California high‑speed rail project now estimated to cost $126 billion | KTLA
For that price, one could purchase 828,947,368 round trip air fares between San Francisco and Los Angeles based on Expedia prices for mid-July 2026. Air time is about one hour.
That’s shy of 1 billion airfares for the construction cost. Currently, air passengers make 3.5 to 4 million air trips per year between the Bay area and Los Angeles (count includes all air carrier airports including San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland in the north, and Los Angeles, Burbank, Santa Ana, Long Beach, etc, in the south).
That is a cumulative total for both directions – it could be, for example, 2 million flying south and 2 million flying north. The total varies somewhat from year to year. The $126B cost of construction could pay for 200 years of airfares (at current prices)! Assuming various changes – like more people traveling or costs changing – at a minimum, the costs would probably fund at least 100 years of travel!
The estimated cost of a train ticket on the CHSR is estimated to be $172 round trip. Travel time would be an estimated 2 hours 20 minutes.
The project was approved in 2008 and as of 2025, is forecast to be complete in 2050 – or 42 years of construction.
It took six years to build the first intercontinental railroad – in the 1860s, using extensive manual labor.
The California High Speed Rail project appears to be a poorly conceived, poorly implemented, over priced, poorly managed project that makes no financial sense as of 2026.
