The Federal Railroad Administration is canceling two grants worth over $26 million for the Baltimore-Washington Superconducting Magnetic Levitation Project, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Friday.
"We want big, beautiful projects worthy of taxpayer dollars — including high-speed rail. This project lacked everything needed to be a success from planning to execution. This project did not have the means to go the distance, and I can't in good conscience keep taxpayers on the hook for it," Duffy said in a statement.
"We'll continue to look for exciting opportunities to fund the future of transportation and encourage innovation."
Duffy said he was ending federal involvement in the high-speed project due to poor planning, opposition to the project, and cost overuns with no results in nearly a decade.
An FRA review showed that the project would directly and indirectly affect federal agencies and federal property, including national security agencies.
The project wasn't included in a report on "billion-dollar boondoggles" from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, that highlighted over-budget government-funded rail projects around the country that have cost American taxpayers more than $163 billion.
On July 16, President Donald Trump announced that he was ending federal funding for California's high-speed rail project.
The announcement followed the release of a Transportation Department report from the FRA that cited missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and questionable ridership projections.
The California project was slated to get about $4 billion from the feds.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
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