A board member of the California High Speed Rail Authority admitted on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday that the state’s marquee rail project now carries an estimated cost of $126 billion, nearly four times the $33 billion price voters approved in 2008, and after close to two decades of work, not a single mile of track has been laid.
“Today, we estimate with the right optimization just over $125 billion,” board member Anthony Williams told the program. Pressed on the figure, he added: “I think $126 billion is the current estimate for that.”
That number lands on California taxpayers like a freight train, minus the train. The project to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco by high-speed rail now faces a funding gap of roughly $90 billion, and its earliest projected opening has slipped to 2033. The only visible progress sits in the Central Valley, on a segment between Bakersfield and Merced, where construction continues in Fresno County. But even there, the work amounts to structures, not service. As Fox News Digital reported, no track has been laid anywhere on the route.
California’s own Transportation Secretary, Toks Omishakin, did not attempt to spin the record on CBS. He acknowledged the project’s failures in terms that would be remarkable from any state official, and devastating from one serving under Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Omishakin told CBS:
“There were mistakes made. Some of the criticisms on this project, I think, are very fair.”
He went further, conceding that the original promises to voters were built on sand. As the New York Post detailed, Omishakin said:
“I don’t think the voters fully understood, and neither did we in the public sector, what it was going to take to actually get this project delivered.”
That admission deserves a second read. The state’s own transportation chief is saying that the government sold a $33 billion bond measure to voters without understanding what the project would actually require. And rather than pausing when costs began spiraling, Sacramento kept spending.
Rep. Vince Fong, a Bakersfield Republican who sits on the House Transportation Committee, has pushed hard for oversight. His office documented 597 change orders on the project as of November 2025, costing more than $2.3 billion, a sum that alone represents nearly seven percent of the original $33 billion estimate.
Fong did not mince words in his “60 Minutes” appearance:
“We’re now in 2026: There are no trains; there’s no track laid; it was a complete bait and switch.”
He said the 2008 business plan was “very theoretical” and that it “became very clear that they didn’t have the specifics worked out.” In a February statement, Fong called the project “a glaring example of structural mismanagement” and demanded cancellation.
“Reckless, repeated contract amendments have squandered resources and precious tax dollars. Hardworking California taxpayers cannot afford to let this continue. This project should be canceled before even more money and time are wasted.”
The pattern Fong describes, vague plans, runaway costs, hundreds of change orders, and zero accountability, is not unique to the rail authority. It is the signature of a state government that treats taxpayer money as an inexhaustible resource. Readers who followed recent federal spending battles over Obamacare fraud will recognize the dynamic: the money goes out, the results don’t come back, and the people in charge ask for more.
Perhaps the most efficient summary of the project’s failure came from outside government entirely. In 2024, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar offered a comparison that has circulated widely since:
“For $10 billion, Elon Musk put 300 rockets in orbit; for $11 billion, the state of California has built 1,600 feet of elevated rail with no rail.”
That is not a partisan talking point. It is an arithmetic observation. One entity spent roughly the same money and achieved orbital spaceflight hundreds of times over. The other produced less than a third of a mile of concrete structure, with nothing running on it.
President Donald Trump called the California rail project “the worst cost overrun, I’ve ever seen.” His Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, went further in a statement to CBS, framing the administration’s decision to cut federal funding as a matter of basic stewardship.
“What this administration won’t stand for is boondoggle projects like Newsom’s Train to Nowhere that wasted billions in taxpayer dollars yet delivered nothing to the American people.”
Duffy said the administration “defunded Newsom’s disaster and created the first Trump Infrastructure Dividend,” redirecting those dollars to “critical projects that enhance safety on rail networks across America.” He added that the administration’s vision “includes high speed rail and we’re exploring opportunities to efficiently build that infrastructure in America.”
The federal pullback leaves Sacramento in a bind. Omishakin acknowledged as much: “The ultimate 494 miles of building this out without the federal government’s help will be challenging: There’s no doubt about that.” Given that the project already faces a $90 billion funding gap, “challenging” may be the understatement of the decade.
Gov. Newsom himself cast doubt on the full San Francisco-to-Los Angeles plan back in 2019, yet the project continued consuming billions. On Feb. 3, 2026, Newsom and California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri greeted Iron Workers Local 155 members at the Southern Railhead site in the Wasco/Shafter area, a photo opportunity at a construction site that still has no track.
The governor’s record on managing California’s public infrastructure extends well beyond the rail project. From health warnings at Los Angeles County beaches to broader questions about state oversight, the pattern is consistent: grand promises, thin execution, and taxpayers left holding the bill.
Nor is infrastructure the only area where California’s leadership has drawn scrutiny. The state’s criminal justice system has produced its own headline-grabbing failures, including a homicide suspect mistakenly released from a California jail and later captured in Missouri. These are different agencies and different problems, but they share a common thread: a state government that struggles with basic competence while pursuing ambitious agendas.
Consider the trajectory. In 2008, voters were told $33 billion. The estimate has since ballooned to $126 billion, and that figure carries its own caveat, since Williams framed it as achievable only “with the right optimization.” Without optimization, the real number could climb higher still.
Meanwhile, 597 change orders have bled $2.3 billion. The earliest opening is seven years away. And the project’s most vocal defenders can offer nothing more than an admission that “mistakes were made” and the original plan was “very theoretical.”
Government spending debates often feel abstract. The dollar figures are too large to grasp, and the consequences land years down the road. But California’s high-speed rail project is a case study in what happens when political ambition outruns competence, and when no one in power has the discipline to stop spending before the damage becomes irreversible. Similar dynamics play out in cities like Chicago, where officials jack up taxes to chase political events while residents shoulder the cost.
Fong is right: taxpayers deserve transparency. They also deserve something more basic, a government that can tell the difference between a plan and a wish.
A hundred and twenty-six billion dollars, no track, and a 2033 opening that nobody in Sacramento can guarantee. If this is what California calls infrastructure, the rest of the country should take careful notes on what not to do.
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