“President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the federal government would not finance California’s high-speed rail project, escalating tensions over the state’s long-delayed infrastructure plan,” reports the Orange County Register:
Trump’s comments come as his administration undertakes a formal compliance and performance review of the project, raising doubts about the future of the rail line. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in February that the Federal Railroad Administration would conduct the probe.
“It’s hundreds of billions of dollars for this stupid project that should have never been built,” Trump said while taking questions alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. “This government is not going to pay.”
The California High-Speed Rail Authority in 2008 said the high-speed rail line would cost $33 billion and begin service by 2020. So far, only about 119 miles of the planned 776-mile railroad have commenced construction, and the estimated costs have soared to as much as $128 billion.
An inspector general report in February found the project was unlikely to meet its 2033 passenger service goal and identified a $6.5 billion funding gap for the Central Valley segment between Merced and Bakersfield.
Despite the misleading label of “high speed” rail, it would cost passengers far more per trip than flying, and transport people far more slowly than an airplane. House Republicans in 2023 tried to stop federal spending on this $128 billion rail project, but Democrats in Congress continued to back it. As noted earlier,
The state’s political class bamboozled voters into approving a high-speed rail project intended to ultimately connect Los Angeles with San Francisco. Construction was supposed to be completed early this decade, and residents were assured that the shiny new ‘clean energy’ train could be theirs for the low, low price of $30 billion,” said the Review-Journal. “Instead, the project is more than a decade behind schedule and is now projected to cost $100 billion…and counting. Officials now hope they can complete a 171-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Merced by the end of the decade.”
That 171-mile stretch will likely be the only part of the project that is ever completed. But few people will ever travel that remote stretch by rail. It runs between two cities that are already connected by a speedy highway, Route 99. It only takes a little over two hours to drive from one city to the other. Merced has only about 80,000 people, so it is not a frequent destination. It’s a city with an extremely high poverty rate, that attracts few tourists or business travelers.
This rail project is so expensive that it will cost more to travel by train than by airplane, even though traveling by train is slower. As the Review-Journal notes, “high-speed” rail can’t “compete with air travel in terms of time or price.” Reason Magazine says California’s “high-speed” rail system “will have ticket prices higher than airfares and will take nearly twice as long as flying.”
The rail project will also harm the environment. The Review Journal calls it an “environmental nightmare.” As the Daily Wire notes, “During the project’s more than 10-year life so far, it has been sued multiple times by environmentalists for harming wildlife along the proposed route.”
Cars and buses use less energy per passenger-mile than the little-used trains will, and building the rail line results in greenhouse gas emissions. Operating high-speed rail will “take massive amounts of electricity,” “raising questions about the power grid’s ability to meet the demand,” says the Fresno Bee. “High-speed trains require huge amounts of infrastructure” compared to a “four-lane freeway,” says a transportation expert.
