Brightline West, the private high-speed rail line planned for the I-15 median, is facing financial challenges which may prevent it from being completed. These developments raise an obvious question: why is a Southern California government agency spending taxpayer money planning a high-speed rail service to connect with a train that may never be built?

The High-Desert Corridor is a 54-mile high-speed rail line intended to connect Palmdale with Victorville at a cost last estimated to be between $5.8 and $6.6 billion , but likely to be a multiple of that. Connecting car-oriented cities with respective populations of 167,000 and 141,000 only makes sense if the service also connects to other intercity rail lines.

At Palmdale, the High-Desert Corridor is supposed to connect with the state-

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