California's high-speed rail project is a disaster, bad news for taxpayers and anyone who believed the original promises.

• The budget ballooned from $30 billion to $231 billion, and the project is decades behind schedule.
• The original promise was a 2.5-hour San Francisco to LA trip by 2020; the new plan involves regular trains, a high-speed section, and a bus to LA.
• Nearly two decades in, no actual track has been laid, just bridges and infrastructure to nowhere.
• Californians are still paying through the cap-and-trade program, which adds to high gas prices.
• The project does not fit California's spread-out, car-based cities the way trains fit dense European ones.

Outlook: Costs will keep climbing and the full LA to Bay Area connection is unlikely to happen on the promised 2039 timeline.