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The California High-Speed Rail Authority won approval Thursday from a federal railroad oversight board to start construction this summer on the first leg of what would be the nation's first bullet train. In a 67-page decision issued Thursday, the Surface Transportation Board ruled 2-1 that the state could begin work on the first 65 miles of the project from Merced to Fresno, as long as it maintains the current route and follows through on promises to mitigate damage to the environment caused by construction. The STB's ruling removes a key hurdle for the rail authority to start construction of the...

NOTHING FITS the Obama administration’s economic project better than high-speed rail. It’s based on visions of a utopian future, employs gobs of union labor in its construction, can be used to reward political allies and donors, and makes use of analysts eager to churn out dubious studies justifying it on economic grounds. Call it Solyndra on steroids. The poster child for high-speed rail is California’s proposed 500-mile bullet train from Anaheim to San Francisco. Since it would begin at Disneyland and end at cultural la-la land, critics can’t resist snarking that the train would be on a fast track from...

Fox is reporting a train has derailed in Connecticut. 20 to 25 injured. Two trains collided.

SPRINGFIELD — Illinois is looking for the railroad equivalent of a unicorn — a super-fast, super-clean, super-cheap locomotive that is not real. The Federal Railroad Administration has placed Illinois in charge of buying 35 new, “next generation” locomotives to serve the to-be built high-speed rail lines in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, California and Washington, even though the locomotives do not yet exist. “Currently these are not being manufactured,” said Joe Schacter, high-speed rail point man for the Illinois Department of Transportation. “We are fully confident that such a locomotive can be manufactured and will be manufactured.” Schacter said Illinois has $175...

Dirty Business as Usual at California High Speed Rail From the article: Out of the entire universe of those who could have won the first phase construction contract for California’s high speed rail boondoggle, who would stand out as the last person who would win it if there were no political patronage. Put another way, who is the most likely person to win it if there is political patronage? Both questions have the same answer: Richard Blum, the husband of California senator Diane Feinstein. So, who won the contract? Blum, of course, as the principle owner of Tutor Perini, the...

the California High-Speed Rail System will saddle taxpayers with losses between $124 million to $373 million a year. Exaggerated ridership estimates and slower-than-promised trip speeds make the California bullet train project a big financial loser for taxpayers... ... The [California High-Speed Rail Authority’s] financing assertions are virtual fantasy

As Gov. Jerry Brown seeks to build California’s own high-speed rail system, he’s pointed to the example set by China, where 5,000 miles of track have been laid in recent years. … But one day before Brown steps aboard, an embarrassing episode involving the railroad is being shoved back into the spotlight in China. The man who led construction of the country’s high-speed rail system is facing corruption charges, the Associated Press reported. …

Whether a high-speed rail system ever gets built in the United States is still up in the air, but if it is, artist and activist Alfred Twu has figured out exactly where those speedy rail lines should go. Twu started working on this map in 2009, when President Obama's plan to build high-speed rail was unveiled. "There were many such maps being made by various designers," says Twu, but since then he's updated the map with labels and put it on Facebook, and it struck a chord. It's gone viral. "With the huge response it's generated, I created a petition...

High speed rail is moving forward in California, but progress is pretty stagnant around the rest of the country. Still, there are a lot of proposals out there, and when placed on one map, they form an impressive rail network. This map was put together by California Rail Map, led by Alfred Twu, which combined existing proposals from high speed rail advocacy groups around the US. The US High Speed Rail Association, a nonprofit trade association, predicts a network similar to this one could be in place by 2030. Transporation Secretary Ray LaHood has called for a large HSR network,...

