California’s high-speed rail project is getting a lot of criticism, with people calling it a big example of government waste and inefficiency. Business owner and politician Vivek Ramaswamy is one of the people asking for federal funding to stop. He called the project a “wasteful vanity project” that has cost billions of taxpayer dollars with little to show.
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In a tweet, Ramaswamy voiced his disapproval of the ongoing funding, highlighting that former President Donald Trump had rescinded approximately $1 billion in federal funds for the project in 2019. Additionally, he attacked President Biden for overturning that decision, intensifying his criticism of what he perceives as a bad investment. “Time to end the waste,” Ramaswamy continued, succinctly expressing his stance.
Ramaswamy's tweet came as a reaction to a post that pointed out that the California high-speed rail project has seen massive cost overruns and delays. The quoted L.A. Times article noted that the project is now $100 billion over budget, with a completion date that keeps getting pushed back – and as of now, no set timeline for when the trains might actually run between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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The idea of connecting California's major cities with a high-speed rail sounded promising when voters approved it in 2008. But what started as a $33 billion plan has since ballooned to over $100 billion, with continuous delays and questions about whether it will ever be finished. Originally, the goal was to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco in under three hours, but even after billions have been spent, the rail remains incomplete, with only 119 miles under construction, mostly in the Central Valley.
The project has become a source of contention in California, where it's simultaneously seen as a job creator for the Central Valley and a major money pit with uncertain prospects. However, the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s data shows that the rail has created 92,000 job-years of employment, spurred $7 billion in total direct labor income earned by workers on the project and $18 billion in total economic activity and brought some new life to local communities.
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According to the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), high-speed rail (HSR) brings many benefits: it supports domestic manufacturing, connects megaregions to boost local economies, helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions by saving up to 800 million tons of CO2 over 40 years and avoids costly infrastructure upgrades, which could save up to $199 billion compared to expanding highways and airports.
Ramaswamy isn’t the only one expressing frustration. Elon Musk, who will work with Ramaswamy in the upcoming DOGE agency, replied with a simple “Yes” to his tweet, agreeing with his opinion. Musk has previously criticized costly rail projects and cited his own business, The Boring Company, as a solution that may address these problems for a lot less money. On the other hand, other than a few continuing projects like the Vegas Loop and some tunnel boring trials in Texas, it appears like Musk’s organization isn’t making any great strides.
However, Musk has a history of promoting ideas that sound good but don’t really solve the problems with our heavy use of cars. The Boring Company was supposed to fix traffic, but instead, it became a Las Vegas attraction. As author Paris Marx pointed out in a Time article, Musk even admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that the Hyperloop was just a way to convince lawmakers to stop plans for California’s high-speed rail, even though he never planned to actually build it. Critics say these actions have slowed down real solutions, like better public transit.
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