Free Republic

The Trump administration officially canceled $929 million in federal grants earmarked for California’s ambitious high-speed rail project, escalating tensions between the federal government and the most-populous U.S. state. Federal Railroad Administrator Ronald Batory said in a letter Thursday to Brian Kelly, the chief executive officer of the state agency running the project, that California has failed to show progress and meet requirements under the agreements for the funds. Governor Gavin Newsom, through a spokesman, vowed a court fight.“It is now clear that California has no foreseeable plans, nor the capability, to pursue that statewide HSR System as originally proposed,” Batory...

California's biggest boondoggle just broke the bank. Not only is the massive high-speed rail project 11 years behind schedule and billions in the red, managers are now saying they will need to ramp up spending to hit a 2033 deadline. California’s money pit cost taxpayers $3.1 million a day last year. But that’s small potatoes compared to what they’ll have to shell out over the next four if they want to meet their deadline and budget, estimated most recently at $100 billion in a report last month by the New York Times. The California High Speed Rail Authority will have...

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know that I spent this afternoon on the phone with folks in California, looking into the recent SNCF-CHSRA bombshell. To summarize: SNCF, the highly experienced French national high-speed rail operator, apparently had a plan for California’s HSR network, but was turned off by the highly-politicized routing. Namely, they wanted to make a straight shot from LA to San Francisco by running along the flat, government-owned I-5 corridor with spurs out to the eastern Central Valley, whereas the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) and state politicians wanted the main line to go...

As California prepares to commit tens of billions of dollars to an ambitious high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Southern California, Congress' political will to provide the bulk of the funding is disappearing, leaving the possibility that the state could end up stuck with a crushing financial burden. State voters have agreed to issue more than $9 billion in bonds to build the system, but that's a fraction of the $43 billion projected tab for the initial phase. And those costs could swell to $65 billion or more, by some estimates. Should federal funds dry up after the scheduled...

A few days before this month's election, the federal government announced that California would receive an additional $715 million for its high-speed rail project, contingent on the money being spent quickly on a segment in the San Joaquin Valley. Why? You'd have to be terminally naive not to believe that the splashy announcement, made personally by an Obama administration official in Fresno, was to help an embattled local congressman, Democrat Jim Costa, stave off a very stiff Republican challenge. Costa, a longtime bullet train advocate, did, in fact, eke out a narrow re-election win. And last week, the California High-Speed...