Ian Choudri has resigned as chief executive of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, quitting the $126 billion project weeks after the Authority's own inspector general substantiated that the agency paid its consultants hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel costs the rules never allowed — among them trips to gyms, a nightclub, an escape room, a tiki bar and cigar lounges.
Choudri sent his resignation by email on Wednesday night, October 28, effective immediately, saying he needed to focus on “important personal and family priorities.” The Authority's board confirmed the departure at its meeting in Anaheim on Thursday and voted unanimously to put California's Director of Finance, Joe Stephenshaw, in charge as interim chief executive. Board Chair Steve Kawa thanked Choudri for his service. Choudri, an engineer who had worked on high-speed rail projects in France and Spain, was hired in August 2024 and was the Authority's fourth chief executive since 2010.
The resignation follows the report the Authority's Office of Inspector General released in September. Investigators substantiated that the agency had failed to follow state regulations and its own contract requirements when it reimbursed consultants for travel. Of the consultant travel they reviewed from 2024 through 2026, about $680,500 — roughly 60 percent — had never received the advance approval state rules require. About $592,000 of it was determined to be unallowable altogether.
The charges included premium airfares, upgraded Uber and Lyft rides, rideshare cancellation fees and same-day flight bookings, many of them with no receipts or supporting documents. About $81,000 went on travel to places that had no documented state business purpose at all: gyms, an escape room, a nightclub, a tiki bar and cigar lounges. Whistleblower expense records also showed consultants billing taxpayers for late-night rides from a street in Folsom where Choudri owns a home, and for rides to and from nearby restaurants and bars.
The board had already moved against him. Earlier in October it voted to strip Choudri of his sole authority over contracts under $25 million, requiring the agency's in-house lawyers to approve new or changed contracts. The Authority has spent more than $250 million on four consulting firms between 2024 and 2026; the firms have so far returned about $1.3 million in questioned charges, and the board expects them to reimburse the unapproved expenses. Choudri quit on the eve of the meeting at which the board was to decide whether his performance earned him a $25,000 bonus. His compensation this year is more than $534,000, according to an Authority spokesperson.
Steven Greenhut, of the Pacific Research Institute, said the departure was overdue accountability for a project “way behind schedule, way over budget”: “It's in the midst of a travel scandal involving $600,000 in questionable travel spending with consultants, and so yeah, it's time for a change. The CEO saw the handwriting on the wall.”
The scandal is small money beside the project itself. California voters approved the train in 2008, under Proposition 1A, when the system was sold to them at about $33 billion. The Authority's 2026 Business Plan now puts the cost of Phase 1 — San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim — at $126 billion. The first piece alone, from Bakersfield to Merced, is projected at $36 billion and is not expected to carry passengers until 2033. In July, the inspector general warned the project could run out of money as soon as December 2027 unless the state borrows billions more to keep construction going.
Washington has already walked away from its share. Last year the Trump administration, under Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, terminated about $4 billion in federal grants for the project, arguing it had wasted taxpayer money, and the Authority has been fighting the move in court. That leaves Sacramento to find the money itself — or borrow it — for a system whose price has nearly quadrupled since voters said yes.
For California taxpayers, the arithmetic is now stark. Eighteen years after they approved the train, not one passenger has ridden it. The chief executive is gone, the consultants are paying back questioned charges, the federal government has pulled its money, and the bill in front of them is $126 billion and still rising — for a railway that, on the current plan, will not open its first segment for another seven years.
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