‘We Have No Plan’: California’s High Speed Rail Boondoggle Will Need Another Multi-Billion Dollar Infusion

California’s oft-delayed and over budget high speed rail project will need billions of dollars in additional funding by the summer of 2026 in order to avoid being postponed further, according to local Sacramento news outlet KCRA3.

An official for the California Legislative Analyst’s Office told lawmakers Wednesday during a transportation budget hearing that $7 billion in additional funding needs to be secured for the development by June 2026, or else the project may face further delays, according to KCRA3. The project was initially pitched as a $40 billion “bullet train” system connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco that would be complete sometime around 2020, but the price tag has soared above $100 billion and the completion of the Bakersfield-Merced line of the system is not expected until 2030 at the earliest.

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“There is no specific plan to meet that roughly $7 billion gap, we also think there is some risk that gap could grow,” said Helen Kerstein, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office official, according to KCRA3. “This isn’t a way out in the future funding gap. This is a pretty immediate funding gap.”