California watchdog says high-speed rail on track to blow more deadlines

California’s multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project is behind schedule on obtaining the land it needs to complete its construction plans, according to a state inspector general report published Friday.

The new report highlights the continued hurdles the project, with an estimated price tag of $88 billion to $128 billion, faces as it attempts to begin passenger service between the central California cities of Bakersfield and Modesto between 2030 and 2033 — just as President Donald Trump casts it as a boondoggle.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Thursday that the Federal Railroad Administration would review $4.1 billion in federal grant agreements with the state — and determine if that funding should be withheld.

The report found that progress on 52 miles of track not yet under construction is at risk of being delayed because of challenges state officials face in securing agreements to relocate utility facilities, like power lines and water supply.

Friday's report comes on the heels of another one earlier this month that found construction on the initial 171-mile Central Valley line is unlikely to be completed by the High-Speed Rail Authority’s 2033 timeline.

State Republicans jumped on that report, encouraging Trump to follow through on his threat to investigate the decades-long project to connect Los Angeles to the Bay Area.

The independent auditor, established by state lawmakers in 2023, laid part of the blame at the feet of the High-Speed Rail Authority, noting that the public agency has a limited number of lawyers to review agreements with third-party groups and no clear guidelines on how quickly staff must complete internal processes.

HSRA Inspector General Benjamin Belnap, an appointee of Gov. Gavin Newsom, said that much of the delay, however, has been generated by the companies and government agencies that need to relocate facilities and infrastructure to accommodate the rail line. The review found that utility providers are often slow to respond to communications with HSRA and generally don't feel pressure to move quickly.

“The baseline schedules for the Merced and Bakersfield extensions showed the final configuration footprint being submitted by the end of 2024, which should have included approved utility relocation designs,” the report says. “However, the Authority did not meet this deadline.”

The review found that HSRA still needs to complete 12 of the 38 needed agreements the agency has identified before moving on to the construction phase.

The report called on HSRA and state lawmakers to take legislative steps to speed up the process of relocating utilities.

Those recommendations included giving HSRA the authority to proceed with “necessary designs and utility relocations” if third parties are nonresponsive after a defined period of time, and pushing local governments and state-regulated utility owners to make the “timely completion” of the rail system a high priority.

The report also laid out steps HSRA can take to move faster, including the development of internal timelines and tracking tools by May 2025, and determining if vacant positions in the agency can be repurposed to hire more legal staff.

The agency in response said it largely agrees with the report’s assessment and is already in the process of making the internal changes recommended.

HSRA also said it is seeking support from state lawmakers on legislation to require local governments and utility owners to cooperate to advance the project and to expedite the eminent domain process.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, introduced a bill this week, SB 445, that would require third parties like utilities to quickly respond to communications from “sustainable transportation projects,” including high-speed rail. That bill has yet to be assigned to a committee.