In 2008, California voted to build 800 miles of high‑speed rail.
Seventeen years and $14.75 billion later — not a single mile is operational.
Voters were promised $33 billion, 96 million riders a year, no operating subsidies, and service by 2020. Today the estimate is $128 billion, the scope has shrunk to 171 miles, and the opening date is the 2030s, at best.
The vote passed by just 665,000 votes. Federal investigators are now asking whether the projections that won it were ever true.
Cost overruns happen on megaprojects. This is not that story.
The firm that wrote the business plan received a billion dollars to manage the project. The consultants doing the work staffed the unit checking the work. The ridership model was debunked by three independent reviews — and used for thirteen more years. The first ten billion dollars was spent without an Inspector General.
Each cost revision came after commitments were secured. Never before.
Here’s how it happened.
$33 Billion → $128 Billion
The Survey That Found What It Was Looking For
mature HSR, dense cities, expensive fuel
“A discrepancy suggesting intentional exaggeration.”
The Consultants Who Oversaw Themselves
“Only 56 contract managers overseeing $5B+ in contracts; only 3 worked full-time.”
$2.8 Billion Bid. $8.6 Billion Spent.
“CHSRA approved amendments based wholly on the information the contractors reported.”
Fifteen Years Before Anyone Looked at the Books
The FSP Agreement
“CHSRA could not have made that commitment in good faith.”
Three Federal Investigations
Connections Not Previously Documented
Most of this work is synthesis — bringing together scattered public records that have never been systematically cross-referenced. But in the process, we identified the following connections that, to our knowledge, have not appeared in published analysis. We document what we found and what we didn’t.
CEO bonus tied to low bid, 65 days before procurement rule change
Resolution #1228 contractually linked CEO Jeff Morales’s bonus to “getting a bid at or below estimates.” Sixty-five days later, the 4th RFP Addendum reversed the Board-approved two-step selection process to favor lowest price over technical competence. The Board was not notified of the change.
Internal memo documents potential criminal change order splitting
A CHSRA regional director’s August 2018 memo explicitly planned splitting a $20.8 million scope into four to five change orders of roughly $5 million each — keeping each below the threshold requiring higher-level review. California Public Contract Code Section 20116 makes splitting work orders to evade oversight a criminal violation.
Threshold-adjacent change order at 251% of independent estimate
An $18.6 million change order was approved at 251% of the pre-construction manager’s independent cost estimate, positioned just below the $20 million Board Operations Committee review trigger. The pricing was not questioned.
Independent PM oversight eliminated during procurement changes
TY Lin International’s independent program management oversight role was terminated in the same period as the CP1 procurement rule change, removing the one entity positioned to flag irregularities in the process.
CP4 as natural experiment isolating governance failure
CP4 had an independent construction manager and a contractor with 722km of Spanish HSR experience. Same state, same project, same era — but 86% growth vs. 290% for the worst package. The comparison isolates procurement and oversight as the variable, not “inherent” US cost factors.
Seven named WSP employees held titled positions within CHSRA
Tony Daniels, Gary Griggs, Kristina Assouri, Hans Van Winkle, Brent Felker, Jim Van Epps, and Daniel Horgan held official agency titles while employed by WSP. Daniels signed CHSRA technical memos. Griggs presented to the Board as staff. Horgan, as Deputy COO, co-authored budget memos with spending authority.
Untested legal precedent for challenging WSP embedding
Professional Engineers in California Government v. Department of Transportation (1997) established that state agencies cannot delegate inherently governmental functions to private contractors. This framework has never been applied to the CHSRA–WSP relationship, despite WSP staffing the unit tasked with overseeing WSP.
13-year knowledge chain establishes reckless disregard
UC Berkeley (2010), the Peer Review Group (2010), and CHSRA’s own reviewer (2022) all called the ridership model unreliable. CHSRA submitted projections based on the same model in the 2024 FSP Agreement. Under the False Claims Act, this chain establishes “reckless disregard” without needing to prove any individual intended to deceive.
Electrification budget at 22% of the same state’s actual costs
CHSRA budgets $11.8 million per mile for electrification. Caltrain — same state, same regulatory environment, same era — spent $53.3 million per mile. The budget is 22% of comparable actual costs. The FRA flagged it as unrealistic in its compliance review.
Post-peer-review model changes went undisclosed
After independent peer reviewers flagged concerns with the ridership model, Cambridge Systematics made undisclosed changes to the methodology. The version submitted for peer review was not the version used to generate the numbers voters saw. No one outside the firm reviewed the final version.
Progressive records shielding across a decade
AB 1889 (2016) was gut-and-amended in the final hour of the legislative session — no video, no public notice, no registered opposition — to redefine standards for bond spending. AB 1608 (2026) would let the new IG withhold records describing “weaknesses,” including fraud-detection controls. The pattern: each legislative intervention weakened oversight, with procedural moves designed to minimize public scrutiny.