Will HSR get DOGE'd?
Image by Dongjie Chen
Trump told reporters Tuesday that his administration will investigate the long-delayed California High-Speed Rail project, which was authorized by voters in the state in 2008. Since then, costs have exploded and delays multiplied. His harsh comments put the future of the much-maligned project in even greater jeopardy. From Epoch Times.
From the proposed Los Angeles-area station to San Francisco, the long-delayed project is expected to cost up to $128 billion.
California has dedicated billions to the project so far, yet no track has been laid. According to recent California High-Speed Rail Authority disclosures, 38 structures and 39 miles of guideway have been completed after spending $13.6 billion.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said it is the “worst managed project” he has seen and “hundreds of billions of dollars” over budget.
The president said the overruns for the rail project, expected to span approximately 460 miles once complete, are the worst of any project in the history of the United States.
“You could take every single person that was going to go on the train and get the finest limousine service in the world, and take them back and forth with limousines, and you'd have hundreds of billions of dollars left over,” Trump said. “It is the worst thing, and we’re going to start an investigation of that because it’s not possible.”
California Policy Center Visiting Fellow Marc Joffe told The Epoch Times that, like the president, he’s not optimistic about the high-speed rail’s future.
“If things go according to plan, they'll have spent a total of $35 billion,” he said of the Bakersfield-Merced line. “The original estimate for that same length of track from Anaheim to San Francisco was $33 billion.”
From the proposed Los Angeles-area station to San Francisco, the overall project is expected to cost up to $128 billion—$95 billion more than originally projected.
Joffe said the overages are due to numerous reasons, such as disorganization on the part of the state at the start of the rail project.
“They’ve also had a lot of trouble acquiring all of the land that they needed,” he said. Instead of running the track along or in the median of I-5, the state decided to run the line through the Central Valley.
“That required them to work out deals with landowners or exercise eminent domain,” Joffe said. “That all takes a lot of time.”
The latest official project update was released by the state in 2023, according to the California Legislature’s biennial update requirements. That same year the federal government earmarked $6 billion for the high-speed rail project. In 2019, Trump criticized the project and rescinded nearly $1 billion in federal funding.
Read the whole thing (behind paywall) here.
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