The Brief

Seventeen years ago, Californians bet on a grand vision of the future. They narrowly approved a $10 billion bond issue to build a high-speed rail line that would zip between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. This technological marvel would slash emissions, revitalize the state’s Central Valley, and, with some financial help from the feds and private sector, provide the fast, efficient, and convenient travel Asia and Europe have long enjoyed.

State officials promised to deliver this transit utopia by 2020. Instead, costs have more than doubled, little track has been laid, and service isn’t expected to begin before 2030 — and only between Bakersfield and Merced, two cities far from the line’s ultimate destinations.

It’s little wonder the project finds itself in a precarious financial position, fighting political headwinds, and deemed a boondoggle by everyone from federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to Abundance authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

“In the time California has spent failing to complete its 500-mile high-speed rail system,” they wrote, “China has built more than 23,000 miles of high-speed rail.”

The reasons for this vary with who’s being asked, but people with expertise often cite three fundamental missteps: creating a new agency to lead the effort, failing to secure adequate funding from the start, and choosing a route through California’s agricultural heartland. The state’s strict environmental review process hasn’t helped, either.

Protestors voice their opposition to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who in February went to Union Station in L.A. to call California’s high-speed rail efforts a “boondoggle” and “failed experiment.”

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Rail's challenges

Such struggles are not unique to the Golden State, where support for the project remains strong. Although the private sector venture Brightline has seen some success, publicly funded high-speed rail efforts in Texas, Ohio, Washington, D.C., and beyond have stalled. Regulatory complexity, a political environment that favors cars and highways, and constant funding challenges stymie America’s aspirations even as other countries have spent big on tens of thousands of miles of track. Gov. Gavin Newsom promises to see the nation’s most ambitious rail project through despite recently losing all federal support, but its troubled path underscores the systemic challenges of building big in America.

California has always been a car-crazy place, and by the early 1990s, transportation studies made clear that its highways would not keep pace with the growth to come.

Policymakers saw an answer in bullet trains.

The Legislature established the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 1996 and gave it the tough job of planning, designing, building, and running the system.

Some consider that a mistake because the agency lacked experience managing so big a project and navigating complex bureaucracy. Even some rail supporters concede it would have been better to let the authority provide oversight and leave the heavy lifting to the state Department of Transportation, or CalTrans.

“It’s building a lot of overpasses and right-of-way, which Caltrans does all the time,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the UC Berkeley climate program in its Center for Law, Energy and the Environment.

Without that experience, the authority’s 10 employees relied heavily on consultants like engineering firm WSP, running up expenses.

“We paid WSP and their predecessor more than $800 million in consulting fees,” said Lou Thompson. He chaired the High Speed Rail Peer Review Group, established in 2008 to provide project oversight, from 2012 until 2024. The authority has in recent years eased its reliance on consultants, who reportedly have gone from 70% of its workforce to 45% over the past seven years.

Funding and politics

Once the High-Speed Rail Authority set up shop, work proceeded in fits and starts. Even as it considered routes and started the myriad bureaucratic tasks the project required, political interest waxed and waned with the state’s fiscal health. Skeptics lamented the cost and questioned whether bullet trains would attract enough riders to be worthwhile. But rail advocates, environmentalists, unions, and others kept pushing forward and in 2008 convinced voters to approve Proposition 1A, securing $10 billion to finance construction.

It was never going to be enough — at the time, the cost was pegged at $45 billion, a figure that did not account for inflation — and funding has been a challenge from the start.

Still, the Obama administration saw an opportunity to show that the economy was bouncing back from the Great Recession. The federal American Reinvestment Recovery Act provided $3.5 billion to help get things started. The authority, which had already mapped a route through the Central Valley, soon began grading land, moving utilities, and taking other steps toward construction of the first leg, a 119-mile stretch from Bakersfield to Madera.

Things chugged along until 2013, when a state judge blocked the use of Prop 1A funds, ruling that some of the work did not meet the rules for bond expenditures.

With federal support contingent upon the state’s cash, the federal grants had to be renegotiated — before they expired in 2017.

“We were literally sitting there saying, ‘Well, if we don’t start going, we could lose $700 [million] or $800 million of the federal money,” said Dan Richard, who was the High-Speed Rail Authority’s board chair from 2011 until 2019.

That prompted the agency to do something no one wanted to do: Move forward without having acquired all of the necessary land. So it did.

