Exclusive: California hasn't laid a single track of high-speed rail on its 18-year-old bullet train because it's been stuck paying consultants $677 million to compile over 130,000 pages of environmental documents—paperwork that must be finished before the project can move forward. California's high speed rail project exists not to move people, but to move money into the hands of its creators. These same consulting firms (HNTB, Aecom, WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff)were among the top donors for the 2008 state ballot measure that authorized the high-speed rail project and helped provide the economic analysis justifying it—and have been awarded billions of dollars in resulting contracts. They remain major donors to the governor and state legislators, and one of their former staff is now CEO of California's High Speed Rail Authority (CAHSR), the state entity tasked with building the train and overseeing its contractors. CAHSR itself says it doesn't have the money it needs to finish the rump Merced-Bakersfield line that it wants to open in the 2030s at a cost of over $30 billion. $1 billion per year from the state's "cap-and-invest" emissions program (ultimately paid with higher gas/diesel/energy prices) isn't enough to finish the train, but it is just enough to feed its armies of contractors. The point of California's high speed rail project is to move money, not people.