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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
California Bullet Buses
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A 140 mph bus on California freeways sounds like a joke you would see in your news feed, until you realize Caltrans is seriously studying it. We dig into the “bullet bus” concept and what it would actually require to run intercity service at "aircraft-level speeds" on rubber tires, including dedicated freeway lanes, banked curves, ultra-durable pavement, and technology that likely leans on advanced driver assistance or autonomous systems. The promise is seductive: a San Francisco to Los Angeles trip in about 3 hours and 50 minutes, cutting a long drive nearly in half.
Then we put that headline next to the elephant in the room: California high-speed rail. We recap the project’s history, ballooning cost estimates, and the ongoing funding fight that has turned rail into a political target. A big question hangs over the bullet bus idea: even if it is pitched as a supplement, does it create a “why not just do buses” argument that could undermine rail before the state finishes what it started?
Subscribe for more transit deep dives, share this with a friend who loves (or hates) California megaprojects, and leave a review with your take: would you ride a 140 mph bullet bus?
The Bullet Bus Headline Explained
SPEAKER_01You may have seen a bizarre headline coming out of California last week that had all of the transit nerds really scratching our heads. California is proposing a high-speed bus, not a BRT, a 140 mile per hour bullet bus that could take you from San Francisco to LA in under four hours.
SPEAKER_02So on today's episode, we are going to dive into this bus proposal, talk about California's other high-speed transportation proposal. Not sure if they were forgetting about high-speed rail when they were plotting out this new scheme. We're also going to talk about how this bus concept has been prototyped elsewhere and what is more realistically happening across the state.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it is when I saw the headline, I just had to do a double take. I don't know if you saw it uh where you are, if it came across your news feed, but I just thought it was wild.
SPEAKER_02It was one of those things on the side of my little Google feed on the side of my phone, and I saw a couple funny looking images, and uh I I kind of didn't think anything of it at the at the time, and then you texted me about this, and I was like, all right, we're we're diving into high-speed buses. I'll take what we can get. We we will we just want to get places fast.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um at first thought when I heard the the concept, I was like, okay. I was like, I will give it a benefit of the doubt. And then I started digging in. So we are gonna start off with explaining what this concept
What A High-Speed Bus Requires
SPEAKER_01is. So, what is a high-speed bus? You are familiar with DRT. That's something that we talk about quite a lot on this show. If you're not, that is bus rapid transit. That sounds very similar to the concept of a high-speed bus, but they are vastly different proposals.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so in May of 2026, Caltrans actually announced a feasibility study for these high-speed buses, which they're also potentially calling bullet buses uh that could operate between 80 and 140 miles per hour, which 140 miles per hour feels absurd for a bus. That sounds scary.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of scary when a bus is hitting like 60 miles an hour on the freeway. Yes. Um, but these buses they would operate on dedicated freeway lanes, and they would have to be separate for the bus to safely operate at these speeds. And then on top of that, those lanes would need to be specially designed to be incredibly durable, to minimize any type of vibrations, and obviously they're gonna have to be banked at the curves for the buses to be able to make those curves.
SPEAKER_02And when you initially think about it, you're probably like, okay, you know, this is probably gonna be able to be maybe sort of feasible with a regular bus. But uh, if you were thinking that you would be wrong, as Chris said, even going 60 miles per hour in a regular bus uh is quite fast. A lot of them don't go much faster than maybe 70, maybe 80 miles per hour. I'm not, you know, they're definitely not going that fast uh on on the roads. So, you know, in addition to the additional lanes and all of these sorts of things that would need to be created, we're also likely looking at brand new bus technology as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and on the technology side of it, to safely operate something at this speed, at least, you know, when you think globally about high-speed networks, the Autobahn is a great example of people, you know, there's no speed limit in certain sections, you can go pretty fast, and the road is purpose-built to sustain those speeds. But even then, 140 miles per hour sustained on the Autobahn is pretty rare. So when we look at US systems, if you want to operate something that is road-based at those incredible speeds, you have to look at upgrading not just the actual vehicle technology, things like the use of autonomous vehicle technology, using an AI-assisted navigation, and just so much more to help those bus operators actually operate this machine.
