California’s long-published high-speed train project was first approved in 2008 and has encountered many obstacles in its development process, and now it may be focusing on the end of the road. According to Reuters, the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation released a report this week that did not portray the project, with DOT head Sean Duffy providing California with more than a month to deal with concerns or faced $4 billion in government funding revocation.
The threat of cutting California claims California missed several deadlines related to high-speed rail and failed to determine how to get $7 billion to build a portion of the railroad between Merced and Bakersfield, California, needed to secure the project next summer to move forward. The report concluded in a Trump-language manner that California “takes taxpayers out of $4 billion in investment, and there is no viable plan to deliver that portion on time.”
The Department of Transportation gave California to mid-July in response to the report and threatened to see if the federal contract fails to adequately address the concerns raised in the report. According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, the California High Speed Rail Administration called the report “misleading” and said it would issue a formal response soon. “We are still firmly completing the first truly high-speed rail system in the country’s major population centers,” a spokesperson for the agency said.
Trump has been on California’s butt since he returned to the office. His administration has conducted an unfinished review of $3.1 billion in federal grants to help fund construction funds in February, and he picked the project in a joint appearance with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney last month, noting: “That train is the worst cost overrun I’ve ever seen” and “this government will not pay.”
The review of Trump and the company’s review of officials involved in buildings involved in the high-speed rail is not surprising, as officials said earlier this year that there could be a shortage of funds in the federal government. Although many are frustrated by how long the California Railroad project took and how much it cost, the federal government really doesn’t have that much. According to the Los Angeles Times, California pays only 82% of the programs, and funds relying solely on federal grants account for 18% of the funds.
Although California’s high-speed rail encounters many problems (mainly caused by politics), it’s the “ubiquitous train” tag, which is often no longer matched to what’s on the ground. There have been 119 miles of railroads between Mercedes and Bakersfield, and the project is close enough to finish that it is more wasteful to give up on it at this point than finishing it, especially as communities along the road expect once a potential economic boom is up and running. But good luck telling Trump (and Elon Musk who has been opposed from the beginning).
