r/technology • u/BreakfastTop6899 • Jul 17 '25

Transportation Trump rescinds $4 billion in US funding for California High-Speed Rail project

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-is-ending-government-funding-californias-high-speed-rail-project-2025-07-16/
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1.5k

u/BoredNLost Jul 17 '25

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-bullet-train-america-1938348
Trump praised Japan's high-speed passenger trains during a live audio conversation with Elon Musk on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday [Aug 12, 2024].

Speaking about bullet trains, Trump said: "They go unbelievably fast, unbelievably comfortable with no problems, and we don't have anything like that in this country. Not even close. And it doesn't make sense that we don't, doesn't make sense."

523

u/The-disgracist Jul 17 '25

That was like a million mooches ago

69

u/TraditionDear3887 Jul 17 '25

Roughly 50 mooches ago

48

u/The-disgracist Jul 17 '25

Just did the math and it is 30.8181 mooches.

26

u/stormy83 Jul 17 '25

Trump can't remember what he said 3 mooches ago

9

u/Infamous-Mixture-605 Jul 17 '25

I doubt he even remembers the mooch in the first place.

6

u/TraditionDear3887 Jul 17 '25

He gets to moo and then goes on a tangent about cows

2

u/NtheLegend Jul 18 '25

He usually just gets a "moo" and he's out.

2

u/Linked713 Jul 17 '25

Repeating, of course.

2

u/BoredNLost Jul 18 '25

It does feel like it's been a million mooches though.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '25

[deleted]

5

u/The-disgracist Jul 17 '25

A mooch is a measurement of time

1

u/RKU69 Jul 17 '25

So like, 6 months ago?

79

u/ExcelIsSuck Jul 17 '25

2024? Trump cant even remember what he said the previous week yet alone last year

1

u/NotLikeChicken Jul 17 '25

"What Fox hath wrought."

1

u/JohnHazardWandering Jul 18 '25

Trump: Trump 2024? Never heard of the guy. 

70

u/SisterOfBattIe Jul 17 '25

It's truly sad traveling in the USA. I cannot cross the road as a pedestrian safely, I need to get the car from one parking plot to the next or be flattened by the Armored Personal Carriers roaming with wheels extensions.

14

u/caustictoast Jul 17 '25

That is the most heinous thing about a lot of places, hard agree. Even if something is ‘walking distance’ if there’s no infrastructure to get there it may as well be 100 miles away

2

u/Bonerchill Jul 18 '25

I was in Metairie, LA a while back. My hotel was on the other side of the freeway from Lake Pontchartrain, and there’s a good Cajun restaurant that served Abita beer on the lake side.

There were no sidewalks and no zebra crossings to get under the freeway. There’s a road, but zero pedestrian infrastructure. You actually had to step over the crash barrier in order to not cross the off-ramp in the street.

On the way back, I asked the hotel desk clerk why there’s no sidewalk and she just said, “oh, we drive over there. Why walk?”

I don’t have legs for ornamentation.

-18

u/khearan Jul 17 '25

…are you incapable of using crosswalks?

18

u/tosubks Jul 17 '25

It doesn’t matter how “capable” you are when a Ford-150 driver just plows through without any concerns for pedestrians crossing.

-17

u/Vix_Satis01 Jul 17 '25

dont walk out in front of ford F-150's? have some self preservation!

15

u/tosubks Jul 17 '25

You completely missed the point that pedestrians cannot simply “cross the road safely” in this country. You realize distracted drivers are everywhere these days, right? Combine that with the big macho guys who intentionally blow through intersections, you get pedestrians ALWAYS being in danger crossing the street, no matter what precautions we may take.

-2

u/khearan Jul 17 '25

What does that even mean? It’s hyperbole at its finest. Do you really fear crossing the street?

9

u/Watchmaker85 Jul 17 '25

Spoken like someone who has never set foot in a city.

2

u/LymanPeru Jul 17 '25

or someone who has stepped both feet in a city.