The Department for Transport has unveiled its plans for the northern section of the controversial HS2 railway, but has faced anger from Tories representing constituencies along the route who say it will destroy large swathes of the countryside and “blight” lives. The 225-mph trains will link London with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds by 2033. It emerged that plans to connect the £32-billion ($50 billion) train line directly to Heathrow have been put on hold until the Davies Commission on airport capacity has reported. …

California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown compared efforts by the California state government to build the first-ever high speed rail project in the United States to the popular children’s story “The Little Engine That Could.” … Earlier in his remarks, Brown cited high-speed rail projects in countries such as China, Spain, and Morocco as part of the justification for the project in California. …

Mayor Ed Lee is floating the idea of tearing down the stub end of Interstate 280 in San Francisco in hopes of creating a new neighborhood and speeding up the arrival of high-speed rail service downtown. The idea, laid out by the mayor's chief transit planner, Gillian Gillett, in a memo to the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission, would be to knock down I-280 before 16th Street - eliminating the ramps both at Sixth and Brannan streets and at Fourth and King streets. It would be replaced by a street-level boulevard akin to those built after the Embarcadero and Central freeways...

The House lawmaker responsible for oversight of the nation's railways promised Wednesday to use his new position to put the brakes on a controversial high-speed railway in his state. California Rep. Jeff Denham (R) was appointed chairman of the House Transportation Committee's Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials subcommittee Wednesday. Denham has sought previously to deny federal funding for the proposed California high-speed railway, and he said Wednesday afternoon in an interview with The Hill that he would use his new perch to keep the up roadblock. "I've obviously taken a very storing position about California high-speed rail and I'm going...

TORRANCE (CBSLA.com) — A Southern California Congresswoman Thursday defended plans for a high-speed rail project despite spiraling costs and concerns about its long-term viability. KNX 1070′s Jan Stevens reports Rep. Janice Hahn (D-Torrance) clashed with a Bakersfield lawmaker during a Transportation Committee hearing in Washington. State legislators in July approved nearly $8 billion in spending on the first phase of the rail project that will ultimately connect the Southland to San Francisco. Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) appealed to the Committee to review the business plan and to assess the viability of investing more funds into the project. “There are...

I thought of my fellow Californian Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, when I paid $4.89 a gallon in Gilroy for regular gas — and had to wait in line to get it. The customers were in near revolt, but I wondered against what and whom. I mentioned to one exasperated motorist that there are estimated to be over 20 billion barrels of oil a few miles away, in newly found reserves off the California coast. He thought I was from Mars. California may face the nation’s largest budget deficit at $16 billion. It may struggle with the nation’s second-highest...

As the UN digs in its ever-sharper, global-grasping claws, there are less and less desirable places to relocate. The New World Order permeates and invades all. Agenda 21? This is how it is done in Australia. Been going on for years... We know a family who live in Sydney’s Parramatta. The oldest girl, now in her 80’s, lives in the family home which was built in the early 1900’s. She was invited to a meeting with Parramatta Council and she and others were told that the Council “could not tolerate” for much longer that there was only one or two...

<p>A government watchdog says Amtrak's train operators are testing positive for drugs and alcohol more and more frequently over the last six years.</p>

In 2008, voters under 30 preferred Barack Obama over John McCain by a 66 to 32 percent margin. Among older voters, Obama led McCain by 50 to 49 percent. How has Obama paid back the Millennial generation, which provided almost all his margin of victory? With what American Interest superblogger Walter Russell Mead calls "Obama's war on the young." Mead is not a tea party crazy or Ayn Rand zealot. He is a history professor at Bard College and an expert on American foreign policy. He voted for Obama in 2008, and he's not wild about Mitt Romney this year....

As Amtrak studies how to bring bullet trains to its frantically busy Northeast Corridor, one design team is suggesting a radically new route requiring a roughly 18-mile-long tunnel beneath Long Island Sound. Trains speeding from Washington to Boston would run through the heart of Long Island, cross into Connecticut through a tunnel emerging in Milford, head to Hartford and then race east toward Worcester on new tracks running alongside I-84. The segment between Manhattan and Hartford would cost about $20 billion, according to the University of Pennsylvania's high-speed rail design studio, which first put forward the idea in 2010. Overall,...

California's controversial high-speed rail project received a boost Wednesday when the Federal Railroad Administration approved the proposed Merced-to-Fresno route, clearing the way for construction to start early next year. A federal record of decision signed by Administrator Joseph Szabo represents the final bureaucratic hurdle for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The decision gives a federal blessing to the 60-mile route and to thousands of pages of environmental review for the project. Backers of the project hailed the decision as historic for the development of the first high-speed train project in the nation and the start of construction in the central...

