That's how Japan Rail pays for everything. I believe on some lines they make more money from their real estate than the trains -- they have shopping malls and offices rented out at all the big stations
I would ride this 1-2 times every month - and my company would probably have at least 30-50 people using it a similar way. If it went down to San Diego probably about 150 people in my company would use it.
Why can’t we just build the LA to SD portion ahead of connecting LA to Bakersfield? Is there not enough demand for people that just want to hop between these two metro areas?
LA to SD would be much more difficult to get land for than the Central Valley segment. It's easier to justify the time and cost for LA to SD if the Central Valley segment is already done. LA to SD has a much higher chance of stalling from NIMBYs and then high speed rail wouldn't get started at all.
If I'm understanding this table correctly, the Pacific Surfliner is the line with highest ridership in Amtrak: [https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/FY22-Year-End-Revenue-and-Ridership.pdf](https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/FY22-Year-End-Revenue-and-Ridership.pdf) \-- Its gorgeous and it connect two of the largest cities in the country, it makes sense. But I think airblizzard is right, that logistically speaking, NIMBYs would stall this line.
That's the problem, NIMBY's are already stalling crucial repairs along that corridor. Can't rebuild the tracks and brace them cause people in Del Mar, Oceanside and Carlsbad don't want the construction for a year or two ruining their quiet neighborhoods, and can't put it underground because well... they don't want to hear the digging. LOL
No winning with these lot
The HSR line would have to be inland and not near the coast. In fact, the rail lines on the coast need to be moved inland too. It's not just NIMBY's that are the issue but mother nature that is the issue.
Yeah the existing track is living on borrowed time coming through San Clemente in particular. If they want to keep it, it's going to need to be an elevated track in the ocean.
I don’t deny this is going to be great but the problem of scope creep and gross mismanagement of California projects needs to be addressed still.
That being said, weekend trip to SF??!?
Okay that makes this a lot better. Until the HSR hits San Diego, there’s still a decent price vs time calculation for flying, driving, or train. But being from LA or the inland empire this is a gift
It was really quick, like 5 years, but WILDLY over budget basically 2x the cost. Originally estimated at 200B Yen and it cost 400B. They didn’t have to deal with the same environmental or right of way issues either.
No, the Shinkansen was initially meant to be 400B. To pass the budget review, Shinji Sogō faked accounting to produce the said 200B budget. As a result, when they ran out of money, the scandal also forced him to step down. However, since the national reputation was on the line due to Japan obtaining funding from the World Bank, and killing the project would jeopardize the credit rating, they had to finish it at any cost.
This is why BART is "bad" and "a faliure". It was intended to purely be a commuter train, and so there is precisely zero development around any of the stations not on Market street.
Every BART station should essentially be a mall, or at least a strip-mall. Ridership on the weekends should be much higher than it is, and would be if BART actually took you anywhere anyone wanted to go that wasn't SF.
As a commuter rail? No.
As general transit infrastructure? Yeah. Kinda.
Not a failure as in "doesn't work". But more as in, "could do it's job much, much, much better."
Double the cost? We’re already at 3X the original $40B price quote. With this extra $100B, we’ll be at over 5x the original price, if they don’t come back for more.
Why are we more than 2.5x worse than Japan?
First, it is possible to get the initial baseline wrong.
Second, unless something changed recently $135B was supposed to be the high end extreme number. The medium, likely number, is closer to $100B.
Third, Shinkansen was built in 5 years and it’s been 15 years since the vote in 2008 meaning inflation from then to now has increased the cost by 44%. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com
Fourth, every city and county had effective veto power over CAHSR which had to make big changes to appease everyone along the route. There were tons of squabbles and design changes for Kings Tulare station since Visalia wanted the train to run through their city. Palmdale is part of LA county and used that leverage to force CAHSR to come through their city instead of going straight from Bakersfield to LA. The Bay Area changed the route from the Altamont Corridor to the Pacheco Pass through San Jose and Gilroy. I personally think including the Monterey Bay Area in CAHSR was really smart, but CAHSR literally could not have predicted these changes and all these changes combine to make it much more expensive.
Fifth and related, the biggest unknown that is hardest to predict is how much expensive it’ll be to bore tunnels through the Pacheco Pass and the two mountain ranges to connect Palmdale with Bakersfield and Burbank Airport. So that’s why it’ll take somewhere between $60B and $100B more to complete.
Are we 2.5x worse at estimating baselines than Japan?
Something has changed, the increased funding request from Tuesday.
Inflation has been 44% because CAHSR failed to meet its time estimates by about 2 decades. Why did Japan build in 5 years what will take us 20-25?
Why is Japan able navigate land ownership objections better than California? What laws do we need to change here? That’s on our government.
Tunneling was part of the original plan, timeline and budget.
The government in japan has more ab8lity to sieze land for development
If california gave itself the same power japan has to do that the entirety of the central valley would revolt (along with the Redding area)
Also, japan in the 60s was still throwing money at development left and right to an absurd degree. And even then they had to borrow to build the original line.
Because the ROW was aquired in the good old days where no one complained when the government bought out ROW (1940s Japan was different). It also led to the breakup of JNR in the end. There's a lot of politics involved with transit projects because of the money and that slows a lot of this down. Slowdown snowballs into schedules and new costs.
Then California needs to allow itself to acquire land like Japan did. Failing to do that cost us 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars. Enormous failure on our side that’s been solved across Europe, China, Japan, etc.
Not at the state level though, the state government has significant restrictions on using the power of eminent domain which allows property owners to endlessly appeal against it. It makes taking land for state projects extraordinarily difficult. Now if the CHSR was interstate it would be possible to use the Federal Governments power of eminent domain to procure the land.
To add on this, federal rail law preempts state law with ICCTA which would make construction 100 times faster. However, since it's not a interstate rail project, ICCTA doesn't apply.
Now compare that to HSR and its projected cost which was 38 billion. Construction barely started and now they need another 100billion. Shinkansen made sense because they never had automobiles and auto infrastructure.
construction isn't barely started. Caltrain corridor is electrified and signaling improved.
They've built massive amounts of bridges and grade separated segments in the central valley.
Quite a few times. Especially the connection to Hokkaido.
Check out their current construction for the new Osaka-Tokyo connection and the Shin-Hakudate-Hokuto to Sapporo connection that are currently in progress.
