From the US Department of Transportation
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Report identifies years of mismanagement, broken promises, and wasted federal taxpayer dollars
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy today released the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Compliance Review Report finding that the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA)’s high speed rail project is in default of the terms of its federal grant awards. The detailed report, which is over 300 pages, contains 9 key findings including missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and overrepresentation of projected ridership. The two grants total roughly $4 billion in taxpayer money. As the letter notes, CHSRA has up to 37 days to respond, after which the grants could be terminated.
In a letter to CHSRA’s CEO, Ian Choudri, the FRA noted its report identified a trail of project delays, mismanagement, waste, and skyrocketing costs. The project has received approximately $6.9 billion in federal dollars in roughly fifteen years but has not laid a single high-speed track. Even with continued federal support, the project is far short of the funding needed to finish just a fraction of the track.
“I promised the American people we would be good stewards of their hard-earned tax dollars. This report exposes a cold, hard truth: CHSRA has no viable path to complete this project on time or on budget. CHSRA is on notice — 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,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy. “Our country deserves high-speed rail that makes us proud – not boondoogle trains to nowhere.”
Please find a copy of the full letter and full report HERE.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
In February, Secretary Duffy announced that USDOT would be launching an investigation into the CHSRA’s high-speed rail project and reviewing two grants awarded to the project: a $929 million Cooperative Agreement from 2010 and a $3.07 billion Cooperative Agreement from last year.
Under the Secretary’s direction, FRA conducted a detailed review of CHSRA’s compliance with federal grant agreements related to over $4 billion in funding. As part of its investigation, the FRA has contacted state oversight entities, visited construction sites, conducted a risk analysis, met with CHSRA officials, and reviewed several thousand documents.
FRA’s report is 310 pages, inclusive of supporting attachments, and contains 9 key findings:
- CHSRA has executed numerous change orders and will likely have many more change orders in the near future to account for contractor expenses as a result of project delays.
- CHSRA has already missed its deadline for finalizing its rolling stock procurement.
- CHSRA has at least a $7 billion funding gap to complete the EOS, with no credible plan to secure additional funds.
- CHSRA does not have a viable path to complete the EOS by 2033 per its commitment in the FY10 Agreement and the FSP Agreement.
- CHSRA relies on volatile non-federal funding sources, which present significant project risk.
- CHSRA lacks time and money to electrify the EOS by 2033.
- CHSRA’s budget contingency is inadequate to cover anticipated contractor delay claims.
- CHSRA has overrepresented its ridership projections for the EOS substantially.
- CHSRA lacks the capacity to deliver the EOS by 2033.
Find excerpts from the report below:
Given CHSRA’s past performance, including substantial change orders, numerous contractor delay claims, protracted third-party arrangements, failure to account adequately for project risk, and lack of a credible plan to close the $7 billion funding gap, CHSRA is not likely to complete the Early Operating Segment (EOS) by 2033. In executing the FSP Agreement and reobligating the FY10 Agreement, FRA relied on CHSRA’s representations, which were included as commitments in the funding agreements, that CHSRA would deliver the EOS by 2033.
To secure substantial Federal funding, CHSRA represented that it could connect major metropolitan cities in California, but can now only deliver a system that is reduced substantially and delayed significantly, which may connect two random endpoints.
As such, CHSRA’s inability to deliver the EOS by 2033 renders the CHSR Project inconsistent with the goals of the HSIPR Program and constitutes a Project Material Change under the FSP Agreement. These findings support a conclusion that CHSRA is in default under the FSP Agreement and the CHSR Project no longer effectuates the goals of the funding programs, which may give rise to an action under the funding agreements, which could include termination.
…
Similarly, in 2008, the CHSR System was represented as a two-phase visionary system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, CA, and later north to Sacramento, CA, and south to San Diego, CA. Since then, the project footprint has been dramatically reduced from an 800-mile segment to a 171-mile segment to the current vision—119-miles. Despite substantial Federal support and funding, CHSRA does not have the capacity to deliver the full CHSR System. This 2025 compliance review demonstrates that CHSRA has not learned from its mistakes and mismanagement and has therefore failed to create an organization capable of effectively and efficiently managing project delivery. Despite the substantial scope reduction, the CHSR Project still continues to face numerous delays and cost overruns. At this rate, CHSRA will never complete the CHSR System. Further, CHSRA has not acted in good faith in making representations to FRA regarding its ability complete the EOS with a reasonable budget and schedule. This not only gives rise to the conditions creating default under the agreement, but also raises a reasonable question about whether continued Federal investment in the CHSR System is a prudent use of taxpayer dollars.
