Discourse for all interested in all things air-quality related
The XpressWest high-speed rail project, to connect Nevada’s Las Vegas to California’s Victorville and beyond, has an anticipated winter 2020-’21 construction start date, with a ’23-’24 projected begin operations/service date. The line, some 180 miles long – 135 miles of which will be in the Golden State – has a $5 billion building-cost estimate. XpressWest … Read more
There are those who rail against California’s bullet-train project asserting that the system will require subsidization. They argue that there isn’t enough available capital even to fund construction of 119 miles of line between Shafter and Madera, much less build 520 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim (the complete Phase 1 portion). … Read more
“Dedicated high-speed rail dollars kept in the Valley will simply go farther,” the Air Quality Matters blog post of Jun. 14th, showed how $4.2 billion in state rail bonds, in being applied to construction work in California’s San Joaquin Valley, could be a tremendous asset where hiring, stimulating local economies and improving area and state … Read more
This June 16th marks five years since construction on California’s statewide high-speed rail program first began. There are now 4,000 laborers doing bullet-train-related building work in the Golden State’s Central Valley at over three dozen sites. That level of commitment notwithstanding, there are those who think that they know what’s best regarding where yet-unspent dedicated … Read more
When the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act was authorized in 1976 (also known as the 4R Act) it had been 10 years since the High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965, introduced by Congress, passed. Interest seemed strong through the 1980s and ’90s but funding for and forward momentum in this direction failed to … Read more
The below May 7, 2020 press release is from the Texas Central Railroad. Today, the Thirteenth Court of Appeals of Texas ruled in favor of Texas Central, holding that it was both a railroad company and interurban electric railway. The Memorandum Opinion, authored by Justice Nora Longoria, held “Having found that the appellants (Texas Central … Read more
No one knows with absolute certainty what transportation patterns in the United States will be like once over the Corona Virus pandemic or whether we’ll return to travel patterns exactly the way they were pre-pandemic. Speaking to this, a team of researchers from two universities (Vanderbilt and Cornell) got to work to consider several possible … Read more
In California’s expansive and agriculturally conducive San Joaquin Valley, encompassing eight counties in all, one-in-five children is an asthmatic. According to the California High-Speed Rail Authority highlighting childhood health and freight and passenger train transport and travel in a media release expresses that in the Valley the childhood asthma rate is better than double the … Read more
The below Feb. 12, 2020 news release from the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Advancing California’s leadership in building a modern, clean, and sustainable transportation system, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) today [Feb. 12, 2020] issued its Draft 2020 Business Plan for public review and comment. The Draft 2020 Business Plan affirms the policy recommendation … Read more
A newspaper editorial dealing with the subject of California high-speed rail ran in the Dec. 24, 2019 Los Angeles Daily News edition. Access to the full Daily News editorial can be had here. Discussed is the fifth and final phase or package of the construction program in the San Joaquin Valley or what is known … Read more