California high speed rail schedule improving, CEO says. When will tracks be laid?
Amid mounting uncertainties about its future, the new leader of the California High-Speed Rail Authority says the project is close to reaching a significant milestone: the first Central Valley tracks will be laid next year.
Ian Choudri, who became the authority’s CEO in August, said Tuesday at a Fresnoland panel that the long-delayed bullet train project is too far deep into construction to look backward.
“We are purchasing rail materials this year, we are laying tracks next year,” Choudri said. “I don’t see any point where we have to say, ‘Oh, we can’t do it.’”
Previously, he said, plans were to purchase rail materials — including tens of thousands of concrete rail ties, electric poles and ballast — in 2026 or 2027. But the faster timeline, Choudri said, is a result of a reevaluation of the project that the authority launched in October to save costs and tighten the construction schedule.
“We are going through a complete review of the project, and the costs are coming down,” Choudri said, adding that the authority could release a report with the results of the reevaluation this summer.
Choudri sought to assure the public that the rail project is making noticeable progress as it faces heightened scrutiny from the federal government over the project’s management and spending.
In the 17 years since California voters approved a $9.9 billion bond measure to fund a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, the project has suffered rising costs, difficult spending deadlines, lawsuits, slow right-of-way acquisitions, shifting areas of focus and big changes to its completion target dates. The goal of opening a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line for service by 2022 has been scaled down to an “interim operating segment” from Bakersfield to Merced, with service starting sometime between 2030 and 2033.
State officials envisioned the project would be funded in equal parts by the state and federal governments and private investors. Most of the nearly $13 billion spent on the project so far has come from the state. The rail authority has yet to spend $4.3 billion allocated to the project by the federal government, putting those dollars at risk.
President Donald Trump has been historically antagonistic of California’s bullet-train project, canceling a $1 billion grant for the initiative in 2019 that the Biden administration restored in 2021. Earlier this year, the Trump administration ordered an investigation to determine whether the $4.3 billion in federal funding that the High Speed Rail has not yet spent “should remain committed to the proposed project,” according to a U.S. Department of Transportation February news release.
Choudri said he hopes the federal partnership continues, calling it “critical for the project.”
High Speed Rail tracks coming soon
Choudri said the project’s reevaluation is a “parallel effort” to construction already underway. The reevaluation will not cause “one day of a stoppage” to the construction happening in the Central Valley, he said.
He said the cost reduction approach involves changes to how purchases are made for the project: Instead of buying rail materials from contractors, purchases can be made directly from manufacturers.
“I went to the steel manufacturers, sat down with them for days,” he said, “and we came out with a result saying 15-20% cost reductions because you’re not going to buy through a general contractor.”
Choudri said that also improved the schedule because, now, the rail materials will be purchased this year instead of the next. He told reporters that the first tracks will be laid in the project’s Construction Package 4 area. That area stretches from the Tulare-Kern line to Shafter and is the most complete part of the Central Valley rail plans.
From there, track-laying will continue northward to the Fresno area.
Last year, the rail authority began soliciting proposals from contractors to purchase six train sets — at a cost of about $516 million — with the goal of purchasing the first train sets this year.
Choudri told The Bee on Tuesday that his current focus is on laying the tracks.
“We need the trains, of course,” he said, “but can we buy them at the right time? That’s how we are evaluating this.”
This story was originally published April 24, 2025 at 5:30 AM with the headline "California high speed rail schedule improving, CEO says. When will tracks be laid?."
