If someone doesn’t put a stop to pouring money down the high-speed rail drain soon, the California project could end up costing well over $200 billion, according to a new report by Wendell Cox. Cox made this estimate, which is about twice the current official estimate, by applying the average of the cost overruns of the portions built so far to the current cost projections of the remaining parts of the project.
Even if the costs don’t reach quite that high, Cox says, it is likely that a full high-speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles will not be ready to ride before 2045. Cox bolsters these projections with statements from the state’s own peer reviewers who have been monitoring the project since 2009. Continue reading
