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California high-speed rail price tag jumps to $231B, nearly 7x 2008 estimate
- WalterBright 6mo agoMusk could probably do it for $3 billion.
- polar8 6mo agoDon't forget the original $33B was for the entire line, not just Merced to Bakersfield.
- Taikonerd 6mo agoI'm very in favor of high-speed rail, in general. But I remember when the price tag had jumped to "only" $100B, and that was already considered a scandal. At some point the state has to say, "our requirements are making it insanely expensive. We need to consider a different route, or a lower speed."
- baggy_trough 6mo agoThe state has to consider whether it is capable of doing this at all (obviously, it isn't).
- StableAlkyne 6mo agoThe state is capable, it is just unwilling to leverage its power to achieve a meaningful outcome. This is relatively normal across the country; NIMBYs and small landowners have outsized influence and ability to delay. China builds high speed rail at half the cost of the US. European countries of comparable size and GDP to California do not experience own-goals of this magnitude.
- electriclove 6mo agoThe state in the US, especially California, is not competent. The state in China, is competent.
- baggy_trough 6mo agoWhat is the best evidence that it is capable? I believe it isn't, as demonstrated in this and other areas.
- cft 6mo agoFor comparison, the construction cost of AlBoraq 200mph bullet train in Morroco is $5.3–5.7 billion in today's dollars. The line length is 200 miles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Boraq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Boraq
- bluGill 6mo agoI doubt those will fix the issues. A better route can lower costs, but there are places in the world that build on much worse land for less. Lower speed is unlikely to change anything, you can have a few sharper corners, but nothing that is a big deal. Meanwhile lower speed makes this much less useful vs flying. (and starts to make driving competitive - at least you have your car when you get there) CA (and the US) has issues, and I don't know what they are. Every time someone suggests something they feel like a drop in the bucket, and all the different drops don't add up to much.
- johnea 6mo agoYour understanding of how the route affects the price is misguided. It has nothing (or very very little) to do with how difficult the terrain is to navigate, it has everything to do with who owns the land, and how much they want to charge for it. Often these "owners" only purchase the land once informed that it is a potential high speed rail route.
- itopaloglu83 6mo agoIn a way, it’s a transfer of wealth from masses to these land owners (or brokers in a sense).
- bluGill 6mo agoThey will do the same to a different route. Once you buy land you become committed to a route. Reform is needed, but I'm not sure what.
- bluGill 6mo agoHaving had a night to think on this... It sounds like CA needs some eminent domain reform. I don't live there, so I don't know (and don't are to look up) the law. In the US in general the constitution requires a fair price, if someone bought land we have evidence of the fair price. My general advice (though often not allowed by law) is that you should pay 10% more than fair if they sell now, but if they go to court we only pay fair price (thus if you disagree with the fair price by 5% you should sell now anyway)
- 6mo ago
- johnea 6mo agoOr, maybe, at some point, the state has to say No, to real estate mafia insider trading? Oh, never mind, that's obviously not going to happen...
- itopaloglu83 6mo agoAnd that’s the real issue. It’s a continuous rent seeking behavior and resource extraction from masses to a limited number of individuals. The Why Nations Fail book pointed out this exact issue that institutions that doesn’t serve the people’s interests is the main culprit.
- cbdevidal 6mo agoI’ve heard a better idea. “What you should in fact do is employ all the world's top male and female supermodels, pay them to walk the length of the train handing out free Chateau Petrus for the entire duration of the journey. You'll still have about 3 billion pounds left in change and people will ask for the trains to be slowed down.” ~Rory Sutherland
- gedy 6mo agoI am too, but folks have to realize this is handout to big construction and construction unions, it's not to solve problem of high speed travel between SF and LA. While that has always been a thing in public works, unfortunately in recent decades in the US we've gotten to point where it doesn't really matter if the project makes sense or is ever completed. It's a shame.
- johnea 6mo agoIt should also be noted that the original route was from: San Diego to San Fransisco The state representative from San Diego was the original proposer of the high speed rail (after returning from Japan of course). Once the crime and graft roulette wheel went into action, San Diego was almost immediately removed from "the route".
- dmix 6mo agoThey also started construction before they even finalized the route, including not realizing they would have to move tons of utility lines along the way (they didn't get sign off from the public utilities beforehand), then it got bogged down by environmental reviews, land acquisition issues, etc.
- nradov 6mo agoThe California High Speed Rail Authority just posted about how many "good-paying jobs" they created, as if that's the goal rather than building a functioning railroad. Disgusting. https://x.com/CaHSRA/status/2040474563847278877 https://x.com/CaHSRA/status/2040474563847278877
- WalterBright 6mo agoHere in WA state, politicians list their accomplishments with lines like "spent $XXX million on YYY".
