Free Republic

A proposed high-speed passenger train between Las Vegas and Southern California got another boost on Tuesday with Biden administration approval to issue $2.5 billion in tax-exempt bonds for the $12 billion project. The announcement benefiting the Brightline West project followed a $3 billion U.S. Department of Transportation grant in December and government authorization in 2020 for the company to sell $1 billion in similar bonds. ... The 218-mile (351-kilometer) Brightline West project aims to whisk passengers at 186 mph (300 kph) or more in electric trains on new tracks along the Interstate 15 corridor ... No date has been announced...

Israel Is Planning an ‘Inland Suez Canal’ Across Its Desert. At What Cost? Israel's planned high-speed train to Eilat: dream or potential environmental train wreck? In theory, it sounds amazing: a high-speed train to Eilat, the country’s southernmost city on the shores of the Red Sea. This was attested to by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his recent Knesset speech enumerating the new government’s goals, in which he described it as a major national project: “The mission is to develop the country’s infrastructures, including developing a high-speed rail that will travel hundreds of kilometers per hour and connect the country...

The latest figures show an undeniable correlation between an increase in violent crime and immigration.. The number of knife attacks recorded at train stations in Germany has more than doubled since 2019, and foreign nationals are greatly overrepresented when analyzing the ethnicity of suspects. By Aug. 31 this year, the German Federal Police had already recorded 527 violent crimes in which a knife had been used at German train stations — the equivalent of more than two knife attacks a day on average. The figures were provided by the federal government following a request by Martin Hess, an MP for...

California's pricey and now-failed bullet train costs about $1.8 million a day, but without a light at the end of the tunnel on how it can be completed as designed, experts told The New York Times. The bullet train sought to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, but the only thing it has brought is red tape and a bulging bottom line: from $33 billion when planned in 2008 to be finished in 2020 to an estimated $105 billion in February to $113 billion now to be finished in 2030, the Times reported. "There is nothing but problems on the...

TOKYO Japan is very proud of its trains, and in many ways rightfully so. The country has one of the cleanest, most reliable, and most convenient rail networks to be found anywhere on the planet. But it isn’t perfect, and the undeniably worst part of train travel in Japan is the possibility of encountering a chikan, or groper, onboard. Rail operators have tried various countermeasures to attempt to prevent gropings, but the actions of one East Japan Railway Co (JR East) worker have been drawing criticism after a video taken at Shinjuku Station in downtown Tokyo on Aug 30 recently...

China’s high-speed rail network includes 37,900 kilometers (about 23,500 miles) of lines that crisscross the country to link all of its major mega-city clusters. All have been completed since 2008. No major incidents have been reported on the network since 2011, when 40 people were killed and nearly 200 others injured after a high-speed train was struck from behind by another train near Wenzhou, Zhejiang province.

The hits just keep on coming for Texas Central. Now a number of Texas counties contend that the company behind the planned 236-mile, Houston-to-Dallas highspeed rail line is behind on property taxes. The allegation comes as both sides of the debate over whether or not to run a bullet train line through a swathe of rural Texas to connect the two metroplexes await the Texas Supreme Court’s decision on Miles vs. Texas Central. Jim Miles, the landowner behind the case, has taken his insistence that the company is not a railway and should not be allowed to use eminent domain...

DENVER — The Regional Transportation District continues to deal with a widespread shortage of train and bus operators, and that resulted in a large number of canceled trips Monday. As of 6 a.m. Monday, RTD’s website was showing more than 50 canceled trips ... Beyond canceled trips, the shortage has resulted in many operators working six days a week. Officials have been weighing whether to reduce service in some areas to make up for the lack of drivers,

Crony Bidding And Gross Incompetence Reign.. At a time when Coloradans are desperately pleading for improved and new roadways the agency in charge of the same, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), is mired in the greatest crisis of its long-storied existence . ... In December 2018, Governor Jared Polis appointed 35-year-old Shoshana Lew as his new Executive Director, a history major .. She replaced Governor Hickenlooper's appointment of 56-year-old Michael Lewis, an engineer with extensive public construction management experience. ... Lew's primary qualification .. was her close relationship to Michelle Obama who called the newly elected governor for a...

A Chinese aerospace firm’s claim that it is developing a “flying train” capable of travelling at up to 4,000 km/h has met with scepticism and wry humour from transport experts and members of the public in China. China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation announced plans on Wednesday to research a futuristic train network that would first run at 1,000km per hour between cities, eventually developing to reach top speeds of 4,000km/h. That target is well over 10 times faster than the maximum speed of existing bullet trains. The idea was unveiled by Liu Shiquan, the corporation’s deputy chief executive, at...

