Sec. Duffy on the California High Speed Rail to Nowhere

The High Speed Rail has become a donation to favored voters. Voters were very excited about it when they heard they would have one for $33 billion and it would be completed by 2020.

“Take people off the road, out of the air, put them on rail, move them quickly. It was an exciting time, exciting promises for an exciting project,” Duffy said. “Where are we today? Well, today we are severely, no pun intended, off track.”

The project goes from Merced to Bakersfield, from farms to a town where half the people are in prison, and at best, it will cost $35 billion and be completed by 2033 or 2035, well after the project was to be completed.

The $15.7 billion invested so far has bridges to nowhere and not one high speed rail track has been laid.

“The federal government has invested $2.7 billion to this project. California has invested the rest. Joe Biden has promised another $4 billion for Merced to Bakersfield to complete the project. The problem is that California is still short $6.5 billion. California doesn’t have the money to complete the project, even with the federal promises that were made by the last administration. So the question becomes, what do we do? Well, I can’t make decisions for the great state of California, but we do have to be responsible for the tax dollars that are spent by the federal government.

There Are Worthy Projects

“And there are wonderful high-speed rail projects that are being proposed to the federal rail administration, projects that will connect cities where they have great timelines, and they have great budgets. Some of them are federal and private funding mechanisms in play. One of those that’s been proposed is bright line West, going from LA to Las Vegas. Seems like a project that is worthy of investment, but this project, if completed, 400 miles from LA to San Francisco at best, it’ll cost $106 billion now; most people will say that is a rosy estimate. There’s no way it’s going to be completed for $106 billion, which, just to do some simple math, that’s three times the original proposal for how much this project would cost to build 400 miles of track.”

Secretary Duffy will direct the Federal Railroad Administration to initiate a compliance review of funding to the California High Speed Rail Authority. It will help decide if they get the $4 billion Biden promised them.

Go to 11:14 for the High Speed Rail information from Sean Duffy. The entire video is interesting. They talk about stopping free healthcare for illegal migrants:

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