Oversight Committee Investigates Federal Funding For California High-Speed Rail Project

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer opened an investigation Tuesday into federal funding provided to the California High-Speed Rail Project.

Comer has started the process with a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy – in an attempt to learn whether the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) knowingly misrepresented the ridership projections and financial viability of the California High-Speed Rail Project to obtain federal and state funds.

He asks for a staff-level briefing, communications related to CHSRA and documents dating as far back as 1995 – with a Sept. 2 deadline.

“The Authority’s apparent repeated use of misleading ridership projections, despite longstanding warnings from experts, raises serious questions about whether funds were allocated under false pretenses,” Comer says. “The massive cost overruns and lack of progress warrant a reassessment of whether CHSRA acted with transparency and complied with the law.”

Californians approved $9.95 billion of state bond funding in 2008 to build an 800-mile high-speed rail network connecting Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Central Valley to coastal cities. The project was supposed to be completed by 2020 at a cost of $33 billion. However, not a single route has been completed, “and the California High-Speed Rail Authority is facing financial collapse,” according to the House committee.

The project’s current cost estimates range from $89 billion to $128 billion.

The Biden administration committed about $4 billion of federal funds to the project. In June, the DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued a Compliance Review Report outlining CHSRA’s mismanagement of the project and wasted federal taxpayer dollars. After the review, Duffy announced that the FRA had terminated the roughly $4 billion in unspent federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project.