SPEAKER_02But in general, the purpose of this new technology would be for longer distance intercity connections across California. Uh, so some of the early proposed routes here are from San Francisco to LA, Los Angeles to San Diego, Sacramento to the Bay Area, as well as in the Central Valley corridor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and there are plenty of freeway alignments that could potentially work for this routing. You have the I-5, the I-80, SR-99, US-101, and I-10. All of these are pretty major highways through the state that you could feasibly add something onto that highway to be able to make this work. And when we talk about routes like these in a state like California, they are really important because California being the third largest state by area in the country, these are major economic centers that should be connected with faster uh modes of transportation, other than just flying. Right now, let's use San Francisco and LA as an example because that's always the example that we use in cases like this. But from LA to San Francisco, if you're driving, it would typically take somewhere around six to eight hours to make that journey. Current train service with what exists, you can make that journey in about nine hours, sometimes a little more, because there's delays pretty frequently. But this proposed high-speed bus would get you there in three hours and 50 minutes.
SPEAKER_02Yes. So um, you know, a lot of work would need to be done to make that happen, but obviously the time savings there are dramatic. I mean, you're you're potentially cutting a driving trip uh in half when you're looking at the longer end of the driving spectrum there. So uh, you know, it's there's no secret that going faster to get between these places is going to be a major benefit in California. I can't believe, honestly, that connections like this haven't been proposed in any real way up until this point. Correct me if I'm wrong, Chris. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I I'm remembering there's this, there's this like really small project that's coming
High-Speed Rail Context And Funding
SPEAKER_01to mind. Um, I don't know, you may not know about it, very lesser known, not a lot of media attention at all. I'd really call it an under-the-radar project, but something like California.
SPEAKER_02Oh, wait, wait, was this was this something that Sean Duffy was championing? Was he trying to make this a lot of it?
SPEAKER_01Obviously, we'd be in sarcastic.
SPEAKER_02Remember, they were he like talked shit about it, and then there are people protesting Sean Duffy yelling at him from behind the wall.
SPEAKER_01Uh obviously, this is sarcasm on our part. Uh, California has been trying to make these faster connections between cities across the state, and that has been really channeled into the California High Speed Rail project, which we have definitely talked about on this channel. Many, many videos out there exist, and you have definitely heard about the challenges that they've had.
SPEAKER_02If you're interested in like the latest updates on California High Speed Rail in a very good deep dive, uh, I just recently saw a Wendover Productions video that we'll make sure is linked that just came out in the last two or three weeks, kind of updating where the project is at right now and kind of where things are potentially going with it. But it's definitely a project that has had its fair share of issues, but at the same time, they're trying to do like the best version of high speed rail in a country that has never tried to do high-speed rail like this before. So uh it was always going to be an uphill battle, but boy, has it been an uphill battle, even more so.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. As uh a little recap for folks who may not be as familiar or didn't see our episode about uh the high speed rail, this project was originally passed in 2008 and had an estimated price tag of about $33 billion for 500 miles of rail, and it would connect as far south as Anaheim in the LA region to San Francisco in the north. With the most recent estimates, the completed system, we're looking at a price tag of about $126 billion, so just a little more than the $33 billion that they passed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so far, just shy of $15 billion has been spent just on what they're calling the initial operating segment, which would be between Merced and Bakersfield. Uh, that section is expected to be open in 2033, which would be 25 years after the vote happened. Also, as a reminder, when they did that vote, it was scheduled to open in 2020. So we're we're a couple of years behind schedule at this point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and uh speaking of being behind schedule, the full rollout of the entire system from San Francisco to Los Angeles, uh, that does not have an estimated opening date at all. So right now they are just focused on getting that uh initial operating segment going. And there also continue to be additional funding issues when it comes to this project, and that's what's usually in the news is this funding fight that's happening on the state level and the federal level. State of California is still putting up the vast majority of the funds for this project, but the federal government also has made some commitments. In the Biden era, we committed about $9 billion to the California High Speed Rail. Since the Trump administration has taken office, this has become a big target, especially for the Department of Transportation. As we mentioned earlier, big press conference from Sean Duffy, uh essentially trying to withdraw support of California High Speed Rail. And uh, we went from $9 billion of total federal commitment to now just around $4 billion in federal federal commitment. And even that is not guaranteed at this point.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and obviously, you know, the budget isn't going down on this, it's it's going up. Uh, there there have been some adjustments recently in terms of, you know, uh trying to do a couple different things to try to get this open sooner and different proposals. We'll kind of save that for uh another another video. Again, there's a lot out there on California high-speed rail already as well. So I encourage you to go look further into it. But this funding story is a story that we're hearing about projects all across the U.S. right now, unfortunately. Uh, hopefully, you know, the tides will swing back in the other direction uh as far as the public transit funding goes soon. But um until then, maybe this bus proposal is the thing that's gonna happen, Chris.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, maybe. It's uh at this point, it's pretty natural, I think, for Caltrans to start looking at other options. And maybe those options should include making California high-speed rail more efficient, reducing the scope a little bit, speeding up delivery. Um, but now it seems like one of those options they're looking at are these uh bullet buses.
