California High-Speed Rail Price Tag Jumps To $231 Billion (kmph.com)
- Reference: 0183054924
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/29/1627235/california-high-speed-rail-price-tag-jumps-to-231-billion
- Source link: https://kmph.com/news/local/california-high-speed-rail-price-tag-jumps-to-231b-nearly-seven-times-2008-estimate
> California's [2]long-delayed [3]high-speed rail project is now facing renewed scrutiny after state leaders revealed a dramatically higher price tag, [4]now estimated at roughly $231 billion , nearly seven times the original $33 billion projection approved by voters in 2008. The revised figures have reignited talks in Sacramento over whether the project can realistically be completed, how long it will take, and whether the state can continue to fund it at this scale.
>
> Senator Strickland pointed to comments from Lou Thompson, former chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority peer review group, who recently criticized the latest draft business plan. Thompson wrote that the 2026 draft plan "has reached a dead end," arguing that the project has drifted far from its original vision due to escalating costs, delays, and unfunded gaps. 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.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~schwit1
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/10/25/1855246/californias-68-billion-bullet-train-project-faces-major-hurdles
[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/11/27/0245250/california-going-ahead-with-bullet-train
[4] https://kmph.com/news/local/california-high-speed-rail-price-tag-jumps-to-231b-nearly-seven-times-2008-estimate
Just build more roads (Score:1)
Personally I prefer to have my car because neither destination has good public transit anyways. So now what? I've taken a train from LA to San Francisco only to be taking Ubers. They should have spend 1/4th of that on new and expanding roadways and used the other 3 / 4th of that to feed people, keep them employed or opened free use hospitals. That's a lot of money for no results.
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Just one more lane and all the problems go away.
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Cheaper/better/more-fun than trains, you could double-deck roads ... the upper lanes being for long-distance express traffic and gas-powered speedsters with off-ramps every 200 miles or so.
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They tried that in the 80's, but made the mistake of letting Russians build certain sections of it, which of course they cut corners on by not following building codes related to rebar use (the primary transgression being failure to weld together cross-connects, as I understand it) and inevitably those sections collapsed during an earthquake. After that, no more double-decker freeways allowed in California. They stopped building them and closed and dismantled the remaining standing sections.
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That's Caltrans moto. By the time they get that lane done (10 yrs lol) traffic is worse than before they started.
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Florida's solution was toll roads and lanes, which solves the problem for a little while, but eventually you end up paying to sit in traffic. Well, at least here that applies because all the idiots keep moving to Florida. It might actually work just fine some place that isn't experiencing population growth.
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Traffic is largely caused by on ramps and exits. A limited access highway with exits spaced similarly to those of long-distance rail would have less congestion. And the whole thing should be HOV-only, to increase throughput.
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> Traffic is largely caused by on ramps and exits.
Good point. A highway with no ramps and no exits would have no traffic at all.
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> Traffic is largely caused by on ramps and exits.
I think it's mostly caused by cars, but if I was working for the government I'd need a large research team and a hefty budget to be absolutely sure.
Re: Just build more roads (Score:2)
Florida has already demonstrated that not only can it build rail networks in a timely manner, but it can do it at a much lower cost, and if that's still not good enough for you, with reasonable upkeep costs as well. And if that's STILL not good enough, it's used by everybody, including people with a decent income.
California usually misses the mark on all four. As narcc says, it's "terrifyingly efficient".
Re: (Score:2)
The SunRail? I've ridden it, see my other post for my thoughts on that. The proposed "Sunshine Corridor" expansion (which would provide much-needed service between MCO and the attractions area) is unlikely to ever materialize without significant federal funding assistance, because nobody in Florida wants to pay for it.
Brightline? That was a private endeavor and supposedly [1]it's losing money. [wlrn.org] It's also really fucking expensive compared to just getting in a car and driving.
I can't speak as to the rail in M
[1] https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-01-23/brightline-business-2026-default-warning
Buses, cars, and planes. (Score:1)
> Personally I prefer to have my car because neither destination has good public transit anyways. So now what?
We can stop trying to solve the problem with a one-size-fits-all boondoggles.
Start with buses, lots of them. A bus replaces dozens of cars, is less expensive per passenger than cars, and FAR less expensive per passenger than California rail transit.
Ubers and, soon, self driving taxi fleets (which are cheaper than Ubers) or even electric planes, can fill in the corners of the remaining short hops.
As for the very long hops like SF to LA, flying remains a viable option and is becoming more efficient every year
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The money would have been far better spent rebuilding I-5.
