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. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the move “illegal” and vowed to fight the decision.
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.”
Newsom, a target of comments from both Duffy and Trump that accompanied the decision, said in a statement that the decision would “hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley. … We’re now in the track-laying phase and building America’s only high-speed rail. California is putting all options on the table to fight this illegal action.” Said Choudri, “Canceling these grants without cause isn’t just wrong — it’s illegal, These are legally binding agreements, and the Authority has met every obligation, as confirmed by repeated federal reviews, as recently as February 2025.”
— Updated July 17 at 7:10 a.m. with response from California officials.
When the DOE set aside billions to build a new superconducting high energy physics ring underground during the the first Bush Administration, naturally the project location picked was Texas.
After spending some $2 billion on the tunnel to support the ring, The Clinton Administration cancelled the project. Still today, there is a massive incomplete round tunnel in Texas doing nothing. Instead funding went to the joint Large HADRON ring in the EU.
The point is, projects at the Federal level start and lose funding constantly for political or priority reasons. I don’t like the waste it involves, but it is not something exclusive to current affairs.
certainly CA HSR has made some serious mistakes. But let us be realistic this recission has nothing to do with corporate mismanagement but just another example of downright political revenge, If it sticks it will cost the US government more than the $4B in the long run. It is not even the most egregious example of political witch hunting. Appears to be another attempt to clean out the bank accounts of political enemies by enemies having to spend very larger amounts to defend themselves against the unlimited Federal bankroll,
Lawyers are going to get rich unless there are more incompetent lawyers at the FRA mess it up.
While I don’t deny the Trump administration is capable of playing political revenge, in this case the fault is entirely with CalHSR. If CalHSR n\blames Trump for their own criminal mismanagement of the project, that’s wrong.
CA HSR officials have many bad decisions, not just some. And thats the real point of this whole discussion. They’ve never been honest regarding projected cost over runs. Never. That, alone, has caused many project supporters to abandon ship.
The longer this goes on the more people believe their tax dollars are going into some kind of black hole, thus support continues to fade, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, where most of the building has taken place.
Timothy Ekren – High speed rail officials in CA have lost the plot. Nobody in their right mind is going to believe them if they came out and said it would take another 20 billion to completely finish the project. Everyone knows it would be more, ALOT more. They speak with a forked tongue…
And where is that money supposed to come from?? The people who are married to their own automobiles who enjoy free movement to go wherever the please at a moments notice??
The project never made any economic or business sense except as a payoff to California labor unions. And after completion it would have run a massive deficit in a state which is almost bankrupt anyway.
How much track has been already laid in the sections of the Central Valley project finished and ready? Wasn’t the whole system planned to be operational by now, funneling passengers from SF to LA and back? What percentage of money already spent went to administration and not construction?
California should pay back to the Feds all money granted so far as a penalty.
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.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
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.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
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.
Timothy — Europe and China conquer mountains. CalHSR is finishing a railroad built on flat land, way over budget and years behind schedule. Hasn’t even started in the mountains, either north or south.
Anyone who has been in a management capacity at CalHSR needs to be held to account.
I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone posting on these pages isn’t outraged by CalHSR. I certainly am.
Let California pay for this stinking heap of criminal incompetence. Not only should there be no more federal money. The federal grants already received should be paid back.
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.
Good point. However this is about publicity, scoring political points, no making things better… yet… California should do (they have made improvements with project managment at the CHSRA) as you advocate anyways. Its all in the “Abundance Agenda” of getting the public sector to not just work more like the private sector, but the way it did decades ago when most of the infrastucture we use was built.
“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.