Free Republic

Snips from Excerpt only website: For reasons that have never been publicly explained, a squad of VIPR agents showed up at a Savannah Amtrak station one day …….Everyone who entered the station was thoroughly searched. It didn't seem to matter whether people were getting on trains or getting off trains, or just looking for a place to go to the bathroom. ….freight railroads were having their own problems with the VIPR teams. The TSA demanded that VIPR agents be allowed to enter yards at any hour of the day or night without notice and to watch employees from hidden positions....

Train Detrailment in Jackson county Michigan.

Gov. Jerry Brown said Sunday that cap-and-trade fees could help pay for high-speed rail, and that the cost would be well under the $100 billion forecast by the California High-Speed Rail Authority just three months ago. “It’s not going to be $100 billion,” Brown said. “That’s way off.” The voter-approved project would create a 220-mph train from San Francisco to Anaheim with eventual connections to Sacramento and San Diego. According to a transcript of the interview in the Sacramento Bee, Brown said, “Phase 1, I’m trying to redesign it in a way that in and of itself will be justified...

Rail shipments of North Dakota crude to increase with decision to block Keystone XL pipeline ### North Dakota oil drillers increasingly will rely on trains to move barrels of crude to market after the Obama administration's decision to reject plans for a pipeline that would run from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, state and industry officials say. "Pipelines are by far the safest and most economically efficient way to transport oil, but we are left with a limited number of options if pipelines are off the table," said Tony Clark, chairman of the North Dakota Public Service...

A host of newspapers up and down the state have run an extremely long article that we guess is supposed to make a case for California’s boondoggle express, AKA high-speed rail. Did it occur to anyone what the bottom line is? It was 1,413 words into this epic, written by a Fresno Bee reporter and published in our paper, when the reader is given what we find to be the most pertinent of information: “There is no question whether (Spain’s system) can cover its costs. It cannot,” ...

E.R. Companion, of Eagan, writing to the editor in Sunday's Pioneer Press, wondered why our elected officials would commit to spending billions of dollars for a so-called high-speed rail line from the Twin Cities to Chicago. (Well, because they're nuts.) Companion was referring to a story that appeared Jan. 12 featuring the idea that the Minnesota Department of Transportation has begun studying environmental impacts along the 400-mile route, which would take passengers to Chicago, through Milwaukee, in an advertised five hours and 30 minutes. Companion wondered what was high-speed about that, and I could not agree more with his sentiment....

When Barack Hussein Obama took office in January, 2009, he identified 10 corridors appropriate for high-speed rail in the US. His stimulus bill earmarked $8 billion to jump-start the project. High speed rail is Obama's "Holy Grail" of public infrastructure projects. Proponents originally said the LA-to-SF bullet train project would create more than 1 million jobs, but recently revised that downward to several thousand jobs. (That's quite a revision!) Almost every state originally identified dropped out of the running because they couldn't afford their share of the cost. Only California is still seeking money for its "high speed rail"...

If it is built, California’s High-Speed Rail would be the largest public works project in state history. That fact alone appears be intoxicating to state officials, in a perpetual quest to have California be the first state to do anything. Despite the warnings of a nearly $100 billion ballooning price tag, no track laid, no trains running, decreasing legislative support and even opposition from diehard rail advocates, the High-Speed Rail Authority is steaming ahead full throttle with plans to build the most expensive high-speed rail system in history. But there is pushback coming from so many places that it must...

Obama's "moon project" aka high-speed rail is moving along. Costs are spiraling: Faster than a speeding bullet train, the cost of the state’s massive high-speed rail project has zoomed to nearly $100 billion — triple the estimate given to voters and more than enough to run the entire state government for a year. Planned completion times are increasing: bullet trains won’t be up and running until at least 2033, much later than the original estimate of 2020, although that depends on the state finding the remaining 90 percent of the funds needed to complete the plan. And the voters...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has an obvious financial problem as it seeks to build a statewide bullet train system. Its latest "business plan" says that it would cost nearly $100 billion to build the backbone of the system, but so far it has only $9 billion in state bonds and a little more than $3 billion in federal money. The CHSRA also has a political problem. The Legislature, which first proposed the bullet train bond to voters, is turning sour on its prospects, which means that it may not give the agency any more bond money to spend. Meanwhile,...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress voted Thursday to kill funds for President Barack Obama's signature high-speed rail program, but the initiative may have some life in it still................ Obama had requested $8 billion in fiscal 2012 for the program and $53 billion over six years....... But House-Senate bargainers this week agreed to a broad spending bill that eliminates any funding specifically for high-speed trains........... The bill marks "an end to the president's misguided high-speed rail program, but it is not the end of American high-speed rail," said Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa.........

