Locator: 49926BULLETTRAIN.
Without this project, neither California nor Governor Newsom have any marketing photo ops.
Definition of a railhead: simply a staging area for material. It may or may not have any rail. In this case, there is yet no rail laid for the actual project.
In early February, 2026, Governor Newsom announced a major milestone for the California high-speed rail project, a railhead in Kern County, to begin staging material to complete a 119-mile segment of the "bullet train" route through the "central valley," from Merced to Bakersfield, combined population, 500,000.
Governor Newsom says the projects hopes to be a fully operational high-speed rail segment by 2033.
Current cost estimates for the rail from "Los Angeles" to "San Francisco" is $135 billion; original estimates, $33 billion, made in 2008. There are no time-of-completion estimates for the entire "LA-to-SF" project," but it now well accepted it will be well beyond 2040, assuming it is even completed.