Last month, California rail officials revealed that the high-speed rail may start service with slower diesel trains. This is in an effort to continue forward with the high-speed rail project and add revenue without adding more increases to the project’s costs. A report released last month also revealed that, by 2028, electric trains capable of […]

According to an audit release in May, the state paid for a Caltrans manager to commute from San Diego to Sacramento for work for two years. The audit states that the manager was reimbursed around $30,000 for airfare and car rentals, plus an additional $12,000 for meals, lodging and other costs from 2016 through 2018. […]

In late April, an internal draft report by the state rail authority’s staff revealed that the cost to build the 119-mile section of the California bullet train in the Central Valley is projected to increase by $1.8 billion. If this draft report is accurate, that would mean that the total cost for this stretch of […]

In late February, a nonpartisan report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) claimed that an account used to fund 95 percent of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles’ expenses will soon become insolvent. LAO predicts that the $3.9 billion Motor Vehicle Account will collapse in a few years, which will affect funds for the California […]

According to the Los Angeles Times, the California High Speed Rail Authority will have to increase daily spending by up to nine times over the next four years in order to hit its 2033 deadline and $77 billion budget. Shockingly, the California bullet train project has cost state taxpayers an average of $3.1 million a […]

According to a Sacramento Bee analysis of travel records since 2013, the California Legislature has spent over $192,000 in public funds for international travel by staff members. Locations included places such as Japan, Paris, Brazil, Mexico City, and Cuba. Last year, the Legislature’s annual expenditures topped $267 million, primarily for salaries and benefits, with staff […]

When the California High-Speed Rail Authority awarded its first contracts for construction of the bullet-train route in Fresno and Madera counties in 2013, the cost to move utilities such as AT&T and PG&E out of the way was estimated at about $25 million. Unfortunately, that figure has been severely underestimated. Now, five years later, the […]

The U.S. Department of Transportation will audit California’s high-speed rail project as costs continue to increase. The inspector general’s audit was announced last month and will examine the Federal Railroad Administration’s oversight of almost $3.5 billion in federal grant money awarded to the rail project. State auditors are also conducting a review of the rail […]

Last month, the California High-Speed Rail Authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would increase to $77.3 billion and could increase as high as $98.1 billion, which is an increase of at least $13 billion from estimates two years ago. The rail authority claims that the earliest trains could operate […]

The economic disparity is surreal in Silicon Valley, as young millionaires dine on expensive meals and purchase expensive products without hesitation, thousands of families in the same area can’t afford a home. Many of the homeless in Silicon Valley work regular jobs, in some cases serving the very people whose sky-high net worth is the […]