Hanford Viaduct - California High-Speed Rail construction progress

California High-Speed Rail is a large transportation project in the US state of California. It ultimately seeks to link the populous metropolitan areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles in its first phase of construction. Pretty much the entire route has been environmentally approved (by far the most arduous bureaucratic hurdle for linear transportation projects), so all that remains is funding and construction. You can see a map of the route here.

Currently, the CAHSR Authority is overseeing the construction of the "Initial Operating Segment" (IOS), between the Central Valley cities of Merced in the north and Bakersfield in the south with stops in Madera, Fresno, and Tulare/Kings Counties. The high-speed track does not yet connect with the SF and LA rail networks, although it will in the future, as long as it receives funding. The IOS is scheduled for completion in ~2027, with trainsets arriving the following year. After testing, which could take another year or two, passenger service will begin around 2030. (It's almost 2025: not so far off!)

This video shows the Hanford Viaduct in the Central Valley, a grade separation project to ensure that there are no conflicts between CAHSR, freight rail, and highway traffic. These enormous structures are essential to the operation of high-speed trains for logistical, safety, and legal reasons. There are hundreds of them along the route, and their construction is one reason why megaprojects like this take a long time. It's like building a hundred horizontal skyscrapers while contending with active traffic around your whole site. In many cases, they also have to relocate canals and utilities before constructing the guideway.

To date, 284 of the 978 pre-cast concrete girders have been placed on the Hanford Viaduct. Ironworkers are working each day to tie rebar for the deck and parapet walls of the structure. Over the last few months, workers have placed concrete for the diaphragms of the structure, which bring the girders set between each span of columns together.

Hanford Viaduct is the largest high-speed rail structure in the Central Valley spanning nearly 6,330 feet long. When complete it will carry high-speed trains over San Joaquin Valley Railroad and State Route 198.

CAHSR is often the target of derision in an endlessly negative media landscape, but seeing actual construction helps demonstrate the real-world progress being made here. And contrary to media narrative, the project is not a "railroad to nowhere"; the fast-growing Central Valley cities mentioned are home to over 1.1 million people. They are an important part of the route from SF to LA and will support its ridership.

For CAHSR to succeed beyond the Central Valley, it requires significant funding from the state of California and, in an ideal world, the federal government. The latter may be unlikely for the next four years, but that's probably okay because they're still finishing up the IOS. The next step after the IOS is most likely going to be the "Valley to Valley" line, an extension from Madera/Merced to San Jose and San Francisco. This is because the Caltrain line in the Bay Area has already been electrified with funding from CAHSR. After that, the Authority will have to connect the track in Bakersfield to the city of Palmdale and beyond to Los Angeles. Future phases of CAHSR are intended to reach Sacramento and San Diego, but there isn't a timeline for any of that.

In theory, all of this could happen concurrently. It pretty much just needs funding. Since basically all of Phase 1 is environmentally cleared, there are no particular barriers to construction otherwise.