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California’s high speed rail project is facing a financial reckoning after the Federal Railroad Administration declared it in default on $4 billion in federal grants. The latest report from the Department of Transportation exposes years of mismanagement, missed deadlines, and unrealistic ridership projections, raising serious doubts about whether the project will ever be completed. The numbers tell the story. The rail system was originally planned as an 800-mile network, connecting San Francisco to San Diego. Over time, the scope shrunk to 500 miles, then 171 miles, and now just 119 miles. The federal review describes the project as a Sisyphean...

Gov. Newsom of California is determined to see the high-speed rail system completed or at least started, but the bad news just keeps rolling in like a freight train (pun intended). Newsom is in the process of pushing for next fiscal year's budget and as part of that process he has announced a plan to make sure the bullet train project gets money from the state climate fund.California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to tap at least $2.5 billion from the state’s climate fund to pay for state firefighting crews and the long-troubled high-speed rail project.In his budget proposal unveiled last...

I had the opportunity to be the very first guest on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new podcast last week. I’m under no illusions about why I was invited: Gavin Newsom wants to run for president in three years, and he thinks that talking conservative figures like me increase his recognition, help him present as a centrist, and cast him as a champion of the left in a time when the left has no real leaders. ….Unsurprisingly, Newsom is charming and friendly in-person. You don’t become governor of 40 million people without having some charisma. But there’s clearly a layer beneath the...

The Trump administration is launching an audit of California’s high-speed rail project, which is a decade late and is expected to run $100 billion over budget without connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles, as originally intended. As Breitbart News has reported, President Donald Trump warned that the federal government could claw back over $4 billion in spending on the project, just as he blocked $1 billion for the ailing project during his first administration. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy drew protesters in an appearance in Los Angeles to announce the audit: U.S. Secretary of...

As President Donald Trump’s administration makes cuts to government programs, his head of the Department of Transportation announced that federal assistance intended for a major California transit project could be next on the chopping block. In a news conference at Union Station in downtown L.A. on Thursday morning, Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said that the once “exciting” California’s High-Speed Rail has been “mismanaged.” In 2023, then-President Joe Biden awarded a $3 billion grant to help officials complete the first phase of the project. That grant came after he reinstated a $1 billion grant to the High-Speed Rail Authority that...

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he will be launching an investigation into the high cost of California High Speed Rail (CAHSR), fulfilling a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) promise made late last year. Originally estimated to cost $33 billion in 2008 with a San Francisco to Los Angeles line set to open by 2028, the California high speed rail system has since ballooned to costing $128 billion, to $135 billion, with an estimated partial completion being set somewhere in the 2030’s. Last year in March, the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHRSA) confirmed that the system still needed...

As Gov. Gavin Newsom enters the second half of his final term, healthcare stands out as his most ambitious but glaringly incomplete initiative for California residents.The issue will probably define his national profile for better or worse, and the incoming Trump administration brings a new wrinkle.SACRAMENTO — Nearly six years after he took office vowing to be California’s “healthcare governor,” Democrat Gavin Newsom has steered tens of billions in public funding to safety net services for the state’s neediest residents while engineering rules to make healthcare more accessible and affordable for all Californians. More than a million California residents living...

California Democrats have written to outgoing Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to ask for more than half a billion dollars in funding for an ailing high-speed rail project that President-elect Donald Trump defunded in 2019. As Breitbart News reported, Trump withheld $1 billion in funding from the project after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) canceled the original project. Newsom had explained to the state legislature that the original plan for a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco “bullet” train “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.” Trump then demanded the state refund the money federal taxpayers had given it — applying...

The omnibus spending bill had $8 billion dollars for the Francis Scott Key Bridge replacement. . That is way too much money to rebuild the Key Bridge. Easily four times as much as it should cost. ... This reminds the Oahu rail project. Around $12B, tons of fraud... total failure of a project. Does not meet intent. Also heavy foreign outsourcing for building talent. How much did it cost to build the bridge initially, adjusted for inflation? - The Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed in March 2024, initially cost about $61 million to build in 1977. Adjusted for inflation...

