California’s high-speed rail project has surged from the original $33 billion to a staggering  $231 billion. As Katy Grimes of the California Globe explains, that markup started in 2008, when voters approved Proposition 1A. Nearly 20 years later, the vaunted “bullet train” has yet to carry a single passenger.

For UCLA economist Lee Ohanian, the rail system is a fantasy with “no path to completion,” and the only reasonable decision is “to end a project that never should have begun.” As the Globe’s Megan Barth reports, that could now become a more difficult matter. 

Assembly Bill 1608, by Suisun City Democrat Lori Wilson, “would rename and expand the powers of the High-Speed Rail Authority’s Inspector General while creating broad exemptions to withhold audit records, internal documents, and any information that could ‘reveal weaknesses’ in the project.” Rep. Kevin Kiley claims “our country has never seen a fiscal disaster of this magnitude,” which invites a comparison with the new span of the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland.

The old span, damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, was repaired in one month and could have been retrofitted for $230-250 million. California opted for a stylish new span originally pegged at $1.5 billion. The span came in 10 years late and cost $6.5 billion, but........

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