How long have taxpayers in California and every other state funded this high-speed rail project? Seventeen years. Fun fact: The entire project was expected to be completed five years ago, with service between San Francisco and Los Angeles running continuously.
How many miles of track have been laid? Precisely zero. Fifteen billion dollars in federal funding have already disappeared into this boondoggle, and Gavin Newsom has had almost eight years to produce something, anything from that investment. Late yesterday, the Trump administration finally cut off the spigot of federal funding:
The Trump administration on Wednesday pulled approximately $4 billion in unspent federal funding from California’s embattled high-speed rail project, calling it a “boondoggle” plagued by years of mismanagement, delays, and skyrocketing costs.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced the termination of funds following a comprehensive 315-page compliance review by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) released in June. The review concluded that the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) could not meet its obligations under the federal grant agreements and has no viable plan to complete the project.
“This is California’s fault. Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results… It’s time for this boondoggle to die,” Duffy said.
In a 22-page letter sent to the CHSRA, the FRA said the decision to terminate funding is effective immediately. The DOT said that roughly $15 billion has been spent on the project, with not a single mile of high-speed rail track laid.
Trump declared himself “thrilled” with the decision on Truth Social. Calling it “this Newscum SCAM,” Trump pledged to make sure no federal dollars got allocated to the project in the future:
To the Law abiding, Tax paying, Hardworking Citizens of the United States of America, I am thrilled to announce that I have officially freed you from funding California’s disastrously overpriced, “HIGH SPEED TRAIN TO NOWHERE.” This boondoggle, led by the incompetent Governor of California, Gavin Newscum, has cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we have received NOTHING in return except Cost Overruns. The Railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will. This project was Severely Overpriced, Overregulated, and NEVER DELIVERED. Thanks to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, not a SINGLE penny in Federal Dollars will go towards this Newscum SCAM ever again. This was an ill-conceived and unnecessary project, and a total waste of Taxpayer money — But no more!
“Never delivered” hits the nail on the head. The project was practically designed as a federal-funding sponge, and its entire raison d’etre was a headscratcher. The state already has highways for people to drive between the two destinations, but more importantly, has plenty of air-service options that will get people back and forth much more quickly and efficiently. Multiple commercial airports exist in both population centers. And most importantly, air travel does not depend on building high-speed rail lines along and across the San Andreas Fault, not to mention through mountain ranges in Los Angeles. The only reason for building it was that China and Japan have high-speed rail, and California wanted its own toy train set, paid for by the other 49 states.
One House Republican from California applauded the decision, which comes ahead of his own efforts to disqualify the project legislatively:
Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., author of H.R. 213, legislation to prohibit further federal funding for High-Speed Rail, applauded the move.
“California High-Speed Rail is the worst public infrastructure disaster in U.S. history,” Kiley said.
“A project that was supposed to be finished five years ago at a cost of $33 billion is now projected to take until the end of the century at a cost of $130 billion. I am grateful that President Trump and Secretary Duffy are sparing our taxpayers by cutting off federal funding. The state must now follow suit, wind this disastrous project down, and spend our transportation dollars where they are needed: our roads.”
Kiley isn’t exaggerating. The previous holder of the title for worst public infrastructure debacle was The Big Dig in Boston, which built two tunnels connecting interstate highways to Logan International Airport. Originally estimated at $2.8 billion and seven years of construction, it took sixteen years to fully complete at an end cost of $21.5 billion. The federal government alone has spent nearly that much over a longer period of time, and there has not been a single track laid as of yet.
Needless to say, this news steamed Gavin Newsom into almost doing something about the embarrassing failures of his administration on high-speed rail. The governor threatened to sue the Department of Transportation for the funding, and claimed that the project is going just spiffy:
“Trump wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley. We won’t let him. With projects like the Texas high-speed rail failing to take off, we are miles ahead of others,” Newsom wrote.
“We’re now in the track-laying phase and building America’s only high-speed rail. California is putting all options on the table to fight this illegal action,” he continued.
Newsom may not be quite as eager as he seems to go to court. The DoT report suggests that the state has a funding gap for its portion of the long-awaited track laying between Merced and Bakersfield, and one has to wonder where all of the previous funds went. Newsom claims that previous reports during the Biden administration gave the project a clean bill of health, but with Joe Biden’s inner circle taking the Fifth these days, getting them to back up those assessments in light of what the most recent report found might be a wee bit problematic.
And after seventeen years, all one has to do is count the tracks laid to judge Newsom’s defense of the project. And it doesn’t take much time to do that, either.
If Newsom wants to build his train set, then let the people of California fund it themselves, and see how popular that will be with voters. One question voters might ask the next time Newsom floats a bond issue for the high-speed rail project, though, is what energy source will power it. California can barely keep its lights on now, thanks to shutting down their scalable-energy generation based on fossil fuels and nuclear power, and has to buy electricity from neighboring states just to limit brownouts now. What happens when the big electric choo-choo starts draining the grid in the summertime? Or maybe even in the wintertime?
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