When the French national high-speed rail professionals told California they were not going to pursue the project and would instead go build HST in Morocco which was less corrupt and dysfunctional. I thought we had reached the height of crazy.
Not even close.
From Jon Jon Fleischman's So, Does it Matter Substack, May 18:
California’s Bullet Train May Not Even Reach Downtown Bakersfield - You Can’t Make This UpGavin Newsom’s high speed rail boondoggle is being downsized again — and the Legislature’s own analysts are calling it out.
California’s infamous “train to nowhere” has somehow become even more ridiculous.
According to a new report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office reviewing the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s Draft 2026 Business Plan, Gavin Newsom’s bullet train project may not even reach downtown Merced or downtown Bakersfield. The report says the northern end would stop roughly 3.5 miles south of downtown Merced, while the southern end would land about six miles north of the previously planned Bakersfield station.
That is not a punchline. That is the plan.
And remember, this is already the scaled-down version.
California voters were promised a sleek bullet train connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim. Then came the delays, lawsuits, cost overruns, and quiet political retreat. Eventually, the statewide vision shrank into a much smaller Central Valley line between Merced and Bakersfield.
Now, even that reduced version is being trimmed back.
At this point, the only thing moving quickly in California’s high-speed rail project is the ambition — in reverse.
Single Tracks, Smaller Stations, Bigger Excuses
The station problem is only the beginning.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office report says 144 of the planned 162 miles could now operate on a single track. In real-world terms, trains traveling in opposite directions may have to wait for one another at sidings rather than running continuously on dual tracks.
California’s “world-class” bullet train is starting to sound like a one-lane country road with better branding.
The report also notes that the stations themselves are being simplified into “at-grade stations with single-side platforms” — bureaucratic language for another downgrade.
Why? Because the costs have gotten so absurd that Sacramento is now trying to cheapen the project enough to keep pretending it is still viable.
When voters approved Proposition 1A in 2008, Californians were told they would get a statewide bullet train system for roughly $33 billion.
Today, the High-Speed Rail Authority’s own estimates acknowledge the original statewide vision could cost roughly $231 billion under legacy projections. Even the authority’s reduced and “optimized” version of the system still exceeds $126 billion.
Meanwhile, the much smaller Merced-to-Bakersfield segment alone is now projected to cost roughly $35 billion.
So California is preparing to spend about what voters were told the entire system would cost just to complete a shortened 162-mile segment between stations outside downtown Merced and Bakersfield.
That is not a cost overrun. That is a civic humiliation.
Now, The Project May Not Even Follow State Law
The newest problem with high-speed rail is not just that it is late, expensive, and shrinking. It is possible that the latest version may not even comply with California law.
State Inspector General Benjamin Belnap recently warned that the rail authority’s proposed changes may conflict with statutory requirements established by SB 198 and AB 377. Those laws required dual-track service and connections to downtown stations for the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office also criticized the authority for obscuring major project reductions by describing them vaguely as “optimization measures.”....
We've been posting on the massive grift and fraud that is the California HSR for many, many years. The New York Times just did a feature on the project that is not nearly as hard-hitting as it could be, being disingenuous from the headline on:
How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails
It was never "on" The Rails, a fact that was pointed out over a decade ago.
However, to their credit, the Times writers and editors included this vignette:
....The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex. SNCF, the French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system.
The company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF.
The company pulled out in 2011. “There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”
Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018.....
There you have it, North Africa is less politically corrupt than California. Just amazing.
