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Washington wasted sixteen years and $15 billion building nothing. California called it high-speed rail. The rest of America called it a scam. Now Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has put the money to work — not in Sacramento's black hole, but in 23 states that actually build things.
On Friday, Duffy stood inside Cincinnati's historic Union Terminal and announced a $5.3 billion Federal Railroad Administration investment that will close dangerous rail crossings, overhaul aging Amtrak locomotives, and purchase 43 new Made-in-America trainsets for routes that real Americans use every day.
Roughly $2 billion of that package — nearly half — came directly from canceling Gavin Newsom's California high-speed rail disaster. A project voters approved in 2008 for $33 billion. A project that, after 16 years of work, will cost well over $231 billion and will still be smaller than the original plan. Newsom's high-speed rail project would still require a two-hour each-way drive just to get on the train.
"It's simple: Boondoggles are OUT and safety is IN," Duffy said. "Instead of wasting billions of dollars on a train to nowhere, we are fixing thousands of grade crossings — saving lives and improving communities across America."
Grade crossings, where trains and roads meet, kill more than 200 people each year. To combat these dangerous intersections, this administration aims to close 30 of the country's most dangerous crossings and improve 1,000 other crossings by building them with better safety technology. Ohio, Texas, North Carolina, and Florida will see the greatest improvements.
The newly built Amtrak trains will run on 21 routes covering the Cascades, Adirondack, Empire, Keystone, and Hiawatha lines. Currently, the trains that use these routes run on equipment more than 40 years old. Improved reliability on trains will also be a result of upgraded and more reliable locomotives.
Duffy's decision to pull the original $4 billion federal grant infuriated Governor Gavin Newsom, who sued to stop it. California dropped the lawsuit when it was revealed the state had quietly missed its own mandated train procurement deadlines without any justification. As Duffy's office made clear: "federal dollars are not a blank check — they come with a promise to deliver results."
Newsom's team called the move a "political stunt." The $5.3 billion worth of actual rail infrastructure spread across 23 American states begs to differ.
Washington has taken a rare step to put taxpayer money to use benefiting the taxpayers — not blue-state vanity projects. That's not a political stunt. That's accountability.
