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California Democrats have written to outgoing Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to ask for more than half a billion dollars in funding for an ailing high-speed rail project that President-elect Donald Trump defunded in 2019.

As Breitbart News reported, Trump withheld $1 billion in funding from the project after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) canceled the original project. Newsom had explained to the state legislature that the original plan for a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco “bullet” train “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.” Trump then demanded the state refund the money federal taxpayers had given it — applying the same rules that hold in the private sector.

Newsom resisted, and when President Joe Biden was elected, he restored the funding. Biden also added federal funding to a different high-speed rail project — a Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas train that shows more commercial promise and was originally started by private investors. Trump is unlikely to stop the latter project — but he is unlikely to support the former, which now only plans to connect stations in the interior regions of California.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday:

Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff joined Reps. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino; Jim Costa, D-Fresno; and Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, on Friday in calling for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to approve $536 million for the project. In a letter addressed to Buttigieg, they called the project “essential.”

The money would fund design work on the first two segments of the project from Bakersfield to Palmdale (Los Angeles County) and from Gilroy to a junction point in the Central Valley south of Chowchilla (Madera County). Specifically, the money would fund the designing of tunnels through the Tehachapi Mountains in Southern California and through the Pacheco Pass in Northern California.

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California voters initially approved $10 billion in bond funding for the project in 2008. At the time, it was projected to cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020. Sixteen years later, the project has blown past both of those estimates. Its projected costs have soared to between $89 billion and $128 billion. Even under the rosiest projections, no segments will be completed and ready for riders until 2030 at the earliest.

The request for money for high-speed rail is just one last-minute request California Democrats have sent to the White House. Last week, the Biden administration approved Newsom’s plan to eliminate sales of gas-powered cars by 2035 — despite the fact that sales of electric vehicles, even in California, are far too slow to meet the target. President-elect Trump is expected to repeal that policy as soon as he takes office, along with other federal electric vehicle mandates.

Trump has chosen former Republican congressman Sean Duffy to be his nominee for Secretary of Transportation, continuing a tradition of nominating officials from the Midwest, historically the country’s transportation hub.

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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/22/california-democrats-ask-buttigieg-for-half-a-billion-dollars-for-high-speed-rail-before-trump/

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