SPEAKER_02Now I actually if I'm gonna be honest, before we get into like some of the positives and negatives of the buses, it just really feels like you're setting yourself up for like the federal government coming in and being like, if you can do it with buses for less money, just stop construction. I don't care that you've already built a ton of the different, you know, uh alignments in terms of building the bridges and tunnels and you know, buying all the land and everything. Well, if you could do this with buses, just like just do it with buses now.
SPEAKER_01Like it's it's I would normally try to counter some of the Lewis doom uh that we get on the show, but in this case, I I just have this gut feeling that this is sort of the beginning of a death spiral for the project, which I I hate to put that out there in the universe, but uh really hoping that's not the case.
SPEAKER_02They're gonna be driving buses on some of these bridges.
SPEAKER_01In Caltrans defense, they have said that this new idea for the bullet buses would not be a replacement for high speed rail, but would supplement high-speed rail. So they are trying to draw a line here, but as you said, it's that line's gonna get very fuzzy very quick. It's a slippery slope. So let's jump into some of the positives. So let's look at the system and and
Could Buses Undercut Rail Plans
SPEAKER_01what actually could uh be the good that comes out of high-speed buses. And the first thing here that comes to mind is faster implementation, which has been one of the biggest drawbacks to this California high-speed rail, is the fact that implementation is so difficult. There's a lot of environmental review that's had to be done over the entire corridor. And California, more than any other state, has uh more strict environmental regulations. The environment is also not necessarily the easiest to build in. And in addition to that, with high-speed rail, you are essentially buying right-of-way for the entire system, which also has severely uh delayed this build-out and this implementation. What they are talking about for high-speed buses would use existing right-of-way on highways that are already on the ground. So you've already eliminated a lot of that right-of-way purchase you have to do. Uh, the environmental hurdles are a lot fewer because they've already done studies on these roads. They know what the impact is of having a road there, and it would be doing what we do best, which is add another lane, bro.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And I would imagine, like, uh like I know that last bit was a joke, but like, even though this uh addition of slightly more you know, banked turns and things like this, it is still building a roadway at the end of the day, and like the the know-how is still there. Obviously, there might be some slightly different practices that would be going on, but like we have a cajillion contractors in the United States who could bid on projects like this. We have all the, you know, the materials, like the the uh the pipelines in terms of supply chains to be able to get all the stuff in here. It's not like we're having to set all of this stuff up uh for the first time. So I really do think that that would would, in this hypothetical scenario, make uh a big difference here. Um, you could also phase the implementation much easier because you know you can buses can drive on regular roads as well. So if you have you know big sections of this new bullet bus infrastructure built out, hypothetically, these bullet buses could probably also drive on the regular road. So you can imagine scenarios where you kind of get a couple main corridors with these things built, but maybe
Why Bullet Buses Sound Attractive
SPEAKER_02some of the destinations on the end you mix back in with regular highway traffic or in an HOV lane, going back to just the 60 or 70 miles an hour for different stages of the journey.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you could also on that potentially add better statewide coverage. Again, if you're just focused on main corridors, the bus can deviate from that corridor to hit more cities that a California high-speed rail maybe wouldn't hit. Another huge factor here is that it would very likely be cheaper than building out high-speed rail. As it stands right now, the California high-speed rail project is estimated to cost $252 million per mile, which is just a staggering number. And when we look at systems that are fully separated BRT systems, and we're talking about you know lane, grade separation, the whole thing, those are approximately $30 to $80 million uh per mile for those projects. Now, that being said, at operating at these high speeds, the banked curves, the durable material that you're gonna need to use to make a roadway that's you know going to survive and not require continual maintenance for a project like this, the cost is going to be much higher.
