California's high-speed rail project, once sold to voters as a $33 billion investment to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, now carries an estimated price tag of $231 billion, and the state has little more to show for nearly two decades of spending than 119 miles of active construction in the Central Valley and a growing pile of criticism from lawmakers in both parties.
The revised figures surfaced during a Senate Transportation Committee hearing on Monday, where state analysts warned of "several issues" with the High-Speed Rail Authority's latest draft business plan. The Legislative Analyst's Office flagged eight distinct structural problems, including concerns that the Authority is shifting the project's scope in violation of current state law, relying on uncertain funding assumptions, and banking on future policy changes that may never materialize.
The gap between what voters approved in 2008 and what the project has become is staggering. The original promise: a bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles, finished by 2020, for $33 billion. The current reality: $14 billion in taxpayer money already spent, mostly on land acquisition and construction in the Central Valley, with completion of even a 171-mile segment between Merced and Bakersfield now targeted for 2032. The full system, if it is ever built, could cost nearly seven times the original estimate.
State Sen. Tony Strickland, vice chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, did not mince words. He told the New York Post:
"I've been saying this for years now, but this is the most wasteful government project in probably world history. It goes from a $33 billion projected estimate to the voters to go from LA to San Francisco. Now it's $231 billion and climbing."
Strickland pointed to a March letter from Lou Thompson, former chair of the state's High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, who warned legislative leaders the project has effectively reached "a dead end" and faces tens of billions in funding gaps. Thompson's letter amounts to a verdict from someone who once helped oversee the project's integrity, and his conclusion is that there is no credible path forward.
The senator also noted that the $231 billion figure does not account for borrowing costs, which would push the real number even higher. "When they talk about $231 billion, they don't take into account borrowing money, which will make it even more expensive," Strickland said. "It's almost like they're in a state of denial."
His advice was plain: "My dad always taught me at an early age, when you dig a hole for yourself, the best way to get out of the hole is to stop digging."
Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Republican from Roseville, called the project "the worst public infrastructure failure in U.S. history." On April 27, 2026, Kiley posted on X: "The cost of High-Speed Rail is now estimated at $231 billion. Our country has never seen a fiscal disaster of this magnitude."
Kiley told the Post that federal funding had been severed. "Thankfully, we have now cut off all further federal funding," he said. He went further, predicting the project's inevitable end:
"There is no viable path forward for this disastrous project. I fully expect the next California governor will have to recognize that reality, stop throwing good money after bad, and finally wind the project down."
That prediction carries weight given the broader political landscape. While the Trump administration has moved aggressively on federal policy and spending priorities in other areas, cutting off federal dollars for a project that has delivered almost nothing in nearly 20 years is the kind of fiscal discipline taxpayers across the country should expect from Washington.
Helen Kerstine, an auditor in the Legislative Analyst's Office, delivered a blunt assessment at the hearing. "In our view, the draft plan's approach lacks transparency," she told lawmakers. The office identified eight distinct structural problems with the Authority's business plan, a remarkable number for a single document from a state agency that has had years to get its projections right.
Among the concerns: the Authority's plan shifts the project's scope in ways that may violate current state law, relies on uncertain funding assumptions, and depends on future policy changes that have not been enacted. The plan also leans heavily on a billion dollars in annual funding from the state's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a revenue stream that State Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Republican representing San Diego and parts of Southern California, called "risky" during Monday's hearing.
Seyarto suggested that CEO Ian Choudri and his team are trying to "salvage" a fragmented and unfunded project. His message to colleagues was direct:
"We need to stop throwing good money after bad, after this segment, because we have lots of projects we could put people to work doing."
That argument resonates beyond California. At a time when major corporations are turning to technology and tight management to cut waste, California's government continues to pour billions into a project that its own reviewers say lacks a credible funding path.
Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged the project's problems years ago. In 2019, he admitted there was no path to get the train from San Francisco to Los Angeles and pushed the state to focus instead on the 171-mile segment between Merced and Bakersfield. That scaled-back vision was itself a concession that the original promise to voters had collapsed.
Now even that reduced ambition looks shaky. The High-Speed Rail Authority estimates the initial Central Valley segment will cost roughly $34.8 billion, more than the entire original price tag for the full LA-to-San Francisco line. The broader "Phase 1" system carries a $126 billion estimate from the Authority, with the $231 billion figure representing the potential cost of completing the project under current conditions.
Newsom's office did not respond to a request for comment on the latest plan and its uncertain costs. That silence is telling. The governor who once championed the project as a signature achievement now appears unwilling to defend it publicly as the numbers spiral.
In Fresno, locals have taken to calling discarded project materials meant to lay track "Stonehenge", a nickname that captures the sense that the high-speed rail project has become a monument to ambition disconnected from reality.
Not everyone at the hearing was ready to pull the plug. State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco argued that criticism has been fueled in part by what he called a "PR propaganda campaign" against high-speed rail. He referenced a 2025 poll showing 62 percent of voters still approve of the project.
"It's sad to me the PR propaganda campaign has sunk in to some extent, although recent polling shows the voters still support this after everything."
Wiener added: "To me, it is embarrassing and harmful that California does not have a true state rail system." He dismissed some opposition as tied to what he called a "Hyperloop" "scam."
But voter approval in a poll and voter willingness to keep writing checks are different things. The voters who approved $33 billion in 2008 did not sign up for $231 billion. And the project they were promised, a high-speed line connecting the state's two largest cities by 2020, does not exist. What exists is a construction zone in the Central Valley, a draft business plan riddled with problems, and a funding gap measured in tens of billions of dollars.
The Authority's own presentation at the hearing opened with a Walt Disney quote: "You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it requires people to make the dream a reality." The choice of a theme-park visionary to introduce a $231 billion infrastructure failure speaks for itself.
The Senate Transportation Committee is expected to continue reviewing the plan as lawmakers weigh whether to commit additional funding or reconsider the project's scope entirely. That decision will define whether California doubles down on a project its own auditors, its own former peer review chair, and a growing number of its own legislators say cannot work, or whether it finally confronts the sunk-cost fallacy that has driven the project for nearly two decades.
The pattern is familiar in government accountability disputes across the country: officials make promises, costs explode, timelines slip, and the public is told that walking away would waste what has already been spent. But $14 billion is already gone. The question is whether California will spend another $217 billion chasing a train that its own experts say may never arrive.
Strickland, Kiley, Seyarto, and Thompson have all reached the same conclusion from different vantage points: the project is a fiscal disaster with no credible path to completion. The Legislative Analyst's Office has flagged eight structural problems with the latest plan. Federal funding has been cut. The governor's office won't comment.
Meanwhile, the Authority keeps building in the Central Valley, spending money it doesn't have on a plan its own reviewers don't trust, toward a deadline it has already missed by more than a decade. And somewhere in Sacramento, someone thought a Walt Disney quote would help.
When even the project's own former oversight chair calls it "a dead end," the only question left is how much more California taxpayers will lose before their leaders finally admit it.
