Trump derail train

It was difficult to hear the federal leaders who gathered at Union Station this morning to make a major announcement about the Trump administration's shifting California transit "priorities." As officials stepped up to the podium, the historic ticket hall echoed with chants from high-speed rail advocates — "Build the train! Build the train!" — shouting over the remarks being made by former Road Rules cast member Sean Duffy, who currently holds the "roads rule" role in our briskly dissolving federal government.

What Duffy announced — at least I think he announced this; he was often drowned out — is a Federal Railroad Administration-initiated review to "help determine whether roughly $4 billion in taxpayer money should remain committed to the proposed project to build high-speed rail in the California Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield." Yes, the project currently has $4.3 billion in unspent federal dollars; it's unclear if the Trump administration can actually take the money away. But any lack of support jeopardizes the future of the project, as former California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Brian Kelly told the Fresno Bee: "What's going to be needed for San Francisco to LA to happen is we're still going to need the federal partner to say, 'Get that done.'"

Why Duffy would make this announcement in Los Angeles, and not in the Central Valley where high-speed rail construction is well underway, is obvious when you look at what happened yesterday. In his attempt to revoke federal approval for New York's wildly successful congestion pricing program, Duffy fired off a nonsensical statement, claiming the program "takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways," benefitting the "elite few" who ride subways. Trump, forever in solidarity with working people, followed this announcement up by declaring himself king.

It was always clear that Trump's democracy-dismantling project would be coming for the state's high-speed rail, something he openly denigrated throughout his last presidency. But with Elon Musk on board, the mission has become supercharged; this is a person, after all, who was trying to destroy high-speed rail in California long before he tried to destroy the U.S. government. Trains have always been in Musk's crosshairs; it's the reason he originally proposed a hyperloop from LA to SF and it's also the reason he's digging under Vegas. In 2018, while onstage at the National League of Cities summit with former LA mayor Eric Garcetti, who had just passed Measure M to fund the largest rail expansion in the U.S., I watched Musk tell a room of hundreds of transportation officials that they should no longer invest in rail; the future was car holes. (In the same fireside chat, Musk also said his first idea to fix LA traffic was double-decking freeways so that gives you a real glimpse into the level of genius we're dealing with here.)

So, of course, as soon as Musk formed his sham department, California's high-speed rail was mentioned in one of the very first tweets.

Duffy unfortunately made a few good points about the project, as protesters screamed "Bring back Pete." California's high-speed rail has taken far too long, although lately it's been making steady progress. "No state in America is closer to launching high-speed rail than California," said Gavin Newsom last month, which is technically true; plus the state has chalked up some great rail modernization successes elsewhere, like electrifying Caltrain in the Bay Area. Duffy also pointed to how California's state-initiated project "contrasts with the impressive work of Brightline West" to bring a high-speed train from Vegas to Southern California, supposedly by 2028. Brightline West, of course, is a privately funded high-speed rail project that Torched readers know all about, but it, too, has received some federal dollars. If California completed some of its SF-to-LA segments as public-private partnerships, it could absolutely help that rail network get built faster. But the overall goal here is to direct hundreds of billions of dollars away from highways, and this administration is definitely not going to do that. However, that's not just a federal problem — the state does this too.

Duffy's coast-to-coast transportation-bashing tour encountered fierce opposition in New York City, where elected officials and MTA board members swiftly countered the attempts to dismantle congestion pricing. Unfortunately LA's leaders, rightly panicked about losing federal funding for fire relief and/or Olympics readiness, have not yet mounted a sustained attack. We desperately need DOT money to get the D line all the way to Westwood. We still need 2,700 electric buses! However, later today, new-to-Congress U.S. Representative Laura Friedman is holding a tour of the almost-finished Wilshire/La Brea Metro D line station to "push back against the Trump administration's promise to cut all federal investments in critical transportation projects." Although it seems perfectly coordinated, Friedman's event was planned well in advance of the announcement of Duffy's visit. But now she'll be joined by Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins, Metro board member Katy Yaroslavsky, and union leaders, who should be plenty pissed that Trump is trying to taking away transportation jobs.

Will we see Newsom going to bat for high-speed rail? He should — as a KTLA poll out today shows, the state's high-speed rail project remains popular with the voters who passed it! But for now, we're going to have to look to Kathy Hochul for leadership, who, to be clear, nearly botched what might be the state's most effective transportation policy in history. The New York governor redeemed herself in a press conference yesterday where she met the moment perfectly, holding up a copy of the fake Time cover of Trump-as-king that had been shared by the White House: "Think about this next time you're stuck in traffic." 🔥