The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s latest draft business plan, which it releases every year, now calculates that it will cost $126 billion to connect San Francisco with Los Angeles-Anaheim. It’s not that far off the previous year’s estimate — give or take a billion or so. But it is a jolting reminder that it was supposed to cost $33 billion when voters approved the train in 2008.

It was also supposed to be carrying 65.5 million to 96.5 million intercity riders a year by 2030. Yet now 2040 is the date for “full service to start.” Skeptics don’t believe we’ll ever see the train run with paying customers aboard.

“In my judgment, the Draft 2026 Business Plan describes a project that has reached a dead end,” says Louis S. Thompson, a 15-year member of the California High Speed Rail Peer Review Group that was established by legislation.

In a letter to lawmakers, Thompson, who was also on the team that created Amtrak, said that after so many changes in the project — cost, design revisions, longer estimated trip times — it’s “not, not even remotely, the system the voters approved in Proposition 1A” in 2008.

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