Then President Donald Trump took office. He seemed interested in what California was attempting to build, having lamented that China and Japan “have fast trains all over the place” while the U.S. relies upon “obsolete technology.” His opinion soured when Gavin Newsom became governor in 2019 and the two sparred over the president’s policies. Trump later canceled nearly $1 billion in federal funds for the rail project.

The Biden administration restored it and provided another $3.1 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The infusion was to help build a station in Fresno and acquire trains for testing. Even with the windfall, California remained at least $7 billion short of what it needed for the first short run through the Central Valley. The situation grew worse in July when Trump rescinded the entire amount after the Federal Railroad Administration said it saw no way of covering that shortfall and no path to completion by 2033.

Newsom said the move “reeks of politics," and the state is suing. But the impact goes beyond California by establishing a precedent to cancel projects at will.

“How do you go to your voters and say, ‘Put up the money. We expect 50% federal share,’ without knowing that the next administration could turn around and say, ‘I don’t like that project,’” Richard said.

The High-Speed Rail Authority initially planned to rely upon state, federal, and private sector funding in equal measure, but California has provided 75% of the $14.6 billion spent so far. The authority wrote in a letter to the Railroad Administration that Newsom’s plan to allocate $1 billion, pulled from the state’s cap-and-trade program, toward the project each year for 20 years will be enough to finish the Central Valley segment. The governor also recently signed a bill requiring the authority to update its estimate on the funding gap for that leg of the journey.

With California seemingly on its own, Thompson said the project needs an income stream approaching $5 billion a year to build everything. That is one reason the authority in June asked the private sector and financial institutions to weigh in on the chance of public-private partnerships. Its chief executive, Ian Choudri, said private investors have shown “extreme interest.”

Thompson isn’t buying it.

“My opinion is that that is hot air,” he said. The way he sees it, no one’s going to invest until they can see that there is demand for the rail line.

Politics and permitting

One of the reasons Brightline is held up as an example of how to bring high-speed rail to the United States is its strategy includes building on public land. Part of its 235-mile line between Miami and Orlando stands on land owned by Florida East Coast Railway. The company’s planned run between Las Vegas and L.A. will largely follow Interstate 15.

California could have done the same and built along the 5 Freeway, which bisects the Central Valley, but chose to go through major population centers 20 to 50 miles to the east. That pivotal decision increased the project’s cost and complexity. Following the freeway would have been straighter and flatter, without the elevated track, tunnels, and other infrastructure needed to traverse cities. The route also turned a state effort into a regional development project beset by local politics.

The High-Speed Rail Authority had good intentions, however. It hopes that bringing rail to places like Merced and Bakersfield might entice Silicon Valley and Los Angeles firms to open offices in the Central Valley, which would be a 90-minute ride from their headquarters. It also would boost local economies left behind by the state’s boom — and it has, to some extent. The project has added 11,000 construction jobs to the region. But that exacted its own toll.

“Those economic benefits have been really substantial, so that sort of worked, but it came at potentially the cost of not being able to build the system at all, because by starting it in the Central Valley they’ve basically blown all the money there,” said Elkind of the UC Berkeley Climate Program.

Should the state once again ask voters for money, it would have had a stronger case if initial construction had occurred in major population centers, he said.

The route also created additional hurdles as the project navigated California’s environmental oversight rules. Going through several cities and all that farmland increased the number of stakeholders who had to be consulted, ballooning the environmental review process.

To be fair, the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, has long protected the state’s rich biodiversity. But some rail proponents argue it has been used to stymie progress. High-Speed Rail Authority data shows it has spent more than $765 million on environmental review. Lawsuits stemming from CEQA can be particularly expensive.

“If you have a $100 billion project, and let’s say that interest rates are 3% a year, every year’s delay costs you $3 billion,” Thompson said. “A $50,000 lawsuit can delay you for a year, and so there’s an enormous pressure on you to try to bargain your way out of these kinds of situations.”

California recently loosened CEQA requirements for the rail system’s maintenance facilities and stations, a move Newsom cheered.

“These are very targeted exemptions that will help cut red tape and deliver on California’s vision of high-speed rail without compromising environmental protections,” gubernatorial spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor wrote in an email.

Whether that reform has an impact remains to be seen, because most of the environmental review is already completed.

And regulation was never the project’s biggest problem.

“It just seems like the easy, obvious answer,” said Hana Creger, associate director of climate equity at the Greenlining Institute. “But I think these things are a lot more complex.”