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Using googled numbers and a route length of 500 miles and rail height of 6 inches, I come up with needing 28 billion bills to replace the steel rails. I like the picture.
It would cost significantly more to do so but to avoid conflicts the entire rail should be raised 20′ in the air
Before or after the steel import tariffs?
Yeah . . . but did you take into account the degree of sea-level rise over, say, the next 100 years?
/sarc
Maybe I’m overlooking something here, but when all the delays, cost overruns and inconclusive studies are considered, maybe the demand for such a rail link really doesn’t exist. There are enough highways air services already available, so who really cares about this rail link except the purblind environmentalists who actually believe such a route would be a positive step toward fighting climate change. Canada has similar dreamers in those who think a new high speed rail line from Windsor, Ontario to Quebec City would have the same effect and are urging the federal government to get the project moving. Except these proposals have been forwarded for decades now, and next-to-nothing has been done. So once again is the demand really great enough or are the roads and airways already adequate for moving passengers and freight in the area and never mind spending millions on a redundant service.
Same down in Australia.
HSR has been mooted many times joining Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne… and maybe Canberra.
… but I doubt it will ever happen. Getting a HST out of Sydney region to the north is rather difficult, especially if you want to service Gosford and Newcastle.
The distances are large over land, and flights regular and quite cheap between those 3 main cities.
I doubt there would be the patronage to ever cover the massive cost of such a venture.
It is pointless. The initiative promised a 2:40 trip time, I think, which was utterly hopeless considering the SF end has 50 miles of dense suburbia to get through and the LA end has 50 miles of suburbia and mountains (the “Grapevine”) to get through or over. Absolutely no way is any 150 mph train going to be tolerated in those sections, so you need 50 miles of tunnel at each end, and the non-engineer in me wonders how practical a 150 mph train is in a tunnel. 400 miles in 2:40 is 150 mph average.
The initiative projected so much traffic it would need a 1000 passenger train leaving every 5 minutes, but I don’t remember if that was 24 hours a day or just 8-5. I believe they projected 100 million passengers a year, so … 250 weekdays is 400,000 per day, 16,000 per hour, yup, 4 minutes apart, night and day. Spread it over every day instead of just weekdays only drops it to 11,000 per hour. There’s no way that many people want to travel between those two cities. It sure wouldn’t be commuters wasting 3 hours twice a day.
Umm. Cut those figures in half to allow for travel in both directions. 5500/hour, a packed train every 10 minutes. Triple those figures for 8-5 only, a train every 3-4 minutes.
And airports do it faster and have more endpoints available. If you add time to get to and from the airports, you have to add more time for the train because it only has one station at each end … if you add multiple stations, that means multiple stops, and makes the promised 2:40 even more ridiculous.
The damned thing has been fraudulent from the start.
The Only difference is that the Rail could be run by electricity while the far more convenient Jet requires Hydrocarbon Fuel. Jets won’t ever work with electricity as their sole energy source.
Problem is society needs to get from coast to coast in hours not days and trains can’t traverse oceans.
If not for their slow air speed I think blimps would be fantastic.
But California gets a significant portion of electricity from fossil fuels, so its still consuming fossil fuels all the same.
Shhhhhh!
You should give the “end point” problems more emphasis. Airports can move (albeit expensive) their terminal to match long-term demographic changes. Not so rail. It is pretty much stuck where it is. Light rail such as between the St. Louis airport and downtown is a different animal, it was designed and built when the St. Louis airport was far outside metro St. Louis so its usefulness has remained for a long time and will continue for a long time. But sooner or later it too will also become less useful. San Francisco has already seen demographic center moves just in the past 25 years.
I once read a sci-fi book back in the 70’s (wish I could find what I did with it) that had as one of its premises that government projects had become so grandiose and expensive that they couldn’t be completed and was making paupers of the taxpayers. It fueled a move into colonizing planets in other solar systems by private enterprise. It was more prescient that most people gave it credit for.
You might enjoy a book, “Romance of the Rails”, all about passenger trains, including light rail, in the US. Most fascinating to me is that every step of the transition from horse buses to horse rail to electric rail to … goes from government opposition (taxing, punitive regulation) to acquiescence to subsidy. NYC subways were originally privately build and made a profit on nickel fares, but once the government took them over, it was politically impossible to keep fares in line with inflation or to keep employment lean and mean.
