The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) is suing the Trump administration over what it called the administration’s “illegal termination” of around $4bn in federal grants awarded during the Biden administration for the state’s delayed and over-budget high-speed railway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
State governor Gavin Newsom announced the lawsuit last Thursday, 17 July. The announcement said the termination was “petty, political retribution, motivated by President Trump’s personal animus toward California and the high-speed rail project, not by facts on the ground”.
A day earlier, US Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) had terminated the grants, saying not one high-speed track had been laid after 16 years and roughly $15bn having been spent.
His announcement said: “The $135 billion projected total cost of the project could buy every San Francisco and LA resident nearly 200 roundtrip flights between the cities.”
The decision came after an FRA review examined CHSRA’s compliance under the FRA-administered grant agreements to see if it had met its obligations under the award terms.
“This is California’s fault,” Duffy said.
“Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results. After over a decade of failures, CHSRA’s mismanagement and incompetence has proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on time or on budget.”
Newsom, a champion of the project, said Duffy’s action comes as the project enters the track-laying phase, and as CHSRA has built more than 50 major railway structures including bridges, overpasses, and viaducts, and finished some 60 miles of guideway.
He said passenger service is expected between 2030 and 2033.
‘Political stunt to punish California’
The 494-mile first phase of the railway would connect San Francisco in the north to Los Angeles and Anaheim in the south, but CHSRA is aiming first to open an “initial operating segment” between Merced and Bakersfield in the state’s Central Valley.
The railway’s estimated cost has risen from around $33bn in 2008 to more than $100bn today.
To date, just under a quarter of the railway’s funding has come from the federal government, the AP news agency reports.
“Trump’s termination of federal grants for California high-speed rail reeks of politics,” Newsom said. “It’s yet another political stunt to punish California.”
“In reality, this is just a heartless attack on the Central Valley that will put real jobs and livelihoods on the line. We’re suing to stop Trump from derailing America’s only high-speed rail actively under construction.”
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