high speed rail

New California High Speed Rail Exaggeration

Wendell Cox — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 22:47:31 -0500

The just released Environmental Impact Statement for the California High Speed Rail Phase I Los Angeles to Anaheim segment assumes a population of 44 million in 2049. In fact, the official state population projection, produced by the California Department of Finance (DOF) is just 40,800,000, according to September 30, 2025 data. Moreover, by 2070, the state is projected by DOF to have a population of 39.5 million residents, virtually the same as reported in the 2020 US census.

For decades, high speed rail aficionados have been claiming that it is necessary to handle California’s population growth. There is none. What decade are they living in?

There is a considerable body of literature documenting the overly optimistic ridership projections associated with high speed rail. There are also the cost overruns, which California and the United Kingdom (the HS2 project) seem to be trying to outspend one another, with little hope of ever completing extensions to Sacramento, Riverside-San Bernardino and San Diego (much less San Francisco, Los Angeles and Anaheim). Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield have similarly been put on the “back burner.”

When the wrong numbers are used, it is not surprising when projects fail to deliver on their advertised performance. The California High Speed Rail line has been on this track for some time.

Train derailment through the wall at Paris Montparnasse Station, 1897.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with Unleash Prosperity in Washington and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985), which was a predecessor agency to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

California High Speed Rail Greatest Infrastructure Failure in US History: Hoover Institution Economist

Wendell Cox — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 20:15:55 -0400

In “California’s High-Speed Rail Was A Fantasy From Its Inception,” economist Lee Ohanion says that: “California’s HSR is perhaps the greatest infrastructure failure in the history of the country. And the reason it failed is because of a gross failure of state governance, one on such a grand scale that it is nothing short of a betrayal of Californians.”

Ohanion notes that the cost of the present Bakersfield to Merced line, for which the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) does not even have the money, is already more costly that the original projections for the 800-mile system, which was to connect San Diego, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Sacramento. This 170-mile stub is on the flat land in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, by far the easiest portion of the system to build. CHSRA hasn’t turned the first shovel on the Pacheco Pass tunnel, the Tehachapi or the San Gabriel Mountains tunnel that would be required just to complete the San Francisco to Los Angeles segment. The San Diego and Sacramento extensions have barely been mentioned for years.

Ohanion concludes:

“There is no path to completion for the fantasy rail system that was falsely sold to voters 15 years ago. Finishing the Bakersfield-Merced route, which will cost in excess of $35 billion, and which won’t be operative for ten years, doesn’t come close to penciling out. The only reasonable decision is to end a project that should never have begun.”

My former colleague on the Amtrak Reform Council, Joseph Vranich and I authored reports on the California High Speed Rail Line, including The California High Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report, California High Speed Rail: An Updated Due Diligence Report, and with Adrian Moore California High Speed Rail Project Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions: A Dynamic Impact and Cost Analysis.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

California High Speed Rail: More Cost Overruns & Delays? (Los Angeles Times)

Wendell Cox — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 11:21:33 -0400

According to Los Angeles Times reporter Ralph Vartabedian (see: Cost overruns hit California bullet train again amid a new financial crunch, October 8), the troubled California high speed rail system could face additional cost overruns. According to Vartabedian, “The California bullet train is facing at least another billion dollars of proposed cost increases from its contractors, following a history of sharp cost growth on construction work over the last eight years, The Times has learned.”

The already much delayed start of service could be delayed further: “The current plan would start train operations by 2030, but officials working on the project say privately that it appears difficult, if not impossible, to meet that timetable.” At the time of the 2008, when voters approved Proposition 1-A to authorize $10 billion in bonds, the Los Angeles (Anaheim) to San Francisco (Transbay Terminal) line was to have cost $33 billion and entire route was to have opened in 2020. Current cost estimates are in the area of $100 billion, though that is after scaling the project back significantly and sharing conventional commuter rail tracks in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas.

Joseph Vranich and I authored a report on the system in 2008 (see: The California High Speed Rail Project: A Due Diligence Report). In that report we projected cost overruns of 30% to 60% for the entire system, which was to have included spurs to Sacramento and San Diego. Our projections were embarrassingly low, with the much more modest system now likely to cost more than the full promised system with its Sacramento and San Diego branches, little of which appears likely to be opened even 10 years late.

High-speed rail advocates tout a 0.008% reduction in pollution

Todd Myers — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 16:14:20 -0400

A recent op-ed in The Seattle Times written by transit activists claims a high-speed railroad from Portland to Vancouver B.C. would reduce air pollution. Although the piece doesn’t provide a source, it claims the project would “prevent 960 metric tons of harmful pollutants such as particulate matter and carbon monoxide from entering our atmosphere over the first 40 years of operation.”

Although that sounds like a lot, it is an absolutely minuscule amount. It shows how high-speed rail advocates must grasp at arguments to justify the tens of billions of dollars the project would cost to build.

