Posted on 02/20/2025 11:33:01 AM PST by BenLurkin
As President Donald Trump’s administration makes cuts to government programs, his head of the Department of Transportation announced that federal assistance intended for a major California transit project could be next on the chopping block.
In a news conference at Union Station in downtown L.A. on Thursday morning, Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said that the once “exciting” California’s High-Speed Rail has been “mismanaged.”
In 2023, then-President Joe Biden awarded a $3 billion grant to help officials complete the first phase of the project. That grant came after he reinstated a $1 billion grant to the High-Speed Rail Authority that had been previously blocked by the first Trump administration.
The ambitious project, designed to connect L.A. and San Francisco with the first publicly funded high-speed rail transit system in U.S. history, has faced a complicated history with years of delays. Currently, some 171 miles of the system are being constructed and designed between Merced and Bakersfield.
The issue, Duffy said, is that even with federal assistance, the state is still short of its funding goals, along with an unstable and unreliable timeline for the project’s completion.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy
Isn’t there a rapper by that name?
NONE of the federal gov’t’s constitutional business.
Keep the feds OUT of our constitutionally sovereign states’ business.
The rapper is P. Diddy (Sean Combs)
Designed to connect L.A. and San Francisco
Two of the worst rotted out cities in California the spots on the seats aren’t intended by design.
I think he knew that.
Fine, just keep our Fed. tax monies out of it too.
Currently, some 171 miles of the system are being constructed and designed between Merced and Bakersfield.
Ya. It’s a high speed rail between La and sf toting busy people
Who is going from La to sf and back. 8 billion?
This is why Americans never want Federal money.
It always comes with strings attached.
a rat bottomless pit where they use the federal funds for their radical agenda, there is no one monitoring where it goes
It took 16 years to build a five-mile stretch of this high-speed railway between Fresno and Merced.
For anyone traveling alongside this stretch (by car), the unfinished section is not only as an eyesore, but a monument to bureaucracy, incompetence and corruption.
In less time (13 years), the Chinese built a nationwide high-speed railway system stretching 24,000 miles, connecting major cities and regions and rivaling air travel within the country.
In less time (13 years), the Chinese built a nationwide high-speed railway system stretching 24,000 miles, connecting major cities and regions and rivaling air travel within the country.
Dictatorships can do those kinds of things. But for me, it’s still not worth it.
The British, Australian and US soldiers built a heck of a railroad through Burma back in the 1940s too!
It became fed business when the sovereign state took $3 billion of federal tax dollars.
Keep the feds OUT of our constitutionally sovereign states’ business.
Keep constitutionally sovereign states’ hands off federal tax dollars.
Since the California taxpayers voted for this boondoggle, they, alone, should bear financial responsibility for funding it without the use of other sovereign states’ tax dollars.
AND we are saddled with with Newsom the Vile as our “leader”: America’s version of Pierre Trudeau.
Is Sean Duffy former ALPA chief Hank Duffy’s son ?
“Currently, some 171 miles of the system are being constructed and designed between Merced and Bakersfield.”
I hate to take pot shots at this complex project, but the Bakersfield-Merced section is probably the cheapest-per-mile portion of the overall route, and will generate little revenue.
The purpose of the railroad is to help migrate commercial and residential activities out of the two endpoint cities.
They should have started with a less expensive design in order to get the railroad up and running sooner. For instance, start with fewer overpasses and stations, and use train components that are already in use elsewhere.
Yes
People who know how a conference calls with computers works don’t need a train.
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