WASHINGTON — The Federal Railroad Administration has terminated some $4 billion in federal funding awarded to but not spent by California’s high speed rail program, following through on a longstanding goal of the Trump administration.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a Department of Transportation press release this evening (July 16, 2025) that the “mismanagement and incompetence” of the California High Speed Rail Authority led to the decision. The move follows an FRA compliance review ordered in February and delivered in June; that report said the project had “no viable path” to being completed within budget or on time, and said the CHSRA was in non-compliance with the terms of those grants in nine key areas [see “Report says California high speed project …,” Trains News Wire, June 4, 2025].
CSHRA CEO Ian Choudri rejected most of those findings in a 14-page letter on June 11 [see “California HSR Authority letter …,” News Wire, June 13, 2025], and in a subsequent response decried the federal review as reflecting “hostility to public investments in high speed rail, and to California’s leadership.” But the DOT press release says, “Neither response addressed FRA’s significant concerns.”
The formal 22-page notice revoking the FRA funding, from FRA Acting Administrator Drew Feeley, says “the statutes under which the [Fiscal Year 2010] Agreement is authorized or funding would not be adequately served by the continuation of the Federal contribution. As such, FRA is terminating the Cooperative Agreements, pursuant to their terms and applicable regulations.”
Reuters reports that President Donald Trump, in a post on his social media site, said “not a SINGLE penny in Federal Dollars” will go toward the high-speed “SCAM ever again.”
Let’s not forget that even if the $4 billion in federal funding is preserved, the state of California would still need to come up with as much as $6.5 billion more to finish the Central Valley segment. This led the inspector general for CHSRA to recently cast doubt on whether the agency can line up all the necessary funding to meet its 2033 service launch date.
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Note that before the administration can terminate the funding, California has 30 days to take any corrective action and make the case that it has complied with the terms of the grant.
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This project has always been a political lightning rod. Many, including me, equated it to a 1930’s depression era WPA project, but one on steroids.
California’s own geography is also partly the reason the project will never be completed. The same two mountain ranges SP had to surmount, the San Gabriel’s and the Tehachapi’s, were always going to make or break the project, no matter what else got in the way. How many more billions would have been needed to conquer those two barriers, especially the proposed tunnel under the San Gabriel Mountains?? Hopefully we’ll never find out.
Europe conquers mountains all the time, China conquers the Himalaya’s and Musk Boring Co claims he can better than anyone else. We give way too much time and money to people telling us why we can’t do something instead of those who actually will build it.
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Like my other comments. Disappointed in the approach and a lost opportunity for a different administration to show us that it can be done.
I suggest a different thought as what is left to do is actually build out right of way, from bridges, viaducts, stations to track. That what is literally happening right now!!.
This is an absolutely a great opportunity for the GOP/Feds to use it financial leverage to actually build better, quicker and cheaper by offering funds in return for meaningful reforms and greater oversight.. POTUS will say good riddance to right at the time that those who would benefit the most right now and going forward is the central valley blue collar workers who voted for him.
I say this because everyone thinks this a California. thing. Wake up and look at construction projects across the board, across the country and across the political spectrum. I will admit California stepped it up notch in terms of way overpromising to get a bond issue approved, then forming a separate entity way over its head to manage when they had a perfectly viable respected DOT, and then throw in the political decision to avoid I5 right of way for more costly Hwy99 parallel route and finally litigation by everyone under the sun to get their cut. Don’t be naive to claim this doesn’t happen with most of the infrastructure projects in this country.
Go look at TxDOT projects that add a lane here and there to I35 or I30 or I40 and the projects are costing 100s of millions.. I live in Dallas and the idea you are going to solve traffic this way at this cost is insane. We need a third leg, rail/transit, added to the transportation stool is my opinion
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Yes, I’m biased as an engineer and someone who has spent 37 years of my adult life building things. We absolutely suck getting to a point of putting a shovel in the ground like what happened w CaHSR. Now we are building its time for someone to lead. This action doesn’t lead.
I can’t feel sorry for CA. They had plenty of opportunity to get it reasonably “right” and couldn’t do it.
“CSHRA CEO Ian Choudri rejected most of those findings…” Of course he did. This is last hope to keep his job and maintain his income as he has to know that California is 72 Billion in debt and will be hard pressed to finish any segment of this poorly thought out and prosecuted idea which while laudable for the future is unable to be built today when the money is being spent on concepts and Not on laying rail or purchasing trainsets… To bad, so sad…
They are actively building the permeant way from a rail head in Madera to one in Shafter just north of Bakersfield, so they should be able to this decade run Siemens Charger-Venture trains at 125 MPH, which would be perhaps #3 in in terms of top and average speeds behind Brightline West and the NEC. If they went with dual-mode high-speed trainsets (like in Spain) they could electrify Madera-Shafter and do 160-186 MPH, so #1 or #2 in the USA.
A dual-mode Alstom Avelia Liberty would be very easy to do, just take the existing components of the power car and then divide the two 1600 HP diesel prime movers of the Alstom ALP-45DP between them, which should solve issues with weight, these diesel generator cars powering the electric power cars beyond the catenary of the new high-speed track, just like the Talgo 250 Dual trainset in Spain.
The state is upgrading the rail lines north of Merced to Sacramento for ‘ACE/Valley Rail’ so that gets you to Sacramento and the Bay Area, they should be able to accommodate at least a half dozen roundtrips to Sacramento and the Bay Area. That gets you one-seat rides instead of the planned change of trains at Merced, and add an extra mainline track from Shafter to the existing Bakersfield Amtrak station on the existing BNSF ROW should only cost a couple hundred million instead of tens of billions.
This project was flawed from the beginning, but its far from unsalvageable. They need to build HSR like in most of the world, like Germany with the ICE, where each new segment of HSR upgrades existing intercity rail service. The Shinkansen model doesn’t work well, as its only useful once you’ve completed large parts of the system, especially if you start in the middle instead of the end-points. California as a billion annually dedicated to HSR from state funds, they should just press on with a far better plan of incrementally building out a HSR system the way France, Germany, Italy have, instead of trying to build it all in one decade, the original 2009 plan.
Of course it’s in noncompliance. The Central Valley (the low-hanging fruit of the project) is years behind schedule and way over budget. Merced to San Jose not even started. Bakersfield to Burbank to LA not even started.
California takes no responsibility for this fiasco and thinks it’s entitled to federal money. The answer is, no.
True to being about politics and not much else. I guess every state, every county/parish, every city/town/village and even plenty of private railroads must be entitled for accepting federal grants to support their infrastructure projects. How much grants to go fund a highway bypass who knows where. Heck, Alabama got Federal grants and loans to build a massive new bridge in Mobile, AL . Certainly the drivers who leave work on one side of the river are entitled so they don’t have to wait in traffic to get through a tunnel.
But no problem. I get it. We change administration and priorities change so in return we get the big beautiful bill that will let let Defense Department spending go to $1 trillion a year, not a B but T times over, in part by allowing a $150 billion increase this year and every year for the next 4 years. We are literally handing the Defense Industrial Base $600 extra fricking billion dollars and turning around cancelling a $4 billion dollar grant on infrastructure that will be built by Americans, last for years and used by Americans and yes, paid mostly by Californians. Just like every other transportation project in this country that received a grant.