California’s oft-delayed and over-budget high-speed rail project will need billions of dollars in additional funding by the summer of 2026 to avoid being postponed further, according to local Sacramento news outlet KCRA3. [emphasis, links added]
An official for the California Legislative Analyst’s Office told lawmakers Wednesday during a transportation budget hearing that $7 billion in additional funding needs to be secured for the development by June 2026, or else the project may face further delays, according to KCRA3.
The project was initially pitched as a $40 billion “bullet train” system connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco that would be complete sometime around 2020, but the price tag has soared above $100 billion, and the completion of the Bakersfield-Merced line of the system is not expected until 2030 at the earliest.
“There is no specific plan to meet that roughly $7 billion gap, we also think there is some risk that gap could grow,” said Helen Kerstein, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office official, according to KCRA3.
“This isn’t a way out in the future funding gap. This is a pretty immediate funding gap.”
The Wednesday hearing did not last long because the California High-Speed Rail Authority failed to submit a complete update report on time, according to KCRA3.
Representatives for the High-Speed Rail Authority said that they expect to be able to produce a complete report by sometime this summer, irritating some of the legislators in attendance.
“We have no plan, we have a good likelihood it’s going to get worse, and we have a short time to solve the problem,” said Democratic California Assemblyman Steven Bennett, according to KCRA3.
“That’s not a good place for government to put itself into.”
To date, California has spent about $14 billion on the high-speed rail project, but the state expects that it will still need to spend at least $28 billion more to finally finish the Bakersfield-Merced line, according to KCRA3.
The Los Angeles-San Francisco line only managed to clear all necessary environmental review hurdles in 2024, and “pre-construction planning” for Bay Area segments is ongoing, according to The Fresno Bee.
As of September 2023, the state had spent approximately $600 million on environmental reviews for the project despite making little progress toward completing the system and beginning operations.
Additionally, labor unions have been one of the largest beneficiaries of the project’s largesse to date.
Bullet train rendering by Justin Chechourka/High-Speed Rail Authority
Read rest at Daily Caller
