All aboard: High-speed rail aims to win over reluctant Republicans

WASHINGTON — High-speed rail advocates are betting support for proposed projects through red-leaning districts will be the key to unlocking greater support from skeptical Republicans in Congress.

For the bet to pay off, lawmakers would have to supply the funds to reverse decades-long failure to complete a passenger rail line capable of reaching 200 miles per hour.

Republicans have consistently labeled these ventures as wasteful, most notably the California High Speed Rail project, which has become symbolic of the partisan funding fights that plague these enterprises. Although planning dates back to the early 2000s, the California project still faces major funding gaps and delays measured in decades, according to the group overseeing the project, the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group.

“California has been a regular target,” Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a high-speed rail advocate, said in an interview. “On the one hand, there are some legitimate criticisms of how the project has been managed, but on the other, it still would cost more to build airports and highways to meet future transportation demands than California High-Speed Rail, even at its inflated cost.”

The Trump administration in 2019 terminated a federal agreement to provide nearly $1 billion after the California High-Speed Rail Authority “failed to make reasonable progress on the project,” the administration said in a statement.

The Biden administration restored the funding in 2021 and has provided the project with over $3 billion in federal grants over the past few years, drawing heavy criticism from Republicans in Congress.

Most recently, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, who are slated to make up President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency with a goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget, have zeroed in on the California project.

Ramaswamy called it a “wasteful vanity project, burning billions in taxpayer cash, with little prospect for completion in the next decade.” The official “DOGE” X account also tweeted out a list of the project’s setbacks, including its inflated price tag and delays.

Public scorn, private support

High-speed rail advocates like Moulton are pitching the projects to members as nonpartisan economic boons to red and blue districts alike.

Brightline, a privately funded Florida intercity transit line that runs between Miami and Orlando is a good example, Moulton said. Although the line runs at a maximum speed of 125 mph, lower than the 200 mph threshold for high-speed, it’s still a success story, he said.

The line runs not far from Trump’s non-White House residence at Mar-a-Lago.

“I understand a lot of Trump staff takes Brightline — not because they’re trying to make a political statement, but just because it’s the best way to get to West Palm Beach,” Moulton said.

Moulton said two other projects, each of which would run through GOP-leaning areas, are causing some Republicans to rethink their opposition.

Brightline West, a true high-speed rail project that would run between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, broke ground earlier this year. The line received a $3 billion grant from DOT last December.

Texas Central, a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston, had been stagnant since 2020 until Amtrak in September received a $64 million Biden administration grant to restart planning. Moulton was the managing director of Texas Central before he ran for Congress in 2014.

Texas Republican Rep. Kay Granger has been a longtime supporter of Texas Central. In 2019 she urged Trump’s Transportation Department to commit funding, and last year requested DOT support for a grant, according to congressional correspondence logs.

Brightline’s political action committee gave slightly more money in 2024 to Republicans than it did Democrats, according to OpenSecrets data. Recipients of money in the last two-year cycle include House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., incoming Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., according to FEC disbursements data.

When asked about high-speed rail in general, Graves said “the costs are continuing to skyrocket, and we still don’t have anything to show for it, and whether or not it works in other parts of the country has yet to be seen.”

But he made an exception for Brightline West.

“That route between California and Las Vegas — I think that’s going to be very successful. … I’m really excited about that route.” As for Texas Central, he said that when the state’s residents decide to pursue it, “I’ll do everything I can to help them out.”

Many other Republicans, Moulton said, support high-speed rail behind the scenes because they feel politically afraid to do so publicly.

“I won’t name names, but there is one that I’m thinking of,” he said, noting the GOP lawmaker’s criticisms have narrowed to just the California project.

‘Pick a winner’

But finding funding for the projects is challenging, Devin Rouse, railway engineering and safety consultant and former passenger rail division director at the Federal Railroad Administration, said in an interview.

There isn’t a sound funding mechanism for long-term, capital-intensive projects, he said. It doesn’t help that their complex planning and permitting processes can lead to delays and add to costs. Those delays damage political will to complete the project, Rouse said.

“If you talk about high-speed rail in general, these are 10-plus-year projects from birth. They’re going to span multiple administrations, multiple terms, just by their nature,” Rouse said. “You can’t build a $100 billion project while not knowing where you’re going to get the money from and if you’re going to have the money to build it … by nature, it causes the project to be inefficient with those funds.”

High-speed rail advocates argue the projects should, in part, be publicly funded, since they are projected to benefit a wide range of commuters and travelers as well as contribute to the GDP. Moulton added that the U.S. spends even more on highway and airway projects than it would cost to build high-speed rail.

“I just want to have that fair level playing field in America. But that’s not what happens here,” Moulton said. “The default is we always build a highway, and then maybe next we expand an airport, but we don’t even consider high-speed rail.”

Rouse and Moulton agree that garnering broad bipartisan support for high-speed rail will be much easier once the first line is built.

“Whether it’s Texas, Vegas or California, at some point, you need to pick a winner to be the first one to cross the line and it becomes a demonstration for what that money could be used for,” Rouse said. “Then you can spend money on other ones, but until you pick one and actually give it enough money to efficiently get built, they’ll just continue to die in the vine.”

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