Progress on high-speed rail

Given all of this, it can be easy to lose sight of what progress has been made. The authority is quick to note that 463 miles of the 494-mile system has cleared the environmental review process and is “construction ready.” It also boasts of having laid 70 miles of guideway — meaning track, elevated structures, or other riding surface — and erected 57 structures. All told, the project has created more than 15,500 jobs since its inception.

Despite the challenges, Newsom remains steadfast in his determination to see Californians one day riding the trains they were promised so many years ago. “I want to get it done,” he said in May. “That’s our commitment.”

That will surely resonate with his constituents; recent polling shows 62% of voters believe the state should continue financing the project, though opinions split sharply along partisan lines. Still, experts caution that support isn’t enough. Tangible progress and credible funding streams are essential to maintain momentum.

The High-Speed Rail Authority seems to understand this and is pressing ahead to connect Bakersfield to either Merced or Gilroy.

There’s a lot to do before crews start laying track, but the goal is to finish that run by 2032 and the authority recently opened the bidding process to begin installing track next year.

Looking further ahead, its latest plan, released late last month, calls for extending the line south to Palmdale by 2038, putting it within 80 miles of San Francisco and 40 miles of L.A. at a cost of $87 billion.

“While challenges remain, so too does the potential to deliver a modern transportation system worthy of the state’s ambitions — one that reflects the scale, complexity and promise of California itself,” Choudri wrote in the plan. “Let’s go build it.”

Assuming the project retains its $4 billion federal grants, the project has $29 billion available, with an additional $15 billion from Newsom’s proposal, according to the CHSRA. Thompson said the governor’s proposal, which would set aside $1 billion every year for the project, should keep it alive for the next four years.

Beyond that, it will need an infusion of cash, likely from voters but possibly from a future presidential administration.

“I think the path forward is that they could show some first segment success and then go back to the voters,” Elkind said. “You just got to get through this first era here, and get something built that they can show to the voters.”

Ultimately, California’s high-speed rail is more than a train line; it is a test of the nation’s ability to deliver transformative infrastructure. Its path forward remains uncertain, but every mile of track laid could lead to a turning point — not just for the state, but for the broader goal of building the kind of transportation network other countries take for granted.

Perhaps nobody embodies artificial intelligence mania quite like Jensen Huang, the chief executive of chip behemoth Nvidia, which has seen its value spike 300% in the last two years.

A frothy time for Huang, to be sure, which makes it all the more understandable why his first statement to investors on a recent earnings call was an attempt to deflate bubble fears.

"There's been a lot of talk about an AI bubble," he told shareholders. "From our vantage point, we see something very different."

Take in the AI bubble discourse and something becomes clear: Those who have the most to gain from artificial intelligence spending never slowing are proclaiming that critics who fret about an over-hyped investment frenzy have it all wrong.

"I don't think this is the beginning of a bust cycle," White House AI czar and venture capitalist David Sacks said on his podcast All-In. "I think that we're in a boom. We're in an investment super-cycle."

White House AI adviser David Sacks speaks onstage during The Bitcoin Conference at The Venetian Las Vegas in January.

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"The idea that we're going to have a demand problem five years from now, to me, seems quite absurd," said prominent Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz, adding: "if you look at demand and supply and what's going on and multiples against growth, it doesn't look like a bubble at all to me."

Appearing on CNBC, JPMorgan Chase executive Mary Callahan Erdoes said calling the amount of money rushing into AI right now a bubble is "a crazy concept," declaring that "we are on the precipice of a major, major revolution in a way that companies operate."

Yet a look under the hood of what's really going on right now in the AI industry is enough to deliver serious doubt, said Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist who is now a research fellow at MIT's Institute for the Digital Economy.

He said there is a startling amount of capital pouring into a "revolution" that remains mostly speculative.

"The technology is very useful, but the pace at which it is improving has more or less ground to a halt," Kedrosky said. "So the notion that the revolution continues with the same drum beat playing for the next five years is sadly mistaken."

The huge infusion of cash

The gusher of money is rushing in at a rate that is stunning to financial experts.

Take OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker that set off the AI race in late 2022. Its CEO Sam Altman has said the company is making $20 billion in revenue a year, and it plans to spend $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next eight years. That growth, of course, would rely on ever-ballooning sales from more and more people and businesses purchasing its AI services.

