California Bullet Train Could Run Out of Cash by December 2027, Inspector General Warns

California's High-Speed Rail Authority will run out of money as soon as December 2027 unless it secures new financing, according to a warning from the project's Office of Inspector General. The oversight report puts the funding shortfall for the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line at $9.5 billion over the next five years.

Closing that gap through borrowing could add another $3.6 billion to $6.6 billion in interest costs, expenses not currently reflected in the project's official cost estimate. The authority has also cut its next trainset order in half as it works to manage spending, the report notes.

The warning arrives alongside a CBS News California investigation showing the authority missed its own deadlines to purchase trainsets — commitments written into a federal grant agreement and promised to a federal court — before quietly dropping its lawsuit against the Trump administration over a separate $4 billion funding cut. Governor Gavin Newsom's office had characterized that cut as a political act by Washington, a framing the DOT disputes.

Together, the findings intensify scrutiny of the roughly $126 billion project (per the Authority's 2026 business plan), which has already spent more than $18 billion without completing operational track, and raise fresh questions about how the state will fund construction through the rest of the decade. The U.S. Department of Transportation has defended the earlier funding cut by pointing to years of missed deadlines and the absence of any completed track.