Free Republic

A recent string of robberies on BART trains took a frightening turn when dozens of juveniles swarmed an Oakland station over the weekend and commandeered a train car, forcing passengers to hand over bags and cell phones and leaving at least two with head injuries, witnesses told the transit agency. The incident — the first of its kind in recent memory — occurred around 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Coliseum Station. According to a police summary, witnesses said 50 to 60 juveniles flooded the station, jumped the fare gates and rushed to the second-story train platform. Some of the robbers apparently...

California will need to double down on support of the bullet train by digging deeper into the state's wallet and accepting a three-year delay in completing the project's initial leg, a new business plan for the 220-mph system shows. Rail planners have turned their construction plans upside down, attempting to fit the mega-project within the state's limited budget. The 2016 business plan, released last month, shows that the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco rail link has proved to be politically and technically more complicated to build than foreseen in 2008, when voters agreed to help finance the project with a $9-billion bond....

Infrastructure: California's high-speed rail project will never make its current 2022 arrival time, according to the Los Angeles Times. Doesn't this strike anyone in charge of this costly boondoggle as ironic?...Officials still haven't settled on a route, they're behind schedule in acquiring land, getting permits and financing, and the project faces several lawsuits. Boring on the 36 miles of planned tunnels isn't likely to get started until 2019, the Times notes, and by any reasonable estimate it will take another 7 to 14 years to complete. Even that's probably optimistic, since several parts will traverse known fault lines, vastly increasing...

California's high-speed rail project will never make its current 2022 arrival time, according to the Los Angeles Times. Doesn't this strike anyone in charge of this costly boondoggle as ironic? The Los Angeles Times does a commendable job of providing a reality check to the increasingly out-of-touch project. After reviewing project documents and talking to various experts, the paper concluded, "The deadline and budget targets will almost certainly be missed," and state officials have "underestimated the challenges ahead." Officials still haven't settled on a route, they're behind schedule in acquiring land, getting permits and financing, and the project faces several...

But soon, there could be something a little different and a lot faster: a high-speed train connecting Palmdale to Victorville, all the way to Las Vegas. XpressWest and China Railway International have put out $100 million to start the project. Not only would it provide a comfortable and fast-way to get to Vegas, but you could avoid the 15 Freeway as well. "The 15 Freeway is murder. Trying to get to Vegas for New Year's or any other holiday, it's like a three, four or five-hour delay," said Brigette Conyers of Victorville. ... He also said the environmental hurdles for...

Even before it begins significant construction on the bullet train route, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has violated federal protections for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox in the Central Valley, federal regulators said in a letter last week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the authority had set up a nine-acre construction yard outside the approved footprint for the project, affecting habitat and resulting in the destruction of a kit fox den. n a Jan. 26 letter, the service said the rail agency, along with the Federal Railroad Administration and its contractors, had failed to comply with the...

Ready or not, Californians - and America - here it comes. After a two year delay, during which the cost nearly doubled, California's high speed rail system will break ground this week. The project - said to cost $68 billion - will link Los Angeles to San Francisco by 2028. There's only one teentsy, tiny problem: They have no idea how they are going to fund it. ... What of that 200 MPH boast? The original design of the project called for railroad tracks totally dedicated to the high speed rail system. But that proved even more ruinously expensive than...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority will officially break ground next month in Fresno on construction of its statewide bullet-train route. The Jan. 6 groundbreaking ceremony, announced Friday afternoon, comes about a year and a half after the agency awarded its first construction contract, a $1 billion deal to design and build the first 29-mile section from Madera to the south end of Fresno... ~~snip~~ California voters approved Proposition 1A, a $9.9 billion bond measure to help finance a high-speed rail system, in November 2008. But it wasn’t until the fall of 2010, when the Obama administration and the Federal Railroad...

Advocates for the projected bullet train running from San Francisco to Los Angeles argued at the Public Policy Institute’s all-day State of Change conference last week that simply getting the project started would catalyze the federal government to pour more money into the $67.6 billion boondoggle. The California High-Speed Rail Authority offered the $67.6 million figure in February 2014 ... As Reason Magazine recently reported, “The CHSRA April 2012 Business Plan is so deficient that it is inconceivable that policymakers would continue to rely on its assertions to evaluate the program.”

The cost of the high-speed rail project might be going above the current estimate of $68 billion. The California High-Speed Rail Authority recently announced a strategic shift to consider an alternative for its 40-mile Palmdale-to-Burbank link. Instead of the current plan of running it parallel to the Palmdale Freeway, the new line would run through a tunnel under the San Gabriel Mountains. According to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who has advanced the idea, the tunnel would be about 15 miles long. ... it’s possible to calculate a rough — very rough – estimate. Let’s start with something we...