The Las Vegas Monorail was developed at a cost of $650 million — but based on its meager ridership and revenue levels it’s now worth just $16 million to $20 million. That caused a bankruptcy judge to express skepticism Monday about Las Vegas Monorail Co.’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy in which it would still be encumbered by $44.5 million in debt — more than twice its value as a company. On top of that, Judge Bruce Markell noted, the monorail’s own financial projections show it facing a deficit of $38.4 million in 2019. “I don’t buy it,” Markell told...

I missed this during my travel to BlogCon 2011 in Denver, which I reached by airline travel — an economical and safe choice on a route served by multiple carriers and requiring little government subsidy to use. The competition for this route falls short of that for the Los Angeles-San Francisco route, though, where more than a half-dozen carriers offer flights between California’s two largest metropolises, complete with choices of departure and arrival airports on either end. Despite the lack of need for fast and reliable transportation between the two cities, Governor Jerry Brown told the LA Times editorial board...

Voters approved the project in 2003, to replace a freeway damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Back then, the cost was $647 million. Today, the price tag is $1.6 billion, with the lion's share of the funding still to come from the federal government. In July, San Francisco's Civil Grand Jury concluded the project was poorly designed, won't meet projected ridership levels, and, as the scathing title of its report says, costs "too much money for too little benefit." At about $1 billion per mile, the Central Subway has become a driving force in Tuesday's mayoral election.

Gov. Rick Snyder yesterday in a speech at the Michigan Rail Summit proposed a vision for making Detroit the hub for a rail system serving North America as reported by the MIRS Capitol Capsule (subscription required). He envisions a rail freight and passenger system that would connect Montreal to Detroit to Chicago to St. Louis. The symposium was sponsored by the Michigan Environmental Council. Chris Kolb, a former Democratic state lawmaker who is president of the MEC, was enthusiastic about the governor’s remarks, stating: “This is huge. If we do this right we will really start to rebuild Michigan’s economy.”...

A glutton for bad press, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has canceled on the Sacramento Press Club. Again. The rail authority, which canceled a luncheon once already at the club -- and delayed the release of its much-awaited business plan -- said this afternoon that it will still release its business plan Nov. 1. But it will be just somewhere else. Lance Simmens, the authority's new deputy director for communications and public policy, said he made the call "to roll out what is going to be a very significant business plan at another venue." That venue, Simmens said, has yet...

Dead. Kaput. Through. Finished. Washed up. Gone-zo. That, I think, is a fair description of the Obama administration’s attempt to build high-speed-rail lines across America. It hasn’t failed because of a lack of willingness to pony up money. The Obama Democrats’ February 2009 stimulus package included $8 billion for high-speed-rail projects. The Democratic Congress appropriated another $2.5 billion. But Congress is turning off the spigot. The Republican-controlled House has appropriated zero dollars for high-speed rail. The Democratic-majority Senate Appropriations Committee has appropriated $100 million in its budget recommendation. That’s effectively “a vote of ‘no confidence’ to President Obama’s infrastructure initiative,”...

US Oks $196.5M for high-speed Chicago-Detroit railAP – 25 mins ago KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Transportation has approved $196.5 million for part of a high-speed Amtrak passenger rail link between Chicago and Detroit, Michigan U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow said Wednesday. The funds now being obligated cover work from Kalamazoo in western Michigan to Dearborn in suburban Detroit, the Democratic lawmakers said. The grant to the Michigan Department of Transportation will cover track and signal improvements.

<p>The first phase of the Dulles rail project — extending Metrorail service to Dulles Airport and Loudoun County — is scheduled for completion in December 2013. An important part of the project is underway in the Tysons Corner area.</p> <p>The Metrorail extension through Tysons Corner has burned through more than 70 percent of its contingency fund. With two years of construction remaining, the jurisdictions paying for the line — and Dulles Toll Road drivers — could be on the hook for millions in possible cost overruns, transportation experts say.</p>

President Barack Obama wants to "stimulate" the economy through infrastructure spending. High on his list is "high speed rail." (HSR) He has even compared this country to China regarding lack of high speed rail. So, with Obama's desire in mind, I thought a look at AMTRAK and the subsidies it receives might be in order. It can be argued that AMTRAK was not designed to be high speed rail, and that is true. However, I think that it can serve as a good model of how the government will manage high speed rail. HSR and Stimulus Spending Obama's first...