Sacramento-area congressman Kevin Kiley took to the floor of the House of Representatives recently to declare the following: “Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to report that the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency has honed in on perhaps the single-greatest example of government waste in United States history,” the Republican from Rocklin intoned. “And that is California’s high-speed-rail boondoggle.”

Public Servant Gavin Newsom’s rise in California politics and acquired power since the 1990s has been through the knavery of family and influential friends. If you ever doubted that politics is made up of the elite class who see themselves as the ruling class, doubt no more: Governor Gavin Newsom and the “First Partner” (his wife) just purchased a $9.1 million home in Marin County. The “mansion” is 5,600 square feet, with Newsoms paying 7 percent above the asking price.

Israel Is Planning an ‘Inland Suez Canal’ Across Its Desert. At What Cost? Israel's planned high-speed train to Eilat: dream or potential environmental train wreck? In theory, it sounds amazing: a high-speed train to Eilat, the country’s southernmost city on the shores of the Red Sea. This was attested to by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his recent Knesset speech enumerating the new government’s goals, in which he described it as a major national project: “The mission is to develop the country’s infrastructures, including developing a high-speed rail that will travel hundreds of kilometers per hour and connect the country...

Israel will build a railway between Ashdod and Eilat, allowing ships that dock at the Red Sea port to transfer goods to the ports of Ashdod and Haifa and from there to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, in an attempt to compete with the Suez Canal, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday. Speaking to investors at the fifth Go4Europe business conference at Tel Aviv's Hilton Hotel, organized by investment bank Cukierman & Co., Netanyahu said that big ships arriving from the Far East are now forced to transfer their goods by land to an Egyptian port on the Mediterranean from...

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher was quoted as saying on Wednesday that press reports over Israel's plans to build a canal linking the Aqaba Bay with the Mediterranean as an alternative to the Suez Canal were a mere "illusion." Maher told the Syrian daily Tishreen "We've heard this many many times and it's a mere illusion." He stressed that the Suez Canal "has and will always be historic and serves the world economy." "If some do not like this ... that's their business, but I affirm that the (Suez) Canal is bigger than being played down by anyone," Maher said....

<p>A station platform has been cordoned off at Hamburg central station in northern Germany amid fears that a train passenger may have arrived carrying a dangerous virus.</p><p>A fire department spokesman told the Bild tabloid that the man and his girlfriend had developed flu-like symptoms on a high-speed train from Frankfurt.</p>

Amtrak, the national passenger railroad company of the U.S., continues to have routine breakdowns despite receiving massive injections of taxpayer dollars from the Biden administration, according to data from the Department of Transportation (DOT). Since 2021, there have been 333 Amtrak train incidents reported nationwide as of July 9, 2024, slightly less than the 397 incidents that occurred between 2016 and July 2020 during former President Trump’s tenure, according to the DOT. The Biden administration, as a part of an announced $66 billion for passenger rail in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, has dedicated huge amounts of taxpayer cash to Amtrak,...

On July 6, due to an ongoing electric power issue, Amtrak canceled service between Boston and New York City for the remainder of the day. Amtrak is communicating directly with impacted customers about this service interruption and offering options for rebooking their travel plans. Amtrak apologizes for any inconvenience caused by the disruption. Our crews are working hard to correct the issues.

California’s massive and ambitious project to connect downtown Los Angeles with the Bay Area via electric trains capable of reaching speeds of over 200 mph has cleared its biggest hurdle to date. On Thursday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority received complete environmental approval between the two regions, a historic milestone in a state notorious for holding up construction projects for environmental review.

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 Brightline West system will reach speeds of 200 miles per hour across a 218-mile route between Las Vegas and three California stops including Rancho Cucamonga, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles...The project received $3 billion in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the rest will be privately funded...