LOS ANGELES — California’s high speed rail project, long in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump and his top advisor, billionaire Elon Musk, will be the subject of a compliance review, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said today (Thursday, Feb. 20).
KABC-TV reports that Duffy said at a Los Angeles press conference that his agency is “going to look at whether the California High-Speed Rail Authority has actually complied with the agreements that they’ve signed with the federal government. We can’t just say we’re going to give money and then not hold states accountable to how they spend that money.”
In a Department of Transportation press release, Duffy said the review will determine whether $4 billion in federal funds should remain committed to the project and that “President Trump is right that this project is in dire need of an investigation.” The Federal Railroad Administration will review the authority and its progress in building the Merced-Bakersfield segment, and determine whether the authority has met its obligations under the terms of the grants.
The release compares the California project with “the impressive work of Brightline West” which “plans to begin service between the Los Angeles region and Las Vegas in 2028.” That project has not yet begun construction.
Trump has called the California effort “the worst-managed project I think I’ve ever seen,” and Musk said in a recent social media post that the project “is an example of where incompetence in the limit is indistinguishable from fraud.”
California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) responded to Duffy’s announcement with a statement in which he called efforts to derail the high-speed project “a massive government handout” to Musk, “who is afraid that modern public transportation will undermine his business interests — including Tesla and his scam ‘Boring Company.’ … High-Speed Rail is an incredibly transparent project that has nothing to hide. The project has an independent inspector general established by the legislature and is subject to ongoing, broad-based public scrutiny.”
The project is years behind schedule and well over budget.
Announcement of the review came the day after release of a survey showing that a majority of Californians still support the high-speed project. The survey, commissioned by Nexstar Media — with six California stations among its more than 200 nationwide — was conducted by Emerson College and found 54% of those surveyed considered the project a good use of state money. The numbers parallel those in a 2022 poll by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times that found 56% in support.
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