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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...

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...

he monumental task of building California's bullet train will require punching 36 miles of tunnels through the geologically complex mountains north of Los Angeles. Crews will have to cross the tectonic boundary that separates the North American and Pacific plates, boring through a jumble of fractured rock formations and a maze of earthquake faults, some of which are not mapped. It will be the most ambitious tunneling project in the nation's history. State officials say the tunnels will be finished by 2022 — along with 300 miles of track, dozens of bridges or viaducts, high-voltage electrical systems, a maintenance plant...

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...

At his recent groundbreaking for the state's high-speed train, Gov. Jerry Brown paused while extolling the project to laud the union workers who will build it.. "You've got to put something in the ground," Brown said, riffing on what drives economic growth. "You've got to get these building trades men and women doing stuff. That's what makes America — what makes the world — go 'round." If Brown has his way, the construction workers will soon be doing a lot of "stuff." The governor's final-term agenda is stacked with legacy-cementing projects, including the rail network, a replumbing of California's waterworks...

Around 25 business owners and supporters of Fresno’s Chinatown gathered Sunday afternoon to share their concerns about the imminent high-speed rail construction along Kern and F streets. Chinatown Revitalization Inc. listed many concerns including that Spanish and Chinese speaking business owners have not been notified of the construction. Verta Gonzalez, who runs Floreria Rubi at 1515 Tulare St., said she had no idea about the coming construction. Gonzalez said business owners who speak English perhaps are able to defend themselves better. “It’s like they think Mexicans don’t matter,” she said of the rail authority. Rail authority spokeswoman Lisa Alley said...

Most of the debate over the building of the nation's first bullet train, in California, has focused on the economics of such a monumental undertaking and its projected $68-billion first-phase price tag. Largely ignored amid the excitement over the railway's recent official groundbreaking is the physical impact and design challenges that cities will need to grapple with as they prepare for high-speed rail. California should look to rail systems across Europe to fully understand the challenge of building a transportation hub that connects to the community. To make the most of California's once-in-a-lifetime chance at building a thriving transportation network,...

Talk about a trainwreck. Today, California broke ground on another disastrous government-funded project: high-speed rail that will eventually go from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The project is estimated to cost $68 billion. The plan is that the private sector will ultimately invest around one-third of the total cost, but so far, there have been no takers. And it’s no wonder. It’s hard to see how this project makes sense. Backers say the train will be able to make the trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under 2 hours, 40 minutes. However, according to a 2013 Reason Foundation...

In a Sunday morning report which tries to put the best possible face on a project which appears to be on track to make the $22 billion "Big Dig" in Massachusetts look like a petty cash disbursement, Juliet Williams at the Associated Press claimed that the $68 billion involved thus far "would span the state." No it wouldn't, unless all of the formerly Golden State north of the San Francisco Bay Area — roughly one-fourth of the state's land mass — were to secede. Williams also wrote: "Voters in 2008 approved $10 billion in bonds to start construction on an...

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...

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,...

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...

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know that I spent this afternoon on the phone with folks in California, looking into the recent SNCF-CHSRA bombshell. To summarize: SNCF, the highly experienced French national high-speed rail operator, apparently had a plan for California’s HSR network, but was turned off by the highly-politicized routing. Namely, they wanted to make a straight shot from LA to San Francisco by running along the flat, government-owned I-5 corridor with spurs out to the eastern Central Valley, whereas the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) and state politicians wanted the main line to go...

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law. The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included — the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts. Over four years, the California High-Speed Rail Authority...

State transportation officials have slashed the price tag for California's controversial high-speed rail project by $30 billion and expanded the first stretch of track to run from Merced in the Central Valley south to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. The California High Speed Rail Authority's revised business plan, which will be released Monday in Fresno, calls for those dramatic changes as the agency prepares to ask the Legislature to use $2.7 billion in state high-speed rail bonds to start construction by early next year. The drastic revision, which puts the proposed cost of the system at $68.4 billion...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has an obvious financial problem as it seeks to build a statewide bullet train system. Its latest "business plan" says that it would cost nearly $100 billion to build the backbone of the system, but so far it has only $9 billion in state bonds and a little more than $3 billion in federal money. The CHSRA also has a political problem. The Legislature, which first proposed the bullet train bond to voters, is turning sour on its prospects, which means that it may not give the agency any more bond money to spend. Meanwhile,...

On Tuesday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority laid down their cards in the form of a new “business plan” for the proposed line, and its cards are not good – the system is now projected to cost $98 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars, which, taking into account inflation, is about twice the $33 billion figure given in 2008.* But despite the price hike, not many people’s opinions on the project seem to have changed – those who were for it are still for it, while those opposed are even more set against it. Everyone, that is, except the engineers. I don’t...

With the Golden State nearly broke, it now plans to secure funding largely by borrowing more, the Associated Press reported, though specifics were unclear. About 20 percent would come from the private sector. Until now, the state had been relying on more than $15 billion from the federal government, $10 billion from private investors and $5 billion from local governments. But the state hadn't gotten any closer to raising the money in the three years since voters approved the plan. The bullet train project, which would link San Francisco and Los Angeles with the nation's first high-speed rail line, has...

Officially, California's high-speed rail project is going ahead with construction, scheduled to start late next year. But in reality, the project is in deep trouble, amidst critical reports, escalating cost estimates, revelations of poor governance and the departures of key supporters from the board overseeing the project. The project is a zombie -- still walking, but almost certainly dead. Here are five reasons why: 1. The state budget Backers of high-speed rail thought they were doing a smart thing in 2008 when they convinced voters to pass $9 billion in general obligation bonds for the project. Such bonds are paid...

Transportation: China's technology of the future has become a boondoggle of the present, piling up debt and resulting in the arrest of the minister of railways. Maybe it's that last part we should be copying. It was supposed to be the modern equivalent of the Great Wall, a web of high-speed rail lines whipping travelers and commuters at speeds of over 200 miles an hour. It was to be a model we were told we needed to emulate to stay technologically competitive. The endeavor was part of China's stimulus package in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. It would...