Boondoggles: How can we tell if Congress is serious about reining in spending? A clear-cut, permanent defunding of high-speed rail would be one sign. But the pipe dream won't quite die. Sometime soon — or so we'd like to think — the fast-train fad will fizzle out, the victim of fiscal sanity and critical thinking. Just this week, a Senate Appropriations subcommittee controlled by Democrats actually voted to give high-speed rail nothing at all in the new fiscal year. That got our hopes up. Then the full Appropriations Committee mixed the message by approving $100 million for the program, which...

It's a formula many officials at all levels of government hope to see repeated across the country. On Monday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Peter Rogoff, lead administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, joined Gov. Mark Dayton at the Union Depot to tout President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs bill, which is moving through a divided Congress. The bill, they said, would invest heavily in infrastructure projects such as roads, rail and bridges, putting more unemployed Americans back to work, if only for a few months to a few years at a time. At its heart, a key question:...

As California prepares to commit tens of billions of dollars to an ambitious high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Southern California, Congress' political will to provide the bulk of the funding is disappearing, leaving the possibility that the state could end up stuck with a crushing financial burden. State voters have agreed to issue more than $9 billion in bonds to build the system, but that's a fraction of the $43 billion projected tab for the initial phase. And those costs could swell to $65 billion or more, by some estimates. Should federal funds dry up after the scheduled...

During construction of the Hiawatha Line, the joint venture in charge of the light-rail project told federal authorities that minority and disadvantaged subcontractors were being included. Now it has agreed to pay the government $4.6 million to resolve allegations that those claims were false. According to the Justice Department, Minnesota Transit Constructors Inc. violated the federal false claims act by telling federal transportation officials that it hired companies qualified as Disadvantaged Business Enterprises to work on the light rail. The program helps businesses owned by minorities, women and other disadvantaged individuals obtain work on federal construction projects.

In the Beginning“While the mighty Pennsylvania boasted of having pushed its steel tentacles into some of the nation’s most populous cities, it could not make that claim with regard to New York City. Throughout the last years of the nineteenth century, the PRR struggled in vain to conquer the great natural barrier – the Hudson River – which lay between it and America’s largest metropolis.” – Michael Bezilla, Electric Traction on the Pennsylvania Railroad 1895-1968, Pennsylvania State University Press To understand the United States, one must contemplate the challenges of those earliest days of the Republic. The two largest cities...

Officially, California's high-speed rail project is going ahead with construction, scheduled to start late next year. But in reality, the project is in deep trouble, amidst critical reports, escalating cost estimates, revelations of poor governance and the departures of key supporters from the board overseeing the project. The project is a zombie -- still walking, but almost certainly dead. Here are five reasons why: 1. The state budget Backers of high-speed rail thought they were doing a smart thing in 2008 when they convinced voters to pass $9 billion in general obligation bonds for the project. Such bonds are paid...

Gov. Jerry Brown said this afternoon that California's embattled high-speed rail project should move forward, despite growing criticism about the project's management and cost. While the nation is in a "period of massive retrenchment," Brown told The Fresno Bee's editorial board, "I would like to be part of the group that gets America to think big again." The Democratic governor has said little publicly about the project since it came under fire this year in Sacramento, with cost estimates rising and lawmakers questioning its oversight. The project, to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, was once expected to cost about...

Do I hate to say, “I told you so“? Er … not really: Building tracks for the first section of California’s proposed high-speed rail line will cost $2.9 billion to $6.8 billion more than originally estimated, raising questions about the affordability of the nation’s most ambitious rail project at a time when its planning and finances are under fire.A 2009 business plan developed for the California High-Speed Authority, the entity overseeing the project, estimated costs at about $7.1 billion for the equivalent stretch of tracks. Officials say those estimates were made before detailed engineering work and feedback from communities along...

Officials of the California High-Speed Rail Authority announced Monday they would receive another $86 million in funds from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as the federal stimulus act. That brings total funding allotted to the 800-mile, $43 billion rail network connecting the Bay Area and Sacramento to Southern California to $6.3 billion in federal and state money. The latest source of federal funds are part of a re-allocation of money that had been targeted for a high-speed rail project in Florida connecting Tampa and Orlando. But that project was discontinued by Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

After the July 23rd train crash in Wenzhou China, where over 40 people were killed, safety isn’t the only thing that has come under the spotlight. China’s railway ministry is saddled with debt. A debt of over 320 billion US dollars, or five percent of China’s GDP. This debt has built up through the rapid expansion of the railway network. Several railway ministry officials have also been charged with corruption for siphoning off money for themselves. The railway ministry has been criticized for calling off the rescue efforts early in order to get trains running again. Some analysts believe this...