The authors didn’t cite a study, but mentioned two particular pollutants: particulate matter and carbon monoxide (not carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas). They claim a reduction of 960 metric tons of pollutants over 40 years, which amounts to 24 metric tons a year.

How much is that? About 0.0008% of the state’s annual particulate matter and carbon monoxide emissions.

Rail-based transit yields infinitesimal environmental benefits despite the massive cost. Advocates throw in the numbers, and multiply them by 40 years, in the hopes that people won’t check to see if they are meaningful.

This is a consistent pattern from transit activists.

In 2015, members of Sound Transit’s board justified spending billions on extending light rail to Lynwood saying it would reduce CO2 emissions. As we noted at the time, the same amount of emissions could be reduced for about $1 million a year - far less than the cost of constructing, let alone operating, the light rail extension.

The following year transit activist Shefali Ranganathan and the Transportation Choices Coalition implied the third phase of Sound Transit (ST3) would reduce 793,000 metric tons of CO2 annually. The real number was much smaller - only about 130,000 MT. After initially denying it, they were forced to add a footnote to an e-mail (an odd way to correct the record) acknowledging they were misleading.

Transit and environmental activists like to claim their projects will help reduce pollution. A look at the data shows that environmental benefits are little more than marketing afterthoughts, rather than sincere efforts at environmental policy.

This piece first appeared at Washington Policy Center.

Todd Myers is the Director of the Center for the Environment at Washington Policy Center. He is one of the nation's leading experts on free-market environmental policy. Todd is the author of the landmark 2011 book Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism Is Harming the Environment and was a Wall Street Journal Expert Panelist for energy and the environment.

Malaysia to Drop Singapore to Kuala Lumpur High Speed Rail Project

Wendell Cox — Mon, 28 May 2018 18:33:29 -0400

Fresh from his recent national election victory, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced that a planned high-speed rail project from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore will be cancelled. Kuala Lumpur is Malaysia’s largest urban area, with approximately 7.8 million residents, while Singapore has nearly 6 million residents. The Prime Minister told a press conference: “We need to do away with some of the unnecessary projects, for example the high-speed rail, which is going to cost us RM110 billion (S$37 billion) and will not earn us a single cent.”

Read more at the Straits Times (Singapore): https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysia-pm-mahathir-mohamad-t...

Former Hawaii Democratic Governor Urges Trump to Stop Funds for Honolulu Rail

Wendell Cox — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 12:53:01 -0400

A full page ad in today’s Washington Post (April 21, 2017) featured former Democratic Governor Benjamin J. Cayetano asking President Trump to stop further funding for the Honolulu rail project. The project has ballooned in cost from $5 billion to $10 billion, with most of the funding coming from local sources. There are serious concerns about the ability of Honolulu or Hawaii to afford completion of the project. Cayetano says that the line will be the most costly in the world. A proof of the ad is below and a pdf is available here.

Several Newgeography.com articles have followed this issue:

http://www.newgeography.com/content/005156-live-honolulu-hart-rail-a-megaproject-failure-making

http://www.newgeography.com/content/002316-honolulu-mega-rail-project-a-micro-city

http://www.newgeography.com/content/005410-honolulu-rail-from-46-b-86-b-eight-years-now-what

http://www.newgeography.com/content/005257-honolulu-rail-it-just-keeps-getting-worse

http://www.newgeography.com/content/002719-honolulu%E2%80%99s-money-train

http://www.newgeography.com/content/001912-honolulu-rail-costs-balloon-ridership-projections-called-high

Caltrain and Blended High Speed Rail Promise Peninsula Traffic Paralysis

Wendell Cox — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 21:25:35 -0500

The following notice was issued by the Community Coalition on High Speed Rail in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A TRANSPORTATION EXPERT CONFIRMS OUR WARNINGS:
THE SO-CALLED "BLENDED" PROJECT WILL
PARALYZE TRAFFIC ON THE PENINSULA

Paul Jones, a mechanical and industrial engineer who was an Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and who was the principal engineer in charge of the high-speed rail design study for the high-speed train from Madrid to Barcelona, Spain, has analyzed the traffic impacts that can be expected if the High-Speed Rail Authority (partnering with Caltrain) actually constructs its proposed "Blended System" project on the Peninsula.

What is Mr. Jones' bottom line conclusion? The following quotation is from the "Abstract" of his November 7, 2016 report, "Potential Traffic Paralysis Throughout the Peninsula: Blended Caltrain/High Speed Rail Impact on Street Traffic."

(End of notice)

The report is available at: http://www.cc-hsr.org/news-pdf/Paul-Jones-traffic-delays.pdf.

