California High-Speed Rail Authority

Will the California high-speed rail project move forward, or will politicians pull the plug? The fate of the program weighs in the balance as construction is about to begin.

By refusing federal stimulus funds for high speed rail projects in their states, incoming Republican governors in Midwest gifted California over $600 million in new funding for the state's planned 800-mile network, says the Fresno Bee.

The UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies has issued a report questioning ridership projections on the $43+ billion, 800 mile, voter-approved California High Speed Rail project. Cambridge Systematics defends their numbers.

A number of foreign countries and firms are jockeying to build high-speed rail in California, but the Chinese government is proposing that they cover some of the financing as well.

California's proposed high-speed rail line is to be funded by a patchwork of federal, state, and local funding mechanisms. Reporter Dierdre Newman sorts through the morass.

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) and the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) are sparring over the size of the "train box" in the new Transbay Terminal. Streetsblog makes sense of the brouhaha.

No one expects the $8 billion to build any one single high-speed-rail system in the U.S. But the U.S., with its vast distances and low gas prices, is not Europe or Asia, and some question whether the investment will produce any substantial results.