California Legislature Moves to Shroud High-Speed Rail Audits in Secrecy
High-speed rail bill passes Assembly, heads to Senate
Pseudo Publius
Civic & Fiscal Accountability Journalism · San Diego, California
"They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast."
— The Eagles, "Hotel California" (1977) · A metaphor California's high-speed rail has made literalCalifornia's Train to Nowhere: They Just Can't Kill the Beast
A broke state, zero federal funding, zero track laid, a price tag approaching $231 billion, a CEO on leave, a missed business-plan deadline — and the Legislature's answer is to make the audits secret. Meanwhile, the candidates who want Newsom's job are still lining up to promise they'll see it through.
Bottom Line Up Front
California's high-speed rail project — approved by voters in 2008 for $33 billion, promised complete by 2020 — has now consumed $14.6 billion in public funds and produced zero feet of permanent high-speed track. Its price tag now stands officially at $126.3 billion (Phase 1), with a full-scope consultant estimate of $231.3 billion. The federal government has terminated or rescinded roughly $5 billion in funding. The Authority's own inspector general and the Legislative Analyst's Office have found the 2026 draft business plan non-transparent and non-compliant with Proposition 1A. The CEO is on administrative leave. The final 2026 business plan deadline was missed. California carries a structural budget deficit of $20–$35 billion per year.
Sacramento's response to this cascade of failure: Assembly Bill 1608, passed 45–18 on May 5, 2026, which would authorize the inspector general to withhold audit findings from the public. And eleven days before California's June 2 gubernatorial primary, most of the candidates who want to inherit this wreckage are still promising to keep building.
In 1977, the Eagles described a peculiar kind of trap: a place you can check out of any time you like, but can never truly leave. You stab it, and it won't die. California's high-speed rail project has spent eighteen years making that metaphor literal. Every factual blow that should have ended it — ballooning costs, litigation, leadership scandals, federal defunding, a business plan its own inspector general calls deficient — has instead produced a new appropriation, a new promise, or, as of last week, a new bill to make the inspection reports secret. They try to kill it with their steely knives. The beast endures.
Assembly Bill 1608, authored by Assembly Transportation Committee Chair Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City), passed the California Assembly on May 5, 2026, by a vote of 45 to 18. The bill now proceeds to the Senate. Its stated rationale is that current law does not explicitly require the Office of the Inspector General for High-Speed Rail — created in 2022 specifically because lawmakers had lost confidence in the Authority — to make its reports public. AB 1608 would mandate publication. The catch: it also grants the inspector general broad discretion to withhold any report or portion of any report if the office determines that public release would "reveal weaknesses that could be exploited by individuals attempting to harm the interests of the state or inappropriately benefit from the project." That standard is elastic enough to cover virtually any finding an embarrassed bureaucracy would prefer not to have on the front page of a newspaper.
"This project is the most expensive infrastructure project happening in the entire world. I think the public deserves maximum transparency. This bill would allow secrets as we're trying to secure funding." — Assemblymember David Tangipa (R-Fresno), Assembly floor, May 5, 2026
Chuck Champion, president of the California News Publishers Association, put it with characteristic plainness: "If any project should have intense transparency and scrutiny, it's the high-speed rail." Republican State Senator Tony Strickland, vice chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, went further: "I'm dumbfounded that anybody would try to pass a bill to make the high-speed rail, with its history, less transparent and have less accountability because it's going to go down in history as one of the most wasteful and mismanaged projects in world history." Assemblymember Diane Dixon (R-Newport Beach) identified the timing directly: "If the state is spending billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars on a project that is significantly behind schedule, I think the taxpayers are entitled to know how their money is being spent. Instead, this legislation seeks to hide that information, to save face and ensure that the project continues uninterrupted."
The Bill Arrives With Perfect Timing — for the Wrong Reasons
It is impossible to review AB 1608 in isolation from what is happening to the project simultaneously. On the same day the Assembly voted to give the inspector general secrecy powers, May 5, 2026, the California High-Speed Rail Authority was legally required — under Assembly Bill 377, enacted in 2025 — to deliver its final 2026 Business Plan to the Legislature. The Authority missed that deadline. A spokesperson said the plan would be reconsidered at the board's June 1 meeting, citing the need "to better align the business plan with the fiscal year 2026-27 budget cycle." The Authority is, in other words, running behind schedule on the document that describes how it will stop running behind schedule.