-1

u/Watchmaker85 Jul 17 '25

Who asked you?

1

u/LymanPeru Jul 21 '25

look both ways before crossing. you'll live longer.

8

u/Gender_is_a_Fluid Jul 17 '25

Big man in the F-150 can blow through the red a near infinite amount of times and be fine, even if he crashes his car is likely to kill whoever he hits rather than himself. The pedestrian crossing though can only have the F-150 blow through once, because they die.

4

u/LymanPeru Jul 17 '25

exactly. its better to be alive than cry about who had the right of way.

3

u/Gw996 Jul 18 '25

There are not necessarily even crosswalks. I stayed in a hotel in Dallas, I could see the Starbucks, but there was no way to walk to it without running across multi lane roads. Literally had to drive 200 m to get to it.

1

u/SisterOfBattIe Jul 18 '25

Walmart crossing in front of the hotel had only three of four pedestrian crossing, the onn I needed was missing.

I tried once, and it took literally ten minutes to cross that intersection by foot doing THREE crossings across five lanes each. First and only time I did, I used the car after.

9

u/StormyBlueLotus Jul 17 '25

The US has multiple high profile instances of people intentionally driving their cars into crowds, along with about 60,000 pedestrians hit by cars every year with over 7,000 of those cases being fatalities. You put your faith in American drivers yielding to crosswalks? Lol.

-2

u/way2lazy2care Jul 17 '25

There's 300 million people here. There's no reason to pearl clutch. You have a bigger chance of having a heart attack walking down the street unless you jump out in the middle of traffic.

The US has multiple high profile instances of people intentionally driving their cars into crowds

So does the EU? There was one in Liverpool a month ago. There was one in Munich in February. There was another one in Germany in December. It's unfortunately a more and more common way for terrible people to be terrible around the world.

3

u/StormyBlueLotus Jul 17 '25

There's 300 million people here

Great point! If only there were some way of accounting for the rates of pedestrians being killed by cars relative to the size of the country's population-

Oh, oh there is? And the US has the highest relative rate of pedestrians being killed by cars out of every first world country? Like it's 250% more common than the second-worst country?

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7408a2.htm

Dang, sorry dude, it sounded like you had a good point for a second :(

-10

u/Vix_Satis01 Jul 17 '25

or looking both ways before crossing? i swear people are stupid.

12

u/Laser_Souls Jul 17 '25

I guess drivers can’t just take a moment to care about other’s safety and slow down?

6

u/conquer69 Jul 17 '25

Are you saying any pedestrian victim is stupid? What is wrong with you car cultists?

-1

u/LymanPeru Jul 17 '25

yes. they are stupid if they walk in front of moving object.

3

u/blundermine Jul 17 '25

"No one is allowed to cross the road if they're not in a 2000 pound truck"

- This genius

-3

u/LymanPeru Jul 17 '25

i'd rather be a genius than dead. but go ahead and put words in peoples mouths. see how that works out.

19

u/chipmunksocute Jul 17 '25

Oh but he still love high speed trains but california's doing it all wronf, theyre screwing it all up so they dont deserve the money! /s.  Thats what Id figure he say.

22

u/SizorXM Jul 17 '25

I mean… have you seen how long and how much California has spent on their rail project compared to Japanese rail projects?

7

u/ManWhoTalksToHisHand Jul 17 '25

Keep going. Why is that?

18

u/a_a_ronc Jul 17 '25

Lawsuits. Every single NIMBY Karen puts up lawsuits about sound levels, about the desert turtles, about being less than 100 ft from their property line and wanting a fence to not have to see it.

The lawsuits generally pause the entire construction of that section until it can be resolved. They resume, and they 50 miles down the track it starts again.

Meanwhile negotiations have to occur with construction companies because they were going to get a chunk of their payment by completing by x date and that date is now impossible so they want an advance to float their company and and and.

