A California Supreme Court ruling last week in favor of environmentalists opposing the state’s reopening of an abandoned lumber train may cost the state’s $46 billion over-budget high-speed rail project another four years, and $15 billion.
Californians may be able to vote on high-speed rail again, after Governor Jerry Brown’s cap-and-trade extension carried a Republican-backed provision requiring a referendum on how the cap-and-trade funds are to be spent.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has proposed building a monorail along the Interstate 405 to connect the San Fernando Valley with West Los Angeles on Tuesday, relieving traffic on one of the world’s busiest and most congested roads.
Columnist George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times makes an interesting observation about California Governor Jerry Brown and his new budget: while the governor talks “like a skinflint, a penny-pinching scold,” his spending priorities are liberal, and even radical.
The State of California issued the first tranche of taxable construction bonds last Thursday for the High Speed Rail Project, making it clear that it is determined to go ahead with the unpopular project despite numerous obstacles, including federal funding roadblocks thrown up by President Donald Trump.
Gov. Jerry Brown wants the Democrat-controlled state legislature to hike unpopular registration fees and fuel excise taxes by $5.2 billion a year to fix transportation over the next decade — after years of diverting $1.5 billion in transportation infrastructure taxes to subsidize California’s General Fund bond payments.
California’s local and state-wide transportation agencies are still relying on President Donald Trump to provide federal funding to run and build their transit operations, despite Republicans’ resistance to funding high-speed rail.
President Donald Trump could bring high-speed rail lines to America, taking up the mantle that Barack Obama started but failed to complete.
California’s House Republicans have penned a letter to President Donald Trump asking him to block a pending $650 million federal grant for California’s troubled high-speed rail project until an audit of the project’s finances is completed.
A new, confidential federal report shows that the initial segment of California’s partially federally-funded high speed rail (HSR) project will come in massively over budget and far behind schedule, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority came up empty when it asked the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama for a $15 billion loan, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The president of the Texas Farm Bureau warned ranchers and farmers at the 83rd annual meeting that the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule for waters in the U.S., “if it’s allowed to happen, will hamstring many farmers and ranchers to the extent that it might not even be possible to farm.” Farmers and ranchers in Texas are struggling with government bureaucracy in many areas.
Texas farmers and ranchers will vote on resolutions to stand-up against taking more farm and ranch lands through eminent domain for high speed rail and other construction projects during a meeting in San Antonio December 3-5. The 83rd meeting of the Texas Farm Bureau will address the challenges in agriculture and rural Texas.
Lieutenant Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday that he now supports of California’s $64 billion high-speed rail system, after opposing it and withdrawing support for the controversial project just two years ago.
California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have increased financial oversight of the state’s high-speed rail project, which aims to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles but lacks the necessary funds and rights of way.
Nearly two hundred people were evacuated from an Amtrak train in Chatsworth, in the San Fernando Valley, after authorities received reports of an armed man aboard the train.
With the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSR) announcing another four-year delay in building the first link of its system, the cost for California’s ultimate boondoggle may increase by another $15 billion, to $79 billion.
California’s new $1 billion desalination plant, which transforms sea water into fresh water, has won an international award for technological and environmental achievement.
Both Democratic and Republican members of the California State Assembly Transportation Committee discussed the financial risks and the estimated $64 billion dollar price tag for Gov. Jerry Brown’s legacy-defining high-speed rail system in nearly three hours of discussions in Sacramento on Monday, focusing on concerns as to where the funding for the massive project will be found.
With the audacious, crowdsourced “Hyperloop” meeting all its technical design milestones, the company’s CEO just promised the L.A.-to-San Francisco commute time will be 36 minutes–and only cost $30.
Although polls reveal that most Californians now want to repurpose “high-speed rail” funding for drought relief, some farmers in the area are concerned that the initiative could actually make their lives worse.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority cleared a legal challenge last week when a Sacramento judge ruled the authority does not have to validate required travel time between LA and San Francisco during the planning stages.
Proponents of a ballot measure that would prioritize water storage projects over the construction of a high-speed train have begun collecting the signatures necessary to place the measure on California’s 2016 ballot.
Anaheim’s shiny new transit center, ARTIC, has become an illustration of the problems with California’s bloated $68 billion high-speed rail plan.
California Governor Jerry Brown delivered his annual “State of the State” address to the legislature on Thursday, against the backdrop of a volatile stock market that could threaten the state budget surplus he achieved, and cause future fiscal uncertainty. Brown told legislators, “…you are not going to hear me talk today about new programs. Rather, I am going to focus on how we pay for the commitments we have already made.”
A majority of California voters support an upcoming ballot measure that would strip funding from the high speed rail project and divert it toward new water storage projects, according to a poll released Thursday.
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.
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.
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.
Two California Republican lawmakers have proposed a ballot measure that would divert bond revenue from a pricey high-speed rail project to pay for more water storage in the drought-parched state.
The infamous California High-Speed Rail may take an extra 15 years to build, travel underground through several very dangerous geologic faults, and rise in cost to $93 billion.
Even the most energetic free-trade enthusiast can find a few things to be queasy about in Bloomberg Businessweek’s announcement of a major joint venture to build a Chinese bullet train connecting Los Angeles with Las Vegas.
On Monday, Democrats in Sacramento, doing their best to aid Governor Jerry Brown’s troubled high-speed rail project, attempted to grease the way for the project’s success by relaxing oversight and reporting requirements.
This is an “incredibly historic moment for all of us. Next year, after 20 years of our agony, Barbara Boxer is going to retire,” U.S. Senate candidate Tom Del Beccaro told the San Diego County Republican Party June meeting last week.
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.
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
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk’s Hyperloop transportation system is nearly ready for its first test. The high-speed tube transportation system will soon have its first test track in California, according to Green Car Reports.
“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.
But why bother waiting for the accident professionals to tell us why an Amtrak train derailed? Plenty of political professionals already know the solution: Spend more on Amtrak.
On the most basic level, Israel seems to have the formula of statecraft right, prioritizing national security and economic growth above all else.