California got nearly $7B from feds for high-speed rail — but never laid any track, bombshell report shows
WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened Wednesday to pull federal grants for California’s High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA)?after it spent nearly $7 billion in taxpayer funds over a decade and a half without laying a single foot of track.
In a?310-page report, Duffy detailed the missed deadlines and stretched budget for the long-running project — and gave the Golden State’s high-speed rail office?until July 11?to respond or?get?around $4 billion in?additional?grants?cut off.
“This report exposes a cold, hard truth: CHSRA has no viable path to complete this project on time or on budget,” he said.
Originally passed as a ballot initiative in 2008, the 800-mile rail line was supposed to be completed in two phases?on a $33 billion budget by 2020, with a main line connecting San Francisco with Los Angeles and branches stretching north to?Sacramento and?south to San Diego
By 2019, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that there was no path forward after costs ballooned to $77.3 billion and the project was drawn down to a 171-mile section between Merced and Bakersfield.
CHSRA officials later applied for $8 billion in grants from former President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law to?help complete?that Central Valley Segment, which has since been abbreviated further — to just 119 miles.
But nine months after the first tranche of money went out the door in September 2024, the authority had blown through a deadline to buy rail cars for the project, according to a Wednesday letter from Federal Railroad Administration?(FRA)?acting administrator Drew Feeley.
Feeley noted other procurement issues and up to $1.6 billion in misspent funds due to?more than 1,000?change orders,?pushing the projected budget up as high as $128 billion and?making it unlikely the?authority?will meet its revised 2033 completion date.
In February, the state rail authority’s?inspector general also found a $7 billion budget shortfall?— roughly the same amount ($6.9 billion) that the feds had already forked over in grants since?2009.
Duffy launched the compliance review of the funding the same month, which found that CHSRA “currently has no credible plan, beyond seeking additional Federal funds, to address this funding gap.”
“To date, CHSRA has not laid any track or started work on signal systems required for train operations,” it stated, adding that Newsom’s 2025-26 budget proposal doesn’t account for costs incurred for recovery efforts stemming from the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year.
“To secure substantial Federal funding, CHSRA represented that it could connect major metropolitan cities in California, but can now only deliver a system that is reduced substantially and delayed significantly, which may connect two random endpoints.”
At least $800 million in additional costs were incurred just for “environmental and logistical challenges,” according to the compliance review.
“CHSRA is on notice — If they can’t deliver on their end of the deal, it could soon be time for these funds to flow to other projects that can achieve President Trump’s vision of building great, big, beautiful things again,”?the Transportation Secretary?said in?his statement.
“Our country deserves high-speed rail that makes us proud — not boondoogle trains to nowhere.”
Last month, Newsom defended the authority’s work, pointing out to reporters that a similar high-speed rail project linking Dallas and Houston had?been completely?abandoned.
“You can see the progress we’ve actually made,” he said. “We’re now on the other side of the environmental reviews; we’re on the other side of the land acquisition.”
“They’re laying tracks, to get to where they start to lay the tracks,” Newsom added. “Real tracks are being laid and the formal track that will be the first-in-the-nation, high-speed rail?track is about to take place. And so I want to get it done.”
“The Authority strongly disagrees with the FRA’s conclusions, which are misguided and do not reflect the substantial progress made to deliver high-speed rail in California. We remain firmly committed to completing the nation’s first true high-speed rail system connecting the major population centers in the state,” a CHSRA spokesperson said in a statement.
“While continued federal partnership is important to the project, the majority of our funding has been provided by the state. To that end, the Governor’s budget proposal, which is currently before the Legislature, extends at least $1 billion per year in funding for the next 20 years, providing the necessary resources to complete the project’s initial operating segment. The Authority will fully address and correct the record in our formal response to the FRA’s notice.”
