California's Transportation Secretary now concedes that "mistakes have been made" on the state's high-speed rail project, a venture sold to voters in 2008 at $33 billion that officials say will cost $126 billion to complete, with no track laid and no trains running nearly two decades later.
The admission from Toks Omishakin came during a 60 Minutes report that laid bare the staggering cost overruns, broken promises, and yawning funding gap behind what was once billed as a transformative public works project linking Los Angeles and San Francisco in under three hours.
That vision has not materialized. The project has been scaled back to a segment in the Central Valley. The only place it is even visible is Fresno, where locals have taken to mocking the idle concrete structures as "Stonehenge." And the earliest projected opening for any portion of the line is 2033, a quarter-century after California voters approved the bond measure.
Rep. Vince Fong did not mince words when he spoke to 60 Minutes about the project's trajectory:
"We're now in 2026. There are no trains. There's no track laid. It was a complete bait and switch."
Fong went further, calling the project the defining example of government dysfunction.
"The California High-Speed Rail nightmare is the probably quintessential example of government waste and mismanagement."
The numbers back him up. Voters were told in 2008 that the sleek bullet train would cost $33 billion. The current estimate to finish the full Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line sits at $126 billion, a figure the New York Post noted exceeds the total amount of federal funding Amtrak has received since it was established in 1971. That comparison alone should give every taxpayer in America pause.
And the money is not even there. The project faces a funding gap of roughly $90 billion. Federal funding has been yanked. Yet officials insist they will find the cash somehow.
Omishakin's concession that criticism of the project is "very fair" marks a rare moment of candor from a California official on the rail debacle. But his broader comments suggest Sacramento still does not grasp the scale of the credibility problem it faces.
The Transportation Secretary told 60 Minutes:
"I don't think the voters fully understood and neither did we... what it was gonna take to actually get this project delivered."
That sentence deserves a second read. The state asked voters to approve a $33 billion bond. Now, eighteen years later, an official says neither the public nor the government itself understood what the project required. The question voters might reasonably ask: then why did you put it on the ballot?
Omishakin also offered a note of confidence that strains belief given the track record, or rather, the absence of one:
"The entire amount... not there today. But do we believe we can get those funds to get the, the project done? Absolutely."
Ninety billion dollars short, no track in the ground, the earliest opening still seven years away, and the answer is "absolutely." That is not a plan. It is a wish.
The project's retreat from its original scope tells its own story. By 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged the obvious:
"Right now, there simply isn't a path... from San Francisco to LA."
His administration then scaled the project back to the Central Valley, a decision that traded the original coast-to-coast promise for a far more modest line between Bakersfield and Merced. That segment has seen some progress. But it is a long way from the bullet train that was supposed to rival Japan's Shinkansen.
This is hardly the first time Newsom has faced damaging scrutiny over his stewardship of California. The governor has built a record of ambitious rhetoric followed by results that fall short, a pattern his critics say extends well beyond the rail project.
Critics of the rail effort say the state has "wasted billions in taxpayer dollars yet delivered nothing." That characterization is difficult to argue with when the only physical evidence of the project in Fresno has earned the nickname "Stonehenge" from the people who live there.
Consider the timeline. In 2008, voters approved the project at $33 billion. By 2019, the governor admitted the full line was not feasible. By 2026, no track has been laid, the cost has ballooned to $126 billion, and the state faces a $90 billion funding gap with federal dollars pulled.
The original promise was a sub-three-hour ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Nearly two decades later, that vision remains exactly that, a vision.
Newsom's administration has drawn fire on multiple fronts beyond rail. Oil industry groups have pushed back on the governor's claims about gas prices, citing billions in extra costs imposed by state policy. The pattern is consistent: Sacramento promises transformation, delivers cost, and blames someone else when the bill comes due.
The $126 billion figure is worth sitting with. That sum exceeds every dollar the federal government has ever given Amtrak since 1971. It would fund entire national programs. And California officials are now asking the public to trust that they will somehow close a $90 billion gap on a project that has missed every benchmark it has ever set.
Meanwhile, Newsom has spent political energy on high-profile feuds rather than delivering results. He has clashed publicly with Elon Musk and picked fights with Washington, activities that generate headlines but do not lay rail.
Omishakin's admission that mistakes were made is a start. But admitting error without consequence is not accountability. It is public relations.
No one has been fired. No one has been held responsible for a cost estimate that was off by $93 billion and counting. No one has explained to voters why the project they approved in 2008 does not exist in 2026, and may not exist in any meaningful form until 2033 at the earliest.
The 60 Minutes report brought national attention to a debacle that Californians have watched unfold in slow motion for years. The "Stonehenge" label from Fresno residents captures something no official statement can: the gap between what was promised and what was built.
The broader question is whether any state government can be trusted with a project of this scale when the incentives all run in one direction, toward spending, not delivery. California approved the bond, spent billions, scaled back the plan, lost federal funding, and now asks for patience and more money. At what point does the public say enough?
Newsom's own press operation has drawn fire for its messaging choices on other fronts, raising questions about whether the governor's team is more focused on political positioning than on governing. The rail project is the most expensive example of that gap, but it is not the only one.
And the federal funding that was pulled? That detail matters. It means the $90 billion gap could grow. It means California may be on its own. And it means the state that could not deliver a $33 billion rail project is now asking someone, taxpayers, bondholders, future generations, to cover a bill nearly four times that size.
There is something fitting about the nickname Fresno residents chose. Stonehenge is ancient, mysterious, and no one is entirely sure what it was supposed to accomplish. California's high-speed rail project is younger but shares the same essential quality: a monument to ambition that never quite became what its builders intended.
The difference is that Stonehenge did not cost $126 billion.
Government works when it delivers what it promises at a price the public agreed to pay. By that measure, California's high-speed rail project is not government working. It is government failing, slowly, expensively, and with the people who approved it left holding the bill.
