The Trump administration says they’re pulling $4 billion in federal funding for California’s now-three-decade-old dream of an SF-to-LA high-speed rail system, and the project’s new leader is looking for ways to get investors to subsidize it.

It’s funny that something called “high-speed” has long been the slowest-moving project that anyone can name, but next year will be the 30th anniversary of the proposal to build a high-speed rail line between SF and Los Angeles. And as that 30th anniversary approaches, all we have to show for it is a set of environmental approvals and the beginnings of a railway between Bakersfield and Merced — 84 structures including rail overpasses.

Complicating matters, the Trump administration has vowed to pull $4 billion in federal funding for the project that was granted under the Obama and Biden administrations, in what the New York Times calls the “one of largest federal funding revocations in history.” But the Times also reported Monday that the state is going to appeal to get that funding back, with Governor Gavin Newsom telling that paper, “We will litigate.”

The Trump administration’s legal grounds for pulling the funding is a combination of claims that the project is way over budget, is missing deadlines like mad, and would not even have significant ridership if ever theoretically completed. But according to the Times, the high-speed rail project’s relatively new CEO Ian Choudri said in a legal response that “The state is in compliance,” and that the federal government’s set of claims “wholly fails to support its conclusion.”

Though meanwhile, Choudri is looking to other venues to round up that $4 billion of federal money that the project might have pulled away, as well as the many more billions needed to complete Phase 1, connecting SF to LA. The Chronicle spoke to him and says he’s looking for private investors to close that gap, or in Choudri’s words, “We are looking at state-level commitments so that we can bring private equity partners in.”

The project may already have a $1 billion-a-year commitment from the state, and it helps that Newsom is supportive of that. But other methods of rounding up private funding could involve real estate deals near major stations, or even having companies build tracks or tunnels, and charging the system a toll once (if) the trains are ever up and running. The Chronicle cites that high-speed rail system in Japan, which the government eventually privatized.

But still, the Japanese government had already built their whole high-speed-rail system before they started selling pieces off. And investment in California high-speed rail may be difficult to scare up, considering everyone wonders if this thing will ever get built in our lifetimes.

“A billion dollars a year [in state money] will mummify the project in its current condition,” California Rail Foundation president Richard Tolmach told the Chronicle. “They will lay a piece of track here, a piece of track there, get little pieces started but not operating.”

Which sounds like an accurate assessment of exactly where this project has been for the last three years, with the current best-case scenarios of even just that Merced-to-Bakersfield stretch not running with passengers until 2033 at the earliest.

Related: Zillionth Version of High-Speed Rail Plan Introduced, Funding Totally Uncertain [SFist]

Image: Selma California, USA - May 12, 2025: Aerial view of construction of the grade separation bridge on South Highland Avenue/ CA-43 in Selma to facilitate high speed rail crossing at the junction.