Despite uncertainty over its budget and timeline, a majority of Californians who took part in a recent poll say the California High-Speed Rail project is still worthy of state funding.
The poll, which was conducted by Emerson College and commissioned by KTLA parent company Nexstar Media, found that of those surveyed, 54% said the project was a good use of state funds.
It’s a piece of good news for an embattled project that was recently put in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump and other Republican legislators.
The numbers are consistent with a similar 2022 poll from UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times, which found 56% of registered voters supported the project at the time.
Officials for the California High-Speed Rail Authority say the new Nexstar poll reinforces their long-held position that the project is more popular than not.
“The poll results show what we know from talking to Californians every day: There is strong support for building a high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and people are eager to see the work completed,” an Authority spokesperson said in a statement provided to KTLA.
But not everyone is buying it.
State Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-San Diego), an outspoken critic of the project, accused the poll of not including the full picture.
“The project is now $95 billion over budget, decades behind schedule, and has no clear timeline for completion,” Jones said in an emailed statement.
The poll intentionally asked respondents to choose their level of support based on what they have “seen, read, or heard” about the project. It did not go into specifics about cost or timelines, but relied on each respondents individual knowledge and understanding of the project — something not uncommon for a poll of its kind.
Jones also criticized the sample size of the poll, which surveyed 1,000 Californians, saying a poll of its size “cannot be taken seriously.”
With approximately 22 million registered voters in California, polling all of them on specific topics would be nearly impossible. However, it’s common to use a poll of this size to estimate broader public opinion.
Emerson College Polling said its poll has a credibility rating, similar to a margin of error, of about 3 percentage points. And while polls aren’t perfect, the results should be within the expected range 19 out of 20 times — or 95%, it said.
Despite public perception in favor of the project, there are still legitimate concerns about the project’s viability.
A recent report from the CAHSR Office of Inspector General raised alarms that the initial operating segment between Merced and Bakersfield could not be completed on its current projected timeline of 2033. As for the full system connecting the Bay Area to the L.A. Basin, its timeline remains even more uncertain, with funding still in question.
But with nearly all of the project environmentally cleared, the Authority calls it “shovel-ready” for construction and argues that opponents should support finishing it sooner rather than later to if they are concerned about further cost increases.
To date, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has spent about $13 billion on the project, $10.5 billion of which came exclusively from the state, officials said.
While funding will continue to be a looming issue throughout the project’s lifetime, construction crews are focusing on one thing at a time. Right now that means working on the 171 miles of active construction in the Central Valley.
Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom joined California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri near Bakersfield to celebrate the groundbreaking on the project’s railhead, which the state says is the first step of laying tracks on the nation’s first publicly funded high-speed rail network.
To track current construction progress on the California High-Speed Rail yourself, officials say you can visit BuildHSR.com.
