Why California’s $33B Bullet Train Is Now a $231B Problem | WSJ

California’s high-speed rail project promised to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains traveling up to 220 mph. Eighteen years after voters approved Proposition 1A, the ambitious transportation project lacks any finished track and faces an uncertain future. Costs are now projected to reach $126 billion with land acquisition and regulatory hurdles still putting America’s largest active infrastructure endeavor in jeopardy.

WSJ travels to construction sites, analyzes satellite images and reviews legal filings to explain what comes next for the multi-billion-dollar project.

Chapters:
0:00 The California high-speed rail project
0:54 The overview
1:30 Construction in the Central Valley
2:45 Criticisms, costs and delays
4:36 Proposition 1A in 2008
5:25 The main issues from the beginning
9:01 Engineering challenges and the new “optimized plan”
10:31 Private investment and investigations

News Explainers
Some days the high-speed news cycle can bring more questions than answers. WSJ’s news explainers break down the day's biggest stories into bite-size pieces to help you make sense of the news.

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