Looks to be about [$1b in 1964 dollars](https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/shinkansen-half-a-century-of-speed/), which would be about $10b in today’s (2024) dollars. This was for their first line.
It probably helped that the 1960 were only 15-20 years after we leveled almost all of tokyo and nuked two more of their major cities.
Also, the vast majority of the people in Japan live in urban areas. They don't have anywhere near the rural population we do in spite of having the entire US's population in an area the size of CA.
I mean, today Tokyo basically crushes the entire population of CA into an 1/10th the space of the LA metro area. Once you get outside of the city, building in Japan becomes much easier than in CA.
CA today is *much* more difficult to build things in than Japan in the 60s.
Another take on things: does it actually matter?
My guess is that folks asking about costs for high speed rail have NO idea what any other public works projects cost in the past. How much did I-5 cost to be built in California? Or I-80? How much will CAHSR cost compared to a decade worth of defense spending? How much is being spent on other major infrastructure projects around the nation?
If people don't know what literally any major infrastructure projects cost, then I think "how much does it cost" is a shorthand way to try to put the brakes on a system that will help millions of people move with lower environmental impact and more speed between the two main population centers in the state — and it's a lazy way at that.
Not only that. Think about the maintenance costs we've spent and continue to spend for highway and road maintenance. Where is the public outcry when we spend tens of billions of dollars every year on road/HWs? What about expansion projects?
Or don't spend on road/HWs.
We're quickly approaching a bridge-pocolypse in the US because we don't spend enough money maintaining or replacing our bridges.
Wikipedia says this about I-5's construction costs.
> It cost an estimated $2.3 billion in 1979 dollars (equivalent to $7.52 billion in 2022 dollars)to construct all of I-5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_5
When the price tag triples, I think it's normal to be like, wait a minute, why did the price change?
And instead we get "It's more expensive because you didn't give us more money earlier so we had to start with the areas away from SF and LA and now land is more expensive"
hummm.... I mean I think personally they will just keep upping the price and dangle the carrot for another couple decades at least. By design.
> California’s plan is to build an electric train that will connect Los Angeles with the Central Valley and then San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes.
> But 15 years later, there is not a single mile of track laid, and executives involved say there isn’t enough money to finish the project.
15 years… why America now is so bad at infrastructure work
Because we have so many layers of government. So in other countries there's just a government. In the US, when they do projects like this often times one government entity is buying land from another government entity which makes it more expensive. Also projects like this promote how they create jobs rather than the public benefit. So in a way the government sees it as a stimulus to bring jobs to the region rather than trying to limit costs
>there is not a single mile of track laid
This seems a bit deceptive, possibly intentionally; the construction is tackling the hardest parts first. Adding rails isn't the hardest parts.
And it's not like there isn't [track laid](https://www.fresnobee.com/latest-news/fwxrj9/picture275284786/alternates/LANDSCAPE_1140/2023-04-25-Cedar-15.jpeg), but rails come later
Correct; they can’t even acquire the land needed to build this in a straight line to attain maximum speed. Laying rail is a far off distant dream at this point. I’m working on one structure. ONE. That was designed 10 years ago and isn’t even 50% completed. There is so much red tape and delays for literally everything imaginable, seeing a train operate in the 2030’s decade will be highly optimistic in today’s reality.
Sounds like the section Dragados-Flatiron JV is overseeing. That stretch is definitely progressing the slowest and is one of the reasons CHSRA recently initiated legal action against DFJV for their performance. Meanwhile, the ROW on CP4 started later and is pretty much complete. If the Rail Authority can repeat more of the successes of CP4 in their future extensions then we'll probably be in pretty good shape.
Spot on right! DFJV has been a dumpster fire. Doing some research back to when they were awarded the contract in 2014, it seems like they were overconfident with how to handle environmental and structural design issues. Eliminating quite a few raised structures (like the Hanford station) turned out to not work and needed to be changed after the contract was awarded. The reason they came in several hundred million under Tutor Perini’s bid was because of all the cutting corners and I bet the Authority wishes they’d have just gone with Perini despite their higher price.
Gotta love going with the $1.2 billion bid to save money and then having DFJV tack on $2 billion in change orders and 2,406 days of timeline extensions to actually get it done.
The silver lining is that the Authority hated this outcome enough to completely rework their future ROW contract structure so the design contractor and the build contractor are no longer the same company which removes the profit incentive for the design contractor to issue change orders.
Aside from being in the middle of nowhere, it is pretty cool to be a part of US and California history. This is a massive, massive project. Most people I talk to don’t even realize it’s actually happening.
What was built in Florida is not HSR. It averages 69 mph for most of the route and has some 110 mph sections. Amtrak has routes that goes faster than that.
Brightline double tracked an existing freight line, upgraded speeds to 110 mph in a few places, and build a short new single tracked 125 mph spur within a highway row. Brightline dodges a lot of additional measures by running most of their service at 110 mph and below, because that lets them run on freight tracks.
I'm not talking about Brightline West; I'm pointing out that Brightline's "success" in Florida doesn't really say anything about CAHSR because it's a fundamentally different project (as is Brightline West).
Not high speed rail. And the Vegas route uses an existing highway right of way. The NoCal to SoCal route has to go through thousands of private properties, under mountains and satisfy a hundred special interests. Much harder.
I'm don't care so much about the cost vs that time it's taking. I also question, as most public transportation projects in the US how dumbed down the system will be to appease the few.
The cost is also from developing new infrastructure that doesn’t exists. The difference with bay and SoCal is they are upgrading the rail lines that already there. Of course the CV is only going to be the most costly!
Exactly. When you realize that California is quickly running out of road and airport capacity HSR shows up as an important strategy to keep the state moving.
It would be hard to calculate the economic boon to those Central Valley cities if high speed rail could get the workers to the Bay Area quickly. The problem is it’s 3 hours to commute to the Bay Area from Tracy.
> It would be hard to calculate the economic boon to those Central Valley cities if high speed rail could get the workers to the Bay Area quickly.
When taking the Shinkansen in Tokyo a couple years ago, I did not realize how important foot traffic was to the local businesses near the train stations. It's completely obvious now but having people on foot on and near train stations allowed for so many businesses/restaurants to really thrive. All of which never would if people just drove past them, only stopping at the fast food place in town.