- grebc 6mo agoSomeone mentioned sunk costs a couple of days ago, and here’s a glaringly stupid example but watch everyone justify the price tag with all sorts of reasons.
- danny_codes 6mo agoI don’t think the tech or the route is remotely the problem. This is purely a matter of political will. Not sure if you’ve read Abundance. But the basic idea is that rich, developed countries have onerous processes in place to satisfy many needs, which is antithetical to building stuff. For example, CA requires strict analysis and studies. CA has myriad legislation to protect private property. It has restrictions on what can be purchased, from whom, and from whence labor can be sourced. Together, this vast web of limitations makes big projects like HSR extremely expensive and unwieldy. It’s not that the scope or ambition of the project is a problem in itself. It’s that the mega project comes along with many requirements aside from just building it. Effectively, CA is working at cross-purpose. The resolution is actually very simple. You just exempt your mega-project from all the legislation constraining it. If CA wanted to they could simply change the law. Skip labor-sourcing laws, skip community feedback, skip permitting and approval (aside from safety), skip domestic parts requirements, and apply eminent domain with no feedback process. We don’t do that for political reasons. This isn’t a technical problem
- mcphage 6mo ago> We don’t do that for political reasons. We don't do that because of all the reasons those laws were put into place.
- xracy 6mo agoI feel like we need to hold Gov't Contractors to higher standards. Like half of these ballooning budgets are things that Private Businesses brag about on the other side. "I got a $200B Private contract with the CA Gov't." Is a big win for the company, and a big loss for the taxpayer. To some extent I think CA should be able to reclaim a large portion of their contract (in some way) because costs ballooned. The same for Military contractors. There needs to be better enforcement of "this is the budget that you bid, we won't increase that, and you still have to deliver." Imagine if companies ended up having to sell part of their company to the gov't if they failed to deliver their contract.
- fastball 6mo agoA truly unbelievable amount of grift and inefficiency.
- inglor_cz 6mo agoThat is absolutely fascinating. Spain has so far spent about 60 billion Eur on its (much more extensive) HSR network. It has a lot of harsh terrain as well, crossing mountains and semi-deserts. There are functional HSRs in Morocco and Uzbekistan, Egypt is building its first own HSR. What's wrong with Californian governance?
- raldi 6mo agoCan't blame unions, considering how easily Europe gets it done. Most likely issue is that in the US, every landowner and minor municipality is empowered to delay and obstruct these projects and thus milk them.
- yonaguska 6mo agounions in the US aren't necessarily even comparable to in EU.
- TheGRS 6mo agoYea I would definitely like to know what the response is to eminent domain in other countries where its working better. I've never been in that situation and I can totally understand the resistance to losing your property, but I can't see American's being particularly unique in that feeling. Maybe the laws are just more permissive in the US for contesting the government.
- BrenBarn 6mo agoIn California specifically there are also environmental regulations like CEQA that provide another avenue for blocking such things, independent of eminent domain issues. Even if someone is building on their own land, lots of environmental review is required, and individuals or groups can sue on the basis that such review was inadequate. This ties things up for a long time. There are legitimate reasons to want environmental review, but the way it works in CA now, CEQA is largely just a tool people use to delay projects they don't want.
- 6mo ago
- johnea 6mo agoIf the rail is just routed through minority neighborhoods, I'm sure eminent domain can be arranged... NOTE: The above sentence is referred to as "dark sarcasm" This rail would displace a huge amount of air travel, thus, it's not "viable" in terms of airline industry losses... NOTE: The above sentence is referred to as "dark reality"
- porphyra 6mo ago$231 B can subsidize over 400 years of free air travel between LA and SF (assuming $200 per round trip and 2.7 million flights per year [1]). The hope is that the high speed rail would allow way more trips between the two cities, as well as the central valley cities in between, bolstering the economy, compared to the current amount of flights. I will keep my fingers crossed for the next 30 years. [1] https://simpleflying.com/san-francisco-los-angeles-flight-market https://simpleflying.com/san-francisco-los-angeles-flight-ma...
- dangus 6mo agoWhile I think the project should cost less money, thinking purely in terms of money is a slippery slope. The $20 I spend on feeding myself a healthy dinner could buy 10 sundaes at McDonald's, that doesn't mean I should eat 10 sundaes. Turning a whole lot of flights into energy and carbon-saving train trips is a huge benefit.
- xnx 6mo ago> thinking purely in terms of money is a slippery slope I agree. Flights would also be much faster and more flexible.
- dangus 6mo agoNot faster by enough to matter, a difference of 1 hour that airport security, taxi, boarding, and takeoff/landing easily eats up. You also can't be productive on a flight packed in like sardines and being required to put away your laptop for for a large portion of the flight time.
- aeternum 6mo agoCancel it and sell what is built to the highest bidder, you can be assured that some company will buy it and complete it.