Roads cost $18.5 billion a year (Score:1)
And keep in mind rail replaces roads and some planes.
And that's MAINTENANCE. Not building from scratch like they are with high speed rail.
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Roads actually get built. This rail project isn't even functional.
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Everyone wants roads near their house. If you don't have a road going to your house then your house is worthless. Once the government has a right of way for a road, expanding the road might be expensive, but it doesn't get the whole community involved in a series of lawsuits.
The only people that want to live near the train tracks, on the other hand, are the people out in the middle of the California desert that would love to have a way to easily get to the parts of California that aren't a wasteland. I
Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Put a government entity in charge of managing a desert. It will run out of sand in 5 years.
Re: (Score:2)
They'll have sand trucked in from other states to make up their shortfall, and then complain when free sand is supplied to kids' sandboxes.
Land acquisition (Score:2)
I hope that's because of land acquisition cost and not engineering incompetence?
Maybe a tunnel, or parallel tunnels (for safety and cost since small diameter boring is exponentially cheaper), would work instead?
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There have been a lot of ...challenges... to acquiring the right of way to build the damn thing. Everything from environmental challenges in court to local municipalities interfering. Every potential stakeholder has demanded special concessions for their unique benefit to allow the project to continue. Very little of the cost is related to engineering or construction.
It is still a massive clusterfuck.
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe, but the technology turned out to be vaporware. They literally just couldn't actually make it work, partially due to the unique geography of California complicating things, and partially due to the fact that the whole concept was based on science fiction and not actually science.
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Sorry, I meant geology , not geography. (I'm not a scientist either. I would have done no better.)
yeah #2 (Score:2)
You know I'm happy for the UK to not be #1 in the world in this regard.
Dont feel too bad about it (Score:2)
Here in the UK the price tag for HS2 which is approx 100 miles of (very) high speed track has hit £100 billion and climbing.
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Holy crap. I heard HS2 is expensive, but didn't expect it be so expensive. Here is from AI:
HS2 (Phase 1): Roughly $800 million to $1 billion per mile (£400M–£500M per km).
China High Speed Rail Average: $27 million to $34 million per mile
To put that in perspective, one mile of HS2 costs roughly the same as 30 miles of high-speed rail in China.
Re: (Score:1)
I know a guy spending half a billion dollars on a ballroom for a house he'll be moving out of in a couple years. [1]https://thehill.com/homenews/s... [thehill.com]
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5852036-gop-senators-white-house-ballroom-bill/
Re: (Score:2)
EVERYTHING IS TRUMP! I just spilled a glass of milk yesterday - it was Trump. I need to go on the internet and talk about it constantly! It's my entire life and reasons for existence but totally isn't an obsession!
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> I know a guy spending half a billion dollars on a ballroom for a house he'll be moving out of in a couple years. [1]https://thehill.com/homenews/s... [thehill.com]
I know a guy who already forgot how much $100 billion sent to Ukraine by a fucking autopen machine makes a Trump ballroom look like a taxpayer refund.
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5852036-gop-senators-white-house-ballroom-bill/
Feels good though... (Score:2)
I'm guessing you could have called all of those riders a cab for less money.
(Or bus.)
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I overlooked the high speed part, so I retract my statement.
The question to ask (Score:2)
Why is this only a problem in the USA? For instance in Japan I could traverse the country from top to bottom via train.
Re: The question to ask (Score:2, Funny)
Density
Both population, and the person asking this question
Re: (Score:2)
> Why is this only a problem in the USA? For instance in Japan I could traverse the country from top to bottom via train.
The infrastructure cost or the perception of public transit? My experience with public transit via train (SunRail) has certainly given me some insight into why most Americans aren't fans:
There is the well-known "last mile" problem. I deal with it by bringing my e-scooter with me, but even this solution isn't really scalable as there isn't enough room on the train for everyone to bring a bike or scooter with them. If your destination isn't within walking distance of a station and you didn't bring your own
Someone is profiting and its not the people. (Score:1)
You could probably buy every rail company in the US in full for that cost. This price tag is absolutely insane.
It is time (Score:2)
Time to call it quits.
too much local red tape and negotiations (Score:2)
Having to negotiate with every land owner along the route and every local community that the train will pass through/near is a major part of these cost overruns. If they just eminent domained the whole damn route from the start it would have been far faster and probably cheaper.
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> Having to negotiate with every land owner along the route and every local community that the train will pass through/near is a major part of these cost overruns.
But think of the lawyers! How will they afford that third vacation home?
