California Bullet Train Breaks Ground on Bridge That Will Connect Nowhere to Nowhere by 2033

High-speed rail authority identifies next construction milestone in programme whose endpoint remains mathematically uncertain

Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

The Bridge and Its Context

FRESNO — The California High-Speed Rail Authority announced groundbreaking on a new bridge structure in the Central Valley segment, which is the segment of the programme that has been under various stages of construction since 2013 and which will, when complete, connect the cities of Merced and Bakersfield at high speed through the agricultural San Joaquin Valley. Merced and Bakersfield are not the primary origin-destination pairs that the programme’s ridership projections depend on. San Francisco and Los Angeles are. The Merced-Bakersfield segment is the construction that is happening. The San Francisco-Los Angeles connection is the construction that is planned.

The Gap Between Construction and Vision

The gap between the Central Valley construction and the full programme is the gap that the programme’s critics have been documenting since the original 2020 completion projection was first revised: the engineering is being done; the funding is not complete; the timeline has been revised five times; the original $33 billion estimate has grown to an estimate range that the Legislative Analyst’s Office describes as still uncertain. The bridge is real. The full programme is a programme.

The Libertarian Position

The libertarian position on the California bullet train is the position that the evidence supports most completely: the programme’s original business case was overstated, the governance structure is inadequate for the management complexity involved, and the decision to continue at reduced scope rather than course-correct toward a more achievable programme reflects the specific political economy of large public infrastructure projects that have already spent billions and in which sunk cost reasoning outweighs prospective analysis. The California High-Speed Rail Authority manages the programme and announces construction milestones. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office provides the independent assessment that the authority’s own projections do not provide. Both confirm the situation, which continues.

California, Freedom, and the Surfboard

California in 2026 is staging a governor’s race that includes at least two libertarian-adjacent candidates arguing that Sacramento’s regulatory apparatus has produced the housing shortage, the energy costs, the wildfire vulnerability, and the business exodus that define the state’s structural problems. The Libertarian Party of California represents approximately 1.02 percent of registered voters. Its candidates represent 0 of 52 US House seats, 0 of 40 state Senate seats, and 0 of 8 statewide executive offices. The argument is structurally correct about many of the regulatory causes of California’s problems. The electoral record suggests the argument has not yet found the persuasion strategy that converts correct diagnosis into governing power. The surfers are in the water. The regulators are in Sacramento. Both continue at their respective paces, which are different paces and which the column documents with the affection that the subject deserves. The Reason Foundation makes the libertarian case. California makes the counter-argument by continuing to be California.

The Structural Conditions Continue

Journalism and California libertarianism are both subjects whose structural conditions generate new specific events every week from the same underlying pressures: the journalism industry’s economic collapse producing layoffs and restructurings; the California regulatory apparatus producing costs and constraints that the libertarian analysis correctly diagnoses and the electoral record suggests the libertarian prescription has not yet resolved. Both are ongoing. Both are worth documenting. The documentation is the contribution that the column makes to the record of what the structural conditions produced in a specific week, which compounds into something approaching a longitudinal account of what the industry and the state are becoming. The account continues. The subjects provide the material. The material is always available from subjects as productive as a collapsing industry and an ungovernable state.

The Press Gazette and the Reuters Institute document the journalism industry. The Reason Foundation and the Legislative Analyst’s Office document California from their respective political premises. The satire documents what all four are too serious to document. All continue. The column continues with them.

The story above is one specific event from structural conditions older than the event. The column tracks the conditions. The event is the evidence. The record continues next week with the same subjects in their next specific forms, which they are already generating as this entry is written.

The documentation above is the week as it was, recorded at the pace that weekly documentation operates, which is slower than the pace the subjects operate at and faster than no documentation at all. The column makes the record. The imperfect record is better than the absent one. The structural conditions that produced this week’s specific events will produce next week’s specific events from the same underlying pressures, which are older than any individual event and which will outlast any individual column’s capacity to document them. The column documents what it can. The documentation compounds. The record grows. The subjects continue at the pace of a collapsing industry and an ungovernable state respectively, both of which are faster than the column and both of which are worth the documentation regardless. Both continue. The column continues with them next week. The record is accurate. The week is documented. The next week begins where this one ends. The record is accurate. The week is documented. The next week begins where this one ends.

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SOURCE: Satirical Journalism