California’s High-Speed Rail Project (HSRP) to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco is $13 billion over-budget and 11 to 12 years behind schedule, but that widely publicized boondoggle is far from unique among major transportation projects getting federal tax dollars, according to a new report made public by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).

Originally scheduled to be completed by 2018, the HSRP is now projected to be completed by 2030. It was originally planned to be built for $5 billion, but that total has now ballooned to more than $18 billion, with no guarantees against further cost increases, according to Ernst.

The troubled Golden State project, which has yet to lay down its first mile of high-speed track, may not even make it to completion in 2030 since President Donald Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy are terminating $4 billion slated for it via the Federal Railroad Administration. California officials are fighting the Department of Transportation (DOT) termination in federal court and in Congress.

The second most expensive rail project getting federal dollars is the Honolulu Rail Project, which was originally estimated to cost $5.1 billion to complete, but is now looking at a nearly $10 billion total tab. Launched with a 2020 completion date, the project’s supporters now hope to see it completed by 2031.

Maryland’s Purple Line Metro Extension is third on the list of costliest transportation rail projects, having ballooned from an original cost estimate of $2.4 billion to more than $5.5 billion. The initial projected completion date of 2020 has been extended multiple times due to court challenges from local residents in Maryland’s inner suburbs around the nation’s capital and is now slated for 2027.

The actual final bill for the Purple Line remains a mystery as well, the Cato Institute reports.

“The full extent of the Purple Line construction cost overrun is not fully known because it is embedded in an opaque Public Private Partnership (P3) relationship under which contractors are participating in the project. As originally planned in 2016, Maryland agreed to pay the contractor group $5.6 billion to build and operate the system for thirty years,” Cato said in a March 2024 report.

“By 2022, contract amendments had increased this amount to $9.3 billion, but the portion of the increase attributable to construction cost overruns is not clear. The latest delay will add a further $425 million to the overall contract cost,” Cato said.

Fourth on the Ernst list of most expensive federally-funded rail projects is California’s Transbay Corridor Core Capacity program, which is intended to increase transit traffic between San Francisco and Oakland via the Transbay Tube. Total costs for this project within the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system have spiraled from the original $2.4 billion to $4 billion.

Fifth on the list is the Queens Railroad Project in New York City, which has seen its projected final cost rise from $400 million to $1.4 billion. A combination project involving both the Queenslink and Interborough Express, the Queens project connects that borough with Brooklyn.

Cost delays are one measure of a rail project, but the time required to finish one is also crucial. The champion delayed project identified by the Iowa Republican lawmaker is the Columbus Crossroads Corridor Improvements that was originally slated for completion in 2018 but is now looking at a 2037 conclusion.

Ernst points to multiple factors cited by DOT officials as driving the higher costs and lengthy delays, including:

• Litigation/investigation (DOT notes that four of the overdue projects are not wrapped up yet, as a result of ongoing litigation or investigations but are otherwise complete.)
• Changes in scope or design.
• Utility issues.
• Red tape and environmental reviews.
• Higher prices/supply chain issues.

“While these are rather vague reasons, they raise some interesting questions. For example, what kind of design change would add more than $1 billion to the bottom line of any project? That’s a pretty big add-on,” Ernst observes.

Ernst also pointed out that circumstances that originally made sense of launching a massive project like the Transbay Corridor Core Capacity may no longer exist.

“Any problems with overcrowding may have resolved themselves amidst the delays and redesigns. BART ridership was already in decline prior to the pandemic, but trips are now at just 43 percent of pre-COVID levels, according to the California Transportation Commission,” Ernst pointed out.

And she noted that a recent San Francisco Chronicle news story declared that “on a recent Friday morning at the North Concord BART station, people exiting trains onto the platform were few and far between. Cows grazing placidly on the nearby hillsides seemed more plentiful.

“It’s no surprise: Ridership at the station was down more than 66 percent in 2024 compared with 2019. And trips to and from downtown San Francisco from the East Bay station were down even more, with 75 percent fewer trips in 2024 than before the pandemic.”

Ernst also noted that the BART system “is running on emergency federal funds that expire next year. At which point, the train could go over a ‘fiscal cliff,’ according to the transit agency. Little details like this raise big questions about the future of federal funding for billion-dollar boondoggles. Questions like, why should billions of dollars be spent increasing the capacity of a subway service that has lost so many passengers it can barely afford to stay on the tracks?”