EXCLUSIVE — Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said California‘s “waste” of a high-speed rail project is discouraging the advancement of the technology elsewhere in the United States, in a significant black-eye for liberal proponents.
In one of Duffy’s first acts as a member of Trump’s Cabinet, the Federal Railroad Administration opened up an investigation into the California High-Speed Rail Authority to determine whether the nearly $4 billion in taxpayer dollars should be clawed back after California blew through its 2020 completion date and suffered from major cost overruns.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Examiner, Duffy said the delays of the project, touted by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), raise significant questions about California’s handling of billions in funding.
And while California has sought to be the first state to launch a novel high-speed rail project from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Duffy said the Democratic-run Golden State has been the “opposite” of a “model” for others.
“Look what happened in California. It’s a waste of money. I want to invest in good projects. The liberal mindset, who wants high-speed rail, you would think they would want to do it really, really well, and they do it like s***,” Duffy said. “And the question is, why? I don’t know.
“You should try to sell people on your ideas, not make them go, ‘These are black holes where people get rich and projects don’t get built,’” Duffy added.
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Newsom backs the project, saying in January at a rail event that “No state in America is closer to launching high-speed rail than California.” Pelosi, whose hometown legacy in San Francisco is also under assault by President Donald Trump, secured federal funding for the project under former President Joe Biden, saying California’s “bullet trains” will “help save our planet” with a greener transportation option.
But the project has since shrunk in scope with a focus on the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment and it could grind to a halt with a lack of federal support, especially after a state assessment recently found the embattled project needs at least $7 billion to move forward.
While Duffy believes in high-speed rail, which has flourished in other countries, he questions why California has had so much trouble while the privately-run Brightline West is making progress to begin high-speed rail service between the Los Angeles region and Las Vegas in 2028.
The Pelosi-backed San Francisco to Los Angeles project was initially supposed to be completed by 2020 and cost $33 billion, but now Duffy said the cost is “upwards of $130 billion.”
“California doesn’t have the money. I can’t imagine the DOT is going to send them additional cash,” Duffy said. “They don’t even have a time frame and when this could be completed.”
Duffy sat for a half-hour interview with the Washington Examiner on Thursday, covering a range of topics like Transportation’s push to innovate automated driver and delivery technologies, the Department of Government Efficiency, fallout from January’s deadly Washington, D.C., plane crash, and more.
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You can read the Washington Examiner’s exclusive interview with Duffy in full on Monday.