Train in Vain
California's Future Henge
Ten thousand years from now, future archaeologists will be allowed back into the wasteland that was once known as California.
They will find many wonderous things but what they come across in Central Valley will astonish them – mile after mile after mile of concrete pillars, crumbling decks, arched bridges seemingly connecting nowhere to nothing and straight line after straight line.
Some will state that it must have been an attempt to create an alien spaceport, others will note that the various segments point to different constellations in the night sky and posit that it was an effort to tap into the great universal presence.
Digging will uncover broken fragments of bronze plaques, leading one archaeologist to insist that all of the structures need to be looked at as one monument, a vast linear temple to the god Hi-Spe.
Then another will neuralink into the tattered and tawdry remains of what is now called the internet and, after months of searching, find the California High Speed Rail Authority’s 2008 Business Plan read it and say:
“Are you kidding me? Really? No wonder the civilization collapsed.”
Wednesday, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office drove the 48th final nail into the coffin of the project, stating categorically that if the project cannot find another $7 billion dollars by next June it completely and utterly grinds to a halt.
“There is no specific plan to meet that roughly $7 billion gap, we also think there is some risk that gap could grow,” Helen Kerstein of the LAO told legislatures Wednesday. “This isn’t a way out in the future funding gap. This is a pretty immediate funding gap.”
She added that the project “could come to a complete halt in 15 months without the funding increase.”
The latest news even shocked some Sacramento Democrats. Well, not shocked (they already know) but at least caused them to actually criticize the project.
“The timing of the project review seems totally out of whack with when we need to be making decisions,” said Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D–Irvine.) “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.”
The rail Authority – which was supposed to present a fully updated business plan to the legislature but hasn’t yet - has exactly zero practical suggestions as to how to to find the money, saying under its breath that maybe the state (which already has a $76 billion deficit this fiscal year) should help or that maybe it could get some federal funding (actually, the feds are looking for ways to get their $4 billion back) or that private funding will finally – after 17 years of beating the corporate bushes to find anyone to invest and failing – come to fruition.
Even green obsessed companies and pension funds have turned their back on the project.
That the high-speed rail project will never be finished has been known for quite some time. In 2008, California voters approved a system that would run from Los Angeles (continuing on to Anaheim and San Diego) to San Francisco and on to Sacramento. It was supposed to cost $33 billion for the main LA to SF phases and about another $10 billion for the rest. In 2008 dollars – in today’s dollars that’s about $45 billion for phase one and $15 billion for the rest.
That’s a total of $60 billion for the whole thing. The latest estimate – just for the LA to SF bit because it seems that the other bits have been cut off like vestigial tails at birth – shows that cost to be at least $130 billion…in today’s dollars…on a good day.
It should be noted that the Authority has a history of upping costs and completion date estimates. Again, originally, it was $33 billion and to be done five years ago. It was also to make “high speed freight” a possibility: high speed freight exists nowhere on the planet because it doesn’t have to.
In 2018, the cost estimate went up to $77 billion and the opening date was pushed back to, well, this year, 2025.
Now we are at least $130 billion (again, no San Diego and no Sacramento) and maybe just maybe someone will be able to go from Shafter (just north of Bakersfield) to Madera (just north of Fresno) in about five years. LA and SF? Just pick a year – it doesn’t matter.
By the way, that first Central Valley segment was supposed to cost $6.34 billion and be the cheapest per mile – by far – to build. Now it’s $33 billion and a person right now can take Amtrak from Bakersfield to Oakland and on to Sacramento anyway – in fact, much of the high-speed train track is being built directly over the existing train tracks:
Irony is not just a river in Egypt.
In summation, the project was based on willful lies, absurd projections, and a belief that once big government things get started they are terribly hard to stop no matter the cost and time overruns.
As former San Francisco Mayor and Kamala Harris boyfriend Willie Brown said a few years back:
“In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.”
This is sadly true, though it need not be. For example, if any one of the dozen or so Democrats who are running for governor in 2026 said they would shut down the project they would win – easy (all the Republicans have said so but, well, this is California, so…)
So, what to do with all of those bridges and decks and pillars once the plug is finally pulled? The viaducts can carry significant loads and are rather wide, perfect decks for apartments actually so there’s a thought.
Or – as is far more likely – the edifice will crumble away until no one remembers what it was actually used for and then the future archaeologists will have a field day.
Note – the headline of the story was inspired by a song, or songs, actually.
Here’s the original Clash version of “Train in Vain”:
And here’s Annie Lennox’s astonishing cover: