California’s High Speed Rail Obsession

It seems as though California leaders embrace every good bad idea.

There it is! Your state and federal tax dollars at work…

It’s finally finished! No, not the California High Speed Rail (HSR) project that will allegedly connect Los Angeles with San Francisco. The Fresno River Viaduct segment in Madera County is now complete – all 1,600 feet of it. And it only took sixteen years and $11.2 billion to make it happen.

That pencils out to $36.96 billion per mile. So in order to complete the entire 550-mile route, that will cost…ack…my calculator seized up.

Just kidding. California’s HSR will NEVER be completed. There is a $100 billion funding gap on the project’s current estimate of $128 billion, which seems like a low-ball estimate given the hideous amount spent on just the 1,600-foot span across the Fresno River that you can walk from end to end at a leisurely pace in about five minutes.

How it Started, How it’s Going

To refresh memories, the original cost estimate issued by the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) approved by voters in 2008 for the entire 550-mile route was $33 billion. The LA to SF line was promised to be operational by 2020. Here we are in 2024 with over $11 billion spent and sixteen years into the project, and not a single mile of track has been laid. It’s no wonder some California officials are calling this the “Hot Mess Express.”  

The primary problem with high-speed rail transit is that it has long ago been rendered an obsolete transportation mode that serves no purpose other than moving passengers by rail who can travel more economically by highway or air. With costly dedicated infrastructure requiring unaffordable land purchase and maintenance, plus the regulatory rules and time needed for the wide array of studies and permits, it’s no wonder why these projects routinely end up costing much more and taking much longer than originally estimated. You end up with HSR as a transportation option that is slower than flying, less convenient than driving, and winds up being more expensive than both.

The greater Los Angeles area is also a really big region with comparatively low population density to that of Manhattan or Chicago. A high population density is needed to make any rail transit system feasible. The societal culture of SoCal is built around the automobile, and building HSR systems without a large population in close proximity is simply not viable.

A Not So “Bright” Idea

One has to wonder if any of this real-world analysis went into the “highly anticipated” Brightline West HSR service between Las Vegas and Los Angeles – well, it won’t exactly stop in L.A., but Rancho Cucamonga, requiring a 41-mile conventional rail connection to Union Station in L.A. with a half dozen or so stops along the way. That alone would have convinced clear thinking people that this rail line isn’t going to attract passengers looking to spend more time and money than they would otherwise incur by having affordable access to over 80 non-stop, 46-minute flights between SoCal and Vegas.

And don’t think Brightline isn’t going to saddle the insane cost of building out their HSR onto the passengers in the form of high ticket prices. Beginning June 1, Brightline commuters in South Florida will see a ticket price increase of 251 percent – from $400 for a package of ten one-way tickets, to $1,400 for the same package. That spike in ticket prices is for a HSR that has already been built and is currently in service.

But, then again, it’s not likely that Brightline West will ever be built. All of the fanfare of the groundbreaking ceremonies will not alleviate the budget shortfalls, bureaucratic red tape, and laws of physics. Brightline’s $45 million per mile estimate appears wildly optimistic and bordering on delusion. California’s High Speed Rail Authority is already spending a lot more than $45 million per mile building on the flat land of the Central Valley. The route to Vegas is far from flat, crossing two mountain ranges, one of which has an elevation of over 4,000 feet.

We Are the World!

Where does California get its HSR obsession? Ask the question and you inevitably hear about China’s rail network being the envy of the world, boasting about their speed, passenger capacity, and advanced technologies. As with the pending Chinese real estate market collapse, the massive build-out of rail infrastructure is causing severe overcapacity that cannot be sustained through ridership and will likely contribute to a collapsing Chinese economy.

Using China – or any other country as an example of the attractiveness and efficiencies of HSR – is deceptive. Even Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train system, which travels up to 198 miles per hour and runs on time right down to the second, is losing money due to declining ridership as well as increased operating and maintenance costs that cannot be offset by dwindling ticket revenue.

So what explains California’s obsession with high-speed rail? It’s clearly an obsolete technology that is hideously expensive. There are existing rail lines and highways these projects are being built right next to. So why the push for this?

California is obsessed with getting people to stop driving their cars altogether. Among other things, the state is going as far as to ban parking space mandates within a half-mile of transit centers, effectively forcing people living nearby out of their cars and onto transit.

Oh, you can park somewhere else? Alright, how about a half-dollar average increase in the gasoline tax, starting July 1? You say you can swing that…okay, so let’s just tack on another 15 percent to the price of a new gas-powered vehicle over a couple of years to further make the cost of ownership less attractive. Now how do you feel about transit?

As stated earlier, these high-speed rail projects will never be completed. Ask most transit experts and they’ll tell you, “Stop putting good money after bad,” “The billions going toward this project could be better spent elsewhere,” “Final costs for the nation’s ‘biggest boondoggle in history’ are impossible to realistically project,” “This project has too many impediments and unknown costs,” “It’s time to re-evaluate the concept of high-speed rail in California.”

Should California listen to the experts? Nah. It seems as though the state’s leaders embrace every good bad idea.