Opponents of high-speed rail contend that it's a boondoggle because of its $68 billion pricetag. But a recent UC Berkeley study provides evidence that a California bullet train might be a good investment, particularly when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases and fighting climate change. The study, published recently in the journal Environmental Research Letters, was the result of two years of research by UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor Arpad Horvath and Mikhail Chester, professor at Arizona State University's School of Sustainable Engineering and The Built Environment. The study analyzed the environmental sustainability of a high-speed rail network...

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is up with its second radio advertisement against Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes, comparing Brown's tax campaign to street robbery. "Hey, lady, hand over your purse or the schools get it," a voice at the top of the ad says. The ad, an issue-advocacy spot running statewide beginning today, comes as the Democratic governor begins in earnest to campaign for Proposition 30, his proposal to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners. The Democratic governor has characterized the election as a choice between higher taxes and...

Brown wants you to believe global warming "poses an immediate and growing threat to California's economy, environment and to public health," and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions, "which are warming the planet," is necessary "to prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change, including the increased likelihood of both flooding and drought." That's the same phony scare story repeated until many people finally tuned it out. It failed to persuade Congress to intervene with a law to limit greenhouse gas emissions, even though Congress almost never has seen a trumped-up crisis that didn't justify overreaching intervention... But, as the Sacramento...

If bullet trains someday race up and down the East Coast, they may not stop at 30th Street Station. Amtrak and city officials envision a new high-speed rail station on Market Street east of City Hall, linked by a 10-mile tunnel to Philadelphia International Airport, where a second new station would be built. The neoclassical 30th Street Station, opened in 1933 by the Pennsylvania Railroad and touted by Trains Magazine last year as "America's Finest Railroad Station," would become a hub for slower intercity trains and commuter service. Amtrak, which owns the station, says a new high-speed rail alignment beneath...

Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line. Consider the disconnects: California's combined income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, but the state's deficit is still about $16 billion. It's estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet California wants to raise taxes even higher; its business climate already ranks near the bottom of most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid on average in the nation, but its public school students consistently test near the bottom of...

California is our Greece, the most fiscally irresponsible of U.S. states – and now it has another fiscal fiasco on its hands. A recent report about the state-sponsored “bullet train to nowhere” calculates $68 billion as the total sum to be spent on a high-speed rail line to run between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Passengers are supposed to be able to travel up to 220 miles per hour in two-and-a-half hours. A plane flight is less than an hour – not counting drives to and from the airports. Voters approved the rail project by a 53-47% margin, in a...

California is broke and broken. Its freeways and roads are crumbling. Many cities—like Stockton, which declared bankruptcy two weeks ago—are straining under hundreds of millions in bond debt and unfunded pensions for retired public workers. In the face of a slow-motion fiscal train wreck, why would state lawmakers commit to spending $5.8 billion in state and federal funds on the first phase of a high-speed rail line that practically nobody wants in part of the state where practically nobody lives? The state Senate on Friday narrowly approved legislation to start work on a 130-mile stretch of rail between Madera and...

Amtrak announced a $151 billion improvement plan on Monday that includes 37-minute trips from New York to Philadelphia at speeds approaching 220 miles per hour (354 km per hour). However, the U.S. passenger railroad will need substantial financial support from both state and federal governments to make its ambitious plan to transform rail travel in the Northeast a reality. The railroad predicted that super-fast train trips along the East Coast could be a reality by 2040. Travel times from New York to either Washington or Boston—both about 200 miles (350 km) in distance—would also be slashed, to 94 minutes, the...

Miffed that the Administration's dream of a nationwide high-speed rail passenger system may be derailed by uncooperative states, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he wished the US were more like China. Thus far Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin have opted out of participating in the President's high-speed rail scheme. “In China the government doesn't have to put up with people thwarting their plans,” LaHood explained. “If the top guy says do something, everyone has to go along. They don't have state legislatures or governors deciding they don't want to pony up their share of the cost for the rail program. And...

