“President [Donald] Trump has thought about this project,” Duffy said on Feb. 20 during a press conference with elected officials at Los Angeles’s historic Union Station. “I think he was very kind when he said this project has been mismanaged. I would agree.”
Duffy said he would direct the FRA to focus on the $4 billion promised by the Biden administration to fund two construction projects planned for this segment.
The investigation, which will review how federal money has been spent and whether the state is in compliance with federal agreements, will help determine whether billions in taxpayer dollars should remain committed, Duffy said.
“We want to make sure the California taxpayer understands that even though they might be excited about this project, [it’s] not going to happen,” Duffy said. “There is no timeline in which you’re going to have a high-speed rail that goes from L.A. to San Francisco.”
If California wants to continue to fund the rail, Duffy said, it can do so.
“But we in the Trump administration are going to take a look at whether this project is worthy of continual investment,” he said.
Elected leaders were interrupted by a small but boisterous chorus of protesters.
“The California High-Speed Rail is a long-term project that should not be obstructed by oligarchs who only care about profits in the short term,” Jeff Zhang, 24, told The Epoch Times, suggesting that delays are just “part of the cost” of the trial and error involved in building what will be the first major bullet train project in the country.
“This is nothing more than a sham investigation,” Eli Lipmann, executive director of transit advocacy organization Move LA, told The Epoch Times.
He acknowledged that the project is behind but said that it has created jobs and will play an integral role in future infrastructure.
Pausing funding for high-speed rail, he suggested, will also put other infrastructure projects in jeopardy.
“L.A. County has almost $1.2 billion in grants—signed, sealed, and delivered—that we need to ensure are coming, everything from better bus connections to less traffic on roads to rail projects like the Purple Line, which I took here today,” Lipmann said.
Pointing to a recent Emmerson poll showing 55 percent of Californians still support the project, he said the federal government should be accelerating, rather than pausing, building high-quality transportation.
“What are they going to do during the investigation? They’re not going to give California money, they’re going to put a pause on it. And then they’re going to say this project is over budget,” Lipmann said.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) expressed a different view. The rail’s runaway costs, he suggested during the press conference, would be better spent on agriculture, water infrastructure, and other “things people need.”
LaMalfa said “dribs and drabs” of $4 billion from the federal government would never add up to the $110 billion needed to make it to the finish line.
“It was a nice thought,” he said. “It’s failed.”
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) said the project symbolizes the “decline of modern California” under current leadership.
Kiley told The Epoch Times his primary focus is to preclude the possibility that a future administration will pick up the mantle.
“Once we cut off the federal funding, we can kill the project and focus on things that will actually improve people’s lives,” he said.
Republican leaders are also taking aim at the state budget, including with efforts to redirect the $1 billion California spends each year on the rail project to wildfire prevention and water storage.
Former state lawmaker and current U.S. Rep. Vince Fong (R-Calif.) had introduced such a bill, which is now being carried by California Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo (R-Tulare).
“There have been eight business plans, and the inspector general has outlined all the structural mismanagement,” Fong told The Epoch Times. “So we have all the data we need. It’s just, does the governor and his state legislature—the ruling party—do they have the political will to stop this project and put it into other things?”
While announcing the review, Duffy also suggested that potential fraud and waste was California’s problem, and an audit should be led by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“I can’t make decisions for the great state of California, but we do have to be responsible for the tax dollars that are spent from the federal government,” he said.
The bullet train was among a flurry of targets Trump took aim at when he assumed office last month, promising on social media that an investigation would be forthcoming.
Duffy pointed to high-speed rail projects with “great timelines” and “great budgets” currently being proposed to the FRA that he said have a realistic shot at completion—such as the privately funded Brightline West, which will connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas and is due to finish in a few years.
“That seems like a project that is worthy of investment,” he said.
Several protesters said California has fallen behind other developed nations in public transportation and infrastructure.
“That’s a problem,” one of them said of the delays and bleeding costs. “And I also think it needs to get done. We’ve invested so much already. ... It’s not just for California, it’s for the whole country.”
Former Rep. Michelle Steel dismissed any parallels to countries such as Spain, France, China, and Japan, where bullet train projects have succeeded.
“I was raised in Japan. It works in Japan because you can get off from the highway public transportation and you can hop on, you can go to the city. For this one costing $128 or $140 billion, going nowhere to nowhere, we don’t need this kind of wasting taxpayers’ money.”
Marc Joffe, a visiting fellow at the California Policy Center and a longtime critic of California’s high-speed rail, in a conversation with The Epoch Times pointed to the state’s uniquely challenging business climate.
“Lots of high-speed rails in other countries were built a long time ago,“ he said. ”China built an enormous amount recently, but they don’t have the private property protections and labor rules like we have here.
“And I don’t think anyone wants to use Chinese standards for property acquisition, or labor.”
State Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield), meanwhile, suggested the project has benefited from plenty of preferential treatment and fast-tracking, noting its exemption from California Environmental Quality Act review.
“It’s proven that the Central Valley is sinking, and they’re building this monstrosity on top of the sinking valley with all that weight of concrete and rail structure,” she told The Epoch Times.
Referring to one part of the project’s Central Valley segment, Grove said: “You can walk across this thing in 10 minutes, and they spent $13 billion on it. It’s ridiculous.”
“CA High-Speed Rail has been audited over 100 [times], every dollar is accounted for & progress is real—50 structures built, 14,600 jobs created & 171 miles under construction.”
