The Trump administration has launched an investigation into California’s high-speed rail mission in what may very well be step one in clawing again the $4 billion promised by the Biden administration to construct out the primary part of the road, from Merced to Bakersfield.
“For too long, taxpayers have subsidized the massively over-budget and delayed California High-Speed Rail project,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated in his announcement of the assessment on Thursday.
In 2008, voters accepted $10 billion in bonds for the mission, which was envisioned as a two-hour-and-40-minute experience from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Within the years since, it has develop into considerably of a poster little one for political dysfunction. Initially estimated to price $45 billion for the 776-mile line and slated to open in 2030, the price estimate has grown to just about $128 billion, due to inflation and rising actual property and labor prices. It may very well be many years earlier than the practice is prolonged north to San Francisco and south to Los Angeles.
However finishing that Central Valley phase will depend on federal funding. California rail officers had hoped to obtain $8 billion in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation between 2023 and 2028 to assist construct the stretch.
Funding for the mission has fluctuated from administration to administration. Throughout his first time period in workplace, Trump canceled $1 billion in federal funding that had been promised to the mission. 4 years later, the Biden administration awarded the mission $3.1 billion. The mission’s directors say the fixed uncertainty round financing is likely one of the predominant causes for the delays.
State auditors, nonetheless, have discovered that the issues run deeper, saying that the authority’s price overruns can be attributed to “poorly managed contracts” and its “flawed decision” to start out development within the Central Valley, a largely rural space.
Earlier this month, Trump — who has recurrently used deep-blue California as a political punching bag — signaled that he may launch a probe into the high-speed rail mission, saying throughout a press convention on the Oval Workplace that it was the “worst-managed project” he’s ever seen and that the state might save “hundreds of billions” by offering “the finest limousine service” for individuals touring between San Francisco and Los Angeles moderately than ending the railroad.
The subsequent day, California Republicans despatched Trump a letter urging him to research the high-speed rail authority.
“We welcome this investigation and the opportunity to work with our federal partners,” stated California Excessive-Velocity Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri in response to the administration’s announcement. “With multiple independent federal and state audits completed, every dollar is accounted for, and we stand by the progress and impact of this project.”
Duffy’s announcement additionally drew an instantaneous response from a few of the railroad’s largest supporters, equivalent to California Sen. Scott Wiener.
“California is committed to High-Speed Rail. The project is happening,” Wiener stated in a press release. “Sabotage from federal actors should never impede our responsibility to deliver affordable transportation for Californians.”
Wiener known as the Trump administration’s assault on the railroad a “massive government handout” to Elon Musk, “who is afraid that modern public transportation will undermine his business interests,” which embrace the electrical automotive firm Tesla and the Boring Firm, a tunnel-digging firm. A decade in the past, Musk beforehand floated concepts for a “hyperloop” within the Central Valley, although he advised later his biographer Ashlee Vance that the proposal was a ruse to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail.
The Trump administration contrasted the gradual progress on California’s high-speed rail with the personal Brightline West rail line, a 218-mile route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas that started development in 2025 and is about to open in 2028. That mission obtained $6.5 billion in backing from the Biden administration, together with $3 billion in federal infrastructure funds.
Regardless of the entire delays and politicking, 54% of respondents in a current Emerson School ballot of California voters stated the mission stays a very good use of state funds.
Initially Revealed: February 20, 2025 at 4:43 PM PST