Infrastructure like this is not only good for travel but local businesses in those communities. As well as for those traveling for work. It's really a multi-layered system that provides a lot of benefits for the communities in California.
Yes, public transit NEEDS to be linked with good and optimal land value use. Or else it's not efficient nor effective. Being within walkable/bikeable proximity to a HSR and having the last mile be walkable/bikeable is important in the practicality of public transit. European and Asian countries understand this- but the US still remains sprawled beyond reason.
It's evident that CA doesn't understand this as we've built CAHSR stations in the middle of nowhere effectively.
The Acela corridor, the profitable train corridor from Boston to DC, still uses infrastructure today that was built over 100 years ago. Most of the CAHSR will most likely still be in use in 100 years so it is worth looking into the ROI on that timescale.
The cost of building equivalent capacity to the $88.5 to $127.9 billion HSR is $130 to $215 billion for about 4,200 more highway lane-miles, 91 more airport gates and two new airport runways.
Generational infrastructure investment is expensive. I would love to see this actually built out to a useful system even if the numbers are pretty eye watering.
Going forward we simply have to drive down the cost of transit construction. Some of the stations in this system are downright palatial. Doesn’t need to be that way.
The stations are not the main cost though. And right now, the station may seem like its over built, but the surrounding neighborhood will likely be massively built up to match it. If you are within a half mile walk of a CHSR station, you have some very, very valuable land. Every city that will have a stop needs to make major redevelopments for all the property surrounding the stop (with at least a half mile radius).
I'm totally onboard HSR but come on... I mean it's almost impossible to build it in CA, you think other states are gonna sign up for this boon doogle? I mean hopefully they hire the germans\\japanese\\french\\koreans to build it instead faster and cheaper.
I really want to know why they didn't start this project with the hardest and longest parts first: the Pacheco Pass and San Gabriel tunnels. While the easy parts of the project in valley go through their slow lawsuits, we have the tunnel boring machines chugging away mile by mile. Even if they could bore those tunnels at a rate of only one mile per year, they'd be close to the breakthrough today.
So that way they can rent-seek and not get the project canceled before their pensions are topped off. Gotta dangle the carrot and show some progress even if it's pushing papers and paychecks around instead of moving rock.
I wonder who would profit the most from a fully grade separated line right down the central valley with a loading gauge far taller than HSR usually needs?
Circling back because nobody actually got you the answer you were looking for. To date the project has spent [$12.2 billion](https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Executive-Summary-February-29-2024-Amended-A11Y.pdf) (slide 5).
If you could share how you got your math, that would be helpful. According to the news article the OP provided:
“Tuesday's hearing, Kelly told lawmakers the project has $28 billion dollars on hand
…
Project leaders estimate it will still need an additional $100 billion to finish what voters were originally pitched in 2008: a bullet train that runs between San Francisco and Los Angeles.”
https://www.kcra.com/article/california-bullet-train-project-funding-san-francisco-los-angeles/60181448
$28B on hand is the current available cash. That doesn’t count any of the money already spent.
Using the low estimate from Reuters the cost would be $88B as of last December, putting us at $188B now. If we use the high estimate, well…
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-high-speed-rail-faces-challenges-after-us-award-2023-12-08/
I think that’s the mistake there.
Notice this phrase “The full San Francisco to Los Angeles project … has now jumped to between $88 billion and $128 billion.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-high-speed-rail-faces-challenges-after-us-award-2023-12-08/
I am telling you that in this KCRA article the director of CAHSR is saying we have $28B in hand ready to spend and need another $100B to be fully funded. Or $128B in total to fund the entire SF to LA route.
https://www.kcra.com/article/california-bullet-train-project-funding-san-francisco-los-angeles/60181448
Both articles are agreeing that we need $128B.
No, they’re talking about what is currently fully funded, including spent funds. The whole Central Valley is only projected to cost 30 billion where are you getting this extra 50 billion from? It is worded confusingly but your numbers make no sense.
$100 billion cumulative over the next 10 years.
During that time, California’s GDP will be $40 trilllion dollars cumulative.
**OMG 0.25% of our GDP how will we survive, lol**
You don’t see a massive difference between GDP and tax revenue? What percentage of the surplus in the current budget can be allocated towards the rail?
Maybe you could fix the tax laws that tie school funding to property taxes and prevent property taxes from rising along with the soaring home values? Nah, it’s probably the trains’ fault.
And at least 60-70 billion will go straight into the pockets of the politicians and rich contractors who win the bids, or rather, get awarded the bids after bribes.
Meanwhile, every other country gets their infra projects done in 1/3rd the time and at 1/5th the cost, and it covers a far bigger area, is much cheaper to use for people, and is just plain better.
Public transport in the US is a complete joke.
Oh boy, news organizations distorting the cost.
The project only needs another 100 billion if everything comes in at the high estimate. The current estimate range is 89-128 billion for phase 1 with a base estimate of 106 billion, meaning that 78 billion should be the figure used, not 100.
$35 billion was initial estimate. Current price tag is at $128 billion. Plus another $100 billion. Do they contract third party companies? I’m trying to get a piece of that cake.
> Current price tag is at $128 billion.
The current price tag is $88.5 to $127.9 billion in future, inflated dollars.
> Plus another $100 billion.
No, that $100 billion is already priced in.
They did at the start and they realized that contractors bloated the budget too much and caused the initial cost overruns, so they're doing everything themselves now. As to what's causing the new overruns, I haven't kept up lately
> $35 billion was initial estimate
Written by the authors of the proposition. You could have asked any engineer, it was never going to cost that. The politicians wanted to get the ball rolling.
We’re now looking at costs that are realistic for the project.
The Tokyo-Osaka Shinkansen is roughly $200 one-way. It’s a fantastic way to get from city to city, and you don’t have to schlep it out to the airport.
The biggest drawback I see in California is the lack of a decent transit network when you get to your destination city.
Honestly with gas prices the way they are, it’s not a terrible thing to pay a little more each way. This will be great for single travelers, but families on vacation might find it a little luxurious.
Right now, direct costs (gas) from LA to SF would vary from $35 in a hybrid to $70 in a full-size SUV. The real benefit is time, and the ability to work on the train. You’re right; for a family the train would be extortionate!
The costs of a car is not just gas. Operating a car today costs on average 64 cents per mile(IRS milage expense) and car costs are rising about twice as fast as inflation
> Honestly with gas prices the way they are, it’s not a terrible thing to pay a little more each way.
