by
How do we process your data?
We use cookies to improve your browsing experience and personalize our content. They are mainly used for statistical purposes.
Zero. That’s the number of kilometers of high-speed rail in service in the United States in 2026. Zero, even though the country has the world’s largest rail network. While France has been operating the TGV for over forty years, Japan launched the Shinkansen as early as 1964, and China built the majority of the world’s high-speed rail network in just fifteen years, the United States remains dependent on airplanes and cars for long-distance travel.
Yet a high-speed rail project was indeed launched in the United States in 2008, in the country’s wealthiest state: California. On paper, everything seemed in place for success: billions of dollars in investment, strong climate goals, and the promise of connecting California’s major cities at speeds exceeding 300 km/h. And yet, more than fifteen years after its launch, the California high-speed rail project has become one of the most controversial in the world. Repeated delays, skyrocketing costs, unfinished sections… To the point of raising a simple question: why is it so difficult to build high-speed trains in certain countries?
We’ll take you behind the scenes of this extraordinary project to understand what went off the rails—and what this says more broadly about our ability to carry out major rail projects today. How did the world’s first major railway power miss the high-speed train? An in-depth look.
What is the project? To connect San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes via a train traveling at 350 km/h. Approved by referendum in 2008 with an initial budget of $33 billion.
Why hasn’t it been built yet? Three main reasons: skyrocketing costs (the budget has more than tripled, reaching $113 billion in 2024), instability in federal funding (Trump cut $4 billion in 2025), and legal proceedings related to land expropriations.
What is the status in 2026? Construction is progressing in the Central Valley. The first stations will begin construction in 2026, and the opening of the first segment is scheduled for 2032. California is now funding the project without federal assistance.
What role did Elon Musk play in the project’s difficulties? In 2013, he launched the Hyperloop to encourage elected officials to abandon the California high-speed rail project, with no intention of building it himself. Since 2025, he has contributed from the DOGE to the elimination of $4 billion in federal funding.
With more than 220,000 kilometres of track, the United States has the largest railway network in the world. Rail is a founding element of the country's territory: it connected entire regions, gave rise to cities where there was nothing, and built a powerful cultural mythology around the conquest of the West.
And yet, despite this deeply rooted history, the country has not a single kilometre of high-speed line today. Not one.
The structural reason is straightforward: of those 220,000 km of track, more than 95% are dedicated to freight. Passenger rail, and high-speed rail in particular, has never been a national priority. Investment has historically flowed toward automobiles, aviation, and fossil fuels.
While France has operated the TGV for more than forty years and China built the majority of the world's high-speed network in barely fifteen, the United States remains dependent on planes and cars for long-distance travel.
The San Francisco–Los Angeles corridor stretches 600 kilometres and connects two of the most economically dynamic hubs in the world. Today, that journey is made either by car on regularly congested highways, or by plane with all the constraints of air travel. In a state of nearly 40 million people, this has become a major economic drag.
On 4 November 2008, Proposition 1A was passed with 52.7% of the vote: it greenlit the construction of America's first high-speed train, targeting a top speed of 350 km/h and an opening date of 2020. In 2010, Barack Obama injected an additional $2.35 billion through a stimulus package. At that point, everything seemed aligned.
The project quickly ran into a reality very different from that of major European or Asian infrastructure projects. The California High-Speed Rail Authority chose to begin construction in the Central Valley, between Merced and Bakersfield — a sparsely populated agricultural area, widely mocked as a train "from nowhere to nowhere." That choice, driven by technical considerations (simpler terrain, fewer tunnels), immediately undermined confidence in the project.
On the legal front, property rights in the United States are extremely well protected. Every land acquisition can trigger litigation, significantly slowing construction. A researcher who has studied the project since 2011 identifies four types of ongoing conflict: political, territorial, procedural, and uncertainty-related. These tensions feed off one another and make progress exceptionally difficult.
The direct consequence of this complex environment: costs spiralled. Estimated at $33 billion in 2008, the budget had doubled by 2012 to $68 billion, then climbed to $77 billion in 2018, $100 billion in 2022, and $113 billion in 2024. In sixteen years, the bill has more than tripled, without a single stretch of line having entered service.
In 2013, Elon Musk unveiled Hyperloop: capsules travelling at very high speed through vacuum-sealed tubes, capable of linking San Francisco to Los Angeles in around thirty minutes. The concept generated worldwide excitement and immediately entered the debate as an alternative to California's high-speed rail.
Except that, according to Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk — as reported by Paris Marx in Time — Hyperloop was conceived in part to discredit the rail project, with no real intention of ever building it. Musk himself described the California project as an example where "incompetence becomes indistinguishable from fraud." Hyperloop never came to be: every company that pursued it has since shut down or walked away. But its impact was real: it diverted attention and fuelled criticism for years.
The project has suffered from chronic funding instability directly tied to political shifts in Washington. During his first term, Donald Trump had already cut nearly $1 billion in federal grants in 2019, before California won the dispute in court. Joe Biden's arrival allowed the project to be relaunched with a fresh $3.1 billion envelope under the infrastructure law.
That reprieve was short-lived. In July 2025, the federal government, with Elon Musk heading DOGE, terminated $4 billion in funding, calling the line a poorly designed and unnecessary project. The project's daily cost, estimated at $1.8 million, is regularly cited to fuel criticism.
Faced with this instability, California radically changed course. Rather than depending on a federal partner deemed unreliable, the state is betting on its own resources: its cap-and-trade programme generates around $1 billion per year through 2045. At the same time, the Rail Authority is seeking private investors - pension funds and sovereign wealth funds - drawn to long-term infrastructure projects.
Despite the difficulties, the project continues to move forward. The first stations are entering construction in 2026, track-laying is set to begin the same year, and the opening of the first segment is now expected in 2032 at the earliest — with the full SF–LA line potentially completed between 2038 and 2039. Economic studies point to significant potential benefits, with several billion dollars of activity generated each year once the line is in service.
The story of California's high-speed rail goes far beyond a single infrastructure project. It illuminates the difficulties faced by Western democracies in delivering long-term projects amid political instability. California's high-speed train does not yet exist, but for the first time in a long while, it seems possible again that it one day will.
Issue du monde de la communication et des médias, Sophie est Responsable éditoriale chez HOURRAIL ! depuis août 2024. Elle est notamment derrière le contenu éditorial du site ainsi que La Locomissive (de l'inspiration voyage bas carbone et des bons plans, un jeudi sur deux, gratuitement dans ta boîte mail !).
Convaincue que les changements d’habitude passent par la transformation de nos imaginaires, elle s’attache à montrer qu’il est possible de voyager autrement, de manière plus consciente, plus lente et plus joyeuse. Son objectif : rendre le slow travel accessible à toutes et tous, à travers des astuces, des décryptages et surtout, de nouveaux récits.
