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Tag: high-speed-rail

Brown at High-Speed Rail Groundbreaking (AP)

Congress to Hold Hearings on High-Speed Rail

Congress plans to hold hearings on California’s controversial Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail project, as estimates from the project’s lead contractor predicted significant cost overruns that the rail authority is attempting to deny.

Blue State Blues (Breitbart)

Blue State Blues: Israel Solves the Water Puzzle

California will suffer severe shortages, with or without a warmer planet. We need to act soon. Water policy may not generate flashy headlines, and politicians who lay the foundations for reform may not be in office ten or twenty years from now, when credit is handed out. But it can be done. Israel has shown us how.

California snow (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

El Niño Rain, Snow Lost to Lack of Infrastructure

Despite El Niño generating three times the amount of snow in Mammoth in the first half of this month as it did for the entire month of November last year, California’s failure to build infrastructure means most rain will be lost to run-off and flooding.

Jeff Denham

U.S. House Votes to Cut Some High-Speed Rail Spending

U.S. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA), chairman of the House rail subcommittee, has proposed an amendment that could cripple plans for the construction of California’s high-speed rail project. Denham’s amendment would eliminate a 2012 agreement between California and the Obama administration that permitted the state to obtain federal grant money without matching those funds with money from state coffers.

Amtrak (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)

Low-Speed Rail: California’s Other Option

California’s controversial high-speed rail project is barely under way, but it’s already been beaten by other options. Under the best of assumptions, the (subsidized) cost of a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles when the bullet train is complete will be $86, plus “last mile” costs of traveling to and from the train station. The journey, door to door, will take about four hours–that is, if the high-speed rail makes the journey in under three hours as originally advertised, which it will not.

high-speed-rail-CAHSRA

Democrats Vote Down Bill to Stop High-Speed Rail Eminent Domain Suits

On Monday, Democrats in the California State Assembly’s Transportation Committee steamrolled their Republican opposition and killed a bill that would have restricted high-speed rail proponents from using eminent domain laws to commence condemnation actions against properties standing in the way of California Governor Jerry Brown’s pet project, the so-called “bullet train” from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Jerry Brown at Sierra Snow Pack (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Jerry’s Folly: Turning California Brown to Appease the Greens

Instead of building dams, reservoirs and fighting to preserve every drop of water he can for Californians, Jerry Brown has chosen to waste his political capital on a train that no one wants, which California can’t afford–and he’s stealing people’s land and closing down businesses in order to do it. And now, finally in his fifth year as governor, he finally decides to act on the drought—and, in quintessential Jerry Brown style, he blames those who have nothing to do with creating the crisis and threatens to penalize them if they don’t comply.

ARTIC

Massive Anaheim Transport Center Falling 75% Short

Orange County’s new transportation center, ARTIC, located on the 5 freeway near the Honda Center, has drawn fewer than 800 boardings a month since it opened December 8–far fewer than the roughly 3,000 Anaheim officials projected when they hawked the center to the city’s citizens, according to the Orange County Register.

(Peter M. Fredin / Associated Press)

Bullet Train Endangers Kit Foxes

California’s project bullet train hit a speed bump last week as the federal government’s Fish and Wildlife Service nailed the California High-Speed Rail Authority for violating federal protections for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox.