Free Republic

It became clearer Thursday that the state's high-speed train will run above ground in the Peninsula and South Bay -- including on so-called "Berlin Walls" that some cities fear will divide their communities and demolish homes and businesses. The California High-Speed Rail Authority, at a packed board meeting in San Francisco, unveiled its most detailed engineering plan yet for the section of the $43 billion rail line that will run along the Caltrain tracks on the way to Southern California. Some of the cities along the line will receive aboveground tracks, either next to the existing Caltrain tracks or on...

Most permanent jobs would be based in Victorville, Calif.When the DesertXpress high-speed train is built, there would be up to 700 permanent jobs at an operations and maintenance facility — in Victorville, Calif. Tom Stone, president of DesertXpress Enterprises LLC, told representatives of the Associated General Contractors at a lunch Thursday that building the privately funded, $4 billion traditional high-speed rail system would create 50,000 person-year construction jobs over the four-year design and construction period expected to begin late this year. Translated, 50,000 person-year jobs is the equivalent of 50,000 people working for a full year. The statistic illustrates the...

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says the $425 million Woodward Light Rail Project -- which will run from Hart Plaza to 8 Mile -- "is going to happen" and that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood should be in town soon to announce additional backing. Bing made the announcement Thursday during a "big four" round table discussion hosted by Paul W. Smith of WJR-AM 760, suggesting the line could help reverse economic and population trends. "I think it's about more than just transportation," he said. "It's about economic development. Cities that I've been in that have a light rail system, you've seen all...

Alarmed by a spate of near-collisions involving airliners, the government is trying to find out why air traffic controllers and pilots are making so many dangerous errors. In recent months, there have been at least a half-dozen incidents in which airliners came close to colliding with other planes or helicopters — including in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Burbank, Calif., and Anchorage, Alaska. In some cases, pilots made last-second changes in direction after cockpit alarms went off warning of an impending crash. "This spring we had several close calls that got everybody's attention, and I think that's the thing that really...