SPEAKER_02Uh enough about the positives though. Let's let's get into the negatives.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say the biggest negative here, uh despite a fancy title, um, it's not a train. It's and it's not gonna be able to carry as many passengers in the corridor as a train would.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. Um, and like with that, I mean, you also end up with uh a lot more cost in terms of labor. Each one of these bullet buses is gonna require its own driver, maybe a second person also riding on board. Who knows? Depends on like what else you're offering on these. Whereas, you know, you could have a train that's carrying hundreds of people, one of these buses, uh, I mean, a very full bus would be like 50 or 60 people on it. Now, maybe they build these longer or something like that. But then the thing is if you make these too long, then all of a sudden you do have to make it so that the dedicated infrastructure gets you all the way from destination to destination versus having to transfer onto the road.
SPEAKER_01Well, wait, Lewis, what if we what if we build dedicated infrastructure and we do make it longer, and then you could actually make it modular where you could connect like multiple of them together, well and then we just reinvent the train.
SPEAKER_02That's that's yeah. That's just like in in Las Vegas, you know how like Elon's got the the cars each with a driver in them, and they they go through the tunnels between, and it's only you can only fit like three or four people in it. But if you strung them together, it's like we would reinvent a subway, also.
SPEAKER_01I think this is our most sarcastic episode we've ever done.
SPEAKER_02It probably is. It probably is.
SPEAKER_01There's major uh engineering challenges. Conventional buses are obviously not designed to operate uh at these speeds or to accomplish what California is proposing. In addition to that, the highways are definitely not designed to have vehicles with sustained uh travel at 140 miles per hour. My husband excluded in his fast cars that he likes to drive.
SPEAKER_02You beat me to it. I was gonna make that joke.
SPEAKER_01Um bigger vehicles at speed also require
Safety And Engineering Dealbreakers
SPEAKER_01exponentially longer stopping distances as well. The faster you go, the bigger your vehicle, the harder it is to come to a stop. And then you also have other safety issues like uh factoring in intrusion prevention. It these have to be completely separated to have collision avoidance to make sure that another vehicle doesn't enter the busway, or if there's an animal in the busway, or or who knows what could possibly be there that could cause more danger to the the bus and its passengers. There's just a lot uh of engineering that has to go into this.
SPEAKER_02Totally. I mean, this is fully just creating an entirely new kind of roadway that would have to be built at scale to make any sort of difference here. And we haven't really tried to do anything like that in a very long time in the US in terms of like trying to implement a new technology like this. And anytime you're trying something brand new for the first time, if if you haven't noticed you don't see bullet buses anywhere really in the world that are being used for anything seriously or at all. I mean, uh outside of like a couple prototypes we'll talk about soon, uh, it's gonna cost a lot because you are pioneering the very first thing.
SPEAKER_01The reality is that a project like this hasn't really been truly tested anywhere in the world. And conventional bus systems, even BRT, only typically operate at around 50 miles, 55 miles per hour on the high end. So we are talking about a completely new generation of a transit system, again, that hasn't really ever been developed.
SPEAKER_02There was a much more fun proposal for a much faster bus that actually happened in the Netherlands called the Superbus.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the Dutch attempted to solve all of the engineering problems that we've been talking about, and there was actually an active project from 2004 to 2014 uh that was done by Delft University, and this was really focused on designing a vehicle prototype that could achieve exactly what California is proposing. And in this, they did create a vehicle that could be used on standard roadways or could be used in some type of guided system. But they created this vehicle that you would never you would never look at it and say that's a bus. I don't know what the definition of bus is officially, but if it's a visual definition, this definitely doesn't fit it.
SPEAKER_02No, this uh this definitely fits uh uh that was I can't believe I just did that.
SPEAKER_01You even end it at the end with Batman. I know. I was just yeah, it looks like something out of a Batman comic, basically. Like you've taken the Batmobile and put 30 people in it.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Um, I mean, uh it to me it's interesting that they even decided to do this, especially like a group in the Netherlands deciding to do this test, because there just is not a need in the Netherlands for this technology, I feel like.
SPEAKER_01The Netherlands is inside of it's actually just pedaling, it's actually just a bunch of bikes strung together.
SPEAKER_02They have it like geared in a crazy way, so every person inside of it just yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Could be cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it it looked honestly like something straight out of a
The Netherlands Superbus Reality Check
SPEAKER_01sci-fi film. It was fully electric. Uh, it like I said, it could use dedicated guideways. It was incredibly aerodynamic, and it was designed to operate at speeds of 155 miles an hour, so faster than anything that California is proposing. And it made a lot of splashy headlines internationally. Um, the testing yielded really positive results. Everything was Was kind of looking like, hey, this might be a viable transportation solution, but then it came down to infrastructure costs and the fact that one, nobody wants to be the first to build something new, but also no one wanted to spend the money to design the infrastructure that would be required for these limited use case vehicles to operate. Um, and the concept never really became practical.
SPEAKER_02Is there a potential application for high-speed buses like this? Maybe. If miraculously you could get the cost significantly lower than high-speed rail. And and do it in a way where it's like there are a lot of right-of-ways where you could use and build high-speed rail. It's like maybe there's a couple niche corridors in different places where high-speed buses could kind of sort of maybe make sense, but is it worth developing an entirely new technology for that's unproven and might end up costing almost the same amount anyway? And like it it kind of feels like it's probably not worth it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh, and and there's already technologies that exist to you know supplement this, or not even supplement it, but to replace this. You have high-speed rail, you have airplanes, I mean spirit airlines, the the bus of the skies, all those are no longer in operation, but they were the high-speed bus. Yes. Uh frontier and uh joking, uh all joking aside, I would really like to see agencies spending more time on building out high-speed rail networks to connect the major cities in our country. And then if there is a need for something like a high-speed bus to connect cities that aren't on that rail network, absolutely let's invest the time and money to do so. But we have other priorities.
SPEAKER_02It's not all doom and gloom, though. We do want to highlight a couple good, not quite high-speed bus lines, but higher speed bus lines that Caltrans has been working on uh over the last few years, starting in LA with the Metro J Line.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the J Line, which many people may remember, used to be called the Silver Line. This is a BRT route that
Real California Rapid Bus Wins
SPEAKER_01connects uh El Monte to downtown Los Angeles, Harbor Gateway, and San Pedro. And it was originally two separate networks. The El Monte Busway was opened in 1973, and the Harbor Transitway opened in 1996. They were unified into one continuous system in 2009.
SPEAKER_02Yes, uh, we also have the North Hollywood Pasadena BRT, which is one that is under construction and hopefully should be finished in time for the 2028 Olympics. Uh, it connects North Hollywood, Burbank, Glendale, Eagle Rock, and Pasadena. Uh, 22 stations over 19 miles, and it is coming in at an estimated cost of $450 million. Uh, again, this is one that hopefully will get open in time uh for the Olympics. LA is doing so many different projects to try to hopefully get done by 2028, and this is just like one of many that uh that they've been working on.
SPEAKER_01And a cool thing about this particular project that's about to open, uh, they're using zero emissions buses, and they're actually estimating around 30,000 daily riders. So it will be a pretty well-used system. Um, we're really excited to see what happens with that. And the last one we just really want to highlight is San Diego Rapid. And this isn't one route, this is actually 10 routes connecting the uh San Diego region. This all started around 2014, grew to those 10 routes, and has roughly 23 uh,000 daily riders across 39 stations and largely operates in existing freeway corridors and highway corridors, just like what this high-speed bus proposal uh would be, probably the best example of regional rapid bus service in the state of California. And every single one of these deserves their own episode, and we definitely plan on making a California trip at some point. So we want to get back to these, but we do want to highlight them because while high-speed rail and high-speed bus networks might seem just this fantasy in California, there are real projects happening to improve transit service, and we do want to highlight those and share them because those are worth celebrating as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and just building out you know, better buses, like you know, small incremental change to get better BRT, to have better express buses, to, you know, work on buses that can run express on highways, those feel much more achievable in a shorter time scale right now, and can make a huge difference. Sure, they are less sexy topics to talk about, but like these can make a huge difference in so many people's lives, uh, just trying to get around the cities that they live in and trying to get between others as well.
Listener Questions And Ways To Support
SPEAKER_01Let us know your thoughts about California high speed bus, California high speed rail, and any other fun projects you may have seen in the headlines. If you like this episode, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Share this with your California friends, your bus enthusiast friends. Definitely helps us get the message out and help us make more episodes for you.
SPEAKER_02If you want to support the show directly, the best ways to do so are via our Patreon. You can also check out our merch store linked down below as well. We also have more content coming from our series in Florida, uh, so stay tuned for that. We've already had a couple episodes come out from Orlando and St. Pete. Um, more to come from Orlando and Miami as well. But with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit and Tuesday.