The Trump administration will terminate its agreement with California to fund the state’s struggling high-speed rail project, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) said Thursday.
In a letter to state officials, Administrator Ronald Batory said FRA would de-obligate the $928.6 million set aside for the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) under a 2010 agreement.
The agency will also continue to examine recouping the $2.5 billion in stimulus funds already spent on the rail program, according to a copy of Batory’s letter obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“FRA finds that CHSRA has repeatedly failed to comply with the terms of the FY10 Agreement and has failed to make reasonable progress on the Project,” FRA said in an emailed statement.
“Additionally, California has abandoned its original vision of a high-speed passenger rail service connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles, which was essential to its applications for FRA grant funding,” the agency said.
The decision to withdraw federal rail funding is likely to heighten tensions between the Trump administration and California.
Dubbed the “train to nowhere,” Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in February he shelved plans to complete the entire high-speed rail line that voters approved in 2008. The project was meant to connect major urban areas from San Diego to San Francisco by high-speed rail.
Instead, California intends to finish a 119-mile corridor in the Central Valley — at a cost of roughly $89 million per mile.
California’s once-celebrated dream of high-speed rail became bogged down by cost overruns, delays, and mismanagement. State officials reported in 2018 that finishing the entire rail line could cost $77 billion.
Despite the high cost, Newsom, a Democrat, said he wanted to complete a section of the rail line to help the Central Valley’s economy and avoid having to send $3.5 billion in federal funds back to the Trump administration.
“I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to [President] Donald Trump,” Newsom said in February.
However, Trump quickly took to Twitter to demand California repay the federal government over the abandoned rail project. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) warned it was keeping a close eye on California’s high-speed rail plans, including whether or not the state would need to pay back $3.5 billion in federal funds.
Now, DOT officials have determined California violated the terms of its cooperative agreement with the federal government. That determination cost California nearly $930 million in funds, Batory wrote in his letter.
“Finally, the dramatically reduced scope of California’s current plan for its HSR System is simply not consistent with the Project as CHSRA proposed in its applications for Federal financial assistance on the Project,” Batory wrote.
“For these reasons, and those set forth in this decision, FRA has determined to terminate the FYlO Agreement, effective today, and will de-obligate the associated funds,” wrote Batory.
Read more at Daily Caller
I do not support high or regular speed rail transit, but there is something I wonder about. Europe has successfully built high speed rail. Did they spend $89 million a mile? I doubt it. Why are things so different here? Are the consultant fees and corruption that bad?
Send the bill to Brown . Funny how politicians know when to spend more time with their family just as shit they created hits the fan . No wonder California
is turning to be a human sewer .
Gee, its just so stone-age and un-evolved of the U.S. that we don’t have rails to every major city like Europe…said some idiot to me the other day.
We can’t even manage to build one between LA and San Fran.
I told him we made the leap over and around rail to air travel, and no need to look back.
This will save the tax payers a bundle not having to pay a for Moonbeams Pork Train on the Tax & Spend Democrat Line
Unfortunately, close to $10B has already been wasted (funneled into consultants’ pockets) without even a nanometer of track laid. A few bridge sections have been under construction for years but no rail line is expected for at least another decade. Better to kill it and write off the loss, so we don’t throw a full $100B+ at it.