Why California Can't Finish Its Bullet Train

They promised a 220 MPH bullet train from LA to San Francisco in under 3 hours. 18 years and over $100 billion later, there's still not one mile you can ride. This is the story of the California High-Speed Rail project — once America's most ambitious infrastructure dream, now one of the most expensive "boondoggles" in modern history. We dig into the political routing decisions, the outside consultant contracts, the CEQA lawsuits, and the abandoned concrete viaducts scattered across the Central Valley — a real-life train to nowhere that's become a case study in modern megaproject failure and engineering disaster. 🔔 Subscribe to BuiltToFail for more deep dives into the world's biggest engineering failures, abandoned megaprojects, and infrastructure disasters. ▶️ Liked this one? Watch our breakdown of Texas's own failed bullet train next.