With high-speed rail ambitions in California delayed by years and coming in at a higher-than-expected cost, Lou Thompson, who sat on the state's high-speed rail peer review group, said "failure is always an option."

He doesn't think failure is what will necessarily happen in California, but earlier ambitions have been scaled back. When California voters approved a bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2008, the estimated price tag was $33 billion, with a target completion date of 2020. Nearly two decades later, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is preparing to lay its first tracks to connect Bakersfield and Merced — a portion of the original route — with a target completion of 2033.

"When you have a project like this, and when the budget no longer permits you to finish it the way you wanted to, you start cutting off your arms and legs," Thompson said. 

What happened to California's plans

Rep. Vince Fong, a Republican representing California's Central Valley, sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He says that when California voters first approved high-speed rail, the promise and price tag were more of a marketing campaign than a realistic projection.

"We're now in 2026. There are no trains. There's no track laid," he said. "It was a complete bait and switch."

It became clear after voters approved the plan in 2008 that the specifics hadn't been worked out, Fong said. California Secretary of Transportation Toks Omishakin, who's relatively new to the job — agrees with that point. He's been left to answer for his predecessors.

"I don't think the voters fully understood and neither did we in the public sector what it was going to take to actually get this project delivered," Omishakin said. 

To get the necessary political buy-in from the whole state, the plan called for the train to run inland, threading the farmland of the Central Valley. But at the time, the California High-Speed Rail Authority hadn't answered basic questions, like precisely where it could lay down its tracks, the public and private property the route would traverse — what's known as right of way . 

So far, the state has had to negotiate roughly 3,000 parcels of land to run its train through the Central Valley leg, Omishakin said. 

California's environmental regulations have also slowed the process. Those regulations have triggered years-long reviews, lawsuits and delays — which, combined with the relatively high cost of labor and construction in the U.S., have also added to the price tag. 

While the federal government made modest contributions to the project under the Obama and Biden administrations, the financial burden fell chiefly on California, and when construction started, the state didn't have the financing to complete the full route. 

In 2019, with costs ballooning and the timeline years off schedule, bipartisan political pressure mounted. 

"Right now, there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A.," Gov. Gavin Newsom, who inherited the project, said at the time. 

Under Newsom, who didn't respond to repeated interview requests, California decided to focus on completing that initial Central Valley segment. It's a route few are likely to ride, according to the Rail Authority's own projections. The ultimate goal remains connecting northern and southern California. 

More than 20 countries have high-speed rail. Why doesn't the U.S.?

The American rail system was once envied around the world. In the 1800s, the U.S. government oversaw the birth of the transcontinental railroad, stitching the country together as it expanded westward.

In the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration decided to create and, critically, continuously fund the interstate highway system, fueling a car culture that still dominates today.

Meanwhile, Japan's bullet train opened in 1964. Today, more than 20 countries — largely in Europe and Asia — have high-speed rail, generally defined as cruising at 150 miles per hour or more. In Africa, Morocco has a train traveling at a top speed of nearly 200 miles an hour. And Egypt has broken ground on a high-speed rail line. 

"The simple answer is they've decided they want to do it and pay for it, and we haven't," Thompson said. 

Thompson, who is in his 80s said he's dubious about the prospect of seeing high-speed rail completed in the U.S. in his lifetime. 

"But maybe yours, I don't know," he said. 

Can a private company make high-speed rail work in the U.S.?

Brightline, a private company, believes it can achieve what California hasn't. In 2018, it opened a train between Miami and Orlando that hits top speeds of around 125 miles an hour. While it's not a high-speed rail, it's akin to a beta test for Brightline's next project: a bullet train connecting L.A. and Las Vegas in just two hours. It's a trip that can take five hours by car. 

"Brightline West will be true high-speed rail, first time in the country," Mike Reininger, managing director of Brightline West, said. "And we'll operate at speeds of about 200 miles an hour maximum."

Brightline is avoiding complicated right-of-way issues out west by running on the median of the I-15 highway. Construction has already begun on some of the station structures. The plan is to start service in late 2029. 

The company says building out west will also avoid the tragedy that has plagued the south Florida route, where trains run at street level, through crowded neighborhoods. In the near-decade since operations began, more than 200 people have been hit and killed by Brightline trains, according to numbers compiled by The Miami Herald and local public radio station WLRN. It will be safer out west, the company says, where train crossings won't be at street level. 

But there are also the finances. In Florida, stratospheric costs of building and running the rail line vastly outstrip revenues. Analysts have downgraded Brightline's debt to junk, raising questions about private rail as a business.

"The business has built slower than we originally expected it to build. We thought we would be carrying more passengers today than we are," Reininger said. "The business is in fact growing month over month, year over year. That's a great thing. That solidifies in our mind the viability of the business."

Brightline West has already received some federal funding and is hoping for a $6 billion loan from the Trump administration.

Can California get the high-speed rail project back on track? 

In California, there's not much hope for federal funding at the moment. In 2025, The Trump administration canceled $4 billion in grants previous administrations had committed to the state's bullet train project, calling it the "worst cost overrun I've ever seen." In a statement to 60 Minutes, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said the administration is in favor of high-speed rail, but this project has "wasted billions in taxpayer dollars yet delivered nothing..."

Omishakin said the California High-Speed Rail Authority believes it can complete the Central Valley segment without money from the federal government, but that the full route from L.A. to San Francisco would be challenging without it. 

Lou Thompson says large infrastructure projects like these require consistent, stable funding that only the federal government can provide, much like it did for the interstate highway system 70 years ago. Plus, he says, "a lot of the benefits of the project, the reason why you build a project, is public — pollution reduction, congestion reduction, improved safety, comfort — all of those things are public benefits."

Under a plan unveiled in February, the California High-Speed Rail Authority said it's hoping to shore up its finances by cutting costs, luring private investment and connecting to bigger cities much sooner. The current estimate for high-speed rail between L.A. and San Francisco is around $126 billion.