He also mentions the idiocy of fixed lines, when buses can reroute instantly.
I can’t think of anything specific, but that description sounds a lot like something by Heinlein.
Seems likely to be a reference to the “future history” stories as a whole with “The Man Who Sold the Moon” the best fit as an individual story. If so, Elon Musk could be as close as we get to D. D. Harriman. Biggest problem with that is Heinlein woefully underestimated how long “the crazy years” would last.
It wasn’t Heinlein. As I remember at the start of the book there was some government project about building a “bridge” on Jupiter. Colossal waste of taxpayer money. Much of the population was on the government dole. I read it fifty years ago and I don’t remember the author. Maybe “A World Out of Time”?
Your description is reminiscent of “The Roads Must Roll”, which is Heinlein. But the Jupiter bridge doesn’t sound like any Heinlein I know, certainly not from The Past Through Tomorrow (The “future history” book Klavier mentioned) or any of the related stories. I don’t recall anything like that in A World Out Of Time either, but if it’s from that universe, then it would be Niven’s Known Space – which would have been my next guess.
Thinking on it some more, it might be “AWOOT” – do you remember if the main character was a “corpsicle” and became a ram pilot? That DOES sound a good bit like the setting of that book at the beginning.
I just don’t remember much more. I just remember that even back then it was apparent the US government was failing at doing big things. Things like the WPA and the TVA projects were in the past and the only new thing that seemed to work was the moon project and even it went way over budget all the time.
In many places trains are required to slow down when passing through towns. How would that affect the transit times? Dunno.
THAT issue is part of the overall farce of California’s so-called high-speed rail (HSR) project. In an effort to stem the realization of initially (intentional) underestimated costs of the project, as presented to taxpayers in order to get an approval vote, the managers of the project later decided to incorporate large segments of existing railroad tracks that already pass though the dense, near-center of urban towns such a Fresno and Sacramento. Of course, the numerous street crossings and aged condition of those urban rail segments automatically eliminates any claim to “high speed” in those segments.
To offset this criticism, the HSR project managers initially pointed to the fact that the HSR could then stop at those intermediary urban centers to offer increased “service” to riders, choosing to ignore the reduction in overall route speed resulting from the additional stops to unload/offload passengers along the overall route.
You can’t make this stuff up!
I don’t think environmentalists drive rail, rather salaried government administration career growth have a stronger interest.
Your comment fits with, build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
Obviously not a better mousetrap.
Just as an exercise in building high speed rail, I cannot see how one could build 200mph rail lines through the mountains at each end of the Bay Area to Los Angeles route.
Both of the routes out of the SF basin are much too curvy, and any tunnels would have to traverse geological faults. The Grapevine was the killer test for European cars in the 1960’s and 70’s, as there were no such long high speed climbs in Europe.
The economics are even worse. Jerry Brown’s Toy Train is an exercise in Green virtue signaling.
The minimum turning radius is 8km.
If California wants a high speed rail they can pay for it themselves. There is no need for us to chip in. Our money would be better spent building a wall on the southern border, plugging the holes on the northern border and building fossil fuel and nuclear generators.
California, where virtue signaling meets reality.
Reality: “The project has received approximately $6.9 billion in federal dollars in roughly fifteen years but has not laid a single high-speed track.”
This project is a dead duck. As the Secretary said: “There’s no way forward.”
Governor Gavin Newsom, among others, needs to be held to account for wasting all this taxpayer money. Next Up: Gavin Newsom denying he is at fault for this outrageously expensive boondoggle. Gavin is not presidential material.
However there is a 1,600 foot bridge over a dry river bed which cost $11B.
How do you soak the Federal Government for $3.999B?
Promise a really fast Train … from nowhere to nowhere … and deliver nothing for it
It’s a real Nowhere Train
Thought up in a Nowhere Brain
Going not to here or there
But Nowhere
Nowhere Train won’t glisten
We all know you won’t listen
Nowhere Train
If you can’t be built your funds will go missin’
Good lyrics.
Although I like it I doubt John Lennon would approve.
If only the UK government would do something similar and cancel HS2.
Indeed.
Not holding breath, though.
California, home of the cancelled Auburn Dam. Also, now home to the soon to be cancelled high speed rail.
Watch out America. California politicians like to brag that California sets the environmental standards for the rest of the country.
My understanding of the Auburn dam was that because the American River canyon was so steep and narrow, it would have stored very little water. They could have stored as much by raising the Folsom Dam six feet at 1/10 the cost. A quick Wikipedia check implies the same; it would have been as high as Hoover Dam, 3 times as wide, and only held 8% as much water.