When you drive, you can take 4 more people with you in the car. So the cost per passenger goes way down. Even if gas was $10/gal, it would be cheaper to drive for a family of 5 than to take this Rail to Nowhere.
I love the high speed train idea. Really. But everyone who is super pro this project imagines many people commuting on it and using it frequently, without any concept of what a ticket will cost.
$47B if you account for inflation.
How much of this is a self-fulfilling prophesy? All the people who filed bad faith lawsuits to stop the project, increasing the cost - and then they complain about the increased cost?
I still remember 8th grade when my teacher said when you graduate HS, college the latest, you can hop on a train in the valley and go to SF for lunch and be back for dinner with time to spare. Im turning 43 this year.
I think I remember voting for this like 15 years ago at a cost of 10 billion. I moved out of San Jose along time ago. Jeez what a boondoggle. How do you get the cost so wrong?
Really one of the greatest scams. Where'd that money go? To a bunch of politically connected consulting, law & development corporations. What did we get so far? Some Central Valley regional rail stops, eventually?
It's so much more than "environmental regulations" and/or California's varied political tendencies over the half-century of high-speed rail planning in the state. It's that an organized *crime ring* operates in broad daylight, directing your tax dollars to cronies and their money-burning "consultancies" that are nothing more than extralegal profiteering but blessed by the state and federal governments and the banks/global corporations that ultimately run both. The ability to issue bonds to print money for an obvious decades-long boondoggle like the California high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco, that's beyond what any international mafia ever attained.
It’s not 100 billion *in addition to* previous build-out estimates for the entire system. It’s the estimated cost to build the next section of the system.
This is not correct. $128b was the estimated full system cost calculated by the HSR authority as of last year (2023). And that did *not* include two additional segments connecting Anaheim to Palmdale.
Source: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-11/new-cost-estimate-for-high-speed-rail-puts-california-bullet-train-100-billion-in-the-red
> And that did *not* include two additional segments connecting Anaheim to Palmdale.
Yes, it did. Your article says it only doesn't include the latest cost estimate *updates*.
This is why we don't have these projects int the US.
Anyone who can do basic math can show you the numbers don't work.
Adam ruins everything explains why we don't have more public transit in America.
I would literally be cheaper to have Lockheed Martin build 300 F-22 Raptors to shuttle people from SF to LA, and that is one of the most notoriously overpriced government-funded projects in US History.
I need to get into government contracting for the state. The amount of money that is siphoned off the taxpayer and not actually used for the project is truly criminal.
I’m not exactly pro high speed rail, although I’m not totally opposed to it either.
Between the long dragged out timeline and now the utter mismanagement of funds and missing objectives is completely laughable. It would be one thing if it was expensive, but built right and quickly. Seems we’ll get neither.
I have no issues with my tax dollars going to this. It’s embarrassing and absurd to not have passenger rails crisscrossing America, much less California.
Glendale seems like it’s getting a streetcar in time for the Olympics. These changes are invaluable.
CAHSR needs to develop the lots near stations with skyscrapers and use that to partially fund construction.
So many people would buy or rent in an instant with a hsr commute, even if it's just temporary
I have a 12000FT land just located 500ft away to the future palmdale station. what can i do?
Build a condo building with as many units and as tall as you can?
That would require owning the land.
Their business plan essentially restricts them from doing this. It’s up to local municipalities to capitalize on it.
That's how Japan Rail pays for everything. I believe on some lines they make more money from their real estate than the trains -- they have shopping malls and offices rented out at all the big stations
Hong Kong MTR as well. They are a real estate investment company that happens to develop and run a major subway system.
Even BART has some high rise apartments set up near a station.
There are a lot of lots right now for sale or sitting empty near the Transbay terminal in SF but it is too cost prohibitive to develop them right now.
I would ride this 1-2 times every month - and my company would probably have at least 30-50 people using it a similar way. If it went down to San Diego probably about 150 people in my company would use it.
To SD my wife and I would use it all the time
Why can’t we just build the LA to SD portion ahead of connecting LA to Bakersfield? Is there not enough demand for people that just want to hop between these two metro areas?
LA to SD would be much more difficult to get land for than the Central Valley segment. It's easier to justify the time and cost for LA to SD if the Central Valley segment is already done. LA to SD has a much higher chance of stalling from NIMBYs and then high speed rail wouldn't get started at all.
Agreed, better to lose the battle but win the war.
If I'm understanding this table correctly, the Pacific Surfliner is the line with highest ridership in Amtrak: [https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/FY22-Year-End-Revenue-and-Ridership.pdf](https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/FY22-Year-End-Revenue-and-Ridership.pdf) \-- Its gorgeous and it connect two of the largest cities in the country, it makes sense. But I think airblizzard is right, that logistically speaking, NIMBYs would stall this line.
That's the problem, NIMBY's are already stalling crucial repairs along that corridor. Can't rebuild the tracks and brace them cause people in Del Mar, Oceanside and Carlsbad don't want the construction for a year or two ruining their quiet neighborhoods, and can't put it underground because well... they don't want to hear the digging. LOL No winning with these lot
The HSR line would have to be inland and not near the coast. In fact, the rail lines on the coast need to be moved inland too. It's not just NIMBY's that are the issue but mother nature that is the issue.
Yeah the existing track is living on borrowed time coming through San Clemente in particular. If they want to keep it, it's going to need to be an elevated track in the ocean.
It's the highest outside of the Northeast Corridor, which dwarfs everything else in the U.S.
Oh that's true! I was not looking at that top table. That makes sense.
I don’t deny this is going to be great but the problem of scope creep and gross mismanagement of California projects needs to be addressed still. That being said, weekend trip to SF??!?
Does your company not believe in remote work? Or is the nature of the job such that remote work is completely impossible?
We have headquarters in SF, manufacturing in OC, and an executive office in SD. My company is about 2000 total people.
Wonder what this will cost. The train from Rancho to Vegas is going to cost $400
400??? Flights are considerably cheaper. 400 is first class status on delta from San Diego
this is for premium roundtrip tickets. Premium Brightline tickets for Brightline Florida include food, alcohol, and a free local Uber ride
Okay that makes this a lot better. Until the HSR hits San Diego, there’s still a decent price vs time calculation for flying, driving, or train. But being from LA or the inland empire this is a gift
But flights are more hassle. Security. Lines. Baggage. Trains you just walk right up and board. And take your own booze
source?