The draft business plan it did release in February had already been assessed by two independent bodies, whose findings were presented to the Assembly Transportation Committee at an oversight hearing on March 2. The Legislative Analyst's Office found the plan opaque on scope changes — burying major alignment and track alterations under the vague label "optimization measures" — and concluded that the plan "lacks identification of key scope changes" in a way that "reduces transparency and utility." More substantively, the LAO found the draft plan inconsistent with legislative direction: it quietly moves the Merced station approximately 3.5 miles south of the downtown location explicitly required by SB 198 (2021), and assumes mostly single-track construction where the Legislature specified double-track. These are not minor design tweaks. The LAO's assessment is that by "unilaterally assuming rather than proposing" these changes, the Authority fails to acknowledge "the Legislature's important role" in authorizing the project's scope.
More gravely still, the plan cannot satisfy Proposition 1A's foundational legal requirement. Section 2704.08 of California's Streets and Highways Code — the law voters enacted — requires that planned passenger service "will not require a local, state, or federal operating subsidy." The Authority's own numbers now project that the initial operating segment will run at a loss, requiring an ongoing subsidy. The plan offers no legal analysis of how this squared with the statute under which the project exists. Assemblymember David Tangipa (R-Fresno) called the plan "illegal" and "non-compliant with state law" at the March hearing, while Rep. Vince Fong (R-CA) told CBS News' "60 Minutes" that the project "needs to stop."
"A business plan that the Authority's own inspector general says lacks transparency and violates state law, and a price tag that's ballooned to $231 billion. It's the quintessential example of government waste." — Assemblymember David Tangipa (R-Fresno), The Daily Signal, May 5, 2026
The Price Tag Nobody Can Stop Growing
When California voters approved Proposition 1A in November 2008 by a margin of 52.6 percent, the state's voter guide promised a 520-mile, 220-mph system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and forty minutes, with tickets priced at 50 to 77 percent of airfares, funded by $9.95 billion in state bonds matched by $12–16 billion in federal grants and $6.7–7.5 billion in private investment, with no operating subsidy ever required. Every figure in that promise has since been repudiated.
The project's official Phase 1 cost estimate now stands at $126.3 billion in its 2026 draft business plan — nearly four times the original voter-approved price. But that "optimized" figure relies on the Authority having already identified $105 billion in "avoided costs" through design changes it may not have the legal authority to implement unilaterally. An independent full-scope consultant estimate, also produced in connection with the 2026 business plan, placed the total cost at $231.3 billion — with only a 65 percent confidence factor attached. The Authority disputed that figure, but did not retract it, calling it a "high-end, un-optimized scenario." Lou Thompson, the former chair of the Authority's own peer review group, responded to the draft plan in writing, concluding the project "has reached a dead end." Against all of this, the project has spent $14.6 billion — more than the entire original bond authorization — and has produced, as a physical artifact, ten miles of temporary siding and storage track near Wasco, Kern County, built in partnership with the BNSF freight railway. There is no electrification, no trainset vendor selected, no permanent high-speed rail track.
Federal Funding: Gone, Litigated, and Abandoned
The project has received approximately $6.9 billion in federal funding over fifteen years. In July 2025, the Trump administration's Federal Railroad Administration terminated roughly $4 billion in remaining grant commitments following a 315-page compliance review — one of the most exhaustive federal audits of a state transit project in American history — that found the California High-Speed Rail Authority in default of its federal agreements across nine distinct areas. The shortfalls included a $7 billion funding gap for the Initial Operating Segment and a missed 2024 deadline to procure a trainset vendor, without which revenue service is physically impossible. FRA Acting Administrator Drew Feeley declined to commit further taxpayer resources to what he called a "Sisyphean endeavor."
