All I Want for Christmas Is for DOGE to Give California's High Speed

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The definition of a “boondoggle” is a failed infrastructure project that politicians keep throwing money at.

An example close to my home is the construction of Interstate 180. Originally built to serve the LTV Steel plant in Hennepin, Ill., Interstate 180 travels 13 miles between Interstate 80 and Illinois 71.

Even though the steel mill closed down, they kept building the darn thing at a cost of $7 billion. Go figure. It’s the least-traveled piece of interstate highway in the nation with as few as 3500 cars a day traveling its expanse.

The California high-speed rail project is the mother, father, sister, brother, and every other relation you can add of boondoggles. If the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) does one thing in its existence, it should prevent any more federal tax dollars from going to this gigantic white elephant.

California should have pulled the plug on this monstrosity years ago. The plan, approved in 2008, was to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco via electrified high-speed rail by 2030. The cost was pegged at $33 billion.

Would that t’were true.

The costs kept ballooning and the timetable kept getting pushed back. Today, the project is projected to cost at least $128 billion and won’t be finished anywhere near 2030. In March, the high-speed rail authority said it would need another $100 billion to finish the project.

Reason.com:

Despite 16 years and billions of dollars, high-speed rail in the Golden State has yet to transport a single passenger. With population declines in the state after the pandemic, expected ridership has fallen from 41 million people (2009 projection) to 28.4 million people (2024 projection). Nevertheless, funding for the project continues. The Rail Authority is currently constructing a 119-mile segment of track in the Central Valley, which it hopes to extend to 171 miles and complete between 2030 and 2033. The full 494-mile system was originally expected to be operational by then.

Passenger fares will have to be subsidized, adding more operational costs to the boondoggle. So why continue the charade that high-speed rail is the answer to clogged L.A. freeways and overcrowded airports?

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) is playing the percentages. He’s hoping that if he continues to throw money at high-speed rail, Washington will bail him out. If Kamala Harris had won, it would have been a good gamble.

But it’s Donald Trump in office, and his friends Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have their hatchets out and are ready to chop funding for high-speed rail off at the knees.

Any spending cuts proposed by DOGE would need congressional approval to be implemented, but there seems to be support in both chambers for ending federal funding for California high-speed rail. In November, Sen. Joni Ernst (R–Iowa) sent a letter to Musk and Ramaswamy recommending that DOGE target several public transit systems in California, including high-speed rail. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R–Calif.) has called the project one of the most wasteful in U.S. history.

Even with congressional support, DOGE will face an uphill battle to pull back grant money that has already been awarded, says Marc Scribner, senior transportation policy analyst at Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this magazine). While the Rail Authority has still not finalized a $3 billion federal grant awarded to them in 2023, the Biden administration will likely push to get this funding out the door before Donald Trump’s inauguration. If this happens, the Trump administration’s best play would be to simply not fund the project in the future, according to Scribner.

Newsom was hoping to push the project so far along that Washington would simply throw up its hands and give him the money to finish it That’s not going to happen, and Newsom better be prepared to explain to Californians (and American taxpayers when he runs for president in 2028) why he blew through $100 billion for a project that was overpromised, underfunded, and never had a chance of being completed.