California’s High-Speed Rail officials are pushing back against a federal audit that said there is no viable path forward for the over-budget and behind schedule project.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority called the audit inaccurate and “often outright misleading.”
The backstory: The U.S. Department of Transportation recently released a 310-page audit into High-Speed Rail, finding that there is not a viable path to completion.
- California voters approved High-Speed Rail in 2008 for a projected cost of $33 billion to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020. But the state has yet to lay a single piece of track down, and the High-Speed Rail Authority’s latest estimate is that it will not finish its first section – Merced to Bakersfield – by 2031. The project has also ballooned to a total cost of around $130 billion.
- The audit found that High-Speed Rail is in default of the terms of a federal grant, meaning $4 billion in federal funding is likely to go away next month.
- It also found that the authority will not be able to complete the 171-mile Merced to Bakersfield stretch by 2033 and that the authority has substantially overrepresented its ridership projections.
The other side: High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri issued a formal response to the Department of Transportation, saying the audit was disingenuous and nothing more than rhetoric.
- Choudri’s 14-page letter refuted the findings in the audit and highlighted the progress that High-Speed Rail has made, including many viaducts, overpasses and unerpasses in the Central Valley.
- Choudri noted that 53 structures and 69 miles of guideway have been completed, including the 432-foot Central Ave. overpass in Fresno as one of four major structures that has been completed and opened to traffic this year.
- The authority’s CEO also pushed back against the federal government’s assertion that the first stretch will not be completed by 2033. Choudri pointed to the 2024 Business Plan, which outlines a construction schedule for completion by 2033, and he noted that the authority will complete a Supplemental Project Update Report this year which will detail the efforts the authority is making to speed up delivery of the system.
- On the issue of ridership, Choudri said the federal government used a report published by UC Berkeley in 2010 to critique the ridership model, which he called “nonsensical,” since High-Speed Rail submitted its Federal-State Partnership application in 2023, where it gives a different estimate.
What he’s saying: “Termination of the Cooperative Agreements is unwarranted and unjustified,” Choudri said. “FRA’s conclusions are based on an inaccurate, often outright-misleading, presentation of the evidence. Among other things, the FRA distorts data that the Authority has furnished to the FRA, includes citations to reports that do not support its conclusions, and employs opaque and disingenuous methodologies.”
