[Note: Excellent piece here from Daily Caller energy reporter Paris Apocaca. The full piece can be read at this link.]
Nearly two decades after California and China started their high-speed rail race, China has laid enough high-speed rail to circle the globe — while California’s bullet train has yet to carry a single passenger.
The stark contrast comes as Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday another $2.7 billion for more than 150 transportation projects across the state while touting progress on California’s high-speed rail system. None of the $2.7 billion announced Friday was identified as funding for the bullet train, which separately secured a $1 billion annual commitment through 2045 from the state’s Cap-and-Invest program.
The Newsom administration did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
California High-Speed Rail Inspector General Benjamin Belnap recently warned that the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CAHSR) — the state agency overseeing the project — could run out of available funding by December 2027 unless it secures financing, CBS News reported earlier in August. The project faces a $9.5 billion funding gap over five years, according to his office. (RELATED: California’s High-Speed Rail Touts Tiny Savings Amid Epic Cost Explosion)
“The most likely outcome should the Authority not be able to secure financing in 2027 is that it will have to re-prioritize its expenditures to focus on the 119-mile central valley segment currently under construction and will have to limit expenditures on planned extensions into Merced and into Bakersfield,” Amanda Millen, Deputy Inspector General for CAHSR, told the DCNF in a statement.
“This action to align the pace of expenditures with the pace of available funding will significantly delay completion of the 171-mile, Merced-to-Bakersfield initial operating segment, exposing the project to increased inflationary costs,” she added.
China, meanwhile, began its modern high-speed rail push the same year California voters approved their bullet train. The country’s high-speed rail network surpassed roughly 31,000 miles at the end of 2025, according to state-owned China State Railway Group.
But in California, the completed guideway does not even have high-speed rail track installed yet. CAHSR approved a contractor in June to install the tracks, electrical systems and other equipment needed to turn the Central Valley guideway into an operating railway.
Rather than completing the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles system in 2020 as originally envisioned, rising costs, funding shortfalls and construction delays pushed the project years behind schedule. Officials are now focused on establishing passenger service along the 171-mile Merced-to-Bakersfield segment — roughly one-third the length of the planned 494-mile San Francisco-to-Los Angeles/Anaheim system. The inspector general’s latest review found that service on the shorter segment could be delayed until September 2034.
The U.S.’ comparatively strong system of private property rights makes constructing high-speed rail more difficult than in countries where governments face fewer obstacles to acquiring land and rights of way, Energy analyst David Blackmon told the DCNF.
“High speed rail is much easier to do in countries with weak or non-existent individual property rights,” Blackmon said, pointing to a proposed Dallas-to-Houston high-speed rail project that has encountered its own challenges securing a path forward.
California compounded those inherent difficulties with its regulatory environment and political management of the project, he argued.
“Combine that reality with California’s ridiculously bureaucratic regulatory state and the impulse by politicians like Gavin Newsom to leverage big projects to the benefit of their cronies and the NGOs they ‘manage,’ and you have a witches’ recipe for waste, abuse, and corruption on the grandest scale possible,” Blackmon told the DCNF.
Under Newsome the loss of cash to projects that produce nothing is not a new unique occurrence. The question remains - where did the money go?
It’s surprising that Newsome and his crony crook buddies haven’t contracted with China to build the high speed rail project. Or maybe they have. . . . ??
A few weeks after, we moved To Virginia, from Silicon Valley,I got a huge set of documents to quote the electronic assemblies for the High Speed Rail project.I read a few of the hundreds of pages and the designs for the electronics were ridiculous and would not work .I sent them a letter telling them this and that I could help them with the designs .They sent me a letter back saying" no thanks, we know what we are doing".I flipped them a middle finger letter back and the conversation stopped.The designs they had were terrible and would never ever work.Since their designs were so awful, this told me that the electronics would never work.This made me wonder what else they were planning on doing that was as bad as the electronics.The electronics were the gut of the design for this project and if the gut is not right, the rest will also fail.