{"id":436282,"date":"2026-08-18T13:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T13:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/436282\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T13:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T13:46:10","slug":"regulatory-laws-blamed-for-high-speed-rail-delays-in-fresno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/436282\/","title":{"rendered":"Regulatory laws blamed for High-Speed Rail delays in Fresno"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of the California High-Speed Rail Authority<\/a> told a Fresno crowd Monday that a history of increasing regulation is at the root of the project\u2019s slow movement since the state\u2019s voters approved it nearly 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

CEO Ian Choudri, who spoke at the Rotary Club of Fresno<\/a>, stopped short of describing the project\u2019s list of pre-construction requirements as overregulation. But he did say that because of the project\u2019s massive size \u201cevery little thing gets a lot of attention \u2014 positive or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the day, in the 1800s, we were able to build infrastructure like this in a very short amount of time,\u201d he said during his speech. \u201cWhat happened after that, continuously we kept regulating ourselves more and more and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CEO\u2019s comments on Monday were similar to those made earlier this year by Republican State Sen. Tony Strickland of Southern California. A known high-speed rail critic, Strickland said during an April oversight hearing<\/a> that \u201coverregulation\u201d has stifled the project and that the Legislature would have to \u201cwaive a lot\u201d for it to succeed \u2014 something he doubted would actually happen.<\/p>\n

Choudri since last year has been calling for the Legislature to approve a list of requests he says will allow the project to move faster and on a tighter budget \u2014 among them exemptions from environmental law, increased land-use power and a faster way to get through eminent domain cases.<\/p>\n

Delays and cost increases have made the project controversial since 2008, when California voters approved $9.95 billion in bonds<\/a> for a train that would connect the state\u2019s major metro areas for about $45 billion. Today, the rail authority is still working on its 171-mile Merced-to-Bakersfield segment, which the agency says it can finish by 2033 for about $35.7 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That timeline and price tag could grow, the rail authority has said, if state officials do not help the project move faster.<\/p>\n

\"California California High-Speed Rail team members walk across the nearly completed San Joaquin River viaduct section of the rail system near Highway 99 between Fresno County and Madera County on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. Cables, tracks and other infrastructure are soon to come, say authorities. CRAIG KOHLRUSS ckohlruss@fresnobee.com CA rail needed input from \u2018every community\u2019 for clearance<\/p>\n

Choudri said the Transcontinental Railroad system constructed in the 1800s across the Rocky Mountains was built at a pace of up to 10 miles per day.<\/p>\n

Today, he said, there is a \u201cpermitting regulatory environment\u201d with national and state laws requiring environmental impact reviews. The California law is called the California Environmental Quality Act<\/a>, or CEQA.<\/p>\n

\u201cConstruction goes through those \u2014 I will not call them constraints \u2014 but those environments that were not there in the past, so it takes longer to build a program like this,\u201d Choudri said.<\/p>\n

The rail authority finished environmentally clearing its entire Los Angeles-to-San Francisco segment only two years ago<\/a>. Choudri said that required \u201clocal input from every community\u201d the train is going through.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do need to get all the due diligence and local input from every community you went through,\u201d Choudri said. \u201cSome of it got subjected to litigation, and we ended up spending a lot of time getting the environmental clearances from all communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"California California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri stands below the archway of the nearly completed San Joaquin River viaduct section of the rail system near Highway 99 between Fresno County and Madera County on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. Cables, tracks and other infrastructure are soon to come, say authorities. CRAIG KOHLRUSS ckohlruss@fresnobee.com Choudri pushes for CEQA exemption for high-speed rail energy<\/p>\n

State lawmakers last year decided<\/a> the construction of high-speed rail stations and maintenance facilities will be exempt from CEQA reviews.<\/p>\n

Now, Choudri wants the Legislature to exempt from those reviews the future energy generation system that will power high-speed rail. The rail authority says in its most recent business plan that the power system\u2019s components will allow \u201c100% clean high-speed rail operations, but face multiyear environmental and local permitting timelines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Choudri said the power generation system will be a \u201cgreen\u201d one that could involve solar, wind and geothermal energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we are going to do green power,\u201d he said, \u201cwhy do we need CEQA clearance for that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Fresno Bee<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Erik Galicia<\/a><\/p>\n

The Fresno Bee<\/p>\n

Erik is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he helped launch an effort to better meet the news needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief of his community college student newspaper, Riverside City College Viewpoints, where he covered the impacts of the Salton Sea\u2019s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of the California High-Speed Rail Authority told a Fresno crowd Monday that a history of increasing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-436282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}