FRA strips another $175M from California high-speed rail project

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy yesterday announced that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) withdrew funding for four projects related to California’s high-speed rail construction project.

The action, which follows the FRA's cancellation of $4 billion in federal funding awarded to the project by President Joe Biden's administration, will eliminate an additional $175 million in federal dollars that would have gone to the project, which Duffy and President Trump refer to as a "boondoggle."

"In 20 years, California has not been able to lay a single track of high-speed rail," said Duffy in a press release. “The waste ends here. As of today, the American people are done investing in California’s failed experiment. Instead, my department will focus on making travel great again by investing in well-managed projects that can make projects like high-speed rail a reality.”

The four projects whose funding was canceled yesterday are:
• Le Grand overcrossing project on the Merced extension, $89.6 million, awarded to the California High-Speed Rail Authority;
• Southern San Jose grade separations on Monterey Road, $7.5 million, awarded to the city of San Jose;
• DTX final design for track and rail systems, $24.7 million awarded to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority; and
• Madera High-Speed Rail Station, $54.5 million awarded to the California Department of Transportation.

In addition to canceling funding for those four projects, Duffy has directed FRA to review all obligated grants related to the California high-speed rail project.

California is suing the Trump administration for pulling the $4 billion in funding earlier this year. Gov. Gavin Newsom has said the high-speed rail project will continue, and recently announced that the state's cap-and-trade program would fund $1 billion into the project each year.

California voters approved the high-speed rail project to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco in 2008. At that time, the project was proposed to cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020. Since then, the project's cost has ballooned to about $120 billion and the timeline has been extended.

A part of the system in the California Central Valley, now under construction, is slated for completion sometime in the 2030s. The entire Los Angeles-to-San Francisco system won't be completed until much later.