California’s high-speed rail project, also known as the Bullet, has so far cost about $100 billion more than originally anticipated by the voters who approved it in 2008.
It also seems that it will only connect the rural towns of Bakersfield and Merced
New cost figures released by the California High Speed Rail Authority show that the plan to build the initial 171-mile section cost about $35 billion.
The cost of that partial system is now higher than the estimated $33 billion for the entire 500-mile system from Los Angeles to San Francisco—the same system approved when voters approved the bond for the project in 2008.
What’s worse is the fact that the full cost of the system was set at around $128 billion in the latest update, which leaves a total funding gap of more than $100 billion for politicians to deal with.
As reported in “Breitbart News”, the ‘bullet’ project ran into trouble from the beginning: first, it did not keep the original promise to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles; It then ran into environmental and regulatory problems; And finally, exceeded the original time frame by decades and the original cost by billions of dollars
In 2019, shortly after taking office, Governor Gavin Newsom admitted that the project “will cost too much and, with all due respect, take too long.”
He canceled the important Los Angeles-San Francisco line project, although he kept the rural element of the project.
But that wasn’t enough for then-President Donald Trump, who immediately demanded that California return the billions of dollars that federal taxpayers had already given the western state for the project.
Trump clawed back about $1 billion, which was later returned under the Biden administration by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to the project…
However, the train remains a failure
In contrast, a private high-speed rail line connecting Southern California to Las Vegas is nearing construction.
In that case, there is more hope that passengers will use the train to avoid traffic and as a form of entertainment in its own right.