Free Republic

The latest auction in California's cap-and-trade market for greenhouse gases fell sharply below expectations, as buyers purchased just 2% of the carbon credits whose sale funds a variety of state programs -- notably, the proposed high-speed rail project. The quarterly auction, conducted May 18 and announced Wednesday, will provide just $10 million for state programs, including $2.5 million for the bullet train. The rail authority had been expecting about $150 million. Whatever prompted the lack of buyers, the auction is a stark example of the uncertainty and risk of relying on actively-traded carbon credits to build the bullet train. The...

In the late 1800s, it took railroad companies six years to lay 1,907 miles of track for what was to become the Transcontinental Railroad (or as Barack Obama calls it, the Intercontinental Railroad). Building that railroad line required tunneling through mountains — at one foot a day — building bridges — including one that spanned 700 feet — and doing all the work almost entirely by hand. As best, it will now take seven years for California to lay 119 miles of track — on relatively flat ground in the middle of nowhere. That news came from a contract revision...

The incredible journey of California's high speed rail took another hit this past week when authorities inked a contract revision pushing back the opening of the first segment of the line from 2018 to 2022. Project costs for this one, 119 mile stretch of track through the relatively empty Central Valley have topped $69 billion, with only a fraction of those funds appropriated. The high speed rail authority has only purchased half the land necessary to complete the first leg of the project and not a single foot of track has been laid. The feds are blaming opponents of the...

High-speed rail is turning out to be a slow-speed proposition. The first segment of California’s first-in-the-nation bullet-train project, currently scheduled for completion in 2018, will not be done until the end of 2022, according to a contract revision the Obama administration quietly approved this morning. That initial 119-mile segment through the relatively flat and empty Central Valley was considered the easiest-to-build stretch of a planned $64 billion line, which is eventually supposed to zip passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. So the four-year delay is sure to spark new doubts about whether the state’s—and perhaps...

It was once billed as a model of socialist fraternity: South America's first high-speed train, powered by Chinese technology, crisscrossing Venezuela to bring development to its backwater plains. Now all but abandoned, it has become a symbol of economic collapse — and a strategic relationship gone adrift. Where dozens of modern buildings once stood, cattle now graze on grass growing amid the rubble of the project's gutted and vandalized factory. A red arched sign in Chinese and Spanish is all that remains of what until 16 months ago was a bustling complex of 800 workers. That's when the project's Chinese...

HS2 has been accused of “dictator-like arrogance” after demanding that more than 600 people and groups — including the Attorney General, Jeremy Wright, and the Commons Speaker, John Bercow — be banned from objecting to the controversial high-speed rail scheme. In a document slipped out on election day, the Government has applied to bar residents close to the route, anti-HS2 action groups and even MPs on the line from making parliamentary objections as the legislation to build the route passes through the Lords. Eight MPs for seats along the proposed route, four of them ministers, are covered by the ban....

The board that oversees California's high-speed rail project is expected to approve a revised plan calling for a $64 billion approach that sends the train from the Central Valley to the San Jose area before it heads to Southern California.

most Californians now believe that the “High-Speed Rail Authority” has become a boondoggle. The rail authority has not issued about $9.95 billion in municipal bonds approved by voters as Proposition_1A in 2008. All of the bullet train start-up cost so far has been funded from $3.2 billion in federal transportation and stimulus funds, plus $750 million in cap-and-trade money from the state’s greenhouse gas-reduction program Sensing an opportunity to pass an initiative to repurpose the bonds, Republican State Sen. Bob Huff of San Dimas and the Republican State Board of Equalization member George Runner formed the “California Water Alliance” and...

California will need to double down on support of the bullet train by digging deeper into the state's wallet and accepting a three-year delay in completing the project's initial leg, a new business plan for the 220-mph system shows. Rail planners have turned their construction plans upside down, attempting to fit the mega-project within the state's limited budget. The 2016 business plan, released last month, shows that the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco rail link has proved to be politically and technically more complicated to build than foreseen in 2008, when voters agreed to help finance the project with a $9-billion bond....

California's plans for a high-speed rail system are coming undone as indecision over routes undermines progress, the Los Angeles Times reports. In 2012 the state rail authority decided to build the first segment of the $68 billion project from LA's Union Station into the Central Valley, ending well short of the final goal: a 2 hour, 40 minute trip from LA to the San Francisco Bay Area. The 2012 plan would confront the most challenging part of the route first: the rocky Tehachapi and San Gabriel Mountains just north of LA. It would also provide the first physical manifestation of...

