Trump administration pulls $4 billion from California’s high-speed rail

The Trump administration said it’s pulled about $4 billion in unspent federal money for California’s high-speed rail project.

Announced by President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Wednesday, July 16, the decision comes about a month after a scathing federal report found there was “no viable path” to complete even a partial section of the long-delayed rail project. Trump, who canceled nearly $1 billion in federal funding for the project during his first term in the White House, had threatened to revoke federal funds again this go-round.

Letters: Oakland must do right by California Hotel’s tenants

Letters: Proposed transit tax for BART isn’t supportable

Trump administration plans to end funding to California high-speed rail project

Letters: Government must end payouts to Elon Musk

Letters: Stop high-speed rail before it costs another dime

“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,’” a post on Trump’s Truth Social account said Wednesday. “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.”

Duffy, in his own statement, also blamed California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state Democrats.

“Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results. After over a decade of failures, (California High-Speed Rail Authority’s) mismanagement and incompetence has proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on time or on budget,” Duffy said.

Duffy said he’s also directed the Federal Railroad Administration to review other grants related to the high-speed rail project. He said the Department of Transportation, in consultation with the Department of Justice, will consider other moves, “including potentially clawing back funding related to” the project.

Voters first authorized $10 billion in borrowed funds in 2008 to cover about a third of the estimated cost, with a promise the train would be up and running by 2020. Five years beyond that deadline, no tracks have been laid, and its estimated price tag has ballooned to over $100 billion.

But Newsom, responding to the news, said the California High-Speed Rail Authority is “entering the track-laying phase and actively building across 171 miles – with 50 major railway structures and 60 miles of guideway already completed.”

“We will be exploring all options to fight this illegal action,” Newsom said.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Dave Cortese, who chairs the legislature’s Transportation Committee, said the federal funding loss won’t “derail this project,” maintaining it has enough support from state funding. And the state legislature, he said, will consider whether to allocate $1 billion per year from the state’s cap-and-invest program into the project with a goal to complete the first phase of the section, connecting San Francisco to Anaheim, and attract private investment.

“You can’t stop this kind of momentum in an innovative, can-do state like California,” Cortese, a Democrat, said. “The California High-Speed Rail Authority is also working on a plan to address potential funding gaps and continue construction.”

California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri suggested in April that private investors could step in and fill the funding gap for the project that promised nonstop rail service between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. At the time, he acknowledged that even if funding is secured, it might take nearly two more decades to complete most of that segment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.