California, under Governor Gavin Newsom, filed suit to recover the funds, and a federal judge rejected the Trump administration's bid to dismiss the case. Then, in December 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit — despite that favorable ruling — filing a notice of dismissal without prejudice. The Authority said it would "move forward without the Trump administration," pursuing private investors instead. Congress then permanently rescinded an additional $929 million for the project in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, as the Senate Commerce Committee released a parallel investigative report. The total federal funding terminated or rescinded now approaches $5 billion. The Authority has not identified a replacement. The cap-and-trade program — which provides $1 billion per year through 2045 — is the last real funding pillar standing, and even that requires legislative goodwill that cannot be guaranteed through eight successive governors' administrations.
A Broken State Keeps Writing Checks
The most striking dimension of this story is not the project's dysfunction in isolation — it is that California is keeping it alive while the state itself bleeds red ink. California enters the 2026-27 fiscal year with what the Legislative Analyst's Office characterizes as a chronic, structural budget deficit. The LAO's November 2025 outlook projected annual deficits of approximately $35 billion per year. Governor Newsom's January 2026 budget proposal presented a rosier picture — claiming a deficit of only $2.9 billion — but the LAO noted the Governor's numbers did not adequately account for stock market risk and projected shortfalls of $27 billion in 2027-28, $22 billion in 2028-29, and $23 billion in 2029-30 under the administration's own assumptions. The LAO's budget analyst, Gabe Petek, stated flatly that the state's situation is "now chronic," that "deficits have persisted even as the state's economy and revenues have grown," and that this "raises serious concerns about the state's fiscal sustainability." Over four years, California has already "solved" $125 billion in cumulative budget problems through a combination of on- and off-book loans, accounting maneuvers, and raids on emergency reserves.
That is the state writing a cap-and-trade check for $1 billion per year to a rail project that its own inspector general says violates state law, while cutting parks, trimming homelessness programs, and watching mayors plead for restoration of $500 million in slashed shelter funding. County officials have separately asked Newsom for $6.4 billion over two years to offset federal Medi-Cal cuts. There is no money. And yet the train rolls on — or rather, continues not to roll, while the Authority cashes the check.
The leadership vacuum at the top of the Authority has not helped. CEO Ian Choudri — appointed in August 2024, credited with bringing strategic coherence to a rudderless organization — was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor domestic battery in Folsom on February 4, 2026. The Sacramento County District Attorney's office declined to file charges, but Choudri agreed to take administrative leave on February 18, just ten days before the draft business plan was released, leaving the Authority without its chief executive precisely when it most needed one. Assemblymember Carlos Macedo formally requested a full legislative audit of the project in February, citing what he characterized as structural mismanagement and reckless contract amendments.
The Gubernatorial Primary: Who Wants to Inherit This?
Eleven days before California's June 2 top-two gubernatorial primary, most of the candidates seeking to replace term-limited Governor Newsom are still committed — with varying degrees of enthusiasm and qualification — to continuing the project. The picture that emerges is not of a political class grappling with reality, but of incumbency inertia dressed in optimism. The beast has a constituency, and that constituency votes in Democratic primaries.
The pattern is familiar and disheartening: Democratic candidates who know the project is in catastrophic trouble are nonetheless unwilling to call it by its name, because the infrastructure-union coalition that funds Democratic primaries depends on the construction contracts it generates. Villaraigosa's debate vow to make the project "transparent, meet deadlines, and stick to a budget" is word-for-word the promise made by Jerry Brown in 2010 and Gavin Newsom in 2019. The project has outlasted the credibility of everyone who made those promises. It will likely outlast Villaraigosa's, too, if he wins.
Only Katie Porter — the one major Democrat who voted against a significant HSR appropriation during her time in Congress and has consistently demanded accountability — has come close to intellectual honesty on the question. But even her position ("if it can't get done, then stop") contains a conditional that Sacramento has been declining to test for eighteen years.
"I don't think we should BS California voters. They have noticed that we don't have a high-speed rail. And they have noticed we've spent money on it. If this high-speed rail project can get done, then let's get it done. If it can't get done, then stop." — Rep. Katie Porter (D), KTLA Inside California Politics interview, 2026
Where Did $14.6 Billion Actually Go?
A common assumption — understandable given the project's visible futility — is that the bulk of the money has disappeared into studies and consultant fees, leaving nothing physical behind. The Authority's own Capital Outlay and Expenditure Report, covering expenditures through May 2025, tells a different and in some ways more disturbing story.
The plurality of the $14.6 billion — roughly $11.4 billion, or about 78 percent — is formally classified as "Construction." This category funded the civil infrastructure now visible across 119 miles of the Central Valley: concrete viaducts, earthen embankments, road underpasses, bridge structures, and grade separations. The concrete is real. The steel is real. The physical work exists. The Hanford Viaduct, the Tied Arch Bridge over State Route 43 in Fresno County — these are not illusions. They are, by any measure, substantial engineering achievements in isolation.
What they are not is a railroad. None of the $11.4 billion in civil construction funded the installation of a single rail, a single overhead contact wire, a single signal, a single traction power substation, or a single trainset. The construction packages explicitly excluded track and electrical systems — those are the subject of a separate Request for Proposal only released in 2026. The Authority built the skeleton and then ran out of money and lost its federal partner before it could put flesh on the bones. As a functioning transportation system, the result is worth precisely nothing to a passenger.
Embedded within that construction figure are at least several billion dollars that represent schedule-failure costs rather than infrastructure value. Construction Package 1 — the first 29-mile segment — was bid at just under $1 billion by Tutor Perini. By the time disputes were resolved, it had cost $2.2 billion, with the excess attributable almost entirely to delay claims and change orders. The contractor itself wrote to the Authority complaining that "it is beyond comprehension that the authority has not obtained all of the right of way" — the most fundamental prerequisite for construction — yet contracts had been signed before the land was secured, before design was complete, before utility relocations were arranged. That sequence, forced by a federal deadline to spend ARRA funds by 2017, compressed a rational construction order into an irrational one and produced exactly the chaos that generated those claims. Across all four construction packages, change orders and dispute settlements have consumed billions that the original bids did not anticipate.
Also embedded in construction costs is the "professional services" overhead that the Authority's own business plan methodology estimates at 18.5 percent of construction costs — covering preliminary engineering, program management, final design, and construction management. On an $11.4 billion construction base, that implies roughly $2.1 billion in consultant-type costs categorized inside the construction budget, not the separate "Project Development" line. Add the separately identified Project Development expenditures — another $1.65 billion covering environmental reviews, planning, right-of-way mapping, and the Rail Delivery Partner program-management contract (worth up to $700 million for services through 2022 alone) — and the total consultant, planning, management, and administrative burden approaches $5 billion, or roughly a third of everything spent.
The remaining accounting goes to Authority operating overhead — 18-plus years of staff salaries, executive compensation, board operations, Sacramento office costs, and legal expenses — which is not captured in the capital outlay report but can be estimated at $1.1 to $1.5 billion over the project's life. And a trivial $39 million went to "Bookend Projects" — partial contributions to Caltrain electrification in the Bay Area and the Link Union Station project in Los Angeles. Caltrain's electrification is complete and revenue service on electric trainsets began in 2024; high-speed trains have not used it.
So the full picture is this: the money did not mostly go to studies. It went mostly to building a concrete skeleton — real earthworks, real structures — that cannot function as a transportation system because the track, wire, power, and rolling stock that would make it functional have not been funded, designed, or built. The studies consumed roughly a tenth of the total. The construction consumed most of it. And the construction produced, after eighteen years and $14.6 billion, a 119-mile roadbed through the Central Valley that no train will use by any near-term date that any analyst considers credible.
The Anatomy of an Undead Project
How does a project with no completed track, no viable funding plan, no federal partner, a legally non-compliant business plan, a leadership vacuum, and a cost trajectory that now spans from $126 billion to $231 billion — depending on which of its own documents you read — continue to command $1 billion per year in cap-and-trade revenue while a broke state cuts parks and homeless shelters?
The answer is not engineering. It is politics. The project creates construction jobs in the Central Valley, a region Democrats need electorally and Republicans represent legislatively. It is a standing rebuke to the Trump administration, allowing Sacramento to frame any attempt at fiscal rationality as "capitulation" to Washington. It has accumulated enough sunk costs — $14.6 billion — that canceling it would require accounting for the waste explicitly, which no politician wants on their record. And it has, until now, been subject to inspector general oversight that could produce findings inconvenient enough to force a reckoning.
