California High-Speed Rail Route Blocked by 1,200-Home Development
“We’ve got jobs that would be lost. Living wages will be affected. But what’s also important is the future growth of the city.”
California’s high-speed rail boondoggle, which is already a $128 billion joke that has been decades in the making with not a single mile of track carrying a single paying passenger, has managed to find a brand-new way to embarrass the state’s “visionary” political leadership.
This time, it’s not federal funding cuts or blown deadlines doing the damage, but a Central Valley city and a major homebuilder simply refusing to get out of the way, greenlighting 1,200 new homes smack in the middle of the rail authority’s approved route.
California’s beleaguered, over-budget high-speed rail line now has one more thing to worry about: A city and housing developer wants to build homes right in the train’s projected path.
Shafter, a city near Bakersfield, and developer Lennar Homes are plowing ahead with 1,200 homes in the same area off Highway 99 where the state’s rail authority plans to build tracks.
The development, called Gossamer Grove, is a “master-planned community” that will be equipped with a picnic area, playground and dog-walking trails, according to Lennar’s website.
The homes planned by Lennar, one of the largest builders in the Central Valley, will have three to four bedrooms, with prices in the high $300,000s.
California’s beleaguered, over-budget high-speed rail line now has one more thing to worry about: A city and housing developer wants to build homes right in the train’s projected path.
Shafter, a city near Bakersfield, and developer Lennar Homes are plowing ahead with 1,200 homes… pic.twitter.com/z1Qzw5apkV— Mike Netter (@nettermike) August 26, 2026
The move unites the home builder’s interests with those of city residents, who wanted nothing to do with the high-speed rail system.
“It’s raw land, we own it, we plan to develop it,” Walter Diamond, Lennar’s director of entitlement, said during a Shafter planning meeting in April.
Lennar did not respond to The Bee’s request for an interview, but the company has indicated it was finished waiting for the rail authority to come to the table. The rail authority told The Bee its current plans in Shafter — decided when the agency settled an environmental lawsuit from the city in 2018 — have not changed.
But the agency also said it has not decided whether it will sue and indicated it’s open to negotiating changes in Shafter. It has historically faced heavy resistance in the city, where officials and many residents would prefer the train take a different route.
The city contends it did not have much choice but to approve Lennar’s legally compliant subdivision map. Even so, Shafter Mayor Chad Givens thinks the Lennar plan approval has strengthened Shafter’s chances of pushing the train in a different direction. He added that Lennar is willing to fight for the map in court, if it has to.
New California High Speed Rail video for you. Based on a new report by the CAHSR Office of the Inspector General and developments in the city of Shafter, the project is at serious risk of not being able to open an Initial Operating Segment. At all. https://t.co/sVa9lE5gH2
— Lucid Stew (@Lucid_Stew) August 24, 2026
In fact, during a packed meeting this past fall, Shafter residents expressed concerns about this project and its negative impacts on the community.
Dozens of Shafter residents filled Veterans Hall Monday night to voice their opposition to a new proposal from the California High Speed Rail Authority that would route the rail line through the city center, potentially displacing businesses and costing the city millions in tax revenue.
The packed meeting required city staff to bring out additional chairs to accommodate the crowd as High Speed Rail Authority members presented their revised plan to the Shafter City Council.
…Kamal Saida, the city’s economic development director, said while official numbers aren’t available, the new proposal could uproot dozens of businesses and potentially eliminate millions of dollars in annual tax revenue.
“We’ve got jobs that would be lost. Living wages will be affected. But what’s also important is the future growth of the city,” Saida said.
It's just too on the nose that the town getting shafted the hardest by this boondoggle — being cut in half by the rail while getting no station — is called… Shafter https://t.co/ockgyu1byR
— Peter Bonilla (@pebonilla) August 26, 2026
Call Shafter’s move poetic justice for a project that has spent over a decade steamrolling farmers and small property owners with eminent domain and political entitlement.
Sacramento’s fantasy train may get ” shafted” by the plucky citizens of a small town that California bureaucrats chose to ignore.
When new housing and high speed rail collide
“Lennar Homes, one of the Central Valley’s largest builders, appears unconcerned that it’s planning to build new housing in the approved path of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.”https://t.co/rqp2UXvnAe
— Sane Housing (@SaneHousing) August 24, 2026
As an added bonus, given the state’s “housing shortage,” it’s going to be very hard to make Lennar homes a villain in this story.
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Comments
Governor Brown’s Toy Train Set, as I used to call it.
Make no mistake. If this were 10 years ago they’d all be falling over themselves to preach about this amazing project going through their town.
The only reason they’re objecting is they know its fake and never going to actually exist.
No, it seems they’ve been against it all along. Why would they be for it? What benefit would they get from having a railroad cut through their town but not stop there? The opportunity to stand at the side of the tracks and wave?!
