California High-Speed Rail is Still a Multi-Billion Dollar Boondoggle

High-speed rail has been a boondoggle across the country, with California’s project leading the way as the most expensive and wasteful.  In 2008, voters approved a $9.95 billion bond measure to fund what was promised to be a fast, affordable, and transformative high-speed rail system.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) first sounded the alarm on this off-the-rails idea in a 2008 report co-published with the Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.  It was co-authored by Wendell Cox and Joseph Vranich and revealed that the rail project was replete with flawed assumptions and false projections.  Those warnings have proven accurate, as the project remains an epic failure of planning, management, and fiscal accountability.  The fantasy of 220-mph trains connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles has been derailed, and the California High-Speed Rail Authority has burned through more than $11 billion, with little to show beyond a few incomplete segments in the state’s Central Valley.  

An April 11, 2025 analysis written by Wendell Cox for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity underscores the continuing mismanagement and fiscal recklessness surrounding the project.  The Central Valley route from Merced to Bakersfield has as much as a $100 billion funding shortfall, which could grow larger.  Cox noted that “ridership projections for a completed Phase 1 are more than double the ridership on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains” but serve half of that population.  Cox proposed ending the entire project with the completion of Phase 1 and the immediate termination of federal funding.

In 2019, CAGW released a timeline documenting the then-current delays and cost overruns.  A 2023 blog post highlighted how little progress California had made despite having spent billions more than the project’s initial budget.  CAGW also led efforts during the first Trump administration to end federal support for the project, coordinating a coalition letter to then-Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao urging the termination of a $929 million federal grant due to the project’s chronic underperformance and legal noncompliance.

Yet the project is still stuck at the station, guzzling taxpayer dollars.  California’s high-speed rail fiasco is no longer just a state embarrassment; it is a national cautionary tale.  The federal government must stop throwing good money after bad and finally pull the plug on this runaway railroad project.