Trump’s Funding Threats Build a Case for Private High-Speed Rail

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But the state didn’t break ground on the project until 2015 and the price tag for the full network has ballooned to between $89 billion and $128 billion, according to state estimates. In fact, the first 171-mile section being built through the Central Valley connecting the cities of Merced and Bakersfield — considered the relatively easy part of the project — is likely to cost more than the 2008 estimate for the entire network, according to a California Legislative Analyst’s Office report released in March.

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“All they have done to date is acquire real estate, clear land and build civil structures of which the overruns have been 300%,” said Lou Thompson, recently retired head of the high-speed rail peer review group, which provides independent oversight of the project.

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The timeline for building that portion of the line is also slipping. The California High-Speed Rail Authority has pushed back the completion date a year to late 2031. An inspector general report published earlier this year, though, said it’s “increasingly unlikely” the route will be completed by 2033. Meanwhile, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found a $7 billion funding shortfall must be addressed before June next year or else the project could slow or even pause.

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The hard part still remains, even assuming the first segment gets finished: Drilling tunnels connecting the relatively flat Central Valley to San Francisco and Los Angeles, a task made especially daunting by the state’s earthquake risk.

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The project was already a lightning rod for conservatives. For example, Trump rescinded around $1 billion in funding during his first term. But it started to attract increasing attention from Republicans following his November victory.

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Late that month, DOGE tweeted about the project, setting off alarm bells for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. “This will be a state project in the next 4 years,” Deputy Director of Legislation Jane Leonard Brown wrote in an email about the tweet that Bloomberg News received in a public records request.

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In December, Representative Vince Fong, a California Republican, submitted the project for review and audit by the House’s newly formed Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee, a name that riffs on Musk’s similarly named department. 

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“This is a nightmare that has to end,” said Fong, whose district the project runs through. “We need to stop any more federal funds from being put into this.”

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Shortly after taking office, Trump said the project was among those he wanted to “investigate rapidly” with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy taking action a few weeks after that. Following the report showing the project’s $7 billion funding gap, Duffy blasted the “train to nowhere” as “a joke” in a tweet. Though Trump insisted the federal government wouldn’t pay for the project, the investigation is still ongoing, a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) spokesperson said.

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In his speech announcing the investigation, Duffy said he wasn’t opposed to high-speed rail and touted Brightline West as a project that appears to be “going well.” The idea of a Las Vegas-Los Angeles high-speed rail line began around the same time as California’s ambitions. But it languished for years before the project was bought by billionaire Wes Edens’ Fortress Investment Group in 2018. 

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Since then, Fortress has already launched another Brightline high-speed rail line, though on the opposite side of the country in Florida. The service began in 2018 and expanded in 2023 to stretch from Orlando International Airport to Miami, zipping passengers from end to end in three-and-a-half hours.