Maybe Chinese trains don't go as fast as promised, but they still cost quite a lot. China's Railway Ministry is 1.98 trillion yuan ($294.87 billion) in debt after the first quarter of this year, and its asset-liability ratio has reached 58.24 percent. To continue financing projects (they still have trains to buy and roads to build), the Ministry will issue bonds on July 21st. This is the third time they've had to issue bonds this year- the first time it raised 20 billion yuan, the second time it raised 15 billion yuan. That's aside from what China Daily calls "super-short-term...

With all the other horrible events of the weekend, China's high speed rail crash sort of faded into the background. But the toll is horrific: 43 dead, and hundreds more injured after one high speed train ran into another. Critics, such as Michael Sainsbury of The Australian, are now arguing that this is the result of cut corners in the construction process:A picture is beginning to emerge of a network that has been built to unrealistic and politically driven timetables, using a mix of technologies that were given little time to be properly integrated.

TALLAHASSEE — In an affront to his tea party base, Gov. Rick Scott on Friday announced he will allow SunRail, a commuter rail project in Central Florida, to go forward.

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON – Some of the first information gleaned from Osama bin Laden's compound indicates al-Qaida considered attacking U.S. trains on the upcoming anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. But counterterrorism officials say they believe the planning never got beyond the initial phase and have no recent intelligence pointing to an active plot for such an attack. As of February 2010, the terror organization was considering plans to attack the U.S. on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. One idea outlined in handwritten notes was to tamper with an unspecified U.S. rail track so that a train would fall...

SNIPPET: "CHARLOTTE, N.C.— The FBI is asking for the public's help in identifying a man who was seen near a restricted area along the light rail near uptown Charlotte. A worker monitoring security cameras said the man was spotted in the area in late April, according to investigators. The man was clearly in an area he wasn't supposed to be in and was acting suspiciously, the FBI said."

Rejecting the recommendations of a recent state report, federal officials said Wednesday they cannot postpone the deadline to start construction of California's $43-billion bullet train project or allow the state to move the first leg of the proposed system out of the Central Valley. U.S. Department of Transportation officials said the 2012 deadline is required by federal legislation that provided about $3.1 billion in funding for the project's initial leg, which, they added, was placed in the state's agricultural heartland after considerable study. "This shows that we are on the same page as the feds," said Jeffrey Barker, a spokesman...

Answered on the video.

Amtrak blames the red ink on rising compensation costs for union workers and increased costs for fuel, materials and other expenses. Amtrak is making money on its heavily traveled Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, serving mostly commuters, executives said. But money-losing, long-distance routes are a drag on the bottom line, Amtrak say. Amtrak officials project an operating loss of $506 million in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, up from a loss of $419.9 million last year. Officials have projected a loss of $616 million next year. Federal subsidies cover about 16% of Amtrak's operating expenses, which are projected...

THERE IS nothing that epitomizes California's dysfunctional government more than the state's pursuit of a high-speed rail fantasy that is headed for all-but-certain failure. The latest criticism of the rail scheme comes from the independent Legislative Analyst's Office, which strongly opposes Gov. Jerry Brown's request for an appropriation of $185 million to keep the project moving forward. It's past time for the state to do what it should have done more than a year ago -- cancel the project and stop wasting any more of the taxpayers' money. The High-Speed Rail Authority has bungled the project from the start with...

DETROIT — The federal government on Monday awarded Michigan roughly $200 million toward a high-speed rail project that within three years is expected to shave 30 minutes off of a trip from Detroit to Chicago. The grant was part of a 15-state, $2 billion disbursal that ties into President Barack Obama’s broader goal of connecting 80 percent of Americans to high-speed rail in 25 years. The majority of Michigan’s funding will go to the development of a 135-mile, high-speed stretch between Dearborn and Kalamazoo, part of the federally designated “high-speed corridor” between Detroit and Chicago. Maximum speeds on the stretch...

California's chronic inability to govern itself has made it an international laughingstock with a blistering article in the Economist, a highbrow British magazine, only the latest manifestation of that unfortunate status. The state now has another opportunity to either cement its image as a civic buffoon or begin acting like an adult. It is the disaster-in-waiting known as the high-speed rail project. On a whim, politicians and voters decided a few years ago that a bullet train connecting the northern and southern halves of the state would be a jim-dandy thing to have, even though nobody knew how much it...

