In the 1980s, then-California governor Jerry Brown made his plan for an unprecedented high-speed railway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Operating at 220 mph, it would make the trip between SF and LA in less than 3 hours.
It took the state of California--notorious, of course, for its efficiency in the implementation of effective mass-transit infrastructure--almost 30 years, in 2008, to approve a $9.9 billion bond measure to fund the program. Original estimates conducted by the CHRA estimated a total cost of a little over $30 billion (around $45 billion in 2025 dollars, according to the CPI).
Now, a wee 16 or 17 years later, this rail line is estimated to cost a whopping $128 billion dollars--and no part of it is ready for operational use.
For scale, one-hundred and twenty eight billion dollars is enough to buy every American approximately 177 McDonalds® Snack Wraps. Or, it can buy 30 and ½ Northrop Grumman B-2 bombers (including R&D). Which is sad; first, in the sense that a rail program can cost that much, but more so in the sense that a dorito-shaped plane is equivalent in value to the annual budget of 3 Federal Railroad Administrations, but I digress.
Now, why does or will the California HSR cost so much?
Land acquisition issues
Needless to say, nobody wants a noisy train line to pass through their backyards unless they benefit from them. So, when Gavin Newsom goes and tries to plop down a set of tracks over a random town in California, he’ll need to convince a county executive, a board of supervisors, a mayor, a city council, and the rest of the who’s who of the American hierarchy of federalism. This means giving in; creating stations in the middle of literal deserts (as a concession for building the line through the middle of x town) or diverting the rail line to avoid towns or counties which did not agree to have the HSR move through the territory. This (a) makes the rail line less efficient since it creates economically insensible stops and route diversions in the unlikely event that HSR operates and (b) increases construction and capital costs.
Even after land is approved for use by local governments, the state will face additional hurldes when private property owners pull their own fight of resistance. As a result, as of 2022, over 500 parcels of land in the Central Valley stretch of the HSR alone haven’t been acquired, rendering them incompatible for construction.
Environmental reviews
When land is acquired, the state will need to conduct a costly environmental review and study of the effects of the project. It will gather the permitting, and even then, will face lawsuits (justified or not) from environmental groups and cities opposing construction.
Now, is it important that CHSR receives scrutiny from an environmental perspective? Absolutely; however, we must consider that, right now, in the middle of LA, there sits a perpetually clogged 26 lane freeway that, from my eyes, looks like its itching for relief from a modern and clean high speed railway. You don't need to be the Lorax to see the irony of having literal metric tons of needless CO2 being released while the state is too busy trying to go through red tape meant to protect the environment.
Contracting problems
Instead of going for contractors willing to provide high-quality work, CHSR’s procurement process leaned toward whoever was willing to provide the cheapest upfront cost to the government. Among the lowest bidders was the Dragados/Flatiron joint venture, which won a $1.2 billion Central Valley contract but altered designs to save some cash (and to win a nice government contract)--resulting in more than $800 million in overruns when those shortcuts violated safety and engineering standards.
Additionally, because initial planning for the HSR was rushed (probably to meet funding deadlines), CHSR requested over 1,000 changes to original plans, many times to relocate utilities, reinforce structures to comply with seismic standards, and add safety barriers to prevent careening freight trains.
California HSR definitely has problems. What lessons can we learn?
CHSR is currently constructing the stretch of rail between Merced to Bakersfield (2 cities that nobody asked for, by the way). But even then, that may not be a realistic prospect. At the current pace, you’d be forgiven for thinking the state’s true plan is to complete the line sometime after the sun burns out and humanity relocates to Mars--where, naturally, Elon Musk will announce the long-awaited and hyper-efficient Hyperloop 2.
So what can we learn? Probably that megaprojects in America take longer than a certain somebody to release the files about you-know-who.
But in all seriousness, here are some real steps that we can take:
- Lock in the route before you start building.
- Acquire the land first, then break ground.
- Reform procurement. Picking the lowest bidder often means you pay more in the long run when they cut corners.
- Consider the positive effects of mass-transit when considering the urgency of environmental reviews. Other countries build high-speed rail faster because their approval processes are measured in months, not decades. California could create a dedicated HSR fast-track permitting channel.
- Build where the riders are. Merced to Bakersfield might be easier politically, but LA to SF is where the passengers (and revenue) are. If the line is constructed (a big if), there will be lower ridership and lower revenue, allowing career politicians to call the project a failure and justify a canning of the program. This is the cycle of transit doom: poor public investment → decreased ridership because of poor ridership → decreased revenue → government blames transit authority for decreased revenue → government further decrease public investment
- Stop portraying this as a strictly engineering problem. It's a political one, too. It took 1 year for the Empire State to be built, in an era where doctors prescribed mercury for regular medical ailments. I think, in the 21st century, we have the technical prowess to build elevated train tracks.