AB 1608 threatens to remove that last check. The bill's confidentiality provision is not targeted at genuine security vulnerabilities — no credible threat actor needs an inspector general's audit to identify that California's high-speed rail project has a funding gap. The provision is targeted at the kind of finding that gets read into the legislative record, published on the front page, and cited in the next election cycle. The California News Publishers Association understands this. Assemblymember Dixon understands this. Senator Strickland understands this. Forty-five Assembly Democrats apparently do not — or do not wish to.
Marc Joffe, president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association, assessed the project's realistic ceiling with characteristic directness: "There's enough funding to maybe get us from Bakersfield to Merced. There's certainly no funding available that would be sufficient to connect that Central Valley segment to either Los Angeles or San Francisco." A Bakersfield-to-Merced rail connection between two agricultural cities that was promised as a San Francisco-to-Los Angeles bullet train is not a high-speed rail system. It is a monument to the gap between what California promises its voters and what it delivers.
The Eagles' haunted guests at the Hotel California used steely knives — and found the beast unkillable. California's taxpayers have tried audits, lawsuits, federal compliance reviews, legislative oversight hearings, gubernatorial promises, inspector general reports, and a 315-page federal termination notice. The beast is still on the budget. Now the Legislature wants to take away the knives.
- 1.Shannon, Madeline. "High-Speed Rail Bill Passes Assembly, Heads to Senate." The Center Square, May 5, 2026. https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_b0e5f730-05ad-4011-a101-9f3b2df66a21.html
- 2.California Legislative Information. "AB-1608, Office of the Inspector General, High-Speed Rail." California 2025–26 Regular Session. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1608
- 3.CalMatters. "Some California High-Speed Rail Records Could Remain Secret Under Proposed Law." February 5, 2026. https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/02/california-high-speed-rail-record-exemption/
- 4.CapRadio. "Critics Say Bill Creates 'Veil of Secrecy' Over California's High-Speed Rail Records." February 12, 2026. https://www.capradio.org/articles/2026/02/12/critics-say-bill-creates-veil-of-secrecy-over-californias-high-speed-rail-records/
- 5.Shannon, Madeline. "California High-Speed Rail Authority Misses Deadline for Plan." The Center Square, May 2, 2026. https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_577b0968-71f2-4818-9ecd-cb952ee6e3d0.html
- 6.Legislative Analyst's Office. "High-Speed Rail Draft 2026 Business Plan." Handout, Assembly Transportation Committee Oversight Hearing, April 27, 2026. https://lao.ca.gov/handouts/transportation/2026/High-Speed-Rail-Draft-2026-Business-Plan-042726.pdf
- 7.California Policy Center. "California High-Speed Rail at a Crossroads." February 19, 2026. https://californiapolicycenter.org/california-high-speed-rail-at-a-crossroads/
- 8.California Policy Center. "The 2026 Draft Business Plan Is Ambitious, Expensive, and Still Legally Problematic." March 2, 2026. https://californiapolicycenter.org/californias-high-speed-rail-the-2026-draft-business-plan-is-ambitious-expensive-and-still-legally-problematic/
- 9.U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation. "After 25 Years and Billions in Federal Subsidies, Not a Single Train Operating in California." February 5, 2026. https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2026/2/after-25-years-and-billions-in-federal-subsidies-not-a-single-train-operating-in-california
- 10.Fox Business. "California Abandons Legal Battle to Restore $4B in Federal Funding." December 28, 2025. https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/california-abandons-legal-battle-restore-4b-federal-funding-long-delayed-high-speed-rail-project
- 11.PBS NewsHour / Associated Press. "California Drops Lawsuit Seeking to Reinstate Federal Funding." December 27, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/california-drops-lawsuit-seeking-to-reinstate-federal-funding-for-high-speed-rail-project
- 12.CBS News San Francisco. "Trump Administration Moves to Pull California High-Speed Rail Funding After DOT Review." [315-page FRA Compliance Review cited therein.] June 4, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-high-speed-rail-federal-funding-cut/