Scores of travelers were stranded after the Acela Express 2253 took off from one platform about 3 p.m. — while they were waiting at another and unaware the train was leaving them behind. An Amtrak train bound for Washington pulled away from Penn Station on Saturday without some pretty important cargo: its passengers. ... They literally sent us to the wrong platform, and the conductor took off without any passengers,” said Damien Miano, 60, of Chelsea. “The right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. It was just so bizarre.” Miano said he and the other abandoned travelers...

The agencies said their needs are too different and manufacturers are not yet ready to build trains that can run on both Amtrak's 100-year-old rail lines and the high-speed corridors planned for California's system. ... Several unfavorable court rulings have also delayed work. In the most high-profile case, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge halted the sale of $8.6 billion in state rail bonds and ordered the state to write a new funding plan, delaying work on the first 28-mile segment from Madera to Fresno. The state has appealed. But the $108 billion budget that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed...

Amtrak train en route from Boston to Washington. ... It was the second accident involving an Amtrak train in Connecticut this week. An Amtrak Acela Express struck and killed a man in Groton on Monday.

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges .. hours after she lost the Southwest light-rail vote, she visited a Somali mall on E. 24th Street in a blue hijab, accompanied by her Somali liaison, Abdirahman Muse. Hodges’ office said she is fulfilling many of the promises she put forth in a 100-day plan for the Somali community, including asking the city attorney for a review of small business regulations. In an upstairs room, Somali shopkeepers praised her for showing up, and poured out their concerns through translators, telling her they needed more space to park, more opportunities for idle youth, and more Somali...

When California first put the issue of building a high-speed bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco before voters, Gov. Jerry Brown made all sorts of nifty-sounding promises about how efficient, convenient, and fiscally sound a choice the rail line would be for Californians. All of those promises have more or less turned out to be a sham by now, as the train’s costs have exploded and its deadlines pushed way back, and now it appears that that less-than-three-hour ride Californians were originally promised… well, probably isn’t. ... who really considers a mounting “wall of debt” and a slew...

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Amtrak wants to know how one of its trains took a wrong turn and got lost in the Philadelphia suburbs. Worried and baffled were most travelers at 30th Street Station Tuesday night. Mike Roberts of Coatesville said, “Wow, that’s crazy. That’s not professional at all. How could that happen?” It sounds wild, but Amtrak officials confirm it did happen and what they can tell us so far is this: Amtrak Train 644 that left 30th Street Station for New York City accidentally ended up on the SEPTA tracks. The train actually traveled several miles before the mistake...

A head on collision involving two commuter trains in Switzerland has resulted in the injury of 44 people. The collision occurred between the cities of Moudon and Payerne at about 6:50 p.m. local time, reports said. It is unclear at this point what caused the collision to occur. "We don't know why this crash happened," Swiss Federal Railways spokesman Reto Schaerli told CNN. "There is currently no train service between these two cities until midnight tonight at least."

The carriages careened off the tracks at a curve approaching the station at Santiago where the limit is set at 80 km per hour (50mph). But one of the drivers has admitted that the train took the curve at a speed of around 190km per hour, according to local media reports quoting sources close to the investigation. Alberto Nunez Feijoo, president of the region of Galicia, described the scene as "Dante-esque". "I saw a woman who had lost one foot," said Lidia Cannon, a tourist visiting the local fiesta. "But instead of crying or shouting or whatever because of the...

A proposed high-speed train connecting suburban California to Las Vegas may have just been stopped in its tracks, after the Transportation Department halted the review of what would have been its largest taxpayer loan in history. In a letter obtained by FoxNews.com, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood informed developer XpressWest that he would “suspend further consideration” of the company’s request for a $5.5 billion federal loan. If approved, the loan would be the department’s largest ever. Though the project was a favorite of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, the request had been the subject of intense Republican criticism, as...

At least seven people have been killed and 60 seriously injured after a packed passenger train derailed south of Paris this evening. The high speed intercity train was travelling from the French capital to the city of Limoges when it derailed onto its side in a train station in the suburb of Bretigny-sur-Orge at about 3.15pm GMT. The accident has left seven people dead, with the victims being crushed to death or electrocuted. Rescue workers are now Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362061/Seven-people-crushed-death-electrocuted-French-rail-crash-horror-train-smashes-platform-south-Paris.html#ixzz2Yraf3s12