President Obama is entering his final year in office with one of his most ambitious first term promises -- a nationwide network of high speed railways -- largely unfilled. Obama spoke frequently in his first term about developing the network. He imagined a U.S. rail system that would rival the interstate highway system, citing similar train systems in European countries that are widely popular. Obama included $8 billion in his 2009 economic stimulus package to jump start the high-speed rail program in the U.S. But seven years later, Obama has little to show for the effort. His stimulus offer was...

In November 2008, California voters narrowly approved Proposition 1A, which provided $9.95 billion in government money for a statewide bullet-train network. The initiative passed, even though the California High-Speed Rail Authority had been legally required to release a detailed, updated business plan by October 1 of that year, so that voters would have time to learn exactly how the state planned to finance what was then billed as a $43 billion project—and no updated plan was in view. Rail officials failed even to release a preliminary report before the election, claiming that state legislators’ long delay in passing the fiscal...

Infrastructure: California's high-speed rail project will never make its current 2022 arrival time, according to the Los Angeles Times. Doesn't this strike anyone in charge of this costly boondoggle as ironic?...Officials still haven't settled on a route, they're behind schedule in acquiring land, getting permits and financing, and the project faces several lawsuits. Boring on the 36 miles of planned tunnels isn't likely to get started until 2019, the Times notes, and by any reasonable estimate it will take another 7 to 14 years to complete. Even that's probably optimistic, since several parts will traverse known fault lines, vastly increasing...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Private firms looking to build California's $68 billion high-speed train system have concerns about the state's ability to finance some of the project's cost through an untested 'cap-and-trade' carbon trading levy. The doubts, mentioned in correspondence to the state and reviewed by Reuters through a public records request, are not likely to stall financing for the United States' largest infrastructure project, but indicate a tentativeness among firms to use the money as a stand-alone money-generating tool. The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) expects to raise $500 million per year for the rail line from the cap-and-trade...

Last week, Governor John Hickenlooper announced a $100 million plan to make Colorado “the best state for biking.” ... Of the total $100 million, about 70 percent will come from CDOT

But soon, there could be something a little different and a lot faster: a high-speed train connecting Palmdale to Victorville, all the way to Las Vegas. XpressWest and China Railway International have put out $100 million to start the project. Not only would it provide a comfortable and fast-way to get to Vegas, but you could avoid the 15 Freeway as well. "The 15 Freeway is murder. Trying to get to Vegas for New Year's or any other holiday, it's like a three, four or five-hour delay," said Brigette Conyers of Victorville. ... He also said the environmental hurdles for...

A long-discussed high-speed rail project linking Southern California and Las Vegas will be built by a U.S.-China joint venture, Chinese officials said Thursday, though many details about the agreement remained hazy. Announcement of cooperation on the XpressWest project adjacent to the 15 Freeway comes days ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States. Financial terms of the agreement, and the cost of the project, were not immediately clear. XpressWest, a private venture formerly called DesertXpress, has been under discussion since at least 2007. Chinese officials described the project as a 230-mile train linking Las Vegas and...

Getting wine-drunk on a train in Napa Valley sounds pretty good if you're the guys from Sideways or the parents in Bob's Burgers, but it's apparently a lot less fun if you're a black woman with a loud laugh. A group of 11 women, members of the Sistahs on the Edge book club, were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train last Saturday for allegedly being too loud and disturbing other passengers—but the women say it was because of their race. One of the book club's members, Lisa Johnson, chronicled the event on Facebook, igniting an outcry across social media...

With little income generated by the canals themselves — recreational revenue is about $165,000 a year, commercial only $40,000 — the cost of operating them is now covered largely with highway tolls collected by the Thruway Authority. And the roughly $55 million operating budget for the canals accounted for a large chunk of the $78.5 million in losses the authority reported during the 2014 fiscal year. On top of that are annual capital investments in the tens of millions of dollars to maintain and improve the system. The burden falls largely on highway toll-payers because of a decision in 1992...

California is a beautiful state, but its incompetent government has turned it into a national joke—a “meanwhile, in California” meme seems appropriate for whatever’s going on elsewhere, because odds are California is doing something even dumber, like declaring an Uber driver is an employee instead of a private contractor, making laws about your bathroom’s temperature, or banning “ex-gay” reparative therapy. Today, during one of California’s most severe droughts in recent history, we can illustrate like so: The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial in April opposing building more desalination plants like the brand new one opening in Carlsbad, which...