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Keyword: highspeedrail

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  • Bankrupt California: No money for crumbling roads, but billions for high-speed rail

    10/09/2012 5:26:31 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 24 replies
    National Review ^ | 10/09/2012 | Victor Davis Hanson
    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...
  • ( UN ) Agenda 21 Getting Worse ( in Australia )

    09/30/2012 10:52:54 AM PDT · by george76 · 28 replies
    Standeyo ^ | September 28, 2012 | Lynette
    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...
  • Amtrak workers failing drug tests more often

    09/28/2012 12:39:31 PM PDT · by reaganaut1 · 6 replies
    Assoicated Press ^ | September 28, 2012 | JOSH LEDERMAN
    <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>
  • Obama: Industrial Age Solutions to Information Age Challenges

    09/27/2012 4:10:34 AM PDT · by Kaslin · 4 replies
    Townhall.com ^ | September 27, 2012 | Michael Barone
    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....
  • One Proposal For Amtrak Bullet Train Route: Under Long Island Sound

    09/20/2012 6:53:39 PM PDT · by Olog-hai · 37 replies
    Hartford Courant ^ | 5:01 p.m. EDT, September 3, 2012 | Don Stacom
    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,...
  • Federal OK for high-speed rail

    09/20/2012 12:54:45 PM PDT · by SmithL · 17 replies
    Sacramento Bee ^ | 9/20/12 | Tim Sheehan
    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...
  • High-Speed Rail Is Definitely Green

    08/29/2012 11:37:02 AM PDT · by NormsRevenge · 33 replies
    East Bay Express ^ | 8/29/12 | Max Pringle
    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...
  • Jarvis group's new ad calls Jerry Brown's tax bid street robbery

    08/20/2012 7:13:45 PM PDT · by SmithL · 4 replies
    SacBee: Capitol Alert ^ | 8/20/12 | David Siders
    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...
  • Jerry Brown hot for money from global warming law

    08/20/2012 1:47:08 PM PDT · by Mark Landsbaum · 5 replies
    Orange County Register ^ | 8-19-2012 | Mark Landsbaum
    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...
  • New rail stations, tunnel to airport eyed for Philadelphia (10 miles, *only* $3 billion)

    08/16/2012 4:28:21 PM PDT · by Olog-hai · 9 replies
    Philly Inquirer ^ | August 15, 2012 | Paul Nussbaum
    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...
  • There is no California

    08/16/2012 3:46:36 AM PDT · by Kaslin · 78 replies
    Townhall.com ^ | August 16, 2012 | Victor Davis Hanson
    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...
  • The Bullet Train Fiasco Reminds Us That California Is Our Greece

    07/18/2012 6:53:07 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 11 replies
    Forbes ^ | 07/18/2012 | Richard M. Salsman
    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’s crazy train: On the fast track for fiscal ruin (high speed rail etc.)

    07/14/2012 2:47:45 AM PDT · by Olog-hai · 20 replies
    New York Post ^ | 12:44 AM, July 11, 2012 | Ben Boychuk
    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 plans 37-minute train from New York to Philadelphia by 2040

    07/10/2012 10:32:59 AM PDT · by Olog-hai · 50 replies
    Reuters ^ | Mon Jul 9, 2012 8:20pm EDT | Dave Warner
    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...
  • Transportation Secretary Envies China Dictatorship

    07/07/2012 3:55:06 PM PDT · by John Semmens · 9 replies
    Semi-News/Semi-Satire ^ | 6 July 2012 | John Semmens
    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...
  • California OKs Funding For High-Speed Rail Line

    07/06/2012 7:51:19 PM PDT · by Lmo56 · 48 replies
    AP ^ | 7/6/12 | Judy Lin
    <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>
  • [CA] Rail project could knock tax vote off track

    07/05/2012 8:40:08 AM PDT · by Cincinatus' Wife · 2 replies
    San Francisco Chronicle ^ | July 5, 2012 | John Wildermuth
    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...
  • California high speed rail is dead

    06/22/2012 6:50:02 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 23 replies
    Washington Examiner ^ | 06/22/2012 | Conn Carroll
    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...
  • The train we hope Jerry Brown doesn’t hear about

    06/15/2012 1:04:06 PM PDT · by Mark Landsbaum · 25 replies
    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...
  • It’s not about greenhouse gases or transit, it’s about greenback dollars and cronyism

    06/12/2012 11:53:02 AM PDT · by Mark Landsbaum
    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 . . .