Free Republic

Shooting at DART Arapaho station, two dead so far including the perp.

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....

Plans For High-Speed Rail Are Slowing Down President Obama set a goal of giving 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within the next quarter century. Here’s a look at the high-speed rail industry around the world. By Michael A. Fletcher January 15 PALO ALTO, Calif. — Critics began panning the first leg of California’s futuristic high-speed rail network as a “train to nowhere” soon after officials decided to build it not in the major population centers of Los Angeles or San Francisco, but through the state’s Central Valley farming belt. Since then, things have only gotten worse. Spiraling...

As the Government prepares to give the go-ahead to its hugely controversial high-speed train project, its closest equivalent in Europe has had to be saved from bankruptcy with a £250 million government bailout. The new “Fyra” high-speed service in the Netherlands — opened just two years ago — is close to financial collapse with passengers shunning its premium fares and trains running up to 85 per cent empty. The line, between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Breda, cost taxpayers more than £7 billion to build but is losing £320,000 a day amid disastrous levels of patronage. A Dutch passenger pressure group, Voor...

Ruling in what it called a "tragically bizarre" case, an appeals court found that the estate of a man killed by a train while crossing the Edgebrook [Illinois] Metra station tracks can be held liable after a part of his body sent airborne by the collision struck and injured a bystander. In 2008, Hiroyuki Joho, 18, was hurrying in pouring rain with an umbrella over his head, trying to catch an inbound Metra train due to arrive in about five minutes when he was struck by a southbound Amtrak train traveling more than 70 mph. A large portion of his...

High-Speed Rail Project in California Under Scrutiny By William Lajeunesse December 23, 2011 The Obama administration's plans for a bullet train could be headed off the tracks in California, the one state where its high-speed rail initiative is still alive. Since the project was first unveiled in 2008, officials tripled its projected cost, delayed its start of service 13 years, downsized ridership projections and increased ticket prices. Almost two-thirds of Californians now say they'd vote against issuing bonds to pay for a project they narrowly approved just three years ago. "It is not viable. It is not the best use...

A young couple hopping railroad cars across the country was found dead under a mound of coal at a Florida power plant. Christopher Artes, 25, and Medeana Hendershot, 22, shared a passion for illegally hopping freight trains and traveling the country without a set plan...

The fortunes of California's high-speed rail project, which would connect Southern California to the Bay Area with a 220mph train, took a big financial hit Thursday afternoon, when a congressional panel slashed the Federal Railroad Administration budget. The Obama administration had asked for $8 billion for fiscal 2012 for high-speed rail projects, including the one in California, as well as other passenger rail programs around the country. But the House Appropriations subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development on Thursday cut the request by nearly $7 billion, leaving money only to operate Amtrak and some smaller programs. House Republican leaders...

After running for only 10 days, the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway has encountered its first operational malfunction as a result of outage. According to the official Weibo of "Beijing Railway," a breakdown occurred at 6 p. m. on July 10 at the contact network of the Qufu-Tengzhou-Zaozhuang rail line section due to stormy weather, which prevented 19 trains from arriving on time. The railway department responded immediately to the accident and took a series of emergency measures. The operation of the high-speed rail returned to normal at 7:37 p.m. Acknowledged by multiple news sources, it was the bad weather that shut...

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...

If you “park and ride” along SEPTA Regional Rail lines, it could be a much more expensive trip than you expected. An exclusive CBS 3 I-Team investigation reveals that since March 12th, riders have had catalytic converters, a pollution control device, stolen from beneath their vehicles.

A study released earlier this month by the Cascade Policy Institute questioned whether pricey mass transit options in Portland, Oregon are really being used by the public. The city has been a leader in securing funding for various forms of passenger rail and trolley systems. The Obama administration, for example, pledged $745 million in federal gas tax dollars to pay for the construction of a $1.5 billion, 7.3 mile light rail project connecting Portland to Milwaukie. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has singled out the city’s priorities as for praise. “By adding innovative transit opportunities, Portland has become a model livable...

CLEVELAND - UPDATE: All RTA trains are running again after a train fire injured about 15 people and shut down trains between the Triskett Station and East 55th Street. Passengers on the red line could still expect delays lasting until later Friday afternoon. The incident occurred Friday on a Regional Transit Authority train car. A spokeswoman for RTA said there were about 75 people on the train when the fire broke out just after noon at West 65th Street and Lorain Avenue. Those injured were transported to local hospitals with minor injuries, she said. RTA does not know how the...

The truth is that high-speed rail doesn’t work in Europe or Asia either. Japan and France have both spent about as much on high-speed rail as they have on their intercity freeway systems, yet the average residents of those countries travel by car 10 to 20 times as much as they travel by high-speed rail. They also fly domestically more than they take high-speed rail. While the highways and airlines pay for themselves out of gas taxes and other user fees, high-speed rail is heavily subsidized and serves only a tiny urban elite. Obama uses the fact that France, Japan,...

The Obama administration's enthusiasm for high-speed rail is a dispiriting example of government's inability to learn from past mistakes. Since 1971, the federal government has poured almost $35 billion in subsidies into Amtrak with few public benefits. At most, we've gotten negligible reductions -- invisible and statistically insignificant -- in congestion, oil use or greenhouse gases. What's mainly being provided is subsidized transportation for a small sliver of the population. In a country where 140 million people go to work every day, Amtrak has 78,000 daily passengers. A typical trip is subsidized by about $50. Given this, you'd think even...

The Family Research Council has leveled strong criticism against plans by Amtrak for the passenger train service to use tax dollars to promote travel to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered passengers. Amtrak plans to spend a quarter-million dollars recruiting homosexual passengers. The Family Research Council points out Amtrak isn't a private business, and this government-run business is now spending 250-thousand dollars taken directly from the pockets of taxpayers, during these difficult economic times. Spokesman Peter Sprigg points out that this is further proof the Obama Administration has gone OFF THE RAILS by allowing Amtrak to spend this money, insulting the...

Michigan leaders who are enamored with building new light-rail passenger lines should look to Greece's experience with its railway system. The New York Times reports that Greece's Hellenic Railways is bleeding red ink at a rate of $3.8 million per day. The total debt of the Greek railway system has increased to $13 billion, or roughly 5 percent of Greece's gross domestic product. Greek government officials who are interested in selling a stake in the state railway system may have difficulty finding a buyer - the Greek rail system pays three times as much for interest payments on its debt...

U.S. stock futures are pulling off their lows as an employment reading shows that the private sector added jobs last month. The ADP National Employment Report arriving Wednesday shows that the private sector added 40,000 jobs in May, rather than declined by 60,000 as economists had been expecting, according to Dow Jones Newswires. Dow Jones industrial average futures are down 20, or 0.16 percent, at 12,384, off their earlier lows.

WASHINGTON - The economy plodded ahead at a 0.9 percent pace in the first quarter — slightly better than first estimated — but still underscoring caution on the part of consumers and businesses walloped by housing, credit and financial problems. The new reading on gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department on Thursday, was an improvement from the government’s initial growth estimate for the January-to-March quarter as well as the economy’s performance in the final quarter of last year. Both periods were pegged at a 0.6 percent growth rate. Gross domestic product, or GDP, measures the value of all...

Sales of new homes rose in April for the first time in six months although the unexpected increase still left activity near the lowest level in 17 years. ADVERTISEMENT The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that sales of new homes rose 3.3 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000 units. But the government revised March activity lower to show an even bigger drop of 11 percent to an annual rate of 509,000, which was the weakest pace for sales since April 1991. Economists believe that new home sales will remain weak for some time as the housing...