The US withdraws its $26 million grant from the high-speed rail project that was delayed
The US government has taken back a $26 million grant that was supposed to go to a long-delayed high-speed train project.
Friday, the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) said it would not be giving a $26 million government grant to the long-delayed high-speed rail project between Washington, DC, and Baltimore.
The money was first set aside for the $20 billion Baltimore-Washington Superconducting Magnetic Levitation (MAGLEV) line, which was billed as a cutting-edge, ground-breaking way to connect cities. But the department said that ending the grant was due to “nearly a decade of poor planning, significant community opposition, tremendous cost overruns, and nothing to show for it.”
The MAGLEV project, which wanted to cut the time it takes to get from one city to the other to just 15, has been facing more and more problems since it began. Because of a pause in an environmental review that started years ago, the project is still not moving forward.
Local towns and environmental groups are against the project, and the costs are going up and there doesn’t seem to be any progress. Support for the project is slowly going away. The USDOT’s ruling on Friday ends the federal government’s financial support for the project, which makes it very unlikely that it will go forward.
