On August 1, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy officially canceled a federal grant almost precisely 20 years in the making, for a magnetic levitation bullet train from Washington DC to Baltimore that showed no signs of ever being built. The story of this money is an epic one.

In the original SAFETEA-LU surface transportation authorization, signed into law on August 10, 2005, section 1101(a)(18) of the law authorized $90 million to be appropriated from the Highway Trust Fund over four years for a new magnetic levitation program established in section 1307 of the law. Section 1307 specified only that half of the money was to go to a maglev project between Primm, Nevada and Anaheim, California, and the other half was for a maglev project “located east of the Mississippi River.”

Unfortunately, in the rush to complete the bill, the committee staff had forgotten to add the magic words  to the effect like “funding authorized for this program shall be available for obligation as if apportioned under chapter 1 of title 23, United States Code” – the magic words that transform a regular authorization into self-funded contract authority. In the absence of those magic words, funding the maglev program was up to the Appropriations Committees, and the relationship between Appropriations and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the mid-2000s was such that Appropriations told T&I to go pound sand on this one.

The maglev program remained unfunded until June 2008, when the SAFETEA-LU Technical Corrections Act was enacted. Section 102 of that law shortened the timeframe of the funding from four years to two, added the magic words to make the $90 million contract authority, lowered the federal share from 100 percent to 80 percent, and specified that the half of the money to go to the Primm-Anaheim project be given directly to Nevada DOT. The other half was now for “existing MAGLEV projects east of the Mississippi River using such criteria as the Secretary deems appropriate.”

During floor debate on the corrections bill, House T&I chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) said that the intent was that the east-of-the-Mississippi money was limited to “three existing projects east of the Mississippi River; Pittsburgh, Baltimore-Washington and Atlanta-Chattanooga.”

(The Pittsburgh project was a proposed 54-mile line connecting Pittsburgh International Airport through downtown Pittsburgh to Greensburg, PA, and the Atlanta to Chattanooga project, which would originate at ATL and run through the city to Chattanooga, TN.)

The Anaheim to Vegas maglev project later fell apart. Section 192 of the FY 2015 Department of Transportation Appropriations Act transferred that $45 million to carry out other passenger rail planning grants, but the other $45 million for an east-of-the-Mississippi project remained available despite repeated efforts from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and others to rescind the money for that project and other “orphan earmarks.”

The Federal Railroad Administration finally issued a notice of funding availability in October 2008 for the east-of-the-Mississippi money, with applications due in February 2009. But between those two dates there was a change in Presidents, and the new Administration had some specific ideas on passenger rail policy that resulted in the maglev projects being put on the back burner. FRA then waited six-and-a-half years before issuing another NOFA for the money in March 2015.

Interestingly, USDOT never announced the winner of the money. Instead, the governor of Maryland made his own announcement in November 2015, applauding a $27.8 million grant to Maryland DOT with some of the money authorized by SAFETEA-LU a decade before hand. Governor Larry Hogan’s announcement added that “The Maryland application for the federal grant was submitted in April with the understanding that the Japanese government will be a source of significant financial backing for the project, along with private-sector support from Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail LLC.”

Maryland spent $13.9 million of the original $27.8 million for AECOM and others to produce an preliminary Environmental Impact Statement on the project by January 2021. Since then, there has been no action on the project according to the Federal Permitting Dashboard. The Federal Railroad Administration says “The purpose of this pause was to allow MDOT and [Baltimore Washington Rapid Rail] additional time to agree on funding to continue the environmental review process and allow FRA and MDOT additional time to review project elements and consider next steps.”

“Agree on funding” really means “find $20 billion somewhere” and no one has been able to do so during the four-year pause. In addition, FRA now says that even if the money were there, the plan as described in the draft EIS is unworkable because “the direct effects would have substantial negative effects to agency operations or to important resources managed by federal agencies” (NSA, NASA, Secret Service, Interior, and Fish and Wildlife all have major facilities in the area, and the rest of the area is national parkland).

Accordingly, Secretary Duffy send Maryland DOT Secretary Paul Wiedefeld a letter on July 31 canceling federal involvement in the project: “…based on agency feedback, FRA has concluded that the Project, as planned, will result in significant, unresolvable impacts to federal agencies and federal property. In addition, given the substantial delay and cost overruns associated with the Project, FRA does not see a viable path to continue investment in the project. Our understanding is that MDOT agrees with these conclusions and supports the termination of the Agreement.”

(Translation of that last sentence: Paul Wiedefeld does not have $20 billion to build this project and has higher priorities for what limited funds he does have.)

Cancelation of the first grant should return $13.9 million in unspent contract authority back to FRA. Still up in the air is the status of two other FRA grants received by the project: one in FY 2019 (with the remaining $14 million of SAFETEA-LU funding and an additional $10 million of appropriations made by Congress in 2019) and a further $2 million of FY 2020 appropriations.