From the proposed Los Angeles-area station to San Francisco, the long-delayed project is expected to cost up to $128 billion.
President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that his administration will investigate the long-delayed California high-speed rail project, which was authorized by voters in the state in 2008.
California has dedicated billions to the project so far, yet no track has been laid. According to recent California High-Speed Rail Authority disclosures, 38 structures and 39 miles of guideway have been completed after spending $13.6 billion.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said it is the “worst managed project” he has seen and “hundreds of billions of dollars” over budget.
The president said the overruns for the rail project, expected to span approximately 460 miles once complete, are the worst of any project in the history of the United States.
“You could take every single person that was going to go on the train and get the finest limousine service in the world, and take them back and forth with limousines, and you’d have hundreds of billions of dollars left over,” Trump said. “It is the worst thing, and we’re going to start an investigation of that because it’s not possible.”
The state is currently focused on building 171 miles of train line from Merced to Bakersfield in California’s Central Valley.
California Policy Center Visiting Fellow Marc Joffe told The Epoch Times that, like the president, he’s not optimistic about the high-speed rail’s future.
“If things go according to plan, they’ll have spent a total of $35 billion,” he said of the Bakersfield-Merced line. “The original estimate for that same length of track from Anaheim to San Francisco was $33 billion.”
From the proposed Los Angeles-area station to San Francisco, the overall project is expected to cost up to $128 billion—$95 billion more than originally projected.
Joffe said the overages are due to numerous reasons, such as disorganization on the part of the state at the start of the rail project.