There is reason to be skeptical. A growing body of research indicates most firms are not seeing chatbots affect their bottom lines, and just 3% of people pay for AI, according to one analysis.

"These models are being hyped up, and we're investing more than we should," said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

"I have no doubt that there will be AI technologies that will come out in the next ten years that will add real value and add to productivity, but much of what we hear from the industry now is exaggeration," he said.

Nonetheless, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are set to collectively sink around $400 billion on AI this year, mostly for funding data centers. Some of the companies are set to devote about 50% of their current cash flow to data center construction.

Or to put it another way: every iPhone user on earth would have to pay more than $250 to pay for that amount of spending. "That's not going to happen," Kedrosky said.

To avoid burning up too much of its cash on hand, big Silicon Valley companies, like Meta and Oracle, are tapping private equity and debt to finance the industry's data center building spree.

Paving the AI future with debt and other risky financing

One assessment, from Goldman Sachs analysts, found that hyperscaler companies — tech firms that have massive cloud and computing capacities — have taken on $121 billion in debt over the past year, a more than 300% uptick from the industry's typical debt load.

Analyst Gil Luria of the D.A. Davidson investment firm, who has been tracking Big Tech's data center boom, said some of the financial maneuvers Silicon Valley is making are structured to keep the appearance of debt off of balance sheets, using what's known as "special purpose vehicles."

An aerial view of a 33 megawatt data center with closed-loop cooling system in Vernon, California.

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The tech firm makes an investment in the data center, outside investors put up most of the cash, then the special purpose vehicle borrows money to buy the chips that are inside the data centers. The tech company gets the benefit of the increased computing capacity but it doesn't weigh down the company's balance sheet with debt.

For example, a special purpose vehicle was recently funded by Wall Street firm Blue Owl Capital and Meta for a data center in Louisiana.

The design of the deal is complicated but it goes something like this: Blue Owl took out a loan for $27 billion for the data center. That debt is backed up by Meta's payments for leasing the facility. Meta essentially has a mortgage on the data center. Meta owns 20% of the entity but gets all of the computing power the data center generates. Because of the financial structure of the deal, the $27 billion loan never shows up on Meta's balance sheet. If the AI bubble bursts and the data center goes dark, Meta will be on the hook to make a multi-billion-dollar payment to Blue Owl for the value of the data center.

Such financial arrangements, according to Luria, have something of a checkered past.

"The term special purpose vehicle came to consciousness about 25 years ago with a little company called Enron," said Luria, referring to the energy company that collapsed in 2001. "What's different now is companies are not hiding it. But having said that, it's not something we should be leaning on to build our future."

Enormous spending hinging on returns that could be a fantasy

Silicon Valley is taking on all this new debt with the assumption that massive new revenues from AI will cover the tab. But again, there is reason for doubt.

Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that Big Tech companies will dish out about $3 trillion on AI infrastructure through 2028, with their own cash flows covering only half of that.

"If the market for artificial intelligence were even to steady in its growth, pretty quickly we will have over-built capacity, and the debt will be worthless, and the financial institutions will lose money," Luria said.

Twenty-five years ago, the original dot-com bubble burst after, among other factors, debt financing built out fiber-optic cables for a future that had not yet arrived, said Luria, a lesson, it appears, tech companies are not worried about repeating.

"If we get to the point after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers that we don't need a few years from now, then we're talking about another financial crisis," he said.

Circular deals raise even more concern

Another aspect of the over-heated AI landscape that is raising eyebrows is the circular nature of investments.

Take a recent $100 billion deal between Nvidia and OpenAI.

Nvidia will pump that amount into OpenAI to bankroll data centers. OpenAI will then fill those facilities with Nvidia's chips. Some analysts say this structure, where Nvidia is essentially subsidizing one of its biggest customers, artificially inflates actual demand for AI.

"The idea is I'm Nvidia and I want OpenAI to buy more of my chips, so I give them money to do it," Kedrosky said. "It's fairly common at a small scale, but it's unusual to see it in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars," noting that the last time it was prevalent was during the dot-com bubble.

Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks during Snowflake Summit 2025 at Moscone Center in June.

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Lesser-known companies are getting in on the action, too.

CoreWeave, once a crypto mining startup, pivoted to data center building to ride the AI boom. Major AI companies are turning to CoreWeave to train and run their AI models.

OpenAI has entered deals with CoreWeave worth tens of billions of dollars in which CoreWeave's chip capacity in data centers is rented out to OpenAI in exchange for stock in CoreWeave, and OpenAI, in turn, could use that stock to pay its CoreWeave renting fees.