Note: The California High Speed Rail project, of which this work is a part, has been evaluated in reports by Joseph Vranich and Wendell Cox, who predicted substantial cost escalation (http://www.reason.org/files/1b544eba6f1d5f9e8012a8c36676ea7e.pdf). This prediction turned out to be low. This was shown in a subsequent report, with an analysis indicating that the system is likely to require substantial subsidies to operate (http://reason.org/studies/show/california-high-speed-rail-report). A later report by Wendell Cox and Adrian Moore found that the high speed rail line that the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) from passengers transferring from planes and cars would cost up to nearly $19,000 per metric tonne (http://demographia.com/CalHSRGHGAnalysis.pdf). This is more than 1,000 times the market price.

California’s Attack on Rule of Law

Wendell Cox — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 11:02:50 -0400

Morris Brown, founder of Derail (a citizen group opposed to California’s high speed rail project) writes over at Fox and Hounds Daily that newly enacted California Assembly Bill 1889 is unconstitutional.

Brown could not be more on the mark. In 2008, the California legislature had placed a number of protections in a Proposition authorizing bonds for California’s high speed rail line. These were intended as enticements to voters to approve the proposition. The legislature and Governor promised. The people approved. And, now the legislature and Governor have gone back on their promise.

In short, the legislature and Governor have revised the conditions of the proposition, something that requires a vote of the people. With respect to high speed rail (and perhaps other propositions) California has replaced rule of law with rule of men (and women). That this should have occurred with respect to a voter approved proposition is particularly egregious, since such measures (such as initiative and referendum) were Progressive Era reforms, under Governor Hiram Johnson in 1911, intended to permit the people to take legislative authority from the legislature and governor when they felt it appropriate.

Meanwhile, the California high speed rail project has become a legendary “white elephant,” with costs going through the roof and little hope for achieving the promised travel time between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Brown’s analysis can be accessed here….

"Rising Rail Chaos" in Honolulu

Wendell Cox — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 15:34:20 -0400

That's what the Honolulu Star Advertiser calls it in an April 8 editorial entitled "Rising Rail Chaos Bodes Ill for Us All." Honolulu’s urban rail project has experienced a host of problems, which were described by University of Hawaii professor Panos Prevedoros in January, who called the project “the nation’s largest infrastructure fiasco by far” on a per capita basis.

Things continue to deteriorate, as the Star-Advertiser editorial indicates. The Star Advertiser reported that city Council chairman Ernie Martin called for both Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) Board Chairman Don Horner and chief executive officer Dan Grabauskas.

In a letter, Martin expressed concern that: “With mounting evidence of mismanagement and out of control costs … it is clear that we need a leadership team capable of moving this multibillion (dollar) project forward.”

In its editorial, the Star Advertiser noted: “HART officials acknowledged new misgivings that the recently approved extension of the funding mechanism — Oahu’s 0.5 percent general excise tax surcharge — would cover the bills.”

Martin called it a “stunning about face” that Horner could not promise Council members that there would be enough cash to finish the project. Previously, according to Martin, Horner had said that the tax extension would be sufficient to finish the 20 mile line.

Martin went on to say that “we need to go in a different direction” to help “stop the bleeding.” He added: “We’re at the tourniquet stage right now,” “If we don’t apply more intense scrutiny, then we’re likely to lose limbs.”

Meanwhile, Honolulu is not alone. There has been plenty of bleeding with respect to expensive urban rail projects. In Los Angeles, $16 billion has been spent to build a massive new urban rail system and yet, transit ridership languishes below the levels of three decades ago, despite population growth. In Toronto, the new airport express train has been such a failure in ridership that it is routinely called a “fiasco” by the media.

Of course, all of this is predictable. Often, urban rail costs more and carries fewer riders than projected. are higher than projected ridership lower than projected, and virtually never high enough to reduce traffic congestion can be characterized as routine, as the international research led by Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg has indicated.

But Honolulu is a special case as well. There may have never been so intense a volunteer campaign to stop what was perceived as a boondoggle is in Honolulu. The Star-Advertiser, usually a cheerleader for the project, concluded by saying: “Reports of this dysfunction just adds to the strain taxpayers feel right now, and it’s the last thing they need. The price tag on the state’s largest public works project is past the $6 billion mark and rising, with the most complicated part of the work still looming.”

Taiwan High Speed Rail Near Bankruptcy

Wendell Cox — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 09:36:58 -0400

Efforts are underway by the Taiwan government for a government led restructuring to avoid bankruptcy (Plan to stop Taiwan's high-speed rail going bust set for review). Since opening in 2007, this privately financed and operated system has been plagued with ridership well below projections. The Taiwan experience is consistent with the research showing that ridership on high-speed rail lines has been frequently over-projected.

Minister of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) Yeh Kuang-shih offered this sobering assessment:

“This is not the best time to address the financial problems, but it is the last window of opportunity. The Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp will definitely go bankrupt if the problems are not addressed by the end of the year. The only other solution would be a government takeover. If the company files for bankruptcy and the government is forced to take over operation of the system, the banks will probably collect on their loans, but neither large nor small investors will get anything back.”

Kuomintang Party legislator Lin Kuo-cheng said that the "debt" and "accumulated losses" mean that the Taiwan high speed rail line is "broke."