California disputed a Trump administration report detailing how it has failed to complete a high-speed rail project on schedule by explaining that the state wants to spend $1 billion annually for the next 20 years to finish the “initial” segment of the project.
California’s High Speed Rail Authority said in a statement that a Department of Transportation (DOT) report released Wednesday was “misguided” in saying that the state is violating terms of federal grants for the infrastructure, which was slated to be built by around 2020.
The state agency said California has made progress, pointing to the fact that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed annual allocation of $1 billion to complete an “initial operating segment” of the project over the next two decades.
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“The Authority strongly disagrees with the [DOT’s] conclusions, which are misguided and do not reflect the substantial progress made to deliver High-Speed Rail in California,” the California High Speed Rail Authority said, adding that most funding has come from the state level. The authority said Newsom’s proposal to the legislature for funding over the next 20 years provides “the necessary resources to complete the project’s initial operating segment.”
California officials initially intended the project to be a “bullet train” system connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles and to complete it by about 2020, but the projected cost has risen from $33 billion to more than $100 billion in the years since. An official webpage detailing progress on the project says 96 miles of guideway have been completed out of a 171-mile segment of the rail system, while 463 miles of another portion are “ready” for construction.
“Even with continued federal support, the project is far short of the funding needed to finish just a fraction of the track,” the DOT said Wednesday, warning that California has 37 days to reply before it may cancel roughly $4 billion in federal funding for the project. California has received $6.9 billion in total federal dollars for the rail system to date, the DOT said, with the agency adding that the project is a “boondoggle.”
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Golden State voters approved the first round of funding in 2008, and construction began in 2015. Despite lackluster progress, at least $600 million was spent on environmental reviews for the project as of September 2023, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.
Newsom’s funding request for the rail system comes as a $12 billion deficit looms over California’s budget for the coming fiscal year, CalMatters reported. The California High Speed Rail Authority pledged to “correct the record” in its formal response to the DOT’s outreach, but did not elaborate further.
“If they can’t deliver on their end of the deal, it could soon be time for these funds to flow to other projects that can achieve President Trump’s vision of building great, big, beautiful things again,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday about California.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