Nvidia, meanwhile, which also owns part of CoreWeave, has a deal guaranteeing that Nvidia will gobble up any unused data center capacity through 2032.

"The danger," said the MIT economist Acemoglu,"is that these kinds of deals eventually reveal a house of cards."

Some high profile investors see bubble-popping on the horizon

Some influential investors are showing signs of bubble jitters.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel sold off his entire stake in Nvidia worth around $100 million earlier this month. That came after SoftBank sold a nearly $6 billion stake in Nvidia.

And in recent weeks, AI bubble pessimists have rallied around Michael Burry, the hedge-fund investor who made hundreds of millions of dollars betting against the housing market in 2008. He was the subject of the 2015 film The Big Short. Since then, though, he's had a mixed reputation for market predictions, having warned about imminent collapses that never came to pass.

For what it's worth, Burry is now betting against Nvidia, accusing the AI industry of hiding behind a bunch of fancy accounting tricks. He's homed in the circular deals between companies.

"True end demand is ridiculously small. Almost all customers are funded by their dealers," Burry wrote on X. He later wrote: "OpenAI is the linchpin here. Can anyone name their auditor?"

As tech companies sink billions into data centers, some executives themselves are freely admitting there looks to be some over exuberance.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told reporters in August: "Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes."

And Google chief executive Sundar Pichai told the BBC recently that "there are elements of irrationality" in the AI market right now.

Asked how Google would fare if the bubble burst, Pichai responded: "I think no company is going to be immune, including us."

Copyright 2025 NPR

A record number of people are expected to travel within the U.S. for Thanksgiving, be it plane, train or automobile.

Nearly 82 million are projected to travel at least 50 miles from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, an increase of 1.6 million people compared to last year's holiday, according to an AAA report released on Monday.

Most of them will be hitting the road in a car, with about 73.2 million people expected to drive, AAA said. That's 1.8% more car travelers compared to the 2024 holiday period.

AAA projected 6 million people to travel by plane within the country for the holiday, a 2% increase from last year. Due to concerns over recent flight delays and cancellations, however, AAA also said that number could end up dropping slightly if travelers make last-minute arrangements to use other forms of transportation. Staffing shortages during the prolonged government shutdown earlier this month resulted in mass flight disruptions.

The FAA lifted its directive that called for an emergency reduction in flights, allowing airlines to return to operating normally. Aviation experts warned it could take some time before flights return to normal, but industry leaders appeared confident that airline operations would return to normal pre-shutdown levels in time for the Thanksgiving travel frenzy. Weather forecast to bookend the holiday in some parts of the country could cause flight disruptions and delays.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Friday it expected the upcoming holiday rush to be the busiest Thanksgiving travel time for air travel in 15 years, with Tuesday being the busiest flying day.

Travel across other transport modes — bus, train and cruise — was forecast to increase 8.5% this year, with a likely uptick in last-minute bus and train bookings

"People are willing to brave the crowds and make last-minute adjustments to their plans to make lifelong memories, whether it's visiting extended family or meeting up with friends," Stacey Barber, vice president of AAA Travel said in a statement on Monday.

Here is what else to know:

Driving in the afternoon? Think again

Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon are expected to be the most congested times for drivers in major metro areas, according to INRIX, a transportation analytics firm.

If driving, the best times to hit the road for the holiday will be before noon on Tuesday and 11 a.m. on Wednesday to avoid backups, according to the firm. Thanksgiving Day will have minimal road traffic impacts.

When returning home after the holiday, travelers are advised to start driving before noon on any day except Monday. The Sunday after Thanksgiving will likely have heavy traffic most of the day and the best time to travel Monday will be after 8:00 p.m., INRIX said.

Weather could be messy, but should clear up for your trip back

During peak travel times, from Monday through Wednesday, rain extending from Southern Texas up to Minnesota will move across the country to the east, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

"Monday into Tuesday will probably be a little problematic anywhere from Texas, eastern Oklahoma, into Arkansas and northwestern Louisiana," Bob Oravec, lead forecaster for the NWS, told NPR.

By Thanksgiving Day, things will be a little drier across the U.S. Temperatures will be colder than average for a majority of the country on Thanksgiving morning, with central parts of the U.S. seeing temperatures in the teens. On Black Friday, there will be warmer than average temperatures from the Great Plains to the West Coast, with places like Denver, Colo., seeing temperatures in the mid-50s, Oravec said.

