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As high-speed rail cost estimate soars, state lawmakers move to hide information from taxpayers

May 8, 2026

The California high-speed rail system’s price tag continues to grow, even though there is little hope that Californians will get anything close to what they were promised.

In its latest business plan, the California High-Speed Rail Authority says, “The Authority used methods from bottom-up cost estimating to re-estimate the full Phase 1 buildout at approximately $231.3 billion in today’s dollars.”

But now the rail authority is trying to pretend it wasn’t the source for the eye-popping cost figure in its own report.

“The $231 billion figure does not reflect the Authority’s published plan. It represents a high-end, unoptimized scenario based on legacy design and delivery assumptions that have since been reevaluated,” the rail authority told the Fresno Bee.

“The 2026 Draft Business Plan identifies a projected cost of approximately $126.3 billion to deliver Phase 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles/Anaheim, based on a bottom-up reassessment of scope, design criteria, and construction sequencing,” the rail authority claims.

However, there’s no reason to think it can deliver even at that cost. A new report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office to state lawmakers found the rail authority’s latest plan “lacks transparency,” fails to properly explain its intent to build train stations in locations other than previously planned, and cannot identify where the money it needs will come from.

“The [rail authority’s] decision not to highlight information on key scope changes in the document—instead stating that cost savings are from unspecified ‘optimization measures’—obscures the nature of these changes and makes comparisons between annual plans difficult,” LAO told lawmakers.

Unfortunately, the state legislature’s response to LAO’s wise warnings is not to demand more accurate information, but to allow the agency to hide important data from taxpayers.

California Assembly Bill 1608 would allow the high-speed rail authority to withhold records from taxpayers that an inspector general believes would “reveal weaknesses” that ” would pose a substantial and articulable risk to the project or to state operations if publicly disclosed.”

The Assembly has already passed the troubling bill to reduce transparency into the rail project and sent it to the Senate.

The bill and ever-rising cost estimates are the latest reasons that many taxpayers and Republican elected officials are calling for the project to be ended, while some Democrats are starting to express greater skepticism.

At this point, every additional taxpayer dollar spent on high-speed rail is wasted. Taxpayer money is being siphoned off from other priorities, including existing transportation infrastructure. California has some of the most pothole-riddled roads and the worst traffic congestion in the country, ranking 49th in Reason Foundation’s Annual Highway Report for overall cost-effectiveness and condition.

The high-speed rail project does not resemble what voters approved. The complete Los Angeles-to-San Francisco system voters were promised in 2008 was supposed to cost $33 billion, go over 200 miles per hour and take riders from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a little over 2.5 hours by 2020.

It’s 2026, and nothing is running. Costs have increased 600%. The system is no longer promising a Japanese or European-style bullet train, but a blended system that would run at reduced speeds on freight rail tracks for long stretches. And the train will likely never reach Los Angeles or San Francisco. The rail authority says it is still more than six years away from even having its dubious Merced-to-Bakersfield train-to-nowhere operational.

“It shouldn’t cost us more to get to Modesto than it costs us to get to the moon,” former San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in the recent California gubernatorial debate.

But Mahan and the other Democratic candidates for governor stopped short of saying they’d kill the project, while Republican candidates Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco said they would end it.

With the legislature seemingly ready to reduce transparency into this boondoggle, the rail project will only get worse and more expensive for taxpayers if state leaders don’t pull the plug.

Baruch Feigenbaum is senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation.

Orange County Register

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As high-speed rail cost estimate soars, state lawmakers move to hide information from taxpayers

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