When U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, slammed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2021 for a costly San Francisco-area subway expansion, the California Democrat’s pet rail project was already north of $1 billion above budget.
Incensed, the senator from the nation’s top pork-producing state handed out her monthly “Make ‘em Squeal” award to the U.S. Department of Transportation for “allowing taxpayers to be taken for a ride on this gravy train that is billions over budget,” Fox News reported at the time.
“The tunnel being dug for this subway is literally a bottomless pit for taxpayer money,” Ernst said in a press release. Back then the Bay Area rail project, which originally checked in at an estimated $4.7 billion, had ballooned to $6.9 billion.
That price tag now seems quaint. The cost of Pelosi’s sweetheart deal has soared nearly three-fold.
“I don’t want to ever be sugarcoating things for our” VTA Board of Directors, Tom Maguire, Valley Transportation Authority’s megaproject officer, told the Mercury News. “I think there’s a chance the number is over 12.2 billion dollars, but I don’t know how much higher.”
As Ernst notes, that estimate for the six-mile project now comes to more than $2 billion per mile. Your tax dollars as work.
Such cost surges may be far from over. This boondoggle was supposed to be wrapped up by 2026; now its planners are looking at a completion date of 2037, perhaps at the earliest. So much for “shovel-ready.” All of this despite a federal report
