Exclusive | California high speed rail paid for consultants trips to tiki bar, gym and escape room as blown expenses revealed

California’s beleaguered high-speed rail project paid more than $680,000 in dubious travel expenses to consultants connected to the project — including premium plane tickets and rideshare trips to gyms, nightclubs and an “escape room,” according to a damning new audit.A report released Tuesday by the inspector general of the California High Speed Rail Agency found the department paid some $2 million in travel payments to four consulting firms — financial, legal and track design contractors — but handed out a slew of questionable reimbursements in the process.

Consultants billed the state for premium flight upgrades, prohibited international travel and rideshare trips to gyms, restaurants, a cigar lounge and more, according to the report obtained by The California Post.“We often found little or no explanation of the need for consultants to travel, and when we did find stated purposes for travel those purposes frequently raised doubts about its necessity,” the report said.California’s ambitious high-speed rail megaproject is facing a critical cash bottleneck and could run out of money by the end of 2027.The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s Inspector General warned the project will run out of funding by as soon as the end of next year.The estimated cost of the train project has ballooned to a staggering $231 billion, according to one estimate, with completion now delayed until roughly 2039.

However, the rail authority pegs the project cost at $126.3 billion after a reassessment this year.Yet despite the fiscal woes, consultants for the rail project appeared to spend without restraint on travel costs, according to the report, citing vague explanations such as “meetings with HSR executives.”The rail authority sloppily approved the expenses on “an assumption that the CEO or a member of the executive team requested or desired the travel, without any explanation of the need for travel or consideration of its cost,” the inspector gene...