Tag "bullet train"
Back to homepageCA bullet train crashes through federal, state safeguards
Jan. 28, 2013 By Chris Reed Reports that the California High-Speed Rail Authority and Amtrak are teaming up to buy bullet trains and that the state is preparing for hundreds of eminent-domain property seizures in the Central Valley for the bullet
Read MoreState government will have to start subsidizing Amtrak soon
Jan. 24, 2013 By Chris Reed Congress and most presidents have long been ridiculously tolerant of Amtrak and its never-ending need for federal aid — the equivalent of massive ongoing annual bailouts. But five years ago, lawmakers actually got a
Read MoreArnold as U.S. transportation secretary? Talk about karma!
Jan. 2, 2013 By Chris Reed A little more than a year ago, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood surprised the inside-the-Beltway set by telling a Chicago reporter who asked if he would come back for a second Obama term that
Read MoreNo ‘time out’ for city in rail authority’s cross-hairs
Dec. 21, 2012 By Chris Reed The nervousness is growing in Bakersfield as the California High-Speed Rail Authority moves toward locking into a route that will disrupt the lives of thousands of people — and maybe for no reason. The
Read MoreBullet-train boondoggle yields a Cabinet-level delusion
Dec. 9, 2012 By Chris Reed A House committee hearing Thursday at which Republicans vowed to use their majority to block new federal funding for California’s bullet-train train wreck produced this astounding passage in The Washington Post: “We’re not giving
Read MoreBullet-train propaganda: China-style vs. California-style
Oct. 22, 2012 By Chris Reed Last week’s New Yorker features a well-reported but conflicted article that tries to depict China’s all-out push to become the world leader in bullet trains as a vast fiasco of corruption, incompetence and hubris
Read MoreBest chroniclers of bullet-train follies miss obvious angle on self-driving cars
Sept. 26, 2012 By Chris Reed Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury-News — the newspaper reporter and the California newspaper who/that have done by far the best job of straight-forwardly illustrating the lunacy of the high-speed rail project —
Read MoreIn the spirit of ‘Animal Farm’: Some projects are more ‘worthwhile’ than others
By Chris Reed Sept. 21 The difference between the federal government’s go-slow-or-is-it-no-go approach on the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the let’s-get-it-done push for the first segment of the California bullet train is instructive, in that in both cases we
Read MoreWill Gov. Brown kill self-driving cars as threat to bullet train?
Sept. 13 By Chris Reed Gov. Jerry Brown gave another hallucinatory endorsement to the bullet-train project in a weekend interview on CNN, depicting the plan as necessary for California’s future. But the growing, glowing reports about the incredible promise offered by
Read MoreChoo-Choo Boondoggle Runs Off Cliff
John Seiler: Ding-dong, the stupid bullet train is dead. It’s all over but the scrambling for a couple hundred million dollars of our tax money in various funds. The California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group yesterday issued a report condemning the
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