This story was originally published by Fresnoland.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) isn’t backing down on its commitment to complete the Central Valley segment of the state’s bullet train project by 2033 — and insists it doesn’t deserve to lose the federal grants the Trump administration has signaled it will revoke.
The rail authority’s July 7 supplemental response to a federal compliance report, penned by the authority’s CEO, Ian Choudri, defended the embattled project, pointing to milestones in the Fresno area as evidence of significant progress.
Choudri said the construction work so far has “reshaped the Central Valley,” generating over 13.4 million hours of work for nearly 11,500 workers. He also identified two recently completed structures in Fresno — the grade separations at Central Avenue and Belmont Avenue — as major accomplishments.
Those characterizations stood in stark contrast to how federal authorities described the project in a compliance report last month, calling it a “Sisyphean endeavor” and a waste of federal resources that may never see completion.
The June report, issued by the Federal Railroad Administration, concluded the CHSRA failed to comply with the terms of two federal grants totaling over $4 billion and is at risk of losing them.
One of those grants — a $3.07 billion award from the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail program — funds the design and construction of downtown Fresno’s high-speed rail station, according to the federal report.
Some local leaders, including Mayor Jerry Dyer, have celebrated plans for the station as an economic boon for Fresno and its downtown revitalization efforts. Dyer’s office declined to comment this week.
Federal authorities gave CHSRA in June a 37-day window to respond to the report’s findings and put together a “corrective action plan.”
What followed was a two-part response from Choudri that largely disputed the federal government’s compliance report, dismissing it as a product of “hostility to public investments in high-speed rail, and to California’s leadership,” rather than an account of legitimate feasibility concerns and noncompliance.
While the rail authority awaits a final determination from the Trump administration over the fate of the federal funding, it’s also been trying to plug a $7 billion hole in the project’s budget that emerged earlier this year.
A proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom in an earlier draft of his budget this year offered a glimmer of hope for the project’s funding woes. The governor’s May Revise proposed earmarking $1 billion annually from the state’s cap-and-trade program and moved to extend the program, which expires in 2030, through 2045.
The authority says the governor’s proposal is enough to clear the project’s funding hurdles.
“The Governor’s proposal before the legislature resolves any outstanding funding gaps,” said Micah Flores, a CHSRA spokesperson, in an email July 9, “and the Authority is on schedule to deliver that segment provided the extension of funding.”
But that cap-and-trade proposal didn’t make it into the state budget following pushback from lawmakers, Bloomberg Business reported in June. Instead, it will have to pass through the legislature.
What do the reports say about the future of high-speed rail?
Originally pitched to Californians as an 800-mile connector between major cities in Northern California, the Central Valley and Southern California, the project has significantly scaled back its scope over the years while its budget has ballooned.
The rail authority has since settled on a 171-mile segment from Merced to Bakersfield as the initial rollout of the project, pending further funding. Meanwhile, estimates of project costs have nearly tripled from their initial estimates to over $100 billion.
The Federal Railroad Administration took aim at that dramatically reduced scope despite a growing budget in its June report, calling the project a “story of broken promises.”
It also criticized numerous change orders that have peppered the rail’s construction so far, adding up to roughly $1.6 billion, and blasted the authority for blowing past a December 2024 deadline to procure train sets for the high-speed rail.
Choudri fired back on all of the above critiques in both parts of the authority’s response to the compliance review, stating the federal government has been well aware of the reduced scope of the project since 2019.
He said that change orders, as the compliance report also notes, are common for projects of this scale and level of complexity, and that some of them stemmed from the Federal Railroad Administration's own safety mandates.
Choudri added that the delay in obtaining train sets for the rail doesn’t prevent the authority from meeting the 2033 deadline to have high-speed rail service up and running in the Central Valley.
Choudri’s July 7 response also criticized several top Trump administration officials’ comments regarding the high-speed rail, including U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who called it a “boondoggle” train “to nowhere.”
“The Central Valley is not ‘nowhere,’” Choudri said, emphasizing that the metropolitan area served by the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment is home to over two million people.
What's next?
To conclude the July 7 response, Choudri requested a meeting with the federal government in early August and asked that it wait to make a final decision until after then.
The rail authority expects to release another report later this month with updated cost estimates for the project, according to Flores, the CHSRA spokesperson, in a June 30 email.
The authority is also exploring private funding options and sent out a “Request for Expression of Interest” to private sector investors last week in search of “potential public-private partnerships to help deliver Program segments faster and more efficiently,” Choudri said. It expects to receive responses by the end of the month.
The Federal Railroad Administration said in its June report that if it terminates the grants, the agency “will reprogram awarded but unspent Federal funds” for “other purposes.”
Fresnoland reached out to the U.S. Department of Transportation to inquire if there are any specific alternatives the agency is looking to fund if the high-speed rail grants are terminated.