<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California lawmakers approved billions of dollars Friday in construction financing for the initial segment of the nation's first dedicated high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco.</p> <p>The move marked a major political victory for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and the Obama administration. Both have promoted bullet trains as job generators and clean transportation alternatives.</p>

A wide range of California voters are willing to give Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative the support it needs in November, but that could change in a hurry if the Legislature approves billions of dollars for the proposed high-speed rail project later this week, a new Field Poll shows. More than a fifth of those voters backing Brown's tax plan, which would temporarily boost the sales tax by one-quarter of one cent and increase state income tax for those making more than $250,000 a year, say they would be less likely to support it if the state starts spending money...

The Los Angeles Times reports today: _______________________ After encountering criticism from environmental groups, Gov. Jerry Brown signaled Wednesday that he plans to withdraw his controversial proposal to protect the California bullet train project from injunctions sought by environmental lawsuits. Brown’s staff told key environmental groups that he would no longer include modifications to the California Environmental Quality Act in a package of legislation this month asking for $6 billion to start construction of the high-speed rail project. …........ Dan Richard, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, had first raised the possibility of some legal protections from lawsuits in a...

If the high-speed train we call the Moonbeam Express will cost anywhere from $68 billion to $117 billion, we wonder how much this one would cost: “Engineers in the U.S. and elsewhere are working on the technology for trains that could shoot through airless tunnels at speeds up to 4,000 miles per hour, the BBC reports. The transporters, which remain at least a decade away, could eventually cut travel time between New York and Beijing to about two hours,” according to the New York Daily News. Actually, at only a decade away, it’s closer than the one floundering today in...

The California High-Speed Rail project is absurd on the face of it, which gives reasonable people reason to wonder – “What in the world are they thinking?” Gov. Jerry Brown says . . .

Imagine your finances are down, and you need to cut back. You get rid of the premium cable channels, start shopping at the discount market, scrap date night at the movies, and ... buy a new house?California politicians may decide to embark upon a similar strategy, on a far bigger scale. Even as they must ax crucial services by Friday to help close a $15.7 billion deficit, state lawmakers are weighing California's costliest project ever: a $69 billion high-speed rail line."You don't run your home like that," said Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, who's tried, unsuccessfully, to kill the bullet...

California's politicians have until Aug 31 to give a final green light to an initial $6 billion, 130-mile section of track in the Central Valley Ambitious plans for a fast track linking Los Angeles and San Francisco at speeds of up to 220mph in just over two-and-a-half hours were slimly approved by 53 per cent in a statewide ballot in 2008. That allowed the state to raise $10 billion from bonds and secured an injection of $3.5 billion in stimulus money from the Obama administration. There is currently no direct train route between the two. Construction is expected to begin...

A strong majority of voters is against the bullet train project just as Gov. Brown is pressuring the Legislature to green-light the start of construction, a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll finds. Across the state, 55% of the voters want the bond issue that was approved in 2008 placed back on the ballot, and 59% say they now would vote against it. Since voters approved that $9-billion borrowing plan, the state and national economic outlook has dimmed and some of the promises about the bullet train have been compromised. 55% of the respondents said the state has bigger priorities than...

Jerry Brown, not surprisingly, used a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge to tout his two bids for public works posterity – a north-south bullet train and a tunnel for water to bypass the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. "Suck it in!" Brown said. "We got to build, we got to do it right. And this bridge I think really expresses that sense." Just as the bridge proved to be an economic boon, Brown said, so would a bullet train and a tunnel to improve water supply reliability, adding that just as the Golden Gate Bridge "connects...

Alternate title for this post: Dreams from My Freightcar: A Story of Pace and Incompetence 1. Why can't private passenger trains operate like plane companies? 2. Why don't we rip up some old tracks and turn them into true high-speed elevated rail that travels at 500 kilometers/hr? 3. Why is Amtrack, as it is now, so inefficient and crappy when train transportation is supposedly so efficient (CSX's 430+miles/gallon fuel) 4. There seems to be an inverse relationship of luxury to efficiency. Plane travel is torture, but it's efficient. Train travel could be luxurious since it's not fuel inefficient, but is...

The California High-Speed Rail project already has raised enough red flags to justify stopping the proposal in its tracks, so to speak. . . In light of critics' continuous detailed inspection of its every plan and the looming legal proceedings, what should we make of a new policy that the rail authority is considering – destruction of its email records after 90 days? Were we the suspicious type, we might conclude the rail authority has something to hide. . .

