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.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority is battling new obstacles in its quest to build the track for the bullet train, including the removal of eight miles of track originally planned to end near Bakersfield, and strong opposition from San Fernando communities determined to prevent the train from traveling above ground in or near their communities.
In San Fernando, seventy people led by city officials entered an open house meeting led by train officials, erecting their own public address system to voice their anger over the train invading their community. The city officials wanted answers from state officials about the train’s effect on their community.
Unlike the bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles championed by California Governor Jerry Brown, a proposed bullet train from Southern California to Las Vegas approved by the Nevada legislature last week would not rely on state funds. According to
“Dam [thumbs up]… Train [thumbs down]… Governor, put our water before your train,” reads a billboard message erected by Fresno City Councilman Steve Brandau, revealed this week in California’s Central Valley.
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.
California farmers are now suing the state over the high-speed rail project, refusing to have their land sold for pennies-on-the-dollar. And with a 12-year estimated project delay, the contractor is threatening to sue the bullet train for delay penalties.
German engineering company Siemens is assembling a 50-foot, life-size model of California’s as-yet-unbuilt high-speed train on the steps of the state Capitol in Sacramento.
Breitbart reported in November that in the six years since California legislature approved the High-Speed Rail Authority (HSRA), just 7% of the 1,100 pieces of land needed for the first leg to travel 130 miles across farm country had been acquired.
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.
At a symbolic event designed to extol the merits of his exorbitant $68 billion bullet train that would run from San Francisco to Los Angeles, California Governor Jerry Brown stood in a vacant lot in Fresno and excoriated his critics as cowards, calling them “pusillanimous.”
Tuesday groundbreaking will begin in Fresno for Governor Jerry Brown’s mass transportation project known as the ‘”bullet train.”