California High Speed Rail Thread

[JDRCRASH]

So according to Lucid Stew on YouTube, the authority now says in it’s 2026 Business plan that the $126 Billion cost recently cited is for the blended approach using not only the Caltrain tracks in the Bay but also ALL of the Metrolink AV line tracks into the LA Basin, meaning NO TUNNEL THROUGH THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS TO BURBANK.

Meanwhile the original full phase 1 plan is now projected to cost over $230 Billion.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xJJk-YebBkg&pp=ygUKbHVjaWQgc3Rldw%3D%3D

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by sammyg

HSR from LA and SF to Fresno makes just as much sense as NYC to Buffalo or New Orleans to Memphis, and those aren't controversial at all.

HSR from Memphis to New Orleans would be insane. Again, has nothing to do with size. Fresno makes no sense for HSR at any size. It doesn't have the ingredients for HSR patronage.

HSR from NYC to anywhere within a few hours makes sense, for obvious reasons. But NYC has to be on one end. I'm not even confident it would work with Boston or DC at one end, and those are very centralized, transit-oriented metros for U.S. standards. Still wouldn't be confident Boston-Portland or DC-Richmond or Philly-Pittsburgh would work, in isolation.

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by JDRCRASH

So according to Lucid Stew on YouTube, the authority now says in it’s 2026 Business plan that the $126 Billion cost recently cited is for the blended approach using not only the Caltrain tracks in the Bay but also ALL of the Metrolink AV line tracks into the LA Basin, meaning NO TUNNEL THROUGH THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS TO BURBANK.

Meanwhile the original full phase 1 plan is now projected to cost over $230 Billion.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xJJk-YebBkg&pp=ygUKbHVjaWQgc3Rldw%3D%3D

Regarding the basin tunnels:

Tunneling Strategy Shift: Instead of completing the entire 26-mile Palmdale-to-Burbank tunnel before launching service, the plan alters construction order to manage high costs and geological risks.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Fresno makes no sense for HSR at any size. It doesn't have the ingredients for HSR patronage.

You argue like the route is up for debate. It is not. Fresno is getting CAHSR, and that's the only sense anyone needs to make of it.

HSR from NYC to anywhere within a few hours makes sense, for obvious reasons. But NYC has to be on one end. I'm not even confident it would work with Boston or DC at one end, and those are very centralized, transit-oriented metros for U.S. standards. Still wouldn't be confident Boston-Portland or DC-Richmond or Philly-Pittsburgh would work, in isolation.

Irrelevant. NYC won't be any part of CAHSR.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Regarding the basin tunnels:

I rode the Metrolink AV line every day between Santa Clarita and downtown LA for the first three months I worked at my current job. The mountainous, curvy AV Metrolink route from Palmdale into the San Fernando Valley is necessarily slow, and shares tracks with freight trains. There isn't sufficient room to four-track the critical chokepoints, either. This is very, very bad news.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Fresno makes no sense for HSR at any size. It doesn't have the ingredients for HSR patronage.

Please define your "ingredients".

Here's a video that was suggested to me today...it starts at a Japanese city with 180,000 residents. It's a 4-track station with express tracks in the middle. The same as CAHSR.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/other/to...d=69a916318c554b8899ee9da06cccdfb7&ei=26

Apparently this city of 180,000 has "ingredients" but not the bigger cities of Bakersfield and Fresno.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by craigs

I rode the Metrolink AV line every day between Santa Clarita and downtown LA for the first three months I worked at my current job. The mountainous, curvy AV Metrolink route from Palmdale into the San Fernando Valley is necessarily slow, and shares tracks with freight trains. There isn't sufficient room to four-track the critical chokepoints, either. This is very, very bad news.

I'm wondering aloud if this is a legal strategy to force construction of the big tunnel, since the slow overland route would violate Prop 8.

But a silver lining to building one new electrified track parallel to the freight railroad (and probably a few passing sidings) would be that after the big tunnel is built a)Metrolink would have electrified service through the San Fernando Valley to Palmdale and b)the electrified Metrolink track could be used as a bypass for the tunnel if it needs maintenance. There could be a scenario, for example, where during a tunnel closure the express trains could use the long tunnel that remains open while locals would use the electrified Metrolink track.

[SoCalKid]

I've been a big backer of this project in the past, but this no longer makes any sense. $126M for a project that almost certainly won't meet the "under 3 hours" timetable for LA to SF that was always the goal.

Around $15B has already been spent, so we're talking about spending another $110B+. Imagine what we could achieve if we gave that to regional rail instead. Let's say you divided that money up by population. The 5 counties that make up the Metrolink region represent around 46% percent of the state's population, so they would get $46B (LA alone would be ~$25B). With even half of that amount would be enough to upgrade every Metrolink line into an electrified, high speed, all day, true rapid transit system (trains every 6-15 mins). Then SD County would get ~$8B (~8% of state population), half of money would easily upgrade the SD portion of the LASSAN corridor tracks into high speed electrified rail (the LA and OC parts would be upgraded as part of the Metrolink upgrades). Santa Barbara could throw in their $1B to upgrade and electrify the LOSSAN tracks from Ventura to Santa Barbara (maybe that doesn't get high speed, but makes a big difference!). You'd now have a major world class electrified rail system with extensive coverage throughout Southern California. And there'd be lots of money left over for more local rail projects in the 5 Metrolink counties.

The Bay Area would get ~$20B to upgrade and extend Bart and Caltrain. Sacramento would get $3-4B which would be enough to provide much better connections to the Bay. The Central Valley could use their portion to upgrade their rail lines as well.

What is outlined above is far, far more transformative than CAHSR ever could be. I would love to have CAHSR, but we live in a world of tradeoffs, and I would much rather have the vision I outlined if we are going to spend another $110B+ on rail infrastructure.

Rant over.

[Nouvellecosse]

$15 billion of a $126 billion project is about 12%. If only 12% of the final projected cost has been spent, wouldn't it be a good idea to pause and figure out how to get the spiraling costs under control before proceeding? Why are the only options to accept the insanely high cost and finish the project or reject the obscene cost and abandon the project. How about get the costs down to a more reasonable level and finish the project?

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

$15 billion of a $126 billion project is about 12%. If only 12% of the final projected cost has been spent, wouldn't it be a good idea to pause and figure out how to get the spiraling costs under control before proceeding? Why are the only options to accept the insanely high cost and finish the project or reject the obscene cost and abandon the project. How about get the costs down to a more reasonable level and finish the project?

Well there's a novel idea - let's spend less money.

Should we start by getting the cost of steel down? Or maybe we should get the cost of labor down instead? Or wait - here's an idea... maybe we could get the cost of building a tunnel down!

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by mr1138

Well there's a novel idea - let's spend less money.

Should we start by getting the cost of steel down? Or maybe we should get the cost of labor down instead? Or wait - here's an idea... maybe we could get the cost of building a tunnel down!

So you're saying that the extreme cost overruns are all perfectly justified? Given the figures involved, that's an interesting perspective.

Perhaps the best place to start is with a thorough audit to find out where the costs are and aren't justified.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by mr1138

Or wait - here's an idea... maybe we could get the cost of building a tunnel down!

California didn't create a new tax to fund this project. The funding is coming from federal grants, the existing state revenue, and cap & trade. There is going to have to be a state referendum to create a dedicated tax stream to complete this project and subsidize its operation.

As I pointed out in recent posts, the state was running gigantic budget surpluses year after year thanks to capital gains windfalls but they didn't divert *any* of it to this project.

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

So you're saying that the extreme cost overruns are all perfectly justified? Given the figures involved, that's an interesting perspective.

Perhaps the best place to start is with a thorough audit to find out where the costs are and aren't justified.

Justified? No

But I am saying that the extreme cost overruns are likely completely out of the control of the people running this project.

I say go right on ahead - do your thorough audit. Do you know what it will likely find? That the vast majority of the cost overrun is due to factors that have nothing to do with the management of this project.

[edale]

Originally Posted by craigs

You argue like the route is up for debate. It is not. Fresno is getting CAHSR, and that's the only sense anyone needs to make of it.

They won't be getting HSR if the project ends up getting scrapped due to spiraling costs and subsequent lack of support. We could end up spending untold billions of dollars and end up with nothing, or just end up with a new rail connection linking the towns and cities of the CV without connecting to the Bay Area or Greater LA. That's a very real possibility, and why some of us are lamenting the chosen route. In trying to do everything- i.e. not just connecting the state's two massive population centers but also revitalizing the Central Valley, we very well might end up doing nothing if the project gets scrapped.

Originally Posted by craigs

Irrelevant. NYC won't be any part of CAHSR.

He was clearly responding to another post that said Fresno is as large as Buffalo, New Orleans, and SLC. I agree that HSR makes absolutely no sense connecting Memphis to NOLA, and I also agree that a stand alone line between Buffalo and NYC is hard to justify. Now a HSR line linking NYC and Toronto with a stop in Buffalo? Yes, that could make sense.

Again, HSR should compete with air travel. That's why SF-LA makes so much sense as a route. It's just far enough to be a slog of a drive, and we have 1,500+ flights a week between the two metros. There's clear evidence for travel demand between these two markets, and a high speed train would absolutely have a large market connecting these regions. Any O/D passengers from the Central Valley will be negligible in the grand scheme of things. That's why it's maddening that the CV seems to be the main priority of this project, and might be the only leg of the route that gets built.

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

If the I-5 route is so much faster and so much cheaper, then there is nothing stopping CAHSR from building a second mainline along the originally proposed alignment. It's SO cheap, right?

But it would be absurd to spend $15~ billion dollars on 160~ miles of track that will save 15-20 minutes and not add any capacity because the two parallel mainlines would have to funnel into the two-track mountain tunnels at either end.

If this is a serious post, it's one of the dumbest things I've seen on this site. The argument is the 5 alignment is cheaper, faster, and easier to build than the selected route. It's still a massively challenging and expensive project no matter the alignment, but it would have been easier than the route we took. You keep citing the time differential between the two routes, but literally no one advocating for the 5 alignment is doing so because it shaves time off the route. The argument is about finding the easiest, most efficient route to connect the Bay and LA. Using an established ROW corridor, like the 5, would save a ton of time and money associated with land acquisition and utility/road/rail realignment. You know, the stuff we've been working on for 15+ years and have spent $15+ billion on so far. The CV has fought CAHSR every step of the way so far. One frivolous lawsuit after the other. They've made crazy demands that the project has acquiesced to. They've driven up land acquisition costs to comical levels, many times over what was budgeted for. This is coming from the region that the project is now professing to be oriented toward-- it's a revitalization project for the CV, right? Not just a line connecting the two metro areas that represent more than 2/3 of the state's population.

In what world would building a SECOND HSR line make any shred of sense when we can't even build one? I expect more informed and reasoned takes on these types of issues from you.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by edale

T

In what world would building a SECOND HSR line make any shred of sense when we can't even build one?

My point is that since people here (and elsewhere) keep claiming that building along I-5 is SO CHEAP and SO EASY and SO FAST why not toss in a second route across the Central Valley like a few extra biscuits at the Golden Coral?

Originally Posted by mr1138

Justified? No

But I am saying that the extreme cost overruns are likely completely out of the control of the people running this project.

I say go right on ahead - do your thorough audit. Do you know what it will likely find? That the vast majority of the cost overrun is due to factors that have nothing to do with the management of this project.

Correct - exchange rates, steel & concrete prices, interest rates, etc., are completely outside the control of the administration.

The fact that California elected a governor in 2018 who has shaped his time in office around a presidential run hasn't helped. In politics you want a mayor who has no ambitions beyond his city. In politics you want a governor who has no ambition in Washington, DC.

Arnold Schwarzenegger could not legally run for President. Jerry Brown was old and wasn't going to run, so he focused his efforts on things that the state actually needed. Then came the golden boy who blew California's wild budget surpluses on kissing the asses of public unions instead of getting aggressive with this project.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

The fact that California elected a governor in 2018 who has shaped his time in office around a presidential run hasn't helped. In politics you want a mayor who has no ambitions beyond his city. In politics you want a governor who has no ambition in Washington, DC.

Arnold Schwarzenegger could not legally run for President. Jerry Brown was old and wasn't going to run, so he focused his efforts on things that the state actually needed. Then came the golden boy who blew California's wild budget surpluses on kissing the asses of public unions instead of getting aggressive with this project.

Governor Newsom has been notably less supportive of CAHSR than his predecessors. His career ambitions are not the reason why he has shown such tepid support for the project.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by mr1138

Justified? No

But I am saying that the extreme cost overruns are likely completely out of the control of the people running this project.

I say go right on ahead - do your thorough audit. Do you know what it will likely find? That the vast majority of the cost overrun is due to factors that have nothing to do with the management of this project.

If done right it would at least show why there was such a huge delta between the earlier and later cost projections. If it had nothing to do with project management, it would imply that the cost of land, labour, and construction materials literally doubled within less than two decades which would be an interesting revelation. Not saying it isn't possible, but not sure I'd expect that to be the likelier finding.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

it would imply that the cost of land, labour, and construction materials literally doubled within less than two decades which would be an interesting revelation. Not saying it isn't possible, but not sure I'd expect that to be the likelier finding.

Have you been asleep? Inflation and interest rates spiked wildly after Covid.

Here is a relatively small project 2,000 miles away that has seen its cost almost double since 2022:
https://www.wvxu.org/politics/2025-12-19/western-hills-viaduct-cost-estimate-doubled

The busting of this project's budget has motivated zero controversy because it's a road project. Only public transportation projects get scrutinized by armchair experts.

[mr1138]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Have you been asleep? Inflation and interest rates spiked wildly after Covid.

Here is a relatively small project 2,000 miles away that has seen its cost almost double since 2022:
https://www.wvxu.org/politics/2025-12-19/western-hills-viaduct-cost-estimate-doubled

The busting of this project's budget has motivated zero controversy because it's a road project. Only public transportation projects get scrutinized by armchair experts.

Exactly. The reason there is a huge difference between the earlier and later cost projections is not some kind of gigantic mystery. The same exact thing has happened to infrastructure projects of ALL KINDS, all over America for the past 10 to 15 years. This is the reason I earlier pointed to the RTD B Line Commuter Rail in Colorado (where I live). Per the article, the project backers put forth a ballot measure 2004 that included a cost estimate that "leasing the track from Burlington Northern Sante Fe would cost $66 million. But in 2011, the track owner, BNSF Railway, told RTD it would actually cost $535 million" As of 2022, the project is now estimated to cost $1.5 billion — about triple the original estimate.

Finding that the cost of land, labor, and construction materials literally doubled (actually, for Denver's project they have tripled) within less than two decades is not an "interesting revelation. " It is the obvious situation we are and have been in for decades and anybody who has been paying attention already knows this. The cost overruns are not some kind of "waste fraud and abuse" that can somehow be overcome by endlessly analyzing the situation.

[Busy Bee]

^ All the more reason to neuter the defacto freight railroad monopolies and at least quasi nationalize the infrastructure. The idea a private corporation could rape a public agency like that is maddening. I'd love to see the total cost to the CHSR program to accomodate and shower particularly BNSF with so many free upgrades.