Blended route” for the way to San Jose—and beyond. California’s ongoing bullet train project is late, over-budget, and politically assailed everywhere from Sacramento to the White House, but the nearly $80 billion venture still (pardon the term) chugs along, as the High Speed Rail Authority board voted Tuesday for routes that will eventually connect trains to the Bay Area. Out of four route proposals, board members favored a Merced-to-San Jose connection designated Alternative Four, one that “blended configuration between San Jose and Gilroy in the existing Caltrain and Union Pacific Railroad corridors before continuing to a dedicated high-speed rail alignment...

a report from the Auditor of the State of California on the High Speed Rail Project ... To understand just how damning the HSR audit was, just consider the subtitle: “Flawed Decision Making and Poor Contract Management Have Contributed to Billions in Cost Overruns and Delays in the System’s Construction.” But like many government documents, the audit is couched in bureaucratic language that ordinary citizens may not understand. For that reason, below are the summary points as provided by the state auditor with accompanying translations. Auditor: “Although the Authority has secured and identified funding of over $28 billion that it...

The cost of constructing the Southern California section of the state bullet train could jump by as much as $11 billion over estimates released earlier this year, though rail authority officials caution that their new numbers assume a more expansive design than is likely to be built. The new estimates are contained in environmental reports prepared for Thursday’s meeting of the authority board, which will review planned routes throughout the Southland. The reports acknowledge that the new cost estimates could affect the $77-billion price tag of the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco system, though they also use a different methodology than previous...

RTD is cutting the number of cars on the light rail R Line that runs through Aurora because of a lack of ridership. RTD says ridership on the R Line is about half of projected numbers. The one-car trains look more like a trolly going up and down the tracks. RTD believes cutting the two-car trains to just one is enough to serve the needs of the R Line passengers and the low numbers for now.

DENVER -- Flaggers have returned to some crossings along the RTD A Line between Union Station and Denver International Airport. In June, the flaggers were removed, but they have returned as RTD tries to figure out a software problem that was discovered on a number of rail lines in the area. The flaggers have returned to the York, Steele, and Holly street crossings, a move that signifies RTD believes the automated gates are still not safe enough to operate without on-site supervision. ... RTD is only saying its contractor, Denver Transit Partners, is doing some updating and testing of the...

Mounting problems may end high-speed-rail projects in California and Texas. A decade ago, high-speed rail was the new, new thing. In 2008, California voters narrowly approved initial bonds for a train that was supposed to go 220 miles an hour and deliver passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes. The next year, the Obama administration’s stimulus bill allocated money for it and several other high-speed lines. But soon the push for trains slowed to a crawl, and now it appears to be on life support. In 2011, the new GOP governors of Florida, Ohio,...

How else to account for the state's wondrous physical beauty and gentle climate, on the one hand, and its ludicrously irrational political majorities and execrable public officialdom, on the other? God gave Yosemite Valley but then inflicted Nancy Pelosi. He created the Big Sur coastline, then dropped Jerry Brown into Sacramento. He graces the state with the sweetest September-Octobers north of the equator but requires that they be shared with the likes of Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf. The list of nature's spectacular bounty, paired with California's unmatched human folly, is endless. Another week in the Golden State, another rich display...

That may sound like a clickbaity headline, but it’s proving to be literally true. Apparently, no one can guess it, least of all the California High-Speed Rail Authority that is running the bullet-train project. Their latest projection shows total predicted cost has jumped 20% to $77 billion, with a completion date moved out four years to 2033.For now, anyway. Be sure to check back next week in the Boondoggle Lotto! The price of the California bullet train project jumped sharply Friday when the state rail authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would be...

Nobody quite knows who built Stonehenge some 5,000 years ago in southern England. The mysterious ring of huge stone monoliths stands mute. Californians may leave behind similarly enigmatic monuments for puzzled future generations. Along a 119-mile pathway in central California, from Bakersfield to Madera, there are now huge, quarter-finished concrete overpasses. These are the totems of the initial segment of a planned high-speed-rail corridor. Californians thought high-speed rail was a great idea when they voted for it in 2008. The state is overwhelmingly progressive. Silicon Valley reflects California’s confidence in new-age technology. Californians are among the highest-taxed citizens in the...

DENVER - The future of RTD commuter rail lines may be in question after its private business partner claims there is no solution to a lingering problem. In a letter to RTD, Denver Transit Partners said the crossing gate timing issue won’t be fixed by the deadline. Denver Transit Partners is made up of the group of contractors who built and maintain the A Line, B Line and the future G Line. At issue, the crossing gates that must be manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because of a computer glitch. ... The crossing gate technology does...