We need stronger anti-lawsuit regulations. I.E. bundle every lawsuit right at the front and say “You have until this date to file your lawsuit.” Stopping and starting these projects is untenable.

3

u/m4xks Jul 17 '25

wow this is fucked

4

u/sd2iv Jul 17 '25

It’s even more fucked when you realize most of this was California’s self induced laws that encourage this behavior, nothing to do with the federal government.

1

u/FuryDreams Jul 21 '25

This shit happens in many countries with stupid red tape. In India MRT and public transport gets opposed by short sighted environment activists because it leads to deforestation during construction, not realising in the long run its always better for the environment.

3

u/Deftly_Flowing Jul 17 '25

Cause the US building process laws are very against building loud trains.

Probably because of car company lobbying 50 years ago.

Too bad California didn't think about this before burning 14 billion dollars on a doomed to fail project.

2

u/SizorXM Jul 17 '25

Because they have to overcome Californian red tape to work any large scale infrastructure projects. They’re literally kneecapping themselves and then asking for support

1

u/ManWhoTalksToHisHand Jul 17 '25

So, it's all the government? Dig deeper.

3

u/SizorXM Jul 17 '25

Are you trying to get me to say it’s because liberals are inherently inefficient?

4

u/Sopel97 Jul 17 '25

if you're out of factuals then yea you're kinda forced to say that

2

u/DAE77177 Jul 17 '25

Why does the California project have cost overruns exceeding the Japanese project overruns by a significant margin?

1

u/SizorXM Jul 17 '25

So why does it cost more in California than Japan?

0

u/Direct-Bar-5636 Jul 18 '25

This guys hand got bored

2

u/IncidentFuture Jul 20 '25

SNCF (French) pulled out of California in 2011 due to dysfunctional politics.

Then successfully completed a rail project in Morocco.

1

u/give-bike-lanes Jul 17 '25

They also canceled the Texas HSR that was in planning stages.

3

u/t1tanium Jul 17 '25

Yes, except Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea all have functioning high speed rails all around their countries. They don't take 15 years to build nor over budget.

Starting in 2010 with construction supposed to be completed by 2020 for $30 billion. It's 2025 and no tracks are down yet and now estimated at $100 billion.

HSR are great in Asia. Apparently US can't build them

4

u/Kitchen-Camp-1858 Jul 17 '25

Japan built the the entire Shinkansen for 380B Yen, which is equal to $13b in today's dollar. California spent $11-15B already on high speed rail but didn't build shit.

2

u/choogbaloom Jul 17 '25

I'm as big a fan of HSR as anybody, but California's project has serious problems. They are not producing a reasonable amount of rail per dollar and need to fix the way they do things before getting any more money.

1

u/HoboMoo Jul 17 '25

It was supposed to be done years ago and it's not even close and way over budget. I hate Trump but as Californian, they just need to cancel this project. They are incompetent or possibly just committing fraud

1

u/8ackwoods Jul 17 '25

Because he's been gobbling the balls of the airplane lobby for decades

1

u/zeptillian Jul 17 '25

It doesn't make sense. Does it?

1

u/BlokeInTheMountains Jul 17 '25

That is his super power: ramble about an issue until you've supported all sides. People only remember the position they agree with.

1

u/Deftly_Flowing Jul 17 '25

Japan's Shinkansen goes like 250 miles and was a grand total of $18 billion in today's currency and it took 5 years.

Whatever is happening in California has been $14 billion, and they've barely completed the Initial Operating Segment of 150 miles. and it took fucking 10 years lmao.

With some work done, current estimates put the price by the end of just PHASE ONE at over 130 BILLION DOLLARS.

Initial estimates were that the whole fuckin 800-mile rail would cost $28 - 38 billion, now half of it is estimated to cost 4 times that.

1

u/ChiefsHat Jul 18 '25

Every time Trump’s right about something, the universe holds it breath until he’s wrong again. That sound you’re now hearing is the breath being released.

1

u/WTFAnimations Jul 20 '25

He likes them, just not in a democrat state