- silotis 6mo agoAt this point it's extremely unlikely the needed funds will be secured for the foreseeable future. Even if the federal government were willing to contribute, spending $100+ billion of federal tax money on a regional rail project would be a hard sell to say the least. Most likely the Bakersfield to Merced segment will be the only segment completed. It will end up as a white elephant racking up operational losses until Sacramento finally decides to pull the plug.
- dangus 6mo agoThe Big Dig in Boston cost almost $30 billion in inflation-adjusted money and had nowhere near the impact on the region as a high speed rail system would have in California. It basically had zero impact outside of the City of Boston. (And it should have been spent on demolishing that highway, not burying it and not replacing it, then expanding regional rail and transit connectivity in the Boston metropolitan area.) Or perhaps we should bring up military spending: https://irancost.com/ https://irancost.com/
- tapoxi 6mo agoSilver Line was part of the Big Dig, but I agree the North/South Rail Link should have been part of it. Having no direct connection between North Station and South Station is stupid. But you can't just get rid of 93
- dangus 6mo agoYou absolutely can just get rid of 93 within city limits, especially if 30 billion was spent on adding more commuter rail. The idea that highways must cut through the city, especially one as geographically small as Boston, has been thoroughly debunked.
- dekhn 6mo agoI wish that they had done just San Jose to Burbank with a couple stops on the west side of the central valley (starting building from both directions at the same time). I think that was the maximum achievable initial goal.
- htx80nerd 6mo agoAsking $200+ billion AND still need private investors. Is the rail made out of gold? >Under current projections, assuming funding and construction proceed as planned, service between San Francisco and Bakersfield could begin around 2033, while the full Los Angeles to San Francisco connection could extend to 2040. Brilliant stuff. I predict the rail will never happen and only more and more money going "somewhere".
- thrownaway561 6mo agoThey need to just accept their lost and cancel the project. I think the people of CA have given this enough money and time. It's become a joke and nothing more than a giant way for they governor to launder money. Looking at you NEWSCUM.
- xnx 6mo agoThe purpose of large rail projects is to take public money and give it to engineering firms, construction companies, consultants, and politicians. In no scenario does this project even make the top 10 in a list of ways to transport people between these locations. It would be cheaper to give away 5 million cars!
- mitthrowaway2 6mo agoDo the 5 million cars come with a free highway?
- xnx 6mo agoYes, and it's already built!
- jmward01 6mo agoOther countries do this just fine and we can easily build freeways and highways. This is because of intentional sabotage. US politics are actively harming citizens by sabotaging projects to 'prove how bad x is' when in reality x is the right answer if you don't have active bad actors.
- colechristensen 6mo agoTo be fair our interstate highways were built many decades ago by mostly just disregarding poor neighborhoods and taking land from them indescriminately.
- jmward01 6mo agoWe do build new ones (I26 is happening now) and that doesn't cost hundreds of billions of dollars. We can and have built big projects. We can and will build bigger ones. This is just sabotage at every possible chance. I have seen this my whole life. We are so far behind on solar adoption because of groups actively making things worse, often at a real cost to the group, just to make it look like actual good ideas are bad ones. Our politics are toxic and the core problem here, not the idea or the technology. This is toxic sabotage politics where it is better to break things than to let the other side have a good idea.
- briandw 6mo agoYou are claiming that this is anti train and pro car conspiracy. Counter ponint : the SF Bay_Bridge cost 6.5 Billion, but was originally budgeted at 200 Million. The US can't build anything efficiently. It's due to the massive mismanagement, bureaucratic nonsense, environmental review, permitting and NIMBY lawsuits. The real conspiracy is that "they" never wanted a train, "they" wanted an endless jobs project.
- nradov 6mo agoThe SF Bay Bridge cost $6.5B, and somehow still didn't include a bike lane.
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- ZeWaka 6mo agoSeems like California needs to figure out how to use Eminent Domain.
- dmix 6mo agoThey already acquired 99% of the land needed to the line.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- havaloc 6mo agoMaybe California should ask Brightline to take a look at it. They've had some pretty good success in Florida, although it's a totally different model.
- xnx 6mo agoBrightline is going bankrupt: https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-01-23/brightline-business-2026-default-warning https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-01-23/brightline-business...
- SilverElfin 6mo agoCorruption and waste. The real problem is that the quality of people in public office and appointed by them cannot responsibly manage these amounts of money. But also that the incentives are all broken. California isn’t the only state with this problem though. Oregon and Washington and New York are just as bad. And the big cities in these states have the same problems at the city level. How long can they go before they can no longer raise debt to do things?
- givemeethekeys 6mo agoWe need a proposition to cancel the project.