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I've watched several trials here in the Central Valley. One of the main issues is Sacramento sends appraisers from metro areas to appraise farm land. They appraiser starts with, well, there are not any utilities near by, the nearest sewer hookup is 6 miles and there are not any access points, etc, etc. The jury who is full of farmers all but do a face plant and then award ten times what the state/authority had appraised each acre of Almonds for.
What is the problem? (Score:2)
This works all over Europe and Japan, for example. Did they not get expertise from people that have done it?
Re:What is the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
"they" did consult with SNCF (the French national train company), and SNCF told them to build a train between LA and SF. I.e. connect the biggest population centers. That's the logic in places like France: You build where you will serve the most people possible, sell the most tickets possible, get the most ridership possible, for the shortest distance, and then you build out from there.
For better or worse, that logic doesn't work in America. The American logic is: LA and SF already have (limited) rail connections, but other cities in CA are completely unconnected by rail. Also, I5 is an infrastructure crisis, because it's completely overloaded and there's no solution, and a train between LA and SF wouldn't do anything to solve the I5 crisis. Also, America has broken land policies, and acquiring land between LA and SF is just impossible. Also, taking tax money from the whole state and spending it on infrastructure only for in the biggest cities, isn't politically popular. In France, it's just understood that cities get more amenities than rural areas, and that's the way it is. But in America, we like to shovel pork projects at our rural areas out of some kind of sentimental obligation to prop them up. So you have to bribe rural areas and secondary cities to get things done.
So, for better worse, the voters of California approved CAHSR only on the condition that it connect the inland cities. There's a legitimate logic to it. It's just American logic and not French logic.
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Ah, yes. France is pretty special in that everything has to connect to Paris. That is not the general situation.
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The problem is regulatory burden, including requirements for numerous environmental impact studies, requirements to use union labor, requirements to use minority/female owned companies, and incompetent individuals running the project. A story today reveled today that the project agreed to making a $1 billion dollar detour to avoid coming too close to the former headquarters and grave of a labor leader. It was recently discovered that labor leader had r@ped multiple women and underaged girls. I'm not even
Cost overruns are what happens (Score:2)
when California has to jump through the hoops setup by - you guessed it - California. Most other reasonable entities would say, how can we reduce costs.
just build housing (Score:2)
We don't need high speed rail. We need housing, more housing makes living more affordable for everyone.
$231 Billion could house a lot of homeless people.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Not really defending California, because their housing policies are broken and that's easy to see. Prop 13 should be considered one of the worst laws in the history of the country.
But housing and transportation are linked, and always have been. That's why cities and villages are built along rivers. That's why, including in California, companies used to build streetcars...then they would build houses along the streetcar lines. And often they would do a rugpull and fail to maintain the streetcar, but that's a
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The rail project is behind because of all of the people fighting it and having special requirements. Housing along that same path will have the same problem, especially affordable housing.
Its fine to invest in transportation, but so far that is not what is happening here. We talk about it but cant seem to accomplish it. We'll spend a trillion by the time its done.
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No, we don't actually need housing. It's a stinking lie that is perpetuated by Democrats.
We have 1.1 units of housing per family right now. And we're near the absolute record on per-capita housing. Don't believe me?
What we need are _jobs_ that are not concentrated in the Misery Centrals (aka downtowns of select large cities).
France? (Score:2)
They built ALL their lines for a quarter of that.
Regulatory Paralysis (Score:2)
The underlying idea of a high-speed connector between SF and LA wasn't a bad idea. The distance is just right for such a project and could help bridge the divide between Northern and Southern California. Likewise, the engineering and construction doesn't seem to be an issue. Plenty of companies with experience in high-speed rail projects like this that can build for a reasonable price.
The problem is regulatory paralysis. When every mile of track needs 23 environmental review hearings and 11 eminent domain l
LOL! (Score:2)
This just proves how much they need the billionaire tax.
Re: (Score:2)
They'll have to shake down the homeless for their pocket change to get this thing built.
California Added a $1 Billion Detour (Score:2)
A reminder that California is in the process of removing his name from streets and school because it was recently reveled he had r@ped multiple women and underaged girls.
> Through letters and stakeholder meetings, the Chavez Center and Foundation successfully lobbied for a bespoke alignment called the “refined Cesar Chavez National Monument design option,” which moved the track about three-quarters of a mile away from the monument boundary. Shaped as a wide curve rather than a straight line, the route would pass over viaducts and access roads and through two tunnels, each one longer than a mile and a half.
> To build it, the authority would need more track, more tunneling, and — on top of everything — a massive dirt berm, stretching about 1,700 feet, to conceal the train and blend with the desert hills.
