As California Burns Billions To Fail At High-Speed Rail, China Laid Enough Track To Circle America Three Times
Thirty-one thousand Chinese miles. Zero California passengers. The guideway still has no rail.
Summary
- The Daily Caller reports China State Railway Group's high-speed network hit about 31,000 miles by the end of 2025, while California High-Speed Rail has yet to carry a single passenger and still lacks track on the finished Central Valley guideway.
- Inspector General Benjamin Belnap warned the authority could run out of money by December 2027 without new financing, with a $9.5 billion five-year hole. Deputy IG Amanda Millen said the likely retreat is the 119-mile Central Valley segment, delaying the 171-mile Merced-to-Bakersfield starter.
- Gov. Gavin Newsom announced another $2.7 billion Friday for more than 150 transportation projects. None of it was identified as bullet-train money. The project separately locked $1 billion a year through 2045 from Cap-and-Invest.
- Costs ballooned from $33 billion to $45 billion to as much as $135 billion after a promised San Francisco-Los Angeles opening in 2020. The Trump administration pulled about $4 billion in federal funds. Energy analyst David Blackmon called the mix of weak accountability and NGO management a recipe for waste.
Commentary
A carpenter still parks on gravel beside a guideway that was supposed to be a train and eats lunch out of a cooler. He did not pay the bond so a 2020 promise could become a 2027 funding cliff with no rail on the concrete.
That is the gap. Thirty-one thousand miles over there. Zero passengers here. Thirty-three billion became 135. The honest dad already paid the tax. The authority paid the press release.
Look every working father who still sits in I-5 traffic in the eye and answer this: if China can lay a continent of track while California cannot lay the rail, who still owns the bond?
Comments
No track on the guideway is not a delay. It is a confession.
I poured concrete that got used. A 2027 cliff on a 2020 promise is theft with a hard hat.
Belnap: $9.5 billion hole. Millen: 119 miles left. Newsom: $2.7 billion for everything else. Stack it.
Allied high-speed lines actually run. A souvenir guideway is a joke on the taxpayer.
$33B to $45B to $135B. $4B federal pulled. File the balloon.
I still sit in I-5 diesel. I want a train or my money, not a 2045 IOU.
A billion a year through 2045 with zero riders is a child's classroom emptied.
Beijing laid a network. Sacramento laid a presser. That is the industrial race.
Daily Caller printed 31,000 miles, zero passengers, $9.5B, and $135B. Argue those nouns.
Stop the IOU. Finish a useful segment or refund the bond. Concrete is not a train.
