TRAVEL
Major Bay Area lawsuit settled, clearing way for Calif. high-speed rail project

The agreement removes a significant hurdle to the train ever reaching SF

By Olivia Harden, Grant Marek
April 25, 2025


A view of high-speed rail construction along the Merced Overpass.
Photo courtesy of the California High-Speed Rail Authority

After years of negotiation, Millbrae and the California High-Speed Rail Authority reached a settlement on April 17 to resolve a lawsuit the city filed in 2022 that threatened to delay construction of Millbrae’s high-speed rail station, clearing a significant hurdle for California’s elusive bullet train project. The city and rail authority reached a decision that addressed the city’s concerns over local control of the land and proper integration with the city’s other transit services.

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The suit in question focused on a small, 11,000-square-foot plot of land next to the existing Millbrae BART and Caltrain station. The city argued that building housing on that land to address California’s housing crisis was a better use than additional tracks for the planned high-speed rail station. The city argued that the high-speed rail project was too speculative, as funding was not secured and the construction timeline was unclear. That argument is actually truer now than it was when the lawsuit was filed: The project’s cost has ballooned from $40 billion to $135 billion at last count, thanks to a revised expected cost of $35 billion for the Merced to Bakersfield extension. The enormous sum is a far cry from what California voters were told the cost would be — $33 billion — when they approved issuing bonds to pay for the project all the way back in 2008.

Almost $13 billion has been spent thus far on the project, most of which has come from state funds, according to a 2025 project update report produced by the rail authority. Meanwhile, the rail authority hasn’t yet $4.3 billion allocated for the project by the federal government, according to the Fresno Bee.

With Donald Trump now serving his second presidential term, those dollars suddenly seem very much at risk in deeply blue California as the Trump administration is cutting federal funding across all sectors. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office in February, Trump addressed the bullet train directly.

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