- 13.Newsweek. "California High-Speed Rail Price Tag Explodes." May 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/california-high-speed-rail-price-tag-cost-11892797
- 14.Newsweek. "California High-Speed Rail: Where Candidates for Governor Stand." May 25, 2025 (updated 2026). https://www.newsweek.com/california-high-speed-rail-governor-candidate-position-2075115
- 15.CNN Politics. "Live Updates: California Governor Candidates Debate." [CNN gubernatorial debate, May 5, 2026 — HSR exchange between Villaraigosa, Hilton.] https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/05/politics/live-news/california-gubernatorial-candidates-will-take-cnn-debate-stage-and-primaries-in-ohio-indiana
- 16.The Daily Signal. "High-Speed Rail: Should Californians 'End the Nightmare'?" May 5, 2026. https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/05/05/high-speed-rail-should-californians-end-the-nightmare/
- 17.Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA-03). "Federal Funding Cut Off for CA High-Speed Rail Project." January 23, 2026. https://kiley.house.gov/posts/federal-funding-cut-off-for-ca-high-speed-rail-project
- 18.KEYT / News Channel 3-12. "Assemblymember Macedo Requests Legislative Audit of State's High-Speed Rail Project." February 18, 2026. https://keyt.com/news/california/2026/02/18/assemblymember-macedo-requests-legislative-audit-of-states-high-speed-rail-project/
- 19.Legislative Analyst's Office. "The 2026-27 Budget: Overview of the Governor's Budget." January 10, 2026. [Structural deficit projections: $27B, $22B, $23B through 2029-30.] https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5101
- 20.CalMatters commentary. "Here's How Newsom's Spending Binge Outstripped Revenues, Creating California's Chronic Deficit." February 13, 2026. [Petek quote: "$125 billion in budget problems solved."] https://calmatters.org/commentary/2026/02/newsom-spending-california-chronic-deficit/
- 21.CalMatters / Dan Walters. "California's Budget Bleeds Red Ink With Added Pressure to Cover Trump's Cuts." March 26, 2026. [$21B general fund shortfall; $125B in stopgap measures to date.] https://calmatters.org/commentary/2026/03/california-budget-red-trump-cuts/
- 22.Times of San Diego / The Center Square. "Agencies Discuss What to Cut as State Deals With $35 Billion Deficit." May 2, 2026. https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2026/05/02/agencies-cut-35b-deficit/
- 23.Mountain Top Times / Substack. "California High Speed Rail Cost Spikes to $231 Billion." May 8, 2026. [HSR Authority Draft 2026 Business Plan analysis; $14.6B spent, zero permanent track.] https://mountaintoptimes.substack.com/p/california-high-speed-rail-cost-spikes
- 24.California Streets and Highways Code, Section 2704.08 (Proposition 1A, November 4, 2008). No-operating-subsidy requirement. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=SHC§ionNum=2704.08
- 25.California High-Speed Rail Authority. "Draft 2026 Business Plan." Released February 28, 2026. https://hsr.ca.gov/about/executive-team/chief-executive-officer/business-plans/
- 26.California High-Speed Rail Authority. "FY2024-25 Capital Outlay and Expenditure Report." Data through May 31, 2025. [Official program-to-date expenditure breakdown by category: Project Development $1.65B; Construction $11.35B; Bookend Projects $39M.] https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Capital-Outlay-Budget-and-Expenditures-Report-July-2025-A11Y.pdf
- 27.Wikipedia. "Construction of California High-Speed Rail." [CP1 bid escalation: ~$1B to $2.2B via delay claims; Tutor Perini letter on right-of-way failures; Rail Delivery Partner contract with Parsons Brinckerhoff up to $700M.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_California_High-Speed_Rail
- 28.California High-Speed Rail Authority. "Chapter 6: Project Costs and Operations" [Palmdale to Burbank EIR/EIS, 2024 Business Plan methodology]. Professional services estimated at 18.5% of construction costs, broken down: preliminary engineering 2%, program management 3%, final design 6%, construction management 4%, agency costs 0.5%. https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/PB_06_ProjectCosts_A11Y.pdf
- 29.California High-Speed Rail Authority. "Economic Investment" program page. Claims $14.6B invested through June 2025; 98.6% of investment drove in-state economic activity. https://hsr.ca.gov/program-areas/economic-investment/
Comments
Post a Comment