- ericmay 6mo agoThis is awful and perhaps what is most awful is that this is the headline folks see, then they have a gut-reaction that because this project is so fucked up that all transit projects must be like this. And of course, there's the fun fact that many highway and road construction projects come in way over budget too. If you don't live in California, the lesson to take away here is to figure out what the transportation departments and highway lobby did to secure the space needed for highways, and copy those tactics, not to look at California's failure and believe that extrapolates to your state or area. In Central Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to fund bus transit and dedicated lanes in high-density corridors in Columbus. Now the project is already being set back perhaps as long as a year and a half, because the Ohio Department of Transportation is concerned car traffic may be negatively affected and wants a new traffic study. Huge waste of time, the exact kind of thing you would have wanted a DOGE in its most idealized form to nuke. You have to imagine these kinds of tactics x1000 because once California and others see the success of rail the jobs programs that are most state DOTs are going to be in serious trouble. We'll get there, it's just going to be a long battle against entrenched lobbying and special interest groups (highway departments, construction companies, auto manufacturers, &c.) which need to profit off of your requirement to have a car to participate in society. By the way, I'm not "against" cars or anything. Have one and love it. But the primary mode of transportation in our more dense areas has to change.
- softwaredoug 6mo agoMeanwhile private rail is connecting cities in Florida. Somehow with less fuss. Something about blue states make progress on basic things costly, time consuming, and difficult. Every stakeholder needs their say. Any NIMBY can veto. The loudest, most obnoxious snowflakes dominate public comment. And officials don’t tell them to STFU. And I don’t see a lot of appetite for soul searching in these states. Just “let’s raise taxes” You don’t have to convince me we have a broken society where the oligarchs have too much power+wealth. But I’m also not willing to pay more taxes without blue states removing veto points on these projects so can’t easily be derailed by every dumb special interest. We’re all paying more so loudest amongst can derail and shape progress on important issues.
- xnx 6mo ago> Meanwhile private rail is connecting cities in Florida. Somehow with less fuss. I wouldn't cite that as a success story, Brightline is going bankrupt: https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-01-23/brightline-business-2026-default-warning https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-01-23/brightline-business...
- dmitrygr 6mo agoMake corruption, appearance of corruption, or anything that looks like it might possibly look like corruption (including having ever had lunch with someone who knows someone who has heard of someone whom you pick as a contractor) at minimum a lifetime-in-jail offense and watch the prices and timelines melt.
- josefritzishere 6mo agoI have worked on CAHSR and I can tell you that some of the extra expense is that State of CA procurement rules are highly complex and cause a great deal of added expense. Bureaucracy creates added costs.
- dashdoesdata 6mo agoSadly, the economics of this will never work out. I ride BART and Caltrain multiple times a week. Trains are delightful. And so are planes. It typically costs about $100, and takes an hour to fly from SF to LA. The train will be slower and almost certainly more expensive. Where is the benefit? Long distance trains work in Europe because they are supported by a rich network of public transit options stemming from city centers, and a population that uses transit frequently. But California public transit is a mess. When you rock up at LA Union Central and want to get out to say, Newport Beach, it's another three hours of navigating buses and the metrolink. The money would have been far better spent integrating agencies and building out high speed rail in our urban areas. BART should be running out to Sacto, Stockton, Silicon Valley, and Marin. Requisition the Amtrak line and build a highspeed rail from San Diego to Santa Barbara - now that'd be something.
- danny_codes 6mo agoThis HSR line makes a good deal of sense if it could be built. Your analysis of flying is wildly incorrect. The train will be faster door to door than the average flight. But the main benefit will come from massive secondary economic growth. Cities along the line will experience dramatic increases in demand and economic activity. Cities at the terminus will have a massively increased share of workers in the commute threshold. Further, the HSR line serves as a backbone for future lines, tying the state together. The plan is very good on paper. It’s getting creamed in implementation because CA is not politically aligned on this project. Half the state doesn’t want it to succeed at all.
- ibejoeb 6mo agoIsn't Artemis weighing in at somewhere about $100B?
- satisfice 6mo agoThey should investigate alternatives to solid gold carriages. Gold is not only expensive, it’s very heavy, requiring much more energy to operate. It also has less tensile strength and its way too ductile compared to aluminum. I’m not a railway engineer, but encrusting the tracks with “pillow cut” diamonds from “actual pirate hoards” seems like a security risk. And pirate hoards are only more rare over time.
- atmavatar 6mo agoIs there a breakdown of the estimated costs anywhere? I see a lot of speculation over how "it's expensive because of X" (e.g., unions, land owners, regulations, etc.), but I don't think I've ever seen a detailed breakdown of the estimated costs which would support anyone's hypotheses as to why it's actually as expensive as it is. For all I know, the high-speed rail project is going to cost $231B because it calls for using osmium rails in its tracks.
- WalterBright 6mo agoIn Seattle, the money disappears and nobody is able to account for what happened to it: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/does-nothing-work-unfortunately-seattle-has-another-case-study/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/does-noth...