high-speed-rail - Page 3

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.

Amtrak (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)

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.

high-speed-rail-CAHSRA

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.

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

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.

ARTIC

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.

(Peter M. Fredin / Associated Press)

Brown Calls Critics of High-Speed Rail Cowards

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.”

Brown at High-Speed Rail Groundbreaking (AP)