Auburn Dan cannot be built because of weakness in the rock, several faults and weak dykes run through the canyon walls.
You can look on Google Earth and see fault movement in the dam footings. That’s a dam failure disaster which was avoided.
Mean while BrightLine is building it’s High Speed Rail Link between Los Angeles and Las Vegas without massive government hand outs.
Well, you . . . ummmm . . . need to get your “facts” straight.
“In December 2023, the United States Department of Transportation awarded Brightline West a $3 billion grant as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act . . . Revenue service is planned to start by the end of 2028.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline_West [my bold emphasis added]
I think it’s fair to call $3 billion a massive government hand out.
And given how little actual construction specific to this project has actually taken place to date, there is ZERO chance this project will achieve a revenue service start date by end-2028. Now catch this:
“In the original plan, the route did not extend into Los Angeles due to the high cost of building rail in urban areas. The 50-mile (80 km) extension from Victor Valley to the city of Palmdale, where it would connect to the California High-Speed Rail system currently in development, in order to provide service to Los Angeles, was not included in the initial phase. In June 2012, the new plan included the link between Victor Valley and Palmdale as part of construction for the first phase of the project. Passengers would transfer to Metrolink to access the Los Angeles area . . . In 2023, Brightline West relocated more sections of the route into the median of I-15. The Victor Valley station was reconfigured to have passenger platforms in the highway median. The vehicle maintenance facility was moved from the Victor Valley site to a 246-acre parcel (100 ha) west of I-15 in Sloan, Nevada, and will connect to the Union Pacific mainline at this location . . . The {Metrolink} line will continue into the Greater Los Angeles area, terminating at Rancho Cucamonga Metrolink station . . . At Palmdale, passengers can connect to the existing Metrolink service or continue into Los Angeles using California High-Speed Rail’s tracks.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline_West [my bold emphasis added]
So, the BrightLine does not really intend to have any “high-speed” rail into the city of Los Angeles proper, stopping far short (about 60 miles) from downtown LA. Furthermore, segments of the route will use the existing Union Pacific tracks, which are also not built for high speed trains.
Moreover, the Brightline project is based, in part as described above, on using portions of the as-yet-unbuilt-and-likely-never-will-be California High-Speed Rail system.
Lastly, just think of the complexity (and thus cost) of having to place new high-speed rail track infrastructure and associated grading and construction equipment into the median of the heavily trafficked (24/7/365) I-15 freeway between LA and Las Vegas (a minimum of 3 lanes wide each way, and in some places up to six lanes wide each way!).
Bottom line: the “BrightLine High-Speed Rail Link” has all the makings for being just a mini-version of the California High-Speed Rail
projectboondoggle, with yet another soaking of taxpayers to occur at the end.You forgot to mention that BrightLine also has almost $4B in private funding. Not the first time the US Gov’t has put up half the funds for a transportation system..Case in point. The US Navy loaned United States Lines $49M to build the SS United States which still holds the record for an Atlantic Ocean crossing by a passenger liner.
Southwest airlines LA to San Francisco $101 ticket and one hour twenty-five minute flight time.
Plus how long it takes to get to the airport plus the two hours in advance of your flight they want you AT the airport.
It’s not any faster to get to the train station, plus parking will undoubtedly be worse, and the TSA will be happy to extend their remit.
ETA You’re not considering that you can choose flights between the several different airports on each end, whereas adding train stations at each end still requires every train stop at, or at least pass through, every station.
Exactly correct. And if the CA HSR Authority isn’t sufficiently competent to connect Merced to Bakersfield (which has been a total fail) the chances they will ever connect SF to LA are infinitesimally small.
I’m absolutely certain this HSR was nothing but a money stealing scheme from the start. I’ve never had any doubts about it failing at some point, in fact, I’m surprised the plug wasn’t pulled years back. But if you are going to compare LAX hops to anything you should base it on experience. I’ve flown in and out of LAX a few hundred times over the last 35 years, I’m jaded.
My experience with Amtrak is completely different than going to LAX. I have a train obsessed grandson, and he and his parents usually visit us by train, traveling on Amtrak from and back to the Bay area. We pick them up and drop them off in Bakersfield. We time it to get there about 45 minutes before the train leaves. Plenty of parking. It takes a few minutes to process in the station, and I don’t think that’s even necessary as literally you can just run to the cars and jump on. Yes, we have to drive 90 mellow miles to Bakerspatch, but that’s family.
