California High-Speed Rail Is a ‘Track to Nowhere,’ US Says in Move to Pull Funding

California’s high-speed rail project is a “story of broken promises,” a “waste of Federal taxpayer dollars” and a “Sisyphean endeavor.”

Or so the Trump administration’s Transportation Department said, which on Wednesday announced it was pulling $4 billion in federal funding from the woefully protracted, over-budget project that the state first broke ground on more than a decade ago.

“What started as a proposed 800-mile system was first reduced to 500 miles, then became a 171-mile segment, and is now very likely ended as a 119-mile track to nowhere,” Drew Feeley, acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, wrote in his scathing report to the state’s high-speed rail authority. “In essence, [the project] has conned the taxpayer out of its $4 billion investment, with n