Price tag of California’s bullet train project balloons to 105 billion dollars
Image: California High Speed Rail Authority
A new draft project blueprint for the California bullet train, set to connect Los Angeles and San Fransisco, has revealed yet another cost increase on Tuesday. Officials now forecast the project will cost at least 105 billion dollars, 5 billion more than the previous estimate.
Want to read more?
You have read all of your free premium articles for this month. Please become a subscriber to keep reading.
Subscribe now!
Take advantage of our exclusive offer to get full access to all premium content.
This reporting is incredibly frustrating. First, the 2022 Business Plan is no longer a draft as it has been adopted. Second, the Business plan was released in early February of 2022, so this is hardly “news” at this point. Third, and most importantly, the $105 billion is among the highest estimates for the cost of Phase 1 of the system. It could be as low as $72 billion. It is disingenuous to infer that the $105 billion is the final cost without providing context.
It is my opinion that this news is not disingenuous at all once the reader realizes that this project was never meant to be finished. It was formulated to gift the Unions with cash, and rewards paid to Jerry Brown and others in Sacramento. Millions have been spent and there is not a single train track to show for it. Maybe eventually a track will be placed merely for the show of it politically, but it will never be completed. It is more profitable for this project to remain in limbo forever.