Lack of US high speed rail ‘doesn’t make sense,’ Trump says. But his administration did little to boost it.

Former President Donald Trump said Monday that it “doesn’t make sense” why the U.S. compares so poorly to other countries with “unbelievably fast” bullet trains — but while in office Trump did little to move such projects forward and in fact canceled funding for a major one in California.

Trump’s comments came during a conversation with Elon Musk where Trump applauded the tech CEO’s Boring Co., which is tunneling for Tesla cars to run under the Las Vegas convention center. During the confab on X, Musk’s social media platform, Trump heaped praise on high-speed rail, saying bullet trains are comfortable and have “no problems.”

“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,” Trump said.

Trump’s right — even the fastest rail in America doesn’t exceed 150 miles per hour, a far cry from the blistering 200-mph of Japan’s Hayabusa train, for instance. But pushing forward policies to build out high-speed rail was not a priority when Trump was in office. His budget requests regularly called for cuts to Amtrak, which operates some high-speed trains in portions of the Northeast Corridor.

And the FRA under Trump also withdrew almost a billion dollars that had been earmarked for the nation’s largest high-speed rail endeavor: an ambitious, controversial and massively over budget California project to eventually connect several areas with a bullet train system. The first phase of the initiative is estimated to cost up to $128 billion. At the time, FRA said California had failed to make sufficient progress on completing the system.

Trump’s campaign did not return a request for comment on his remarks. Neither did the office of House Transportation Committee Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) or Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Both Cruz and Graves have been highly critical of the California project. In May, they sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg demanding documents about why it is billions over budget and years behind schedule.

Peter DeFazio, former chair of the House Transportation Committee, told POLITICO on Tuesday the Trump White House was “absolutely pathetic on all issues related to transportation” and was specifically “hostile to rail and transit.” DeFazio said there was “absolutely no initiative from the Trump administration toward high-speed rail.” (DeFazio also acknowledged there are serious problems with the California project and called it a “debacle.”)

Trump made infrastructure a rhetorical focal point of his campaign, but once in office the plans he did produce went nowhere. In 2018, he released the outline of a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan that was largely silent on high speed rail. (That plan never moved forward; instead, Congress and President Joe Biden eventually produced the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.)

His administration also repeatedly pushed Congress to slash Amtrak’s funding. In his fiscal 2019 budget request, Trump wanted to cut Amtrak from $1.2 billion to $538 million. The Northeast Corridor, Amtrak’s busiest region, would have received $200 million — a nearly 40 percent decrease from $326 million in fiscal 2018. His fiscal 2021 budget request again urged dramatic cuts, proposing that money for the Northeast Corridor and state-supported lines be reduced by more than 50 percent.

There are other players in the private sector. Brightline Florida operates in some areas at up to 130 miles per hour. It is also developing a 218-mile system connecting Las Vegas and Southern California with projected speeds of up to 200 miles per hour. A proposed route between Dallas and Houston, spearheaded by Texas Central, aims to offer similar speeds.