On Feb. 20 2025, United States Department of Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) would be conducting a review of the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) to “determine whether the CHSRA has followed through on the commitments it made to receive billions of dollars in federal funding.” The review, should it find noncompliance on the CHSRA’s behalf, would possibly threaten to remove $4 billion of federal funding for the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) set aside by the Biden Administration’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Secretary Duffy’s statement stands in contrast to the recent success of the CAHSR in completing Construction Package 4 — a construction contract for the creation of infrastructure for a limited portion of the line — and the beginning of the track and systems construction process on the Merced to Bakersfield initial operating section.
Ian Choudri, the CEO of the CHSRA, has responded to Secretary Duffy’s statement by welcoming the investigation, affirming that the previous completion of “multiple independent federal and state audits” means that “every dollar is accounted for” and that the authority “[stands] by the progress and impact of this project.”
The idea of a high-speed rail project in California to connect the economic and population nexuses of San Francisco and Los Angeles has been pursued as early as 1981. Throughout the 1990s, the project gained traction following the creation of the California Intercity High-Speed Rail Commission in 1993, later superseded by the CHSRA in 1996, and the passage of the Swift Rail Development Act of 1994. The adoption of Proposition 1A in 2008 permitted the California legislature to issue $9.95 billion in bonds to create an 800-mile high-speed train line between the two cities, providing the funding for the beginning of CAHSR development.
However, progress toward the realization of this project has since been repeatedly stalled and delayed. The United States’ highly decentralized government consisting of various jurisdictions in the American West coupled with the political tradition of being resistant to large public works projects has hindered progress, leading to slow land purchases and environmental clearance for the construction of the tracks.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has also rolled back previous aspirations due to increasing political resistance, instead prioritizing the 172-mile Central Valley section between Merced and Bakersfield as a proof of concept for later expansions to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego. The original plan for service to begin as early as 2020 has come and gone, with the earliest expectations for trains to begin service on the initial operating section now slated for sometime in the 2030s.
Political opposition at the state and federal levels has also contributed to funding holds for the CAHSR project. Several California legislators have cited the failure to meet the 2020 deadline, the estimated $105 billion price tag and the seeming lack of managerial coherency as reasons to delay the disbursement of funds for the project.
CAHSR has also been the target of external interference attempts. Tech billionaire Elon Musk allegedly presented his vision of the Hyperloop as a means to divert government funding away from the high-speed rail project and potentially thwart its implementation. In May 2019, Republican President Donald Trump unsuccessfully attempted to cancel $1 billion in federal funding for CAHSR following Gov. Newsom’s shift in approach to prioritize the Merced-Bakersfield section earlier that same year.
In January 2025, immediately before President Trump’s re-inauguration, Gov. Newsom acknowledged that California fully expected to see a repeat of the 2019 action following Trump’s reelection and expressed his confidence in the resilience of the high-speed rail project. He stated that Trump’s 2019 attempt “didn’t necessarily slow down the project” and that last time, “the money was ultimately returned to the people of the state of California.”