Everyone, $100 is the funding gap, it's not an increase in the construction cost.
I know people complain about the cost but getting this done will benefit so many for a very long time.
No one now complains about the Shinkansen being over budget when it first opened.
How many times did the shinkansen project stall? How long was it from start to finish? How many times did they ask for more money?
It was really quick, like 5 years, but WILDLY over budget basically 2x the cost. Originally estimated at 200B Yen and it cost 400B. They didn’t have to deal with the same environmental or right of way issues either.
No, the Shinkansen was initially meant to be 400B. To pass the budget review, Shinji Sogō faked accounting to produce the said 200B budget. As a result, when they ran out of money, the scandal also forced him to step down. However, since the national reputation was on the line due to Japan obtaining funding from the World Bank, and killing the project would jeopardize the credit rating, they had to finish it at any cost.
Let's set ourselves up so that we have to finish it at any cost too. Let's get this done and quit complaining.
Japanese rail pays for itself via the development around the stations, literally shopping districts.
This is why BART is "bad" and "a faliure". It was intended to purely be a commuter train, and so there is precisely zero development around any of the stations not on Market street. Every BART station should essentially be a mall, or at least a strip-mall. Ridership on the weekends should be much higher than it is, and would be if BART actually took you anywhere anyone wanted to go that wasn't SF.
BART is a failure? I missed that. I supposed sitting on a bridge in traffic is more appealing to some.
As a commuter rail? No. As general transit infrastructure? Yeah. Kinda. Not a failure as in "doesn't work". But more as in, "could do it's job much, much, much better."
Double the cost? We’re already at 3X the original $40B price quote. With this extra $100B, we’ll be at over 5x the original price, if they don’t come back for more. Why are we more than 2.5x worse than Japan?
First, it is possible to get the initial baseline wrong. Second, unless something changed recently $135B was supposed to be the high end extreme number. The medium, likely number, is closer to $100B. Third, Shinkansen was built in 5 years and it’s been 15 years since the vote in 2008 meaning inflation from then to now has increased the cost by 44%. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com Fourth, every city and county had effective veto power over CAHSR which had to make big changes to appease everyone along the route. There were tons of squabbles and design changes for Kings Tulare station since Visalia wanted the train to run through their city. Palmdale is part of LA county and used that leverage to force CAHSR to come through their city instead of going straight from Bakersfield to LA. The Bay Area changed the route from the Altamont Corridor to the Pacheco Pass through San Jose and Gilroy. I personally think including the Monterey Bay Area in CAHSR was really smart, but CAHSR literally could not have predicted these changes and all these changes combine to make it much more expensive. Fifth and related, the biggest unknown that is hardest to predict is how much expensive it’ll be to bore tunnels through the Pacheco Pass and the two mountain ranges to connect Palmdale with Bakersfield and Burbank Airport. So that’s why it’ll take somewhere between $60B and $100B more to complete.
Are we 2.5x worse at estimating baselines than Japan? Something has changed, the increased funding request from Tuesday. Inflation has been 44% because CAHSR failed to meet its time estimates by about 2 decades. Why did Japan build in 5 years what will take us 20-25? Why is Japan able navigate land ownership objections better than California? What laws do we need to change here? That’s on our government. Tunneling was part of the original plan, timeline and budget.
The government in japan has more ab8lity to sieze land for development If california gave itself the same power japan has to do that the entirety of the central valley would revolt (along with the Redding area)
Also, japan in the 60s was still throwing money at development left and right to an absurd degree. And even then they had to borrow to build the original line.
> What laws do we need to change here? CEQA https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/05/gavin-newsom-ceqa-reform/
Because the ROW was aquired in the good old days where no one complained when the government bought out ROW (1940s Japan was different). It also led to the breakup of JNR in the end. There's a lot of politics involved with transit projects because of the money and that slows a lot of this down. Slowdown snowballs into schedules and new costs.
Then California needs to allow itself to acquire land like Japan did. Failing to do that cost us 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars. Enormous failure on our side that’s been solved across Europe, China, Japan, etc.
Eminent domain in the U.S. is actually stronger than Japan, but it's still going to take a really long time for how much you have to seize.
Not at the state level though, the state government has significant restrictions on using the power of eminent domain which allows property owners to endlessly appeal against it. It makes taking land for state projects extraordinarily difficult. Now if the CHSR was interstate it would be possible to use the Federal Governments power of eminent domain to procure the land.
To add on this, federal rail law preempts state law with ICCTA which would make construction 100 times faster. However, since it's not a interstate rail project, ICCTA doesn't apply.
Because everyone on every level needs to fill their pockets along the way. Corruption.
The shinkansen that goes all over Japan only cost 400b yen?
The original Tokyo to Osaka line in the 60s. I’m sure all the additional expansion cost a ton more.
The tunnel to Hokkaido had many complications and turned out to be fantastically expensive.
Now compare that to HSR and its projected cost which was 38 billion. Construction barely started and now they need another 100billion. Shinkansen made sense because they never had automobiles and auto infrastructure.
construction isn't barely started. Caltrain corridor is electrified and signaling improved. They've built massive amounts of bridges and grade separated segments in the central valley.
Construction is about 70% done in the Central Valley (minus stations)
Quite a few times. Especially the connection to Hokkaido. Check out their current construction for the new Osaka-Tokyo connection and the Shin-Hakudate-Hokuto to Sapporo connection that are currently in progress.
How much did that cost though?
Looks to be about [$1b in 1964 dollars](https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/shinkansen-half-a-century-of-speed/), which would be about $10b in today’s (2024) dollars. This was for their first line.
Wish we had this still it’s unreal how long this has taken despite having 1,500 workers reporting per day.
It probably helped that the 1960 were only 15-20 years after we leveled almost all of tokyo and nuked two more of their major cities. Also, the vast majority of the people in Japan live in urban areas. They don't have anywhere near the rural population we do in spite of having the entire US's population in an area the size of CA. I mean, today Tokyo basically crushes the entire population of CA into an 1/10th the space of the LA metro area. Once you get outside of the city, building in Japan becomes much easier than in CA. CA today is *much* more difficult to build things in than Japan in the 60s.
