During remarks on the House floor, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) tore into California High-Speed Rail's recently announced plans.
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00:00Mr. Speaker, I wanted to provide an update on the non-existent high-speed rail project
00:10in California. As I've noted on this floor before, I've introduced a resolution or legislation to
00:18cut off all future federal funding for California high-speed rail. I was with Secretary Duffy when
00:24he announced an investigation into where the recent federal funding has actually gone,
00:32and I have called upon the FBI, Director Kash Patel, to launch an investigation into what
00:39happened to the $17 billion that has already been spent. At this point, the cost of the project
00:48is estimated to be about $100 billion more than it was initially sold to the public.
00:55But we did get some news this week, and maybe I've been a little too unkind to high-speed rail.
01:03The new CEO, and by the way, this is the fifth CEO, so there have been five more CEOs than there have
01:08been riders, five CEOs, zero riders. The new CEO came out with some exciting news. He announced
01:17that he has a goal by the year 2045 of completing the line going from Palmdale to Gilroy. So let's parse
01:32that statement. A goal of 2045 going from Gilroy, Palmdale to Gilroy. Well, 2045 is, of course, 20 years
01:44from now. I'll note that when the project was passed in 2008, it was supposed to be done the entire thing
01:53by 2020. So the whole thing was supposed to be done five years ago, but now the CEO is saying,
02:01I've got an exciting, ambitious plan. We're going to have Palmdale to Gilroy completed in 20 years. And this
02:09is just the goal. There have been a number of goals in the past in the tortured 17-year history of this
02:16project, and they've blown right past them, missing deadline after deadline with more cost overruns
02:23than we can even keep track of. And then finally, when you look at what his goal, which is very
02:29unlikely to actually be reached, is, it's to go from Palmdale to Gilroy. So where are these places?
02:36Remember, the initial project, it's supposed to ultimately go from Los Angeles to San Francisco,
02:43the two main population hubs of California. Well, Palmdale is a ways away from LA. It's about 37 miles
02:54northeast of Los Angeles. So if traffic is good, it'll take you an hour in your car,
03:00or two hours if you're using existing public transportation. So think about this. You're
03:07taking our high-speed rail, which by the way, isn't going to be that fast. It'll probably be the
03:12slowest high-speed rail system in the world, if it even gets built. And then you get out at Gilroy,
03:18and you have to somehow have a car there and drive another hour, or you hop on public transit for
03:23another two hours of travel just to get into LA. And it's similarly on the north part of it.
03:28Gilroy is 70 miles from San Francisco, and you'd be going for at least another hour,
03:37probably more. You'd certainly be driving more than an hour after hopping off there
03:42if you actually wanted to get into the city. So of course I'm being facetious when I say that
03:50this is an exciting, ambitious plan. It is just another example of why we need to end this project
03:59once and for all. There is absolutely no reason that state or federal taxpayers should continue
04:06to fund a project that is going absolutely nowhere, especially when our roads are in such bad shape,
04:14among the worst in the entire world. It's time to redirect this spending towards transportation needs
04:19that will actually improve the quality of life for Californians.