Have you ever been disappointed in life, where you've had large goals and big dreams, only to have to scale them back due to adversity? We've all had those moments, right? Imagine the heartbreak of being the poor, non-existent, 44-year-old California high-speed train fantasy.
In 1982, California's legislature authorized the first $2 billion of a whole lot of billions to come for a study on a high-speed rail project from two actual cities in California - Los Angeles and San Diego. Anyone that has traveled Interstate 5, the only feasible north-south highway linking the two metropolises in the Golden State, would have cheered a high-speed rail that could get you from one place to the other in an hour or less.
It never happened. That project was killed off by bureaucracy and land rights lawsuits. It might be developed one day, but not before Christ comes back for his Church. The cancer of the idea of a bullet train, however, metastasized statewide over the next couple decades...sorta.
In 2008, California voters approved a $33 billion price tag for high-speed rail that would take commuters from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a little under three hours. That was 18 years ago. There's still no track, no train, no happy commuters, and the projected cost has risen to $128 billion, without the added benefit of beginning and ending in the two major cities it promised.
No, the revised estimate covered only 162 miles of the 381 miles between the two cities. Why? Because the line would now start in Bakersfield, an hour-and-a-half drive north of Los Angeles, to Merced, over an hour away from San Francisco.
Our friend Jon Fleischman, who has spent much of his career covering many of the bigger boondoggles in the Golden State, has a new piece out on the project getting the budget cutting axe yet again. The long and a short of it? Internal California government documents now estimate the train's cost ballooning a little bit larger, very possibly exceeding $215 billion.
How do the California unicorn train grifters plan on delivering on decades of false promises and justifying the money already spent? You're going to love this.
According to a new report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office reviewing the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s Draft 2026 Business Plan, Gavin Newsom’s bullet train project may not even reach downtown Merced or downtown Bakersfield. The report says the northern end would stop roughly 3.5 miles south of downtown Merced, while the southern end would land about six miles north of the previously planned Bakersfield station.
Let's start up north...ish. Three-and-a-half miles south of beautiful downtown Merced is...this place.
There is literally nothing around it but agricultural land. It hugs State Route 59, also known as Los Banos Highway. For those of you who are bilingually challenged, Los Banos means The Bathrooms. That's right. The termination point of this excrement of government waste is alongside Toilet Highway.
And the southern termination point has been moved north six miles. Because Bakersfield is too complicated to navigate and place a station, requiring a station, of sorts, set up in the 'burbs of Bakersfield. Oildale is where you'll wind up. Never heard of it, you say? Well, it's the licensed home of KLLY-95.3FM. If you blink twice, you'll miss their transmitter. That's pretty much the length and breadth of Oildale.
Now you might believe the Scam Tram project could not get more absurd, but also included in Fleischman's report is this little beauty.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office report says 144 of the planned 162 miles could now operate on a single track. In real-world terms, trains traveling in opposite directions may have to wait for one another at sidings rather than running continuously on dual tracks.
California’s “world-class” bullet train is starting to sound like a one-lane country road with better branding.
The report also notes that the stations themselves are being simplified into “at-grade stations with single-side platforms” — bureaucratic language for another downgrade.
The whole selling point of the project forty-plus years ago when they floated the L.A.-San Diego line was speed. Getting people from one place to another faster than driving, and almost as fast as flying once you factor in the check-in process at the airport. Now, because the cost of developing what was promised is nowhere near original estimates, they can no longer even promise the speed. There's only going to be one track, because building two - one for northbound trains and one for, *checks notes*, southbound trains, is too exorbitant for this state. So at best, we're going to get one track with siderails every so often, requiring you to come to a stop while another train passes. That's no longer fast by any definition, and it's no longer energy efficient to constantly brake and accelerate these trains to 200 miles-per-hour. And as for the stations, wherever they plan on putting them, they're going to be the equivalent of a rest stop with a wooden deck next to the track. That's what you get for $128 billion.
Jon goes on to say that even scaling back to the point of absurdity, the project may find itself now in direct violation of the legislation that enabled its existence. The law that was passed to fund the project was for a two-track line, not one, with stations that provided for transport connections to the downtown stations in Merced and Bakersfield. Under the new cuts, even if the train gets built, which is still highly doubtful, your only way to get from Toilet Highway to Merced, or Oildale to Bakersfield, is either by sticking out your thumb on the side of the road or convincing a Waymo that your location actually exists and isn't an Atlanta cul-de-sac.
I kid, of course. We don't have Waymo's in California anymore. The state's too expensive for that model, and during riots, they serve as bonfires on wheels.
And speaking of Toilet Highway, as we near California's June 2nd primary, the most fun race of all might turn out to be L.A.'s Mayor's race. Spencer Pratt might actually advance to November's general election, which would make AI-generated videos ubiquitous in the Southland for a few more months.
One of the most recent is Pratt's response to the allegation by incumbent Mayor Karen Bass that he's engaging in violent rhetoric. Pratt countered by offering up a softer tone.
Spencer Pratt dropped his funniest AI commercial yet. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/1zMy306mSo
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) May 17, 2026
Win or lose, Pratt is going to change the campaign landscape for a long time to come. I'd love for California's Scam Tram to get the AI video treatment. Maybe that might help scuttle it once and for all. Mockery might indeed trump sunk costs of idiocracy married to progressivism.
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