By Don A. Wright
In 2008 a rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles was sold to the voters as a $33 billion project with $9 billion of that as a taxpayer investment to be completed by 2020. Now, 17 years later the only portion of the project being focused on is the segment between Merced and Kern Counties and an estimated $16 billion has already been spent. Not one passenger or train has moved one very expensive foot and the estimated cost to complete the entire route is now between $106 billion and $140 billion depending on who you ask.
On May 20, 2025 the California Globe reported the segment of the California High Speed Rail line running from Merced to near Bakersfield is $10.2 billion short of funding. Think about this for a moment – the distance from Merced to Bakersfield is 165 miles driving down Highway 99. The actual route is shorter, at 119 miles, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and use the longer distance.
This is where we have fun with journalist math. (The amounts were rounded to keep from fooling with long decimals expressing fractions of cents.)
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- $10.2 billion divided by 165 equals $61.8 million. That’s almost $62 million per mile.
- A mile is 5,280 feet. $62 million divided by 5,280 equals $11,700 per foot.
- There are 12 inches per foot. $11,700 divided by 12 equals $975.
Unless I really scrambled the division – there are people who believe $975 per inch isn’t too much of a cost to pay for a high speed train trip from Merced to Bakersfield.
I find it difficult to picture in my mind a group of adults who – aware of the costs – could look you in the eye and say with a straight face, “Come on now. It’ll be good for California’s image to have a high speed rail line. Why, it’ll pay for itself.”
Who Will It Serve
Who will be served by this rail line? I’m stepping out on a limb here and using the dreaded word “assume”, because, you know what it makes out of you and me. But still, I’m assuming zero ridership from either the Bay Area or Los Angeles. I don’t see our city cousins driving from their respective homes to ride a really fast train up and down a part of the San Joaquin Valley. I may be wrong about this but if so, I’m betting I won’t be the only one surprised.
So, removing more than 75 percent of the state’s population from the likely ridership category leaves the locals. We took a look at the top 500 cities in California by population and further narrowed the search to those that lie along or reasonably close to the HSR line. Sixteen of the top 500 cities in the state fit the above criteria.
Including Fresno (545,716) the 5th largest city in California to Kingsburg (13,013) the 430th largest city in the state there are 14 additional cities with population counts in between. The combined population of the 16 cities is 1,692,594 people.
How Many Must Ride
Let’s say a fourth of the local population (423,148) felt the need to be speedily whisked about and decided to ride the HSR its entire length one-way once, how much would a ticket cost to pay for the line? If they each paid $24,105 per ticket – or – $146 per mile or just a little less than three cents per foot – which equals 2/1000th of penny per inch – the entire project would be paid off in one swoop.
A one-way Amtrak ticket from Merced to Bakersfield costs $30, cheaper than driving and takes about three hours. (This is, by the way, also cheaper than a Greyhound bus at $35.) At $30 per ticket – it will take 340,000,000 tickets to pay for HSR. Our 423,148 riders would have to purchase more than 803 tickets each at Amtrak cost to pay for a High Speed Rail line from Merced to Bakersfield.
But of course, transportation and logistics aren’t designed to be used only once for a complete return on investment or ROI. When its ROI is good a project doesn’t have trouble attracting private investors. I don’t believe High Speed Rail has any private investors yet.
What Started Things Down This Track
According to Wikipedia, “Proposition 1A (or the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century) is a law that was approved by California voters in the November 2008 state elections. The law allocates $9.95 billion to the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Of that sum, $9 billion will be used to construct the core segments of the rail line from San Francisco to the Los Angeles area and the rest will be spent on improvements to local railroad systems that will connect locations away from the high-speed rail mainline to the high-speed system.
“Prop 1A required the California High-Speed Rail Authority to ‘seek private and other public funds to cover the remaining costs.’ The project also requires federal matching funds, since the $9.95 billion bond covers only part of the estimated cost of the initial core segment. The money will be raised through general obligation bonds that are paid off over a period of 30 years.”
Prop 1A passed by 52 percent of the votes with heavy support limited to the San Francisco Bay Area. The overall cost of HSR was presented as $33 billion with a completion date of 2020.
Evidently the ROI on HSR isn’t very good because to date if there are any private investors, they’re being very quiet about it.
Who Will Pay
HSR, however, isn’t being quite about private investors. The California High Speed Rail Authority put out a press release on May 15, 2025 titled, “’Building Smarter, Faster: High-Speed Rail Authority to Advance Bold Vision with Private Sector’ “In January HSRA hosted a forum of experts from all over the world to discuss strategies on how to build the rail line
smarter and faster.” I guess that means more affordable and on schedule. The press release stated more than 400 folks showed up and you may recall many of the original HSR contracts were awarded to experts from all over the world.
The press release said this event helped to gather insights on how to, “. . . shape future partnerships with private industry through sustained engagement.” They seem to be hopeful these efforts will, “. . . improve project planning and delivery and create options for project delivery, including potentially making the project more attractive to private capital.” Well, I guess we’ll see if they reach their potential.
In The Meantime
High Speed Rail slices across the farms of the San Joaquin Valley. Eminent domain
proceedings are much less expensive in the rural farmlands than the as yet to be figured out right of ways through the densely developed landscapes of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
There’s a story (names omitted to protect the culpable) in the San Joaquin Valley about High Speed Rail staff approaching an irrigation district and telling the district it’ll have to pay to build a culvert on its ditch where the train tracks will cross over. Unfortunately for HSR this district was a Central Valley Project contractor and title to the canal in question actually belonged to the US Bureau of Reclamation. The district engineer told the HSR staff to go talk to the Bureau. The HSR staff were never heard from again.
There is a great need for repairs, improvements and expansion of California’s water conveyance system. There hasn’t been any major water conveyance work done in the state since the mid-1960s, when there were 16 million people living here. Now there are 40 million people using the same system.
The Friant Kern Canal just underwent a $500 million subsidence correction project and at least that much or more is needed to further update the canal. There are similar needs and costs on the Delta Mendota Canal and the California Aqueduct. The need to raise dams for more storage is vital to preserve the state’s economy.
How many miles of High Speed Rail lines would it take to pay for refurbishing the entire Friant Kern Canal? At $62 million a mile you could move the Merced station eight miles south and the Kern County station eight miles north and pay for the entire work completed and still needed. It would take about 16 miles of HSR track to pay for a billion dollar fix. That’s just the money HSR needs to keep going until the end of the year. Figure in the $16 billion to $17 billion already spent and you could fix the Delta Mendota and California Aqueduct as well.
Abandoning a $975 an inch railroad could go a long ways toward improving many things in California. And that needs to start with water.
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