It will cost roughly $87 billion to build between Gilroy, about 80 miles southeast of San Francisco, and Palmdale, about 37 miles north of Los Angeles, the High Speed Rail Authority’s report says. That section is expected to start running in 2038.

“While challenges remain, so too does the potential to deliver a modern transportation system worthy of the state’s ambitions — one that reflects the scale, complexity, and promise of California itself,” Authority CEO Ian Choudri wrote in the report. “Let’s go build it.”

The project is designed to shuttle riders across nearly 500 miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles. When voters approved a proposition in 2008 to authorize a bond to fund a third of the project, the cost was estimated at $33 billion and was to have been up and running by 2020. It could now cost up to $128 billion to build, the authority estimated last year. Officials will release an updated estimate in a business report next year, authority spokesperson Micah Flores said in an email.

There is 119 miles of construction underway in the Central Valley. But the state needs to make progress to build toward larger population centers near the Bay Area and L.A. and secure stable sources of funding to attract potential private investors, the report says. The project desperately needs help from the private sector. The authority recently heard back from 31 potential private investors who expressed their interest and started meeting with them this month.

A 171-mile section in the Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield is expected to cost nearly $37 billion. That’s up slightly from a previous estimate, but the authority said that figure would have ballooned to $51 billion had it not taken recent cost-saving measures.

The project has received nearly $24 billion in funding to date, most of which has come from the state through a voter-approved bond and money from the state’s cap-and-trade program. The rest has come from the federal government. But the Trump administration said in July it was pulling $4 billion in funding from the project, which the authority quickly sued to try to get restored.

The authority has spent about $14 billion on the project through May of this year, according to the new report. Dozens of structures have been built in the Central Valley, including viaducts, underpasses and overpasses, along with 70 miles of guideway, the report says.

President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy both have slammed the project as a “train to nowhere.”

“The Railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in July. “This project was Severely Overpriced, Overregulated, and NEVER DELIVERED.”

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wants lawmakers to reauthorize the state’s cap-and-trade program through 2045 and ensure high-speed rail receives $1 billion a year from it. The program is set to expire at the end of 2030.

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In a letter sent to Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chair James Comer (R-KY) requested a staff briefing and all communications and records about federal funding for the high-speed rail project and any analysis over the train’s viability.

“The Authority’s apparent repeated use of misleading ridership projections, despite longstanding warnings from experts, raises serious questions about whether funds were allocated under false pretenses,” Comer wrote.

Comer’s letter copied Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee who has also voiced skepticism about the project. Garcia, whose districts represent communities in Southern California, was not immediately available for comment.

An authority spokesperson called the House committee’s investigation “another baseless attempt to manufacture controversy around America’s largest and most complex infrastructure project,” and added that the project’s chief executive Ian Choudri previously addressed the claims and called them “cherrypicked and out-of-date, and therefore misleading.”

Last month, the Trump administration pulled $4 billion in federal funding from the project meant for construction in the Central Valley. After a months-long review, prompted by calls from Republican lawmakers, the administration found “no viable path” forward for the fast train, which is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The administration also questioned whether the authority’s projected ridership counts were intentionally misrepresented.

California leaders called the move “illegal” and sued the Trump administration for declaratory and injunctive relief. Gov. Gavin Newsom said it was “a political stunt” and a “heartless attack on the Central Valley.”

The bullet train was proposed decades ago as a way to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours by 2020. While the entire line has cleared environmental reviews, no stretch of the route has been completed. Construction has been limited to the Central Valley, where authority leaders have said a segment between Merced and Bakersfield will open by 2033. The project is also about $100 billion over its original budget of $33 billion.

Even before the White House pulled federal funding, authority leaders and advisers repeatedly raised concerns over the project’s long-term financial sustainability.

Roughly $13 billion has been spent so far — the bulk of which was supplied by the state, which has proposed $1 billion per year towards the project. But Choudri, who started at the authority last year, has said the project needs to find new sources of funding and has turned focus toward establishing public-private partnerships to supplement costs.

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The Federal Railroad Administration pulled $4 billion in funding on Wednesday that was intended for construction in the Central Valley, according to a letter that acting FRA administrator Drew Feeley sent to the project’s chief executive officer Ian Choudri.

Department of Transportation Secretary Duffy has also asked the FRA to review other grants related to the project. The agency said it will consult with the Department of Justice on potentially clawing back other funds.

Duffy blamed state leaders for the “mismanagement” of plans for the train.

“Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results. After over a decade of failures, CHSRA’s mismanagement and incompetence has proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on time or on budget,” Duffy said in a statement Wednesday. “It’s time for this boondoggle to die.”

On X, Duffy said that Newsom and California “are the definition of government incompetence and possibly corruption.” In response, Newsom said he “won’t be taking advice from the guy who can’t keep planes in the sky.”

President Donald Trump, a vocal critic of the project who has vowed to defund it, said the decision to pull funding saves taxpayers’ money.

“I am thrilled to announce that I have officially freed you from funding California’s disastrously overpriced ‘high speed train to nowhere,’” Trump wrote on social media. “The railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will. This project was severely overpriced, overregulated and never delivered.”

The high-speed rail project was supposed to be completed by 2020 but is decades off schedule and about $100 billion over budget from its original proposal of $33 billion. No part of the line from Los Angeles to San Francisco has yet to be completed and construction has so far been confined to the Central Valley.

The Trump administration initiated a review of the project in February after Republican lawmakers called for an investigation. In a 310-page compliance review released in June, the federal government cited budget shortfalls, missed deadlines and a misleading projected ridership and found “no viable path” forward for the train.

Choudri sent two letters to the Trump administration in response to the review findings. In a letter sent earlier this month, Choudri called the assessment inaccurate and said the administration relied on old information to come to its conclusions, misrepresenting the facts.

“FRA’s flawed inputs have led to flawed outputs,” Choudri wrote. “Rather than rely on the relevant information and documentation provided by the Authority, FRA inexplicably relies on outdated information, unreliable, unsupported third-party sources, and incomplete and flawed analyses to support its conclusions.”

Choudri asked the Trump administration for another meeting in early August and for the decision to be delayed. The responses did not satisfy FRA’s concerns, the agency said.

The high-speed rail authority and state lawmakers have been pushing for private-public partnerships to fund the project outside of government support. The state is also committing $1 billion per year in funding towards the project, which has created thousands of jobs in the Central Valley and has become central to several communities’ business revitalization plans.

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The company is one of three train-building companies that participated in a pre-bid conference for California’s high-speed rail project that aims to begin carrying passengers between Merced and Bakersfield by 2030. The brand-new building is set to be completed by the end of the year and features 30-foot clear heights, one ground level door and five dock high doors.

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