Some of the worst weather will be across much of the central and eastern U.S. where there will be lake-effect snow showers coming off the Great Lakes, Oravec said.

For holiday travelers returning home on Friday and Saturday, the weather should be decent for a large portion of the country, he said. But a storm system is expected to develop over the weekend.

On Saturday and Sunday, the system could bring heavy snow across western Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota as well as parts of Minnesota into Wisconsin, according to Oravec. On Sunday, from Texas up into Missouri and Illinois, chances of rain are forecast to increase.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Some of the red ink in California’s budget deficit is coming from unplanned spending in state prisons, according to a new report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is on track to exceed its budget by roughly $850 million over three years despite recent cuts that include four prison closures and some labor concessions that trimmed payroll expenses. The state budget included $17.5 billion for prisons this year.

The office attributed the corrections department’s shortfall to both preexisting and ongoing imbalances in its budget. The analyst’s annual fiscal outlook projected a nearly $18 billion deficit for the coming year, which follows spending cuts in the current budget.

The corrections department last year ran out of money to pay its bills. In May, it received a one-time allocation of $357 million from the general fund to cover needs including workers’ compensation, food for incarcerated people and overtime.

Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco in a June 17 letter to the Department of Finance said he was “shocked and disappointed that (the corrections department) overspent its budget by such a significant amount” while the state faced a $12 billion general fund shortfall that resulted in cuts to key health care and social service programs.

“These were dollars that could have been used to provide basic services to some of our most underserved communities,” wrote Wiener. “While this year’s budget included measures requiring departments to ‘tighten their belts’ and reduce state operating expenses by up to 7.95%, (the corrections department) did the opposite, and overspent by nearly three percent.”

Without having any new dedicated funding to align its actual costs with its budget, Wiener warned, deficits “will likely persist” and put additional pressure on the general fund in years to come.

That’s despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attempts to save the state money through prison closures. Newsom in May moved to close the state prison in Norco in Riverside County next year, the fifth prison closure under his tenure.

Newsom’s administration estimates it saves about $150 million a year for each prison closure, which lawmakers and advocates regard as the only way to significantly bring down corrections spending. A spokesperson for Newsom’s Finance Department declined to comment on the analyst’s projection. Newsom will release his next budget proposal in January.

“We are allowing wasteful prison spending to continue while Californians are being told to tighten their belts and brace for deep federal cuts to core programs,” said Brian Kaneda, deputy director for the statewide coalition Californians United for a Responsible Budget in a statement to CalMatters. “We are spending millions on prisons that could be safely closed. That is government waste, not public safety.”

A new electric streetcar service connecting Garden Grove and Santa Ana is currently undergoing testing. If all goes as planned, the new service will be in operation starting next summer.

The nearly $650 million project — funded through a combination of state, federal and local funds — was originally set to begin service in 2021, but has been beset by rising costs and delays.

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Back on track

Darrell E. Johnson, Orange County Transportation Authority's CEO, told LAist that the service is 95% complete. The current testing phase could take anywhere between six and 12 months.

That means testing the train pulls out of the platform properly, control systems are operating properly, and that the train system interfaces with the street signal system along its route.

All aboard

Each car is over 90 feet long and has the capacity to carry up to 211 passengers.

“The fleet itself is eight vehicles. The service that we plan to run will take six of them every day.” Johnson said.

The new service will travel across some of densest areas of Orange County, ferrying an expected 5,000 passengers a day across the route's 10 stops.

The eastern side of the route starts at Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center, where over 50 Amtrak and Metrolink trains pass through daily.

The Civic Center for the county — which houses state, federal and county courthouses as well as Santa Ana City Hall — is in the middle of the route.

The service will end at the Harbor Boulevard — a heavily used bus route that sees more than 10,000 passengers a day.

The front view of an OC Streetcar on tracks.

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Transportation future

OCTA says it plans to charge the exact same amount as their bus system to ride the streetcar service — $2 one way or $5 for a day pass.

The service is slated to run every day from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., with extended hours on weekends.

Officials are hoping for an Aug. 1 launch next year. And they don't anticipate stopping there.

“This is the beginning of something, whether we go north on Harbor Boulevard or South on Bristol Street or we continue westerly towards Artesia, Cerritos and LAX,” Johnson said. “That’s probably a decision that will be discussed in the next two to five years.”