Subsidies: This week, Amtrak marks its 40th anniversary, which means that for decades it's wasted tens of billions of tax dollars. Naturally, Washington wants to reward this with billions more under the guise of "high-speed" rail. To say that Amtrak is a failed business is to be unkind to failure. Consider: • A Pew study found that all but three of Amtrak's 44 lines lost money in 2008, with an average loss of $32 per passenger. Even the heavily used Northeast Regional line was a money-loser. • Each year, Amtrak relies on more than $1.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies —...

California’s liberal Ninth Circuit rejects a specious civil-rights lawsuit.This February, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—widely seen as one of the more liberal federal courts in the nation—issued its ruling in Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transit Commission, a lawsuit brought by poor, largely minority riders of public buses in the San Francisco Bay Area. The plaintiffs had alleged that, since a large majority of the city’s bus riders were nonwhite, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s preference for rail-expansion projects over bus-expansion projects was racially biased and a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The court ruled against the plaintiffs and...

Last Tuesday, March 22nd, saw two Obama high speed rail shills, hapless Illinois Governor Quinn and the loyal, ebullient, camera centric Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, shamelessly announcing with pride, the next phase of the so called Chicago to St Louis High Speed Rail project. The new $1.2 billion phase is to run from Bloomington, IL to Dwight IL, a distance of 58.5 miles of what could only be described as the "Billion Dollar Train to Nowhere." Folks, that amounts to a mere $20,618,556 per mile, with an estimated heart stopping speed of 110 mph. Google Map estimates driving between these...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is meeting with Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle to discuss the city's planned $5.5 billion commuter rail line. LaHood, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and other officials were to join Carlisle at a briefing Wednesday on the rail transit project. LaHood oversees the Federal Transit Administration, which has pledged to sign an agreement providing at least $1.5 billion for the rail. LaHood plans to tour the port and talk with people about how to "rev up this economy in Hawaii." This is LaHood's first visit to the state since being appointed by President Barack Obama....

The Obama Administration has designated the Northeast Corridor as a federally-recognized high speed corridor. This allows states in the area to apply for $2.4 billion in federal grants, which were made available after the governor of Florida turned them down. It will also allow Amtrak to be in on the planning process. In order to be eligible for the money, states must show an ability to reduce energy use, improve the efficiency of their transportation network, and generate sustained economic growth. Local lawmakers applauded the move, calling it an engine for job creation. Applications are due on April 4.

Gov. Rick Scott turned down $2.4 billion taxpayer (or borrowed from foreign countries) dollars the US Dept. of Transportation offered Florida. The money would’ve helped to create a high speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando. Supporters also want future lines between Orlando and Miami and maybe one day Orlando and Jacksonville. The Florida Times-Union ran a story on Saturday suggesting US senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) might go after the money despite Scott’s concerns. The header to the story in the print edition was “Nelson fighting to get back rail money.” The header to the online story read “Florida loses...

TOKYO, Japan - A passenger train with an unknown number of people aboard was unaccounted for in a tsunami-hit part of coastal Japan, Kyodo News reported Friday, citing police. The East Japan Railway Co. train was running near Nobiru Station on the Senseki Line connecting Sendai to Ishinomaki when a massive quake hit, triggering a 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami, the report said.

High-speed trains that Gov. Rick Scott rejected would carry more passengers and operate at a greater financial surplus than projected in a 2009 federal application, data the state released Wednesday showed. Figures averaged from findings by two independent consulting firms showed more than 3.3 million people would have ridden the Tampa-Orlando line in its first full year of operation in 2016, compared with a projection of 2.4 million in a previous study. The latest reports the Florida Department of Transportation commissioned at a cost of $1.3 million indicate a $10.24 million surplus from high-speed rail operations in 2016, with ticket...

Californians have a reputation for questioning authority. And increasingly, they appear to be questioning the High-Speed Rail Authority, which voters empowered in 2008 to issue $9.95 billion in bonds and build the nation’s largest such system. Opposition hasn’t reached critical mass — not yet. But it is broad, and it includes Republicans, some Democrats, community groups, local governments, fiscal conservatives, and neighborhood preservationists. Reports from respectable engineering and financial teams, including state agencies, paint a far gloomier picture than the happy-talk done deal that’s been portrayed in the national media. Lawsuits further complicate the picture. The more money California sponges...