Posted on 06/14/2013 9:26:47 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
The California High-Speed Rail Authority won approval Thursday from a federal railroad oversight board to start construction this summer on the first leg of what would be the nation's first bullet train.
In a 67-page decision issued Thursday, the Surface Transportation Board ruled 2-1 that the state could begin work on the first 65 miles of the project from Merced to Fresno, as long as it maintains the current route and follows through on promises to mitigate damage to the environment caused by construction.
The STB's ruling removes a key hurdle for the rail authority to start construction of the $68 billion system in the Central Valley. A ruling against the state could have caused substantial delays and cost overruns for the project, which is under tight federal construction deadlines to collect billions of dollars in federal matching grants.
You’ve heard of the Bridge to Nowhere.
This is the Train for No One.
From the route I’d surmise the purpose is to bring Mexicans to cut down redwood trees?
Pothead Brown: “We will have trains in our time!” /Chamberlin
The purpose of the project is twofold:
1. Feed the greedy unions, who in turn fund big spending legislators.
2. Sever as many east-west roads as possible, making it easier to corral people leaving the coast in an emergency, and disarm them at checkpoints.
.
Trains operate in quakes in California all the time. Its no big deal.
Earthquakes are hyped bigtime.
The trees are on the northern coast; the trains ain’t going there.
High Speed?...How high speed do these dummies think any train can go at the Tehachapi loop? Not to mention all the freight trains that use this route to the bay area.
Ha..Unions....
Feinsteins hubby BLUMB got the contract...
The Perini-Zachary-Parsons bid was the lowest received from the five consortia participating in the bidding process, but “low” is a relative term. The firms bid $985,142,530 to build the wildly anticipated first section of high speed rail track that will tie the megopolis of Madera to the global finance center of Fresno. Do the division, and you find that the low bid came in at a mere $35 million per mile.
Perini has been caught doing such things over and over again. They are absolutely ridiculous in California projects. … According to the Seattle News some of the Perini headlines read: “In February, Tutor-Saliba and Perini agreed to pay $19 million to settle racketeering and fraud allegations in a San Francisco airport project.” … “The companies are embroiled in an 11 – year legal battle over $16 million in extra costs on a Los Angeles subway job.” (p) Lefties, who generally support the high speed rail project, are probably a bit flummoxed by this news because they have railed (nice pun, huh?) against Blum and Feinstein for what they call criminal collusion in the granting of defense contracts.
Only in Crazifornia would the wheels still be on this train. But on and on and on it chugs, dodging all fiscal reality on its trip to the Great Sea of Red Ink
Exxxxxxcellent.
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