Free Republic

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr on Friday wrote that President Joe Biden has not connected one American with high-speed internet with $42.5 billion in funding from the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill. “In 2021, the Biden Administration got $42.45 billion from Congress to deploy high-speed Internet to millions of Americans. Years later, it has not connected even 1 person with those funds. In fact, it now says that no construction projects will even start until 2025 at earliest,” the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner wrote.

The High Speed Rail Authority shared an update on the Fresno River Viaduct .. They were widely mocked with Elon Musk and Billy Markus piling in .. California has been mercilessly mocked for boasting about completing the 'world's most pointless crossing' to nowhere at a cost of $11billion. The California High Speed Rail Authority shared an update on the Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County last week, proudly saying it was one of the 'first completed high-speed rail structures'. The Tweet did not get the reaction officials were hoping for with Elon Musk and Dogecoin creator Billy Markus piling in...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority will need an additional $100 billion — above the nearly $30 billion it already has — to complete its original route from San Francisco to Los Angeles, CEO Brian Kelly told state legislators this week. As Breitbart News noted in 2023, the project was set to cost $100 billion more than the $33 billion voters originally approved in 2008. And as Breitbart News was first to report in 2014, the journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles would not take less than three hours, as originally promised to the California electorate when they approved the...

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...

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...

Government is urged to implement action plan to address this issue before the 2024 Olympics ... With the Paris Olympics less than a year away, French authorities want to make sure the bedbugs don't bite during the games and have started a drive to exterminate the pests. Social media users have been publishing footage of the insects crawling around in high-speed trains and the Paris metro, alongside a rash of online articles about bedbugs in cinemas and even Charles de Gaulle airport. The reports have reached the highest levels of government. "The state urgently needs to put an action plan...

Three people were killed and five others hurt – two critically – in a high-speed Long Island crash late Sunday, cops said. A motorist was heading west on Sunrise Highway – across from a shopping center – at a “high rate of speed” when that vehicle collided with three others around 7:20 p.m., Nassau County Police said. Three people involved in the smash-up were pronounced dead at the scene. Five more people were taken to local hospitals – where two are listed in “critical unstable condition,” two in stable condition and one was treated and released, cops said. First responders...

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...

It's been the dream of Chicago's city government under several recent mayors to bypass the gridlocked loop traffic by building a high-speed rail system to O'Hare Airport. Now it appears that the first steps to achieve that goal are being taken. Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office announced that a proposal is being negotiated with tech billionaire Elon Musks's Boring Company and the city government. There is no timeline and no cost estimates for the project, but Boring Company will finance the entire project.

Update on the California High Speed Rail Project Thursday, September 28, 2017, 11:30 AM to 3:00 PM University of California Center - 550 East Shaw Avenue, Fresno (Stanislaus/Tuolumne Room) Join us for lunch and an update on the High Speed Rail Project presented by California High Speed Rail Authority Environmental Staff. After lunch attendees will be taken on a tour of construction sites in the Fresno/Madera County area. Since adoption of the Final EIR/EIS, the project has progressed into the design/build phase with four active construction packages. This presentation will update us on the current High Speed Rail work happening...

A college student in Columbia, South Carolina was kidnapped by three men at gunpoint. Fearing the worst, she used some Jason Bourne level-problem solving and her manual transmission car to get away safely. According to newspaper The State, 20-year-old Jordan Dinsmore found herself in one of the worst situations possible when three men approached her, pushed her to the ground and put a gun to her head. The publication reports that they forced her to drive her car and withdraw money from an ATM and then told her that she was going to be taken to a location to be...

It’s no secret that tickets bought by SunRail passengers pay only a tiny fraction of the commuter train’s bills, but less known is that ticket revenue doesn’t even cover the cost of selling tickets. SunRail’s finances would be slightly stronger if riding was free. Put another way, the revenue of $1 to $7.50 per ticket is devoured by ticket machines, employees who support ticket sales and armored cars that collect fares, and does nothing to keep the train running. “If we have to pay more money to collect revenue than we are actually collecting, why does it make sense to...

Elon Musk has announced an ambitious plan to put more than 4,000 satellites in space to create a global high-speed internet network. Musk first turned his attention to internet satellites in 2014, and his plan soon received the backing of Google, which chucked $1bn at Space Exploration Technologies Corp, aka SpaceX. Musk said in January 2015 that the plan would cost at least $10bn. The original number of satellites was pinned at 700, but documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission show that SpaceX wants to deploy 4,425 satellites, plus “in-orbit spares”, to provide high-speed, global internet coverage. Earth...

A Google executive is headed to Cuba this weekend to explore bringing better Internet access to the island, and the search giant has made a related proposal to the Cuban government, according to a State Department official. It’s the latest sign that U.S. tech companies are testing the seriousness of Cuba’s interest in opening up to outside investment after President Barack Obama’s announcement of a historic thaw in relations and the Raúl Castro-led government’s recent pledge to bring Internet access to all Cubans by 2020. n Cuba today, only about five percent of the population has Internet access, and cellphone...

Even before it begins significant construction on the bullet train route, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has violated federal protections for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox in the Central Valley, federal regulators said in a letter last week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the authority had set up a nine-acre construction yard outside the approved footprint for the project, affecting habitat and resulting in the destruction of a kit fox den. n a Jan. 26 letter, the service said the rail agency, along with the Federal Railroad Administration and its contractors, had failed to comply with the...

The cost of the high-speed rail project might be going above the current estimate of $68 billion. The California High-Speed Rail Authority recently announced a strategic shift to consider an alternative for its 40-mile Palmdale-to-Burbank link. Instead of the current plan of running it parallel to the Palmdale Freeway, the new line would run through a tunnel under the San Gabriel Mountains. According to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who has advanced the idea, the tunnel would be about 15 miles long. ... it’s possible to calculate a rough — very rough – estimate. Let’s start with something we...

A passenger train derailed in Spain yesterday, killing at least 77 people trapped inside the crushed cars and injuring 143. There were Americans among the dead, according to television reports. The tragic high-speed derailment, along a curving stretch of track in the northwestern part of the country, was Spain’s worst rail accident in decades, officials said. Bodies were covered by blankets along the tracks as rescuers used pickaxes to pry open the cars and free people inside the train cars.

the California High-Speed Rail System will saddle taxpayers with losses between $124 million to $373 million a year. Exaggerated ridership estimates and slower-than-promised trip speeds make the California bullet train project a big financial loser for taxpayers... ... The [California High-Speed Rail Authority’s] financing assertions are virtual fantasy

E.R. Companion, of Eagan, writing to the editor in Sunday's Pioneer Press, wondered why our elected officials would commit to spending billions of dollars for a so-called high-speed rail line from the Twin Cities to Chicago. (Well, because they're nuts.) Companion was referring to a story that appeared Jan. 12 featuring the idea that the Minnesota Department of Transportation has begun studying environmental impacts along the 400-mile route, which would take passengers to Chicago, through Milwaukee, in an advertised five hours and 30 minutes. Companion wondered what was high-speed about that, and I could not agree more with his sentiment....

The Obama Administration has designated the Northeast Corridor as a federally-recognized high speed corridor. This allows states in the area to apply for $2.4 billion in federal grants, which were made available after the governor of Florida turned them down. It will also allow Amtrak to be in on the planning process. In order to be eligible for the money, states must show an ability to reduce energy use, improve the efficiency of their transportation network, and generate sustained economic growth. Local lawmakers applauded the move, calling it an engine for job creation. Applications are due on April 4.