The Wall Street Journal has the backstory about how Governor Jerry Brown is insisting on trying to complete the high speed rail plan despite a budget shortfall of $16 billion: Transportation experts warn that the 500-mile bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles could cost more than $100 billion, though the Governor pegs the price at a mere $68 billion. The state has $12.3 billion in pocket, $9 billion from the state and $3.3 billion from the feds, but Mr. Brown hasn't a clue where he'll get the rest. [Snip] In 2008 voters approved $9 billion in bonds for...

We wrote for the weekend (see our column Sunday morning when it goes up here) that Gov. Jerry Brown is a bad guesser. The ink wasn’t even dry yet – in fact the Sunday paper hasn’t even been printed yet – and we learn that Brown guessed wrong again. Back in January Brown guessed that the state budget would be $9.2 billion in the red. Wrong. Monday Brown revised his estimate. Then he said it would be $15.7 billion in the red. Wrong. Today the independent Legislative Analyst affirmed that Jerry’s wrong again. It will be $17 billion plus some...

Poker players often use the phrase "betting on the come" to describe a willingness, if instincts and odds indicate, to wager big on the hope that they will draw winning cards. That's a perfectly valid tactic when one is playing with one's own money and therefore bearing the risk. But is it appropriate for California politicians to bet on the come by approving many billions of dollars in spending on very shaky assumptions that the money will be there when it's needed to pay the bills? Risk was the underlying theme of two hearings in the Capitol on Tuesday. One...

They are from the federal government and here to help. Or so goes the classic line by the last decent president. Federal transportation Sec. Ray LaHood has “warned” California lawmakers not to wait until the fall to vote on the Moonbeam Express high-speed rail boondoggle. “We need to make sure that the commitment is there to obligate the money,” LaHood lectured. In short, the feds are threatening,...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warned the California Legislature today that the Obama administration will not wait until fall for a vote on high-speed rail, urging its approval in a budget vote next month. "We need to make sure that the commitment is there to obligate the money," LaHood told reporters at the Capitol, where he was meeting with lawmakers and with Gov. Jerry Brown. The state's commitment, LaHood said, will be demonstrated when lawmakers "put it in the budget and take a vote on it." Brown and the California High-Speed Rail Authority want to start construction on a $68...

For the sake of argument, let’s concede the high-speed rail will cost only $68 billion as most recently advertised. Of course, it will cost far more, probably even more than the $98 billion to $117 billion previously estimated, and certainly nowhere close to the $33 billion originally estimated. But let’s give them that. For the sake of argument. And let’s concede, for the sake of argument . . .

Prison crowding seems to be improving, but the bullet train still lives and Gov. Brown still pursues billions more from an overtaxed populace. . . .

With the state budget mired in deficits, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators, especially his fellow Democrats, are searching under every fiscal rock for money to spend. That search has spawned an odd syndrome involving what could be three big pots of money – a competition among liberals over how they should be spent if, indeed, they materialize. The pots: • What could be several billion dollars a year in "cap-and-trade" fees that industries must pay as part of the state's anti-greenhouse gas crusade. • Another billion-plus bucks that it's believed would appear were the state to change taxation of multi-state...

Real-life Futurama tube-transport will catapult you from New York to Beijing in 2 hours The Simpsons have the monorail. Futurama has the Tube Transport System. The difference is that tube-transport is a fantasy — at least for now. The folks at ET3 want to make what they call "Evacuated Tube Transport" a reality. Their proposed maglev system would be capable of propelling six-person-capacity cylinders to speeds of over 4000 miles per hour, making it possible for people to travel from New York to L.A. in just 45 minutes, or from New York to Beijing in two hours. What's more, ET3...

The state's top analyst has urged lawmakers to pull the emergency brake on California's $68 billion bullet train, saying the recently revised plan carries way too much risk of failure. The Legislative Analyst's Office report released late Tuesday may give the Legislature political cover if it decides to ax the polarizing rail line as it begins debating whether to approve high-speed rail Wednesday.