Free Republic

Jerry Brown did not invent the idea of a high-speed rail system to connect Northern and Southern California. It was voted on by the state Legislature and ratified by voters years before he returned to the governor’s office in 2011. But for the last eight years, as cost estimates have skyrocketed and federal and private sector funding for the project has evaporated, Brown has become high-speed rail’s most persistent defender. Only weeks away from the election to replace him, neither candidate for governor appears to share the depth of Brown’s commitment to a statewide rail system. Fellow Democrat Gavin Newsom...

The California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) surprised local communities on Wednesday by proposing a controversial Burbank-to-Palmdale route featuring above-ground tracks. The Los Angeles Times reported that the proposed 38-mile track alignment will cross the San Gabriel Mountains via a series of at grade sections and five separate tunnels. The bullet train’s original route, offered in support of the SB 1856 bond measure passed by the California Legislature in 2000, proposed to follow the Interstate 5 Freeway and tunnel under the 4,144 ft-Tejon Pass to link Los Angeles and Bakersfield.

California's biggest boondoggle just broke the bank. Not only is the massive high-speed rail project 11 years behind schedule and billions in the red, managers are now saying they will need to ramp up spending to hit a 2033 deadline. California’s money pit cost taxpayers $3.1 million a day last year. But that’s small potatoes compared to what they’ll have to shell out over the next four if they want to meet their deadline and budget, estimated most recently at $100 billion in a report last month by the New York Times. The California High Speed Rail Authority will have...

One stat to look for in this growing economy is the weekly rail statistics report from the Association of American Railroads (AAR). I have attached the link. It is a weekly summary of car loadings compared to last year. (Note: the tax cuts were passed in January so it is a good comparison to last year.) Nearly everything is up in the 2-4 percent range. Petroleum (unit tank car trains) really up. The other big stat is intermodal (trailers on flatcars or double stack containers). Intermodal is around 6-8 percent growth from last year and is leading the recovery. The...

Ron Tutor, chief executive of Tutor Perini, said the redesign was not his firm’s fault... “We designed it and they approved it and then they changed their minds,” Tutor said. “They had a change of heart.” At least three other bullet train bridges in the Central Valley used the same design as the Avenue 8 bridge and are now being redesigned, according to a January rail authority status update, raising questions about whether potentially more costly designs will be required in the future. The previous design for Avenue 8, using what is known as mechanically stabilized earth walls, is generally...

Let me just say from the outset that I still miss California. When I see news about my former state, it’s like reading the details of a train wreck after having safely disembarked a comfortable time ago. I and my family got to live in Orange County for seven glorious years and another year in the Bay Area when the state was not convulsed with insanity on stilts. It was sunny nearly every day, with low humidity. There were no bugs. Our local amusement parks were Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. We did, as Californians are fond of boasting, go...

That may sound like a clickbaity headline, but it’s proving to be literally true. Apparently, no one can guess it, least of all the California High-Speed Rail Authority that is running the bullet-train project. Their latest projection shows total predicted cost has jumped 20% to $77 billion, with a completion date moved out four years to 2033.For now, anyway. Be sure to check back next week in the Boondoggle Lotto! The price of the California bullet train project jumped sharply Friday when the state rail authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would be...

Friday, California's High-Speed Rail Authority published its draft 2018 Business Plan. Its 800-mile bullet-train project's estimated cost is now $77.3 billion, up from $64 billion two years ago, and its final completion has been pushed out another four years to 2033. The current estimate is now more than 70 percent above the $45 billion presented to voters in 2008. The related Associated Press story failed to disclose that original cost estimate, as did three leading California newspapers. The Authority's draft discloses that "More than $3 billion has been expended to date on construction in the Central Valley and planning for...

The price of the California bullet train project jumped sharply Friday when the state rail authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would be $77.3 billion and could rise as high as $98.1 billion — an uptick of at least $13 billion from estimates two years ago. The rail authority also said the earliest trains could operate on a partial system between San Francisco and Bakersfield would be 2029 — four years later than the previous projection. The full system would not begin operating until 2033. The disclosures are contained in a 114-page business plan...

The projected cost of California's bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles has jumped to $77 billion and the opening date has been pushed back four years to 2033, according to a business plan released Friday. The two-year plan presented by the California High-Speed Rail Authority is the first under new chief executive Brian Kelly, who has promised more transparency about the project's challenges after years of cost increases and delays.