One “benefit” is to have their town have an area known as “the wrong side of the tracks”.
Waiting for California state gov’t to finish the rail project while people suffer with the uncertainties is cruel. AND unnecessary. Kill the project, it’s merely a political trophy for Newsome and his ilk.
Isn’t the first step of any project like this determining the route and getting the property to build?
CA HSR should’ve secured the ROW if they actually thought they had a functional business plan. They don’t.
That’s what boggles my mind. Were they going to lay the tracks piecemeal and then deal with the details that were further down the line later?
What in the Hell were they thinking?
This is what happens when people who have never built anything start big projects.
Politicians, most politicians, have no marketable skills other than tricking people into voting for them. Once elected they believe they have been endowed with the intelligence and wisdom to do all things well. They cannot understand that some mystical change does not occur when the election results are certified.
This was nothing more than a ploy to create union construction jobs to garner union support at the ballot box.
I guess the State figures that its eminent domain power is such that it can just demand whatever access it needs whenever it sees fit. And if a developer builds 1,200 houses, well, tough shit, that is just another $36 million in acquisition costs.
Yes, they can. The Tyrants in Black Dresses let Pfizer twist the arms of a Connecticut town to declare an entire neighborhood “blight” so they could seize the property to build a new lab or something. The owners were forced out, paid “fair market” (to whom?) value, and the houses torn down. The facility was never built. The justification was that the Pfizer pfacility would generate more tax revenue and the courts gave it their blessing.
There is no problem with this. All they have to do is tunnel under the city and they’re golden. Call Musk. He’s got a tunnelling company. What’s a 100B more on this project.
Postscript. If they did let Musk build a tunnel for them I’m willing to bet the tunnel will be finished before a mile of track is laid anywhere along the route,
Tunnels in California?
They have them. Ask BART. [The transit authority, not the “Simpsons” character.]
Hopefully the townsfolk are familiar with the movie Blazing Saddles…
I’m thinking they’ve all watched “The Music Man.”
This is insane. You would think the very first thing a state rail authority would do, before a single track is laid, is to use Eminent Domain and take the land for the entire planned route, or to ask the Legislature to do it if they can’t.
Normal governments would. But having to spend the money appropriated for the project on the land up front reduces the amounts available to be grifted by the connected “consultants,”
The landowners’ actions are smart business. If the county denies them a development permit because the land might be needed in the future for the train, that will be deemed an effective taking that triggers the obligation to pay the landowners. The county won’t want that liability, so it will approve the permit application.
And if the state ultimately wants the land for the train (which likely will never happen), it then will have to buy it at the market price . . . which will be massively more than the current raw land value after it is improved and covered with houses.
California state government isn’t just corrupt, it’s stupid.
Paste eatingly stupid.
It’s both brilliant and stupid at the same time. In a sane state, the strategy of “We’ll build a multi-million dollar development in your railroad path so you have to pay us a bazillion dollars” is countered by “We moved the railroad a quarter-mile to the north. Enjoy the noise at your little overpriced community.” But California regulations mean that minor move would cost the railroad far more than paving a road through the development in gold bricks.
Lennar?? Just what California needs – another slum.
I thought this project was already dead. Didnt Trump stop the funding?
Oh dear. A Spaniard in the works to Greasome’s super train.
I I’ve in one of the places on the route of the first steam railroads in the USA, The tracks were built outside of town. The heart of the town migrated to the railroad, There is no passenger rail today
More fees to lawyers to fight for a rail system that will never get built
Newscum is gaming on to this project until after the 2028 Presidential elections. He wants to point to his green place in history on the campaign trail. If he doesn’t make it through the primaries it will be cancelled. If he gets the nomination and loses it will be cancelled. If the San Andreas fault slips and alters the land it will be cancelled by nature. By the way, the San Andreas is at a 1000 year high for stress from El Cahone pass to just south of Frisco.
Time to rename this cluster f$ck the “no speed rail project”.
Somehow this is almost hilarious.
California originally promised the train would be operational by 2020 (six years ago.)
Later, they projected 2028.
Now, California is unable to even guess the opening year.
It is irrational to force the builder to delay its project without California compensating the builder for its entire loss ASAP.
They originally sold it to public at estimated cost of $20billion? With route LA to SF?
Such a fraud.
We need homes in California, we don’t need a high speed rail to nowhere.
Covid changed the landscape, millions of people work from home today and don’t need to take a train to work.
Build the f’ing homes!
I have footage of the high speed rail in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix5G7zJH2BY
They know it ain’t getting built.
If the overlords thought the rail would get built, they’d have bought n developed the land themselves.
A C-Note says the housing development serves more people than the high speed rail ever would.
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