LAX is hellish by comparison. I leave home 7 hours before my flight (140 mile drive), pray traffic is no worse than usual, pray that security is no worse than usual. I park out in the LAX lots and shuttle in – that’s not too bad but allocate an hour for that. If I have a morning flight I book a hotel for the night before. Coming back if we land in the afternoon before 2PM I’ll hit the road for home, hoping to ride the wave. After that I mill around West LA for a few hours as I’d rather sit at the beach then in my car on the 5 stalled in traffic.
Going from SF to SoCal, there are some other airports – John Wayne, Ontario, Burbank. My experience with these airports is carriers, available flights, and pricing is highly variable. While the burden might be slightly less in some respects, the overall experience is similar to LAX.
It is not very likely that the high speed rail station will be built next to your house. It will likely be slower to get to than the airport and you will have to get there early too. The trains will have to be spaced for safety on the track. The price will have to be much higher that air tickets if the system cost is to be recovered.
In Victorian Britain, an entire inland waterway network, then railway network were built without any taxpayers’ money and entirely by private enterprise without Government direction.
Anything that needs public money is not a viable business, too risky for private investors. It will certainly cost more than originally estimated, it will fail to meet its supposed aims, fail to attract consumers, never make money, always need taxpayer support.
This is true of all railways in the World. The railways in Britain were nationalise just after WWII. They were allegedly privatised in the 1980s, although Network Rail which owns track and other infrastructure has a single shareholder, the British Government, and rail services are franchised out by the Government.
Network Rail received £7.5 billion in subsidies last year, and the private service operators £4.4billion in subsidies. “Private” rail services therefore cost the British taxpayer £12 billion each year.
Rail fares are regulated and capped by Government. A number of operators have declared bankruptcy and handed their franchises back – these services are now run directly by the State. Much of these subsidies come from taxpayers who for one reason or another do not use the rail network, in many cases because their area lacks railways.
Railways are a 200 year old technology which have only survived because of Government interventions, and regulations and taxation to deter alternatives from being developed, and of course to save the environment/planet.
The US has at least bucked the trend with air travel replacing rail mostly, because unlike in other Countries the entire rail system was never nationalised and State-owned and run.
Freight rail lines are useful. They take traffic off roads. They do not need to be high speed and can more easily be scheduled properly.
Well, when you get right down to it, government subsidized all of the alternative modes, highways (trucking, automobiles, buses) and airlines (airports, air traffic control systems, and aircraft r&d).
So what made railroads unprofitable was having to compete with government subsidized competition.
In the US, high speed rail is only going to be competitive with airlines in short distance service lanes. Many trips are too long for it to be practical. We would get a lot more “bang for the buck” by instituting a nationwide auto train service with “drive on/drive off” equipment and stations that accommodate that, with incentives to the private freight railroads to add capacity (e.g. by relieving them of property taxes if they maintain certain minimum capacity and speed requirements).
All you’re proposing is different subsidies for unpopular services.
If you have to subsidize it, it’s inefficient, and you are wasting society’s resources. Look up “opportunity cost” sometime.
Let CA pay the full cost if they want it so bad.
Here’s one interesting claim by critics of this boondoggle. Insiders close to the California politicians who dreamed this up purchased land along the right of way of the rail line. The land was cheap and basically worthless. Once the project was announced and funded, they sold back the land to the HSA at large profits.
How is Hyperloop doing? Still alive? Naming it starting “Hype” was a hint to investors…
It’s right there alongside Elon Musk’s plans to place a freeway system underground in Los Angeles (and other cities as well), featuring computer-controlled, electrically-powered “sleds” that cars-with-their-drivers would zip around on from pickup point to delivery point.
You’re right though, he should have named his offshoot company that would enable this dream the “Hyped Boring Company”.
One-Track Mind: Unanimous SCOTUS Decision on Rail Line Approval Further Narrows Scope of NEPA
The U.S. Supreme Court today cleared a major hurdle for the construction of a proposed oil railway in northeastern Utah. The decision brings sweeping changes to how federal agencies consider environmental impacts.
I liked Bill Whittle’s video take on this from a couple of weeks ago, when he, Scott Ott, and Steve Green were discussing the announcement that California’s high speed rail project was a complete failure, but now they’re going to start over and do it right. One of the three asked, at one point, how long had it taken to build the first transcontinental railroad. Another replied “Six years…during the Civil War.” It was actually seven years, beginning in 1862.