After Billions Spent and Zero Trains, California’s Rail Boondoggle Nears a Reckoning
12th August 2026
California’s high-speed rail boondoggle may finally be running out of money. It’s bad news for Gov. Gavin Newsom, possibly good news for the people of California.
I’ve been opining about why the California bullet train will never succeed since I wrote my very first column as a young college pup. But even my accurate (though not difficult) prediction about its certain failure didn’t quite capture the sheer depth of the wasteful insanity this project has achieved.
There now may be a glimmer of hope, though a faint one, that the “project”—a word I use loosely in this case—may mercifully starve to death after fattening itself on taxpayer cash for nearly two decades.