CA high-speed rail wants special laws, court to hear land cases. Can it speed work?

The California High-Speed Rail Authority wants a faster way to get through court cases against property owners unwilling to sell. It’s also seeking an easier process for acquiring construction permits from local governments, and more jurisdiction over utilities in its right-of-way.

Could state lawmakers help the rail authority resolve land-use conflicts so construction moves forward faster and with fewer cost increases? That’s what the rail authority is hoping.

“Some of these situations were there for years,” rail authority CEO Ian Choudri recently told The Fresno Bee. “What we’re trying to create is certainty in the schedule.”

It’s been 17 years since California voters approved nearly $10 billion in bonds to help fund a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed railway with a completion target of 2020. Today, the rail authority is still working on completing the Central Valley segment by 2033 at a cost of more than $30 billion — a figure the state originally thought could cover the entire project.

The agency is also relying more on the state as it battles the Trump administration in court over a recent federal decision to pull $4 billion from the project. Completing the Central Valley segment by 2033 could depend on whether California’s legislature approves at least $1 billion in annual state money for high-speed rail through 2045.

But Choudri is also asking the state to pass SB 445, a bill that in its current form would allow the rail authority to contract to remove utilities faster and also bar local governments from making permitting requests unrelated to health or safety. He also wants legislation to establish a set of judges or courts dedicated to handling eminent domain cases.

Could new legislation help construction, costs?

Choudri said jurisdictional issues have been at the root of the delays and expensive change orders the project has historically suffered.

“That has nothing to do with how to build a bridge,” he said. “It has a lot to do with stopping 3,000 workers from doing what they are there to do ... because of a permitting issue, because of a utility issue, because of a court case.”

Helen Kerstein, a fiscal and policy analyst with the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, told The Bee those issues are “likely a notable contributor” to high-speed rail’s past delays and change orders.

The project has faced many problems over the years. Delays also resulted from lawsuits over the project’s use of state dollars and the adequacy of its environmental reviews, The Bee previously reported. Spending deadlines required by federal grants caused the project to award construction contracts before the rail authority had completed necessary planning and design work. Once that work was done, costly change orders became apparent.

Speaking generally, Kerstein said giving the rail authority more power to move quickly and with fewer concessions will result in time and cost savings for the project.

“But it’s important to look at the full picture of potential trade-offs, such as savings versus impacts to the courts and the fairness to other parties,” she said.

High-speed rail utilities, local permits bill

High-speed rail construction on the 119 miles between Madera and Shafter alone requires 1,826 utility relocations. As of May 31, the rail authority had completed 86% of those, according to a July report.

An inspector general report found there’s less progress on the stretch between Madera and Merced, where utility owners had not reviewed most of the relocation designs by the end of last year. At the time, the rail authority had not yet submitted relocation designs to utility owners between Shafter and Bakersfield, the report said.

SB 445 would require the rail authority to adopt by July 2026 rules and timelines that: require early engagement with utilities, provide options for a dispute resolution process, and create frameworks for future interactions with utility owners, among other requirements.

“If, in fact, the utility can’t get to the relocation, high-speed rail will contract to be able to get it done more expeditiously,” said State Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Fresno, who is co-sponsoring the bill. “The idea is to set up a process where it can be done cooperatively.”

The bill would require similar measures meant to make the acquisition of building permits from local governments faster. But the rail authority will be allowed to adopt rules that prohibit local agencies from making requests of the rail authority that “are unrelated to ensuring that health and safety standards are met,” the current draft of the bill says. It will also have to “define options that can govern a local agency process for permits and approvals.”

“It’s a new issue and, in most of these jurisdictions, you’re through a bunch of small cities where the permitting has caused a significant delay,” Caballero said.

Rail authority wants eminent domain judges

The rail authority has also made progress on land acquisitions between Madera and Shafter. In that stretch, it had to acquire 2,291 parcels, plus an additional 176 parcels owned by freight railroads.

At this time last year, it still needed to acquire 48 parcels, with 25 subject to eminent domain cases and 23 under negotiations with freight railroads. As of May 31, it only needed a total of 29 more parcels between Shafter and Madera.

But that’s a decade after construction first began on that stretch. The rail authority has not yet begun acquiring land on the Merced and Bakersfield extensions. The agency said in an email to The Bee that those extensions are still under advanced design, which determines right-of-way.

“Having learned lessons over the course of this project, we now proceed with this project’s development in a prescribed sequence,” the email said.

Choudri said he wants courts appointed to handle the rail authority’s eminent domain cases in Sacramento so judges can “process those cases as fast as we can.”

Something similar happened in 2015, when the Chief Justice of California assigned all eminent domain cases tied to high-speed rail in Kings County to a single, previously retired Los Angeles-area judge. But that was because all Kings County Superior Court judges declared “disqualifications in connection” with each case.

“We are not asking for any exceptions,” Choudri said. “We are asking for a special court and few judges that are available only for our program. So if we were to process cases, those are handled in an expeditious way, instead of letting it bigger, like what happened in the past.”

This story was originally published August 12, 2025 at 7:30 AM.

Erik Galicia

The Fresno Bee

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’s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert. Erik’s work is supported through the California Local News Fellowship program.