these projects. California’s disastrous bullet train project has ballooned to a staggering $88 billion dollars - four times the cost of taxpayer money available to finance it. On March...

The $2.5 billion has already been spent — but California has failed to deliver the high-speed rail (on time, or at all) as promised. Therefore, the Trump administration argues, the state has to repay federal taxpayers. The Los Angeles Times quoted Stanford law professor David Freeman Engstrom, a Stanford law professor, describing Trump’s effort as a “nuclear option.” The practice of recovering money after a breach of contract, while common in the private sector, was virtually unheard of in government, he explained. “There is a reluctance to penalize misspending by local government agencies. … Almost never do those violations result...

The Trump administration said Tuesday that it plans to cancel $929 million awarded to California's high-speed rail project and wants the state to return an additional $2.5 billion that it has already spent.

Gov. Gavin Newsom told the California Legislature the bullet train was so over budget that he would kill 73 percent of the track and still spend 100 percent of the taxes.  Facing another cost spike, Gov. Gavin Newsom stunned a joint session of the Democrat-controlled Legislature by proposing to slash the 520-mile voter-approved and taxpayer-funded system that would have stretched from Anaheim through the Central Valley to San Francisco, while keeping the 119-mile stretch from Bakersfield to Merced. In his formal appearance as governor in front of lawmakers, Newsom claimed that his priorities are combating the state's homelessness crisis...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday he is pulling the plug on the state's massive high-speed rail project from Los Angeles to San Francisco that was more than a decade behind schedule and billions in the red. "Let's be real," Newsom said in his first State of the State address. "The current project, as planned, would cost too much and respectfully take too long. There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency." CALIFORNIA BULLET TRAIN PROJECT ON TRACK TO BLOW THROUGH BILLIONS OF MORE DOLLARS Newsom added that while California has "the capacity to complete a high-speed rail...

PARADISE - President Donald Trump toured the damage wrought by California’s deadliest wildfire Saturday, visiting the ruins of a mobile home park and pressing his argument that the state’s forests must be managed more aggressively to prevent future disasters. With the death toll from the Camp Fire at 71 and rising, Trump met with Paradise Mayor Jody Jones and toured the charred wreckage of the Skyway Villa Mobile Home and RV Park. They passed a destroyed home where someone had hung an American flag, and picked their way past a downed streetlamp and other debris. Bits of ash floated in...