High-Speed Rail and California’s Wasted Potential

This month was brutal for California’s High-Speed Rail. I’m not talking about this week’s announcement that the Trump Administration is investigating the project. That press conference may have received all the headlines, but it was less interesting than a 30-page report quietly released earlier this month by California’s High-Speed Rail Authority’s own Inspector General.

The report’s author used the title, “The Authority Is Unlikely to Complete the Segment as Currently Envisioned within Its Planned Schedule,” showing a rare level of candor for a government document. That’s bureaucrat for “we’re completely and utterly screwed.”

No one can claim partisan politics here, unlike the Trump Administration’s investigation. Governor Newsom appointed the author to his job just 18 months ago. This report is a rare recognition of failure, a government agency saying it is failing at its job. The only reason it’s not shocking is because Californians’ expectations are already so low. We’re accustomed to learning that public projects, even one backed by $10B of taxpayer funds, go nowhere. Instead of outrage, all we can muster is a collective shrug.

Californians should be livid. We're not even talking about the original vision promised to voters of a high-speed train from LA to SF by 2020. No, this damning report is about a measly 120-mile stretch between Merced and Bakersfield. This "starter segment" running through the state's flattest, friendliest terrain was Newsom's consolation prize after the original plan imploded. Now, even this modest section won't be done by the revised 2033 deadline, thirteen years after the entire line was supposed to be finished. Like all Californians, I want access to a functional high-speed rail line, but this project is a trainwreck in desperate need of a mercy killing and California has no one but itself to blame.

The true tragedy extends beyond one failed infrastructure project. High Speed Rail exemplifies a broader pattern of dysfunction that has become California's hallmark. From housing to water management to education, the rail project is just the latest example of how our state fails to deliver on its promises. It symbolizes California's deeper crisis: a state trapped in dysfunctional politics, squandering its vast potential.

The contrast with our private sector's accomplishments is comical. California launches rockets into space, designs self-driving cars, and builds world-leading AI systems, yet we can't lay train tracks through a valley. The same state home to the world's most valuable companies can't build enough housing for its teachers. The birthplace of modern technology can't modernize its infrastructure.

How do we reconcile the fact that America’s most innovative state may also be the most poorly governed?

The answer might be simple. Perhaps our advantages enable California’s poor leadership. Our immense economic power, natural resources, and global influence create the illusion that complacency and mismanagement have no cost.

This pattern isn't new. It's similar to the "paradox of plenty" in development economics, the idea that abundant resources can become a curse, enabling dysfunction instead of progress. Like a trust-fund heir burning through their inheritance, wealthy governments are shielded from the consequences of their mistakes.

Consider California’s staggering advantages. Our initial booms were driven by gold in the north and oil in the south. We have an ideal climate, deep-water ports, world-class agriculture, and stunning natural beauty. This wealth of opportunity led to an influx of optimistic migrants, first from America, then the entire world. We now have the world’s 5th-largest economy built on tech, trade, and entertainment, and maintain global cultural influence.

For decades, California operated as if we were exempt from basic governing rules. We made housing impossible to build, yet people kept coming. We raised taxes, yet the rich stayed. We mismanaged public funds, yet high-income earners and tech IPOs kept our budget afloat. The momentum of past success masked the consequences of dysfunction, and the party continued.

But at some point, the music stops. We feel that today. Our population growth has stalled. We have the highest poverty rate. Nearly two-thirds of voters feel the state is heading in the wrong direction. The California dream has curdled.

The high-speed rail project stands as the perfect emblem of this era: a broken system papered over by bold plans and blank checks. For decades, our leaders believed we could make grandiose announcements and throw money at problems, but it’s no longer enough. The gap between our ambition and execution is impossible to ignore.

California is wasting its potential and is at risk of becoming a shell of what it could be. The choice ahead is stark: acknowledge these failures and rebuild a government worthy of our state's legacy, or continue our slow slide from dysfunction into decline.

California’s story has always been one of reinvention. But reinvention requires the willingness to admit the status quo isn’t working. High Speed Rail was supposed to be a vision of the future, yet it has become a warning that ambition without execution goes nowhere. If California wants to remain the land of opportunity, we must stop coasting on past success and prove we can build.