Readers may be familiar with the humiliating saga of California’s bullet train project, which was successfully sold in 2008 as a project to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco via high-speed rail. Voters narrowly approved the plan on the same day Barack Obama was first elected president. Its total projected budget was approximately $33 billion, spanning roughly 800 miles of track. Its completion date was slated for 2020. Eight years of Obama’s presidency elapsed. Then four years of President Donald Trump. Then four years of President Joe Biden.
We are now in the second year of Trump’s second term. Not one foot of track has yet been laid. Proponents have openly abandoned the “LA to SF dream,” instead vowing to connect smaller cities far away from the original hubs. And the budget has exploded to “as much as $128 billion,” according to the New York Times, and is now “scheduled for completion at some unknown future time.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is proud of this “achievement.” At a press event last month, he boasted that “this is the only high-speed rail system of its type anywhere in the United States of America.” It’s unclear what “high-speed rail system” he’s referring to, because his state’s system does not exist. He bragged that the project, which was supposed to be fully completed six years and tens of billions of dollars ago, has at last taken a “critical step” toward the “track-laying stage.”
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He actually, truly used the media availability as an occasion for a victory lap, just lacking anything approaching a victory. Dressing up abject failures, marred by waste, incompetence, and regulatory morass, as ‘progress’ and ‘wins’ is a familiar sight in America’s most prominent “progressive” state. The Party of Government has totally dominated California politics for years; crushing Republicans has been its most high-profile achievement. But the Party of Government can’t govern.
A miniature version of the breathtaking bullet train boondoggle is playing out in Los Angeles:
A long-promised transit project at LAX remains closed to the public, years after its original target opening date. The Automated People Mover, designed to ease congestion around LAX, is still sitting behind locked doors and fencing. The project was initially slated to open about three years ago.
On Tuesday, FOX 11 observed empty trains running on the elevated guideway, but it remains unclear when passengers will be allowed to board, noting that airport officials did not return calls or emails seeking comment. Construction on the nearly $3.5 billion project began in 2019. A bus driver, who asked not to be identified by FOX 11, when asked if construction would be finished in time for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, said, “We have to be optimistic, right?” In 2024, the project was considered 96% complete; however, disputes between parties involved created significant delays. In addition, FOX 11 is saying that the price tag has since been estimated to have climbed to nearly $1 billion over its original budget.
One billion dollars over budget and at least three years late. For a single project, at a single airport. “Progress,” they call it. Maybe trains aren’t their thing. So, what about water retention, which seems rather important and relevant, especially in light of the government’s catastrophic failures during the 2025 wildfires? Let’s check in on that issue, shall we?
Perhaps the best accomplishment they can tout is La Sombrita, which is almost too stupid to be real — yet it is. As others have observed, blue state and blue city Democrats increasingly demand that their citizens pay European-level taxes in exchange for less-than-first-world governance and services.
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Businesses and successful people who can afford to flee for greener pastures are increasingly doing so, and we see new examples on a near-daily basis. And as the vicious cycle deepens, the radical leftist interests that control these places show few signs of capacity for course correction. I’ll leave you with two representative dispatches from California’s even more dysfunctional cousin up the coast:
The “progress” will continue until morale improves. Or until there’s no one left.