The Trump administration has poured cold water on federal funds for two high-speed rail projects this year, leaving advocates to hope that a plan to speed travelers between southern California and Las Vegas can demonstrate the U.S. can still complete projects with transportation technology common in Europe and Asia.
The Brightline West project covering the 218 miles between California’s Rancho Cucamonga, east of Los Angeles, and Nevada’s largest city would allow travelers to reach their destination in two hours. The train is scheduled to go into service in 2028.
The Brightline West project now looks like a sharp contrast to two other prominent high-speed rail projects.
The Transportation Department put the California High-Speed Rail Authority on notice last week that it could terminate federal grants because of the project’s delays and cost overruns. A department report found that the authority has missed deadlines and still faces a $7 billion funding gap.
Acting Federal Railroad Administrator Drew Feeley gave the authority 30 days to submit an action plan to address concerns that it’s not “responsibly” handling the federal money after which the administration may pull the two federal grants totaling roughly $4 billion.
“I’ve heard no discussion of any clawing back of any of the money that the Biden administration gave to Brightline West … so I don’t think it’s a death knell at all for high speed rail,” former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in an interview. “I think they’re doing their due diligence … but the same judgment has not been made about the Las Vegas project.”
LaHood, a Republican lawmaker from Illinois before he joined President Barack Obama’s cabinet, is now co-chair of the U.S. High Speed Rail Coalition. High-speed rail is generally understood in the U.S. as reaching speeds of 200 miles per hour, although the Brightline West is averaging about half that speed.
The California high-speed rail project, which dates to the early 2000s, was once seen as a rail line connecting Los Angeles to Sacramento, a stretch of 385 miles that commercial flights cover in just over an hour and a half.
But the delays and increases in cost estimates have whittled away at the ambition. The DOT said the California authority is not on track to finish the Merced-Bakersfield segment — 164 miles — by its initial goal of 2033.
Many of the funding arguments over high-speed rail have been partisan. The first Trump administration in 2019 terminated a federal agreement to provide nearly $1 billion after the authority “failed to make reasonable progress on the project,” the administration said in a statement.
The Biden administration restored that funding in 2021 and has provided the project with over $3 billion in federal grants over the past few years.
“I think that’s important to make it very clear that this is not a matter of just waiting out one administration or another, that this project is not a good use of taxpayer dollars at any level and should be brought to a halt immediately,” Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., said on a call with reporters. “So hopefully this will be the beginning of the end for high-speed rail, and the tax dollars of Americans … can be used where they will actually be needed and where they’ll make a difference.”
Kiley introduced a bill earlier this year that would prohibit California from receiving federal funds for the project.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy endorsed high-speed rail projects that work.
“Our country deserves high-speed rail that makes us proud — not boondoggle trains to nowhere,” he said in a statement about the notice to the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
“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,” Duffy said.
Duffy in April also ended a $64 million grant to the Texas Central line, a proposed high-speed project connecting Dallas to Houston. The Biden administration had awarded a grant to Amtrak to develop the line. Duffy cited the project’s ballooning cost, which he said was over $40 billion.
“The Texas Central Railway project was proposed as a private venture. If the private sector believes this project is feasible, they should carry the pre-construction work forward, rather than relying on Amtrak and the American taxpayer to bail them out,” Duffy said in a statement.
But Duffy praised Brightline West early this year, leaving federal funding intact as long as the project sticks to its schedule. The federal government has provided $3 billion and authority for another $3.5 billion from private activity bonds to date.
“The project from L.A. to Las Vegas, it appears that project is going well,” Duffy said at a press conference in Los Angeles in February. “High-speed rail that again connects two big cities, takes people off the road and out of the air and moves them more quickly. It appears to be on budget, on time. Those are the projects that I think taxpayers are willing to invest in.”
High-speed rail proponents say the popularity of a completed high-speed rail project will fuel support for more. But the U.S. needs to finish one.
LaHood doesn’t think the Texas and California rail projects are doomed yet.
“This is a project that’s going to move ahead and go ahead, because it’s a project that’s a part of the vision for transportation in California,” LaHood said. “High-speed rail is there to stay, and mainly because this is what the American people want.”
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