William Shelton will not let go of the past, even if it is in the way of someone else's future. He has spent more than five years rebuilding his family's ancestral home, board by board, and has no intention of leaving it or the 250-acre farm that has been in his family since 1851. Two years ago, surveyors started showing up, wanting a clear idea of his property lines for Texas Central Railway, the company behind plans for a 200-mph "bullet train" connecting Houston to Dallas. The proposed route would go through Shelton's farm. "I guarantee I will be restoring...

The National Transportation Safety Board investigating the accident, which killed three people and injured more than 50 others, is still trying to determine the probable cause and prevent such accidents in the future. It appears that there were two people in the lead locomotive control cab of the train who were both injured and hospitalized: an instructor engineer, and another engineer who was learning the territory and qualifying to operate the train along the route.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pitching Japan’s maglev technology for the railway system in the United States. Speaking in a meeting with US business leaders and financial experts in New York on Wednesday, Abe said that in the late 2030s, a maglev train linking Tokyo to Nagoya in central Japan will take just 40 minutes - an hour shorter than currently required for the shinkansen bullet train. The two cities are about 260km apart, as the crow flies. “The distance between Tokyo and Nagoya is almost the same as that between New York and [Washington] DC,” he said. “You...

Because of a derailment at the East Falls Church Metro station portions of the Orange and Silver lines will remain closed for the rest of the day. WASHINGTON — Service on parts of the Orange and Silver Lines will remain suspended through at least Saturday, following an early-morning derailment near the East Falls Church station that damaged two train cars, sent one rider to the hospital and scrambled passengers’ Friday morning commutes. Service on the Silver Line between the McLean and Ballston stations and on the Orange Line between West Falls Church and Ballston will remain suspended through the end...

Dream on you loopians, just don't expect me to fund your crazy ideas! There is a new company, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) that intends to revolutionize high speed continental travel. It’s CEO, Dirk Ahlborn, recently announced an agreement with the Slovakian government to build Hyperloops from Vienna, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia, and from Bratislava to Budapest, Hungary. Its competitor, Hyperloop One, recently tested an open air propulsion test of a vehicle with its “Blade Runner” test rig. The Japanese “bullet trains” going at 200 mph are like snails in comparison. The new hyper-things are envisaged to do about 760 mph....

U.S. Throws China Off High-Speed Rail Project China state media says XpressWest’s move is irresponsible By Te-Ping Chen June 9, 2016 5:42 a.m. ET 26 COMMENTS BEIJING—A high-speed rail agreement touted as a symbol of U.S.-China cooperation has fallen apart less than a year after it was signed. XpressWest, a private U.S. company, on Thursday said a venture with China Railway International to build a high-speed rail line to link Southern California with Las Vegas won’t proceed. In a statement, the U.S. company said it terminated the partnership because of “difficulties associated with timely performance” and its Chinese partner’s challenges...

The world's longest railway tunnel is set to open in just over a week - after some 17 years of construction. Measuring 35.4-miles in length, the Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is 7,545 feet below the Gotthard massif, cutting through the Swiss Alps. The tunnel was first conceived in sketch-form in 1947 but construction began 17 years ago. It consists of two single-track tunnels connecting Erstfeld (Uri) with Bodio (Ticino) and passing below Sedrun (Graubünden).

In November 2008, California voters narrowly approved Proposition 1A, which provided $9.95 billion in government money for a statewide bullet-train network. The initiative passed, even though the California High-Speed Rail Authority had been legally required to release a detailed, updated business plan by October 1 of that year, so that voters would have time to learn exactly how the state planned to finance what was then billed as a $43 billion project—and no updated plan was in view. Rail officials failed even to release a preliminary report before the election, claiming that state legislators’ long delay in passing the fiscal...

While Metro Transit's Green Line isn't exactly paying for itself through passenger fares, it's doing a better job than most other Minnesota public transit options. Passengers boarding the state's second light-rail line from its debut in June through the end of 2014 paid $6.21 million into the fare box, or about 35.8 percent of what it costs to operate the 11-mile route. "I think 35 percent is a really good percentage," said St. Paul City Council member Dave Thune. "I love it. I think it has been a success. The kind of traffic it's seeing, going from one end of...

I am not making this up. The Official Amtrak Merchandise store. (click the pic)