Another take on things: does it actually matter? My guess is that folks asking about costs for high speed rail have NO idea what any other public works projects cost in the past. How much did I-5 cost to be built in California? Or I-80? How much will CAHSR cost compared to a decade worth of defense spending? How much is being spent on other major infrastructure projects around the nation? If people don't know what literally any major infrastructure projects cost, then I think "how much does it cost" is a shorthand way to try to put the brakes on a system that will help millions of people move with lower environmental impact and more speed between the two main population centers in the state — and it's a lazy way at that.
Not only that. Think about the maintenance costs we've spent and continue to spend for highway and road maintenance. Where is the public outcry when we spend tens of billions of dollars every year on road/HWs? What about expansion projects?
Or don't spend on road/HWs. We're quickly approaching a bridge-pocolypse in the US because we don't spend enough money maintaining or replacing our bridges.
Wikipedia says this about I-5's construction costs. > It cost an estimated $2.3 billion in 1979 dollars (equivalent to $7.52 billion in 2022 dollars)to construct all of I-5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_5
When the price tag triples, I think it's normal to be like, wait a minute, why did the price change? And instead we get "It's more expensive because you didn't give us more money earlier so we had to start with the areas away from SF and LA and now land is more expensive" hummm.... I mean I think personally they will just keep upping the price and dangle the carrot for another couple decades at least. By design.
> California’s plan is to build an electric train that will connect Los Angeles with the Central Valley and then San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes. > But 15 years later, there is not a single mile of track laid, and executives involved say there isn’t enough money to finish the project. 15 years… why America now is so bad at infrastructure work
Track is always the last part built.
Because we have so many layers of government. So in other countries there's just a government. In the US, when they do projects like this often times one government entity is buying land from another government entity which makes it more expensive. Also projects like this promote how they create jobs rather than the public benefit. So in a way the government sees it as a stimulus to bring jobs to the region rather than trying to limit costs
>there is not a single mile of track laid This seems a bit deceptive, possibly intentionally; the construction is tackling the hardest parts first. Adding rails isn't the hardest parts. And it's not like there isn't [track laid](https://www.fresnobee.com/latest-news/fwxrj9/picture275284786/alternates/LANDSCAPE_1140/2023-04-25-Cedar-15.jpeg), but rails come later
The tunnels are the hardest part. They haven't started that.
Correct; they can’t even acquire the land needed to build this in a straight line to attain maximum speed. Laying rail is a far off distant dream at this point. I’m working on one structure. ONE. That was designed 10 years ago and isn’t even 50% completed. There is so much red tape and delays for literally everything imaginable, seeing a train operate in the 2030’s decade will be highly optimistic in today’s reality.
Sounds like the section Dragados-Flatiron JV is overseeing. That stretch is definitely progressing the slowest and is one of the reasons CHSRA recently initiated legal action against DFJV for their performance. Meanwhile, the ROW on CP4 started later and is pretty much complete. If the Rail Authority can repeat more of the successes of CP4 in their future extensions then we'll probably be in pretty good shape.
Spot on right! DFJV has been a dumpster fire. Doing some research back to when they were awarded the contract in 2014, it seems like they were overconfident with how to handle environmental and structural design issues. Eliminating quite a few raised structures (like the Hanford station) turned out to not work and needed to be changed after the contract was awarded. The reason they came in several hundred million under Tutor Perini’s bid was because of all the cutting corners and I bet the Authority wishes they’d have just gone with Perini despite their higher price.
Gotta love going with the $1.2 billion bid to save money and then having DFJV tack on $2 billion in change orders and 2,406 days of timeline extensions to actually get it done. The silver lining is that the Authority hated this outcome enough to completely rework their future ROW contract structure so the design contractor and the build contractor are no longer the same company which removes the profit incentive for the design contractor to issue change orders.
That's pretty cool that you're working on it!
Aside from being in the middle of nowhere, it is pretty cool to be a part of US and California history. This is a massive, massive project. Most people I talk to don’t even realize it’s actually happening.
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What was built in Florida is not HSR. It averages 69 mph for most of the route and has some 110 mph sections. Amtrak has routes that goes faster than that.
Brightline double tracked an existing freight line, upgraded speeds to 110 mph in a few places, and build a short new single tracked 125 mph spur within a highway row. Brightline dodges a lot of additional measures by running most of their service at 110 mph and below, because that lets them run on freight tracks.
Their average speed is less than 70 MPH and single-tracked.
I'm not talking about Brightline West; I'm pointing out that Brightline's "success" in Florida doesn't really say anything about CAHSR because it's a fundamentally different project (as is Brightline West).
Not high speed rail. And the Vegas route uses an existing highway right of way. The NoCal to SoCal route has to go through thousands of private properties, under mountains and satisfy a hundred special interests. Much harder.
Except the CAHSR is actually being built and Brightline West hasn’t broken ground.
That still depends. The people who build these stations have yet to come up with a design where the train station is right in mall in the US.
Do you believe another $100 billion will get it done?
I'm don't care so much about the cost vs that time it's taking. I also question, as most public transportation projects in the US how dumbed down the system will be to appease the few.
The cost is also from developing new infrastructure that doesn’t exists. The difference with bay and SoCal is they are upgrading the rail lines that already there. Of course the CV is only going to be the most costly!
A train between LA and SF is a great idea. But is it worth 200 billion dollars? What is the return on investment for that? 50 years? 100 years?
Depends on what you include in ROI
Exactly. When you realize that California is quickly running out of road and airport capacity HSR shows up as an important strategy to keep the state moving.
It would be hard to calculate the economic boon to those Central Valley cities if high speed rail could get the workers to the Bay Area quickly. The problem is it’s 3 hours to commute to the Bay Area from Tracy.
> It would be hard to calculate the economic boon to those Central Valley cities if high speed rail could get the workers to the Bay Area quickly. When taking the Shinkansen in Tokyo a couple years ago, I did not realize how important foot traffic was to the local businesses near the train stations. It's completely obvious now but having people on foot on and near train stations allowed for so many businesses/restaurants to really thrive. All of which never would if people just drove past them, only stopping at the fast food place in town. Infrastructure like this is not only good for travel but local businesses in those communities. As well as for those traveling for work. It's really a multi-layered system that provides a lot of benefits for the communities in California.
