Not content to pour billions of dollars into a high-speed rail sinkhole, California’s policymakers now have a plan to burn billions more on high-speed buses.
You can’t make up this stuff.
Kerry Jackson of the Pacific Research Institute wrote recently that California lawmakers have discussed a proposal put forward by state transportation bureaucrats to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco by buses that travel up to 140 mph. CalTrans sees this “as a potential enhancement to the state’s public transportation network.”
The proposal was endorsed by the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, who called the plan “a good idea” and “certainly an option to rail.”
That sounds a lot like the optimism proponents of the state’s bullet train boondoggle expressed 18 years ago when they hoodwinked California voters into approving the plan with $9 billion in seed money. Backers predicted that the build-out would cost $33 billion and be ready to roll in 2020.
Here we are today, halfway through 2026, and the state hasn’t laid a mile of track. The cost is now projected to hit $231 billion.
Obviously ignorant of the sunken-cost fallacy, California officials not only vow to plow forward with the train debacle, they also hope to expand into the bus business. What could go wrong?
As Mr. Jackson notes, a 2025 CalTrans study on the bus proposal foreshadows many of the same problems that have dogged the rail effort. The project would have to survive “impact assessments for noise, emissions and energy consumption” while also requiring a — bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo alert! — “multidisciplinary consortia with stakeholders including federal and state agencies, academia, automotive manufacturers and technology developers to leverage pooled resources and expertise.”
In other words, it would be buried in red tape before it ever got off the ground thanks to California’s regulatory morass. And while the plan is to use existing highway lanes “wherever possible,” the report acknowledges that the buses would require dedicated lanes to “mitigate risks associated with mixed traffic.”
The CalTrans report also finds that, “despite significant engineering hurdles, it is conceptually feasible to operate buses safely at high speeds under controlled conditions. However, real-world implementation requires incremental approaches, substantial investments in infrastructure, technology and rigorous validation through field tests.”
The study includes nothing about the cost or time frame. But whatever number CalTrans pulls out of thin air, triple it and you’ll still likely be underestimating the damage.
Whether the bus scheme is just a pie-in-the-sky dream or will actually move forward remains to be seen. But don’t feel sorry for Californians. They get what they vote for.