> All of those elements combined added $815 million to the project tab in “2020 dollars” — more than $1 billion today, when adjusted for inflation.
[1]Add a $1 billion detour for California high-speed rail to Cesar Chavez’s legacy [sfchronicle.com]
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/high-speed-rail-cesar-chavez-22224768.php
Come on, this is a goof, right? (Score:1)
Every year the project cost increases by billions while little gets done. Next year it will jump again.
$231 Billion (Score:5, Funny)
How much track have they laid for the $231 billion?
Maybe they can run on this current segment of new track until they figure out why cost overruns are happening.
California has some of the best and brightest in government so this seems like a good plan to be responsible stewards of the US taxpayer.
Re:$231 Billion (Score:5, Informative)
[1]Here's a map [wikipedia.org] of the progress made since the project was launched 18 years ago.
Not to worry, I'm sure the new [2]billionaire tax [slashdot.org], if approved, will cover any remaining cost.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_California_High-Speed_Rail#/media/File%3ACAHSR_map.svg
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/27/0335242/californias-billionaire-tax-has-the-signatures-to-make-the-ballot
Abundance (Klein and Thompson book) on this (Score:3)
The book "Abundance" has an entire section on the failure of high speed rail in California despite ldecades-long government support at all levels. In general, the argument they make is that regulations created in previous generations (to avoid the worst excesses of reckless construction) now get in the way of creating solutions to today's issues like a need for clean energy, improved transportation, and affordable housing. The authors claim the book is written "by liberals, for liberals" and there whole poi
Re: (Score:2)
There is also the problem of maintaining approval over the duration of a project. If voters approved something and couldn't ever be messed with then things would proceed more smoothly. But if at any moment its popularity drops below 50% suddenly it gets defunded and dies and is nearly impossible to revive.
I've seen several infrastructure jobs suffer this fate. It gets approved, then during planning and development voters change their mind and the project is shutdown. Then a couple years later voters ch
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't priced plane tickets in the past month or so, have you?
Re: $231 Billion (Score:1)
Are they $300 billion?
Re: $231 Billion (Score:2)
Oh, wait until you see the way California manages rail systems after they're already built:
[1]https://www.city-journal.org/a... [city-journal.org]
The answer to every incompetent leadership problem here is ALWAYS more taxes. That's just how the system works.
This isn't an argument against public transit by the way, rather it's an appeal to voters to pay fucking attention to things beyond the fucking letter next to a name. If you can't, or won't, it's probably better to just not vote. I personally do exactly this: If I've never hea
[1] https://www.city-journal.org/article/bay-area-rapid-transit-system-bart-costs
Re: (Score:3)
> You haven't priced plane tickets in the past month or so, have you?
Considering what the end price tag for this will be at "completion" (if in fact it is ever completed and running)....I can't imagine ticket prices for this train will be very competitive to the airplane ticket for same destination(s).
Re: $231 Billion (Score:1)
the idea with these kind of investments is traffic capacity and speed grows at such a rate that there is significant economic growth from the easier faster travel of people alone; more business meetings; more liesure; more visitors to internal smaller cities along the line it works very well in asia and europe but america seems very broken and things like land acquisition and legal challenges for these things hold up projects for years
Why luxury safer electric cars should be free (Score:2)
Bingo. My essay on that idea from 2009: [1]https://groups.google.com/g/op... [google.com]
"This essay explain why luxury safer electric (or plug-in hybrid) cars should be free-to-the-user at the point of sale in the USA, and why this will reduce US taxes overall. Essentially, unsafe gasoline-powered automobiles in the USA pose a high cost on society (accidents, injuries, pollution, defense), and the costs of making better cars would pay for themselves and then some. This essay is an example of using post-scarcity ideology t
[1] https://groups.google.com/g/openmanufacturing/c/bNyZ6qupGFU
Re: $231 Billion (Score:3)
*sigh* You just...don't understand the finer points about job creation. Economies aren't supposed to create value, they're supposed to create busy hands. You need money to do that, and that has to be taken from other busy hands. The government just needs to repeal the second law of thermodynamics and it will all work out.
Cheese...Don't you know anything?
Re:$231 Billion (Score:4, Informative)
> How much track have they laid for the $231 billion?
"You've raised this pig since birth and how many pounds of pork have you harvested so far?"
Only $13.8 billion has been spent so far, not $231 billion. [1]Here [buildhsr.com] is a list of structures (bridges, viaducts, etc.) that have been built, and most of the land for the initial operating segment has been acquired. The reason why it's taking so long is because the funding is trickling in very slowly.
[1] https://buildhsr.com/projects/