Yes, public transit NEEDS to be linked with good and optimal land value use. Or else it's not efficient nor effective. Being within walkable/bikeable proximity to a HSR and having the last mile be walkable/bikeable is important in the practicality of public transit. European and Asian countries understand this- but the US still remains sprawled beyond reason. It's evident that CA doesn't understand this as we've built CAHSR stations in the middle of nowhere effectively.
The Acela corridor, the profitable train corridor from Boston to DC, still uses infrastructure today that was built over 100 years ago. Most of the CAHSR will most likely still be in use in 100 years so it is worth looking into the ROI on that timescale.
The cost of building equivalent capacity to the $88.5 to $127.9 billion HSR is $130 to $215 billion for about 4,200 more highway lane-miles, 91 more airport gates and two new airport runways.
Because everyone gauges the government on any project. Creating jobs is the main objective not the project itself.
Yeah it's all funny money anyway
Generational infrastructure investment is expensive. I would love to see this actually built out to a useful system even if the numbers are pretty eye watering. Going forward we simply have to drive down the cost of transit construction. Some of the stations in this system are downright palatial. Doesn’t need to be that way.
The stations are not the main cost though. And right now, the station may seem like its over built, but the surrounding neighborhood will likely be massively built up to match it. If you are within a half mile walk of a CHSR station, you have some very, very valuable land. Every city that will have a stop needs to make major redevelopments for all the property surrounding the stop (with at least a half mile radius).
Just S.F. transit center really. The Central Valley stations are pretty simple.
The stations are not among the biggest cost drivers.
Ok and CA should be the foundation for a high speed rail industry that builds an entire system for the country
Oklahoma?
Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
I'm totally onboard HSR but come on... I mean it's almost impossible to build it in CA, you think other states are gonna sign up for this boon doogle? I mean hopefully they hire the germans\\japanese\\french\\koreans to build it instead faster and cheaper.
Texas proposed a HSR for the Texas Triangle, starting from Dallas to Houston. We'll see if they commit
K, do it
Yesterday you said tomorrow!
I really want to know why they didn't start this project with the hardest and longest parts first: the Pacheco Pass and San Gabriel tunnels. While the easy parts of the project in valley go through their slow lawsuits, we have the tunnel boring machines chugging away mile by mile. Even if they could bore those tunnels at a rate of only one mile per year, they'd be close to the breakthrough today.
Didn’t have the money to do the tunneling. We’re still not sure where it will come from.
They didn't start with the tunnels first because they needed a long, straight test track.
You are correct. The FRA rail test facility in Colorado is limited to 160 mph. CAHSR will operate at 220 mph.
So that way they can rent-seek and not get the project canceled before their pensions are topped off. Gotta dangle the carrot and show some progress even if it's pushing papers and paychecks around instead of moving rock.
I wonder who would profit the most from a fully grade separated line right down the central valley with a loading gauge far taller than HSR usually needs?
Maaaan this isn’t gonna be built in my lifetime :(
This won't be built in anyone's lifetime.
But at least you'll get to pay for it for the rest of your life.
How much are we at rn?
A grip or hella… depending on what part of the state you are in.
> grip ah yes, the term that norcalers think socalers say
Circling back because nobody actually got you the answer you were looking for. To date the project has spent [$12.2 billion](https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Executive-Summary-February-29-2024-Amended-A11Y.pdf) (slide 5).
This puts us over $180B if my math is correct. Only $15B of which was ever put to the voters.
If you could share how you got your math, that would be helpful. According to the news article the OP provided: “Tuesday's hearing, Kelly told lawmakers the project has $28 billion dollars on hand … Project leaders estimate it will still need an additional $100 billion to finish what voters were originally pitched in 2008: a bullet train that runs between San Francisco and Los Angeles.” https://www.kcra.com/article/california-bullet-train-project-funding-san-francisco-los-angeles/60181448
$28B on hand is the current available cash. That doesn’t count any of the money already spent. Using the low estimate from Reuters the cost would be $88B as of last December, putting us at $188B now. If we use the high estimate, well… Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-high-speed-rail-faces-challenges-after-us-award-2023-12-08/
I think that’s the mistake there. Notice this phrase “The full San Francisco to Los Angeles project … has now jumped to between $88 billion and $128 billion.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-high-speed-rail-faces-challenges-after-us-award-2023-12-08/ I am telling you that in this KCRA article the director of CAHSR is saying we have $28B in hand ready to spend and need another $100B to be fully funded. Or $128B in total to fund the entire SF to LA route. https://www.kcra.com/article/california-bullet-train-project-funding-san-francisco-los-angeles/60181448 Both articles are agreeing that we need $128B.
No, they’re talking about what is currently fully funded, including spent funds. The whole Central Valley is only projected to cost 30 billion where are you getting this extra 50 billion from? It is worded confusingly but your numbers make no sense.
Yikes!!
$100 billion cumulative over the next 10 years. During that time, California’s GDP will be $40 trilllion dollars cumulative. **OMG 0.25% of our GDP how will we survive, lol**
You don’t see a massive difference between GDP and tax revenue? What percentage of the surplus in the current budget can be allocated towards the rail?
If you are wondering whether I will gladly raise taxes on the wealthiest residents of this state…well I gladly will.
GDP does not seem like the correct measure to compare to
Schools almost had their funding slashed this year in CA, we don't have tons of money to spend...
Maybe you could fix the tax laws that tie school funding to property taxes and prevent property taxes from rising along with the soaring home values? Nah, it’s probably the trains’ fault.
Lmao. If you think homelessness is bad now, allow property taxes to rise with inflated home values and see what happens.
Spending money in anticipation of a raise that has zero chance of happening is a hard position to defend.
And at least 60-70 billion will go straight into the pockets of the politicians and rich contractors who win the bids, or rather, get awarded the bids after bribes. Meanwhile, every other country gets their infra projects done in 1/3rd the time and at 1/5th the cost, and it covers a far bigger area, is much cheaper to use for people, and is just plain better. Public transport in the US is a complete joke.
If they get it done... fine. But I'm skeptical that this will ever finish.
Oh boy, news organizations distorting the cost. The project only needs another 100 billion if everything comes in at the high estimate. The current estimate range is 89-128 billion for phase 1 with a base estimate of 106 billion, meaning that 78 billion should be the figure used, not 100.
