By Abdul Masih —
California promised us a train. Not just any train, but a gleaming, high-speed, steel stallion that would whisk us from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less time than it takes to binge half a season of “The Bachelor.” The year was 2008, a time when Barack Obama was still new, “change” meant more than rummaging for parking meter quarters, and Californians voted to approve $9 billion in bonds for a dream: a 220-mph train linking north and south, a modern marvel of speed, efficiency, and green energy.
Today, 16 years and roughly $100 billion later, what we’ve got instead is the world’s most expensive commuter shuttle between Merced and Bakersfield. That’s right—forget San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge or Los Angeles’ Hollywood sign. California’s shining future is a bullet train connecting cow pastures, nut orchards, and truck stops on Highway 99.
Here’s how the boondoggle got started:
- LA to SF in 2 hours, 40 minutes.
- Tickets for $55.
- Self-sustaining, no need for operating subsidies.
- Completed by 2020.
This was the same era when Tesla was still a quirky startup, Uber was just a German word for “super,” and most people thought high-speed rail would be the green equivalent of putting a Prius on steroids. Californians imagined sleek trains zipping past traffic-clogged freeways, sipping lattes while the San Joaquin Valley blurred by like a time-lapse video of growing almonds.
What we got instead is a 16-year case study in how good intentions pave the road—not to heaven, but to a half-finished railbed in Madera County.
By 2012, that slipped to 2022. By 2015, it was 2028. Today, the most optimistic projections put the “starter line” (Merced to Bakersfield) operating in the early 2030s. That means, by the time the train is finished, Gen Z will be middle-aged, and the TikTok influencers promoting it will have hip replacements.
Delays came from everywhere: lawsuits, land acquisitions, environmental reviews, labor disputes, and the occasional discovery that building train tracks across a mountain range is harder than drawing them on a PowerPoint slide. Who knew? But most importantly, giving money to politicians is like giving whiskey and the car kids to minors.
Back in 2008, voters were promised the whole enchilada for $33 billion. Today, estimates hover around $100 billion—and that’s just for the Central Valley portion. If they ever get around to tunneling through the Tehachapi and Pacheco passes to connect LA and SF, tack on another $50–70 billion.
Now only an “operational segment” will run 171 miles from Merced to Bakersfield. Unless you are a raisin farmer with a desperate need to get to Bakersfield quickly, this is useless. The train connects two cities that were never clamoring for faster travel between them.
Politicians loved the pipe dream. The unions love it — construction jobs for decades. The contractors love it — change orders galore. The only people who don’t love it are, inconveniently, the taxpayers footing the bill and the commuters who were promised a real train.
California’s super majority Democrat leaders keep promising and failing to deliver. As always, the finished project is nothing like the PowerPoint presentation: Billions spent to build half a railroad between nowhere and slightly less nowhere.
Here’s the cruelest irony: the billions shoveled into the bullet train could have actually modernized California transportation. For a fraction of the cost, the state could have:
- Fixed its crumbling highways
- Expanded airports and invested in cleaner aviation fuel.
- Built regional rail that actually connects where people live to where they work.
Instead, we got the high-speed equivalent of a slot machine—lots of noise, flashing lights, and the occasional payout for insiders, but nothing for the players.
The California bullet train was supposed to be a monument to progress. Instead, it’s showing that there’s not a project that California can’t screw up.
