And another one bites the dust.
Ian Choudri, chief executive officer of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, resigned Wednesday night, citing “personal and family priorities” as the reason he is walking away from a salary of more than $534,000 per year.
That’s more than double the salary of the governor. California taxpayers certainly pay a lot to go off the rails.
Choudri was the CHSRA’s fourth CEO since 2010. That was the year the rail authority’s first top official, Executive Director Mehdi Morshed, retired at age 72 to spend more time with his family. Morshed, who passed away in May, said at the time that his goals had been met with the successful passage of Proposition 1A in 2008 to secure nearly $10 billion in bond funding plus federal funds to finally build the bullet train.
As we have seen, not so fast.
After Morshed’s retirement, an extensive search led to the hiring of Roelof van Ark as the rail authority’s top official. He was given the title of CEO and a salary of about $375,000. Van Ark lasted less than two years, announcing in January 2012 that he was leaving to focus on his family.
Next into the CEO’s chair was Jeff Morales, who held the job for about five years and was paid close to $400,000 for each of them. He was followed by Brian Kelly, who left the ever-higher-paying CEO job in August 2024, citing a desire to spend more time with his family.
That’s when Choudri was hired. Two years later, he’s out. CBS News in Sacramento reported that Choudri wrote in a letter to employees that it “was not an easy decision.”
In fact, he resigned under fire. The rail authority board voted a few weeks ago to curtail Choudri’s spending authority following a report from the Office of Inspector General that revealed more than $600,000 in highly questionable travel expenses billed by consultants. During Choudri’s tenure, the rail authority spent about a quarter of a billion dollars on consulting firms.
Choudri wrote in his letter that leading the rail authority was one of the most “rewarding chapters” of his professional life. It’s hard to argue with that. He was paid more than a million dollars for two years of “leadership.” Here’s how he described his accomplishments: “Over the past two years, this project has evolved from one facing significant challenges to one that is now irreversible and on track to deliver the first true high-speed rail system in North America.”
Perhaps the High-Speed Rail Authority has rebranded itself as a literary society and is giving out million-dollar prizes for fiction writing.
In the non-fiction category, a report by the inspector general warned in July that the high-speed rail project is on track to run out of money as early as December 2027 unless the state borrows billions of dollars to continue construction. The “funding gap” to complete the Central Valley segment is $9.5 billion between 2027 and 2032. Borrowing that money would add roughly $3 billion to $6 billion in interest costs to the price of the Merced-to-Bakersfield line, currently estimated at $35.7 billion.
And much like the photo of a Salisbury steak on a boxed frozen dinner, that’s the best they can make it look.
Choudri resigned just before the announcement that the board has approved the environmental clearance for what the L.A. Times described as the “last 33-mile leg of the route from Anaheim to Los Angeles.” The cost of that segment is said to be $8.8 billion. Its planned route would go from Anaheim to L.A.’s Union Station, hypothetically traveling like the wind through Fullerton, Buena Park, La Mirada, Santa Fe Springs, Norwalk, Pico Rivera, Vernon, Commerce, Bell, Montebello and some unincorporated areas of L.A. County.
There’s no funding for it. There isn’t enough funding to finish Merced-to-Bakersfield.
Even more absurd, there’s no plan for this unfunded 500-mile route to connect Bakersfield to Los Angeles, at least not with high-speed rail. Not with any rail. The business plan of the California High-Speed Rail Authority describes a “high-speed rail bus” that will take hypothetical passengers from Bakersfield to Union Station.
Behold the “irreversible” plan that Ian Choudri points to with such pride: Conventional rail from the Bay Area to the Central Valley, high-speed rail from Merced to Bakersfield, a bus from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, and high-speed rail from L.A. to Anaheim.
That trip will take quite a bit longer than the 2 hours and 40 minutes voters were promised for a San Francisco-to-L.A. train when they approved the bonds for the project in 2008. The bus trip alone will take two and a half hours. If you’re planning to include high-speed rail in your travel plans, don’t forget to allow extra time. It’s running about 30 years behind schedule.
But in his parting message, Choudri insisted that he is leaving the rail authority “on track to deliver the first true high-speed rail system in North America.”
And Governor Gavin Newsom’s office told CBS News Sacramento that Newsom “is committed to delivering the nation’s first high-speed rail system and to protecting California taxpayers every single step of the way.”
There’s no track. There’s no train. There’s no more money. High-speed rail is funded with $1 billion per year from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, money that comes from charging fees that are passed on to consumers as higher prices for gasoline, electricity, and everything that is transported or manufactured in California. Funding for the bullet train, set to continue through 2045, is raising the cost of living in California.
A day after Choudri’s resignation, the rail authority board named state Department of Finance director Joe Stephenshaw as interim CEO.
He probably won’t be there very long. Anyone who’s good at math is a bad fit for the culture at the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley