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The Department of Transportation announced more than $6 billion in grant funding for high-speed rail projects this week. The money comes amid ongoing support for a technology that has also encountered concerns about its costs. Brightline West, an affiliate of Florida’s Brightline intercity rail service, was awarded $3 billion in federal funds for its proposed line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, which would zoom passengers between the cities in two hours. The California High-Speed-Rail Authority was awarded $3.1 billion to continue work on its system, which will ultimately connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours....

The California High-Speed Rail has received its biggest boost from the federal government yet, being awarded more than $3 billion in grant funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The announcement was made Tuesday and was confirmed by California Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

A high-speed bullet train connecting LA to Sin City is currently in the works - thanks to a billionaire private equity investor and some prospective federal funding. Billed as Brightline West, the planned desert route is the brain child of Wes Edens - a part owner of both the Bucks and Aston Villa FC - and will cost at least $12 billion to create. Its part of his vision to create high-speed lines between some of America's least traversable - and most traveled - paths, with the 270-mile stretch between the starcrossed cities a prime candidate for the gargantuan undertaking....

It sounded too good to be true, and it was. Travel from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in two hours via high-speed rail. California voters in 2008 approved Proposition 1A, authorizing $9.95 billion in general obligation bonds to build this so-called “bullet train.” They were told not only that the total cost would only be $33 billion but also that the entire 500-mile system would be running by 2030. Fat chance. In March of this year, the California High-Speed Rail Authority released its latest progress report. The project is now projected to cost $127 billion, and there is...

The latest report from the California High-Speed Rail Authority projects costs for the initial segment at $35 billion, which exceeds secured funding by $10 billion. Other segments of the system are likely to have their projected costs increase, too. The state hopes it will get more federal aid.

Last February the California High-Speed Rail Authority announced that the price for the state’s planned bullet train had gone up from $100 billion to $105 billion. A few months later they clarified it was actually going to be $113 billion. Yesterday there were more reports about delays and price increases.High Speed Rail Authority officials on Thursday could not provide an estimated completion date for the original vision pitched to voters but said the price tag for the entire project is now up to $128 billion, a 13% increase from last year’s projections…Construction is currently focused on a segment in the...

If you ask someone to close their eyes and picture a train, they'll typically imagine one of two things: The sleek, fast European passenger trains that can zip through the countryside, or The industrial, coal-burning freight trains that powered the American westward expansion. So, how did these two vastly dissimilar pictures come to be? In this article, we'll take a closer look at the key differences between American and European rail systems. HOW DO EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN TRAINS DIFFER? When it comes to American trains vs. European trains, there are six main factors that help make each one stand...

California hasn’t created a railroad to the future but a warning to the rest of the country to avoid its delusion and folly. California progressives tried to build a European-style high-speed rail network and alienated the French in the process. A big New York Times piece on the rail project reports that the French, who wanted to work with California, decided the state was simply too dysfunctional and departed to help complete a high-speed line in Morocco instead. The ongoing unraveling of California’s rail plan is an object lesson in how infrastructure as eschatology is a bad idea. If transportation...

The French national railroad company intended to help California build its high-speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but ended up leaving the state to pursue projects in war-torn North Africa, which the company said was a less “dysfunctional” place. The New York Times published a lengthy essay on Sunday about how California’s “bullet train” failed — despite the fervent desire of Gov. Jerry Brown (D) that it be built, and the investments of both the Obama and Biden administration in its supposed construction. The Times noted: Now, as the nation embarks on a historic, $1 trillion infrastructure building...

Ed Morrissey wrote a story about the costs of California’s high speed rail project going up back in August 2011. More than ten years later, we’re still seeing that story repeated over and over. Last January, we learned from a contractor’s letter that project delays were “beyond comprehension,” often thanks to failures by the state to buy needed property to build on. ... The cost to build California’s ambitious but long delayed high-speed rail line has once again risen, with rail officials now estimating it could take up to $105 billion to finish the line from San Francisco to Los...

BEIJING, July 20 (Reuters) - China unveiled a maglev train capable of a top speed of 600 kph on Tuesday, state media said. The maximum speed would make the train, self-developed by China and manufactured in the coastal city of Qingdao, the fastest ground vehicle globally. Using electro-magnetic force, the maglev train "levitates" above the track with no contact between body and rail.

The Biden administration late on Thursday restored a $929 million grant for California’s high-speed rail that then-President Donald Trump revoked in 2019. ===== Trump had pulled funding for a high-speed train project in the state hobbled by extensive delays and rising costs that he dubbed a “disaster.” Trump repeatedly clashed as president with California on a number of policy fronts, prompting the state to file more than 100 lawsuits against the Republican Trump administration.

California’s bullet train has become a nearly forgotten source of trouble, eclipsed in the public eye by Covid-19, a gubernatorial recall, and out-migration from the Golden State. But it’s still out there, sucking up time and money, and as empty as it ever was. The California High Speed Rail, its formal name, was a hobby-ego project for former governor Jerry Brown that was supposed to move passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco at 220 mph by 2020. Instead, the project is moving at the speed of the museum piece it sometimes appears destined to be. Not a single train...

2014, when the rail authority awarded the contract, it went with the lowest bidder...which promised $300 million in cost savings by altering the design that the authority had proposed to regulators. Seven years later, these changes have been largely abandoned and have contributed to more than $800 million in cost overruns on the Kings County segment. That figure is 62% above the contract price tag, which the rail authority has agreed to pay, according to interviews and technical and contractual documents reviewed by The Times. In addition, the rail authority awarded the contract without first completing a scientific assessment of...

The fiasco of California’s pathetic attempt to build a high-speed rail (HSR) line between Los Angeles and San Francisco continues to generate far more embarrassment than actual completed track. Once again, for what seems like the umpteenth time, California is unable to meet the deadlines imposed by the federal government as a condition of receiving federal aid – in other words, subsidies from other states for building what should be commonly known as “Brown’s Folly,” after Jerry Brown, who go the itch to build it after riding bullet trains in Japan and Europe.Kathleen Ronayne reports for the Associated Press:California is...

Contractors for the rail authority are filing massive change orders and delay claims... Additional land is also needed, adding to costs. At the same time, the bullet train’s funding has taken several big hits. California’s cap-and-trade greenhouse gas auction system has provided about $3 billion to the rail project since 2015 and is counted on to provide at least $500 million annually until 2030. But as a result of COVID-19’s economic impacts, the last two auctions shorted the project by $140 million... The Trump administration last year terminated a $929-million grant, which is in legal dispute. But the money is...

In the midst of Sunday's presidential debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, Biden blurted out that his campaign's high-speed rail plan would take "millions of automobiles off the road." This is the second debate in which the former vice president brought up the belief that bullet trains will get people out of their cars. This is, to put it mildly, extremely unlikely. Biden's campaign site calls for "the construction of an end-to-end high speed rail system that will connect the coasts, unlocking new, affordable access for every American." Would bullet trains passing through major cities scattered across the U.S....

California High-Speed Rail Authority on Wednesday bumped its overall cost estimate for completing the rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles to $80.3 billion, blaming inflationary increases and better cost projections... After years of embarrassing cost overruns and delays, managers of California’s ambitious bullet-train project insisted that they are on pace to meet a preliminary 2022 federal deadline for laying track along the first segment in the Central Valley. But that will use up virtually all the money the project has available. The authority’s latest business plan comes amid unrelenting pressure from state lawmakers, some of whom want to...

Farmers up and down California’s Central Valley are up in arms over the state seizing their land to build its long-awaited high-speed railway and then failing to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars owed them for years. Thanks to an order of possession by the Superior Court, California can take private land through eminent domain for the troubled bullet train project. While landowners are expected to eventually be reimbursed for the property – and for expenses like lost farming production, irrigation replacement projects and road construction – many farmers in California’s agricultural heartland say state officials have offered them...

On a recent weekday morning, Liu Ai’jun boarded one of eight daily high-speed rail (HSR) services between Urumqi, capital of China’s north-western Xinjiang region, and Hami, an oasis town 614 kilometers to the east. The trip, along the longest and most expensive line in the country’s HSR network, took just three hours and cost RMB 167 ($24). Previously Liu, a self-employed elevator salesman and technician, used to rely on infrequent and expensive flights between the two cities. Before the new HSR line was completed in 2014, the train between Urumqi and Hami took seven hours. “If you’re not in a...