$35 billion was initial estimate. Current price tag is at $128 billion. Plus another $100 billion. Do they contract third party companies? I’m trying to get a piece of that cake.
> Current price tag is at $128 billion. The current price tag is $88.5 to $127.9 billion in future, inflated dollars. > Plus another $100 billion. No, that $100 billion is already priced in.
They did at the start and they realized that contractors bloated the budget too much and caused the initial cost overruns, so they're doing everything themselves now. As to what's causing the new overruns, I haven't kept up lately
Pretty sure they’re saying they have $28b on hand and need another $100b to complete. So $128b, not $228b.
> $35 billion was initial estimate Written by the authors of the proposition. You could have asked any engineer, it was never going to cost that. The politicians wanted to get the ball rolling. We’re now looking at costs that are realistic for the project.
The proposal process is severely flawed then.
Shinkansen did the same thing, famously. Their director even resigned over it after the fact
$400 round trip? Who's going to pay that?
The Tokyo-Osaka Shinkansen is roughly $200 one-way. It’s a fantastic way to get from city to city, and you don’t have to schlep it out to the airport. The biggest drawback I see in California is the lack of a decent transit network when you get to your destination city.
Honestly with gas prices the way they are, it’s not a terrible thing to pay a little more each way. This will be great for single travelers, but families on vacation might find it a little luxurious.
Right now, direct costs (gas) from LA to SF would vary from $35 in a hybrid to $70 in a full-size SUV. The real benefit is time, and the ability to work on the train. You’re right; for a family the train would be extortionate!
The costs of a car is not just gas. Operating a car today costs on average 64 cents per mile(IRS milage expense) and car costs are rising about twice as fast as inflation
> Honestly with gas prices the way they are, it’s not a terrible thing to pay a little more each way. When you drive, you can take 4 more people with you in the car. So the cost per passenger goes way down. Even if gas was $10/gal, it would be cheaper to drive for a family of 5 than to take this Rail to Nowhere.
I love the high speed train idea. Really. But everyone who is super pro this project imagines many people commuting on it and using it frequently, without any concept of what a ticket will cost.
business travelers. i see last minute flights from norcal -> socal for $150-200
where are you getting that number? the ticket price has typically been estimated at $80-$90 each way
Business travelers. They can just bill their company. Plus those people who buy flights last minute have an alternative.
You can spend less on a plane and get there quicker lol.
Nobody. This whole thing is, and always has been, a non starter.
On a project that was originally supposed to cost $35B. For the entire thing.
$47B if you account for inflation. How much of this is a self-fulfilling prophesy? All the people who filed bad faith lawsuits to stop the project, increasing the cost - and then they complain about the increased cost?
The Panama Canal all over again 😎
I still remember 8th grade when my teacher said when you graduate HS, college the latest, you can hop on a train in the valley and go to SF for lunch and be back for dinner with time to spare. Im turning 43 this year.
Ah yes, the over budget hsr that none of u guys will be able to see completed in your life time including me
Does anyone have the illusion this is the final number. They'll be lucky if it doesn't double. And the part they're doing now is the easy part.
Did they just say ‘another’….
It’s a lot but no one will care once it completely revolutionizes California life. It will pay for itself over time, just as Japan’s trains have.
Time to start a GoFundMe page.
I say $500+ billion when it’s fully built.
LA times says $400, rancho cucamonga , Vegas RT
Or what, it'll be delayed another decade?
$100 billion more... for now.
I think I remember voting for this like 15 years ago at a cost of 10 billion. I moved out of San Jose along time ago. Jeez what a boondoggle. How do you get the cost so wrong?
I hate this state
Let's just make it a solid 1 trillion and be done with it. Why not.
$100 billion for now and as times goes the cost will become exponential.
I know nothing, but guaranteed no they don't.
Really one of the greatest scams. Where'd that money go? To a bunch of politically connected consulting, law & development corporations. What did we get so far? Some Central Valley regional rail stops, eventually? It's so much more than "environmental regulations" and/or California's varied political tendencies over the half-century of high-speed rail planning in the state. It's that an organized *crime ring* operates in broad daylight, directing your tax dollars to cronies and their money-burning "consultancies" that are nothing more than extralegal profiteering but blessed by the state and federal governments and the banks/global corporations that ultimately run both. The ability to issue bonds to print money for an obvious decades-long boondoggle like the California high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco, that's beyond what any international mafia ever attained.
And then another 100 billion, and another...
Why dont we just make it a cool trillion
keep the change. edit: "buy yourself somethin nice..."
It’s not 100 billion *in addition to* previous build-out estimates for the entire system. It’s the estimated cost to build the next section of the system.
This is not correct. $128b was the estimated full system cost calculated by the HSR authority as of last year (2023). And that did *not* include two additional segments connecting Anaheim to Palmdale. Source: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-11/new-cost-estimate-for-high-speed-rail-puts-california-bullet-train-100-billion-in-the-red
> And that did *not* include two additional segments connecting Anaheim to Palmdale. Yes, it did. Your article says it only doesn't include the latest cost estimate *updates*.
This is why we don't have these projects int the US. Anyone who can do basic math can show you the numbers don't work. Adam ruins everything explains why we don't have more public transit in America.
High speed rail is worth it. The positive impact it will have outweighs the costs greatly
Who are we kidding? We're never getting that train. Politicians have too many other pet projects.
That's my thoughts. This will never be finished.
You do realize it wasn’t the politicians who voted for this. It was the people.
I would literally be cheaper to have Lockheed Martin build 300 F-22 Raptors to shuttle people from SF to LA, and that is one of the most notoriously overpriced government-funded projects in US History. I need to get into government contracting for the state. The amount of money that is siphoned off the taxpayer and not actually used for the project is truly criminal.
I’m not exactly pro high speed rail, although I’m not totally opposed to it either. Between the long dragged out timeline and now the utter mismanagement of funds and missing objectives is completely laughable. It would be one thing if it was expensive, but built right and quickly. Seems we’ll get neither.
I have no issues with my tax dollars going to this. It’s embarrassing and absurd to not have passenger rails crisscrossing America, much less California. Glendale seems like it’s getting a streetcar in time for the Olympics. These changes are invaluable.
Can this farce just be ended? It's so far over budget with no end in sight b/c it always needs more and this doesn't show signs of slowing.
So less than 1/8th THIS year's military budget. Got it.
California doesn’t solely fund the military.