Free Republic

The French national railway SNCF has filed a detailed proposal with the Federal Railroad Administration stating an interest in operating high-speed rail in Texas. The route in question would run from DFW through Austin and into San Antonio. It would not be the Gulf Coast route that's been on the USDOT's official list of 10 prospective HSR corridors or the much-promoted Dallas-Houston link (including the Texas T-Bone). But Houston could be in the distance. From Yonah Freemark on the TransportPolitic blog: At $13.8 billion in construction costs, SNCF expects benefits to outweigh public infrastructure costs by 170% over a period...

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Wachovia Corp., the new owner of SouthTrust Corp., plans to cut 829 jobs in Birmingham between January 2005 and March 2006. More layoffs are expected to follow. The job losses represent about 20 percent of the 4,000 people SouthTrust employs in Birmingham. Charlotte-based Wachovia, which bought SouthTrust last month, told state officials about the job cuts Wednesday, as required by laws that demand disclosure of mass employment cuts. Wachovia, the country's fourth-largest bank, has said it can eliminate $255 million in annual expenses by combining its operations with those of SouthTrust, once Alabama's biggest financial institution. The...