A newly restructured leadership promises to speed up the arduous construction process and start running trains in five to eight years.
After a restructuring of the authority’s leadership, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) says it plans to begin running trains in five to eight years, reports Skip Descant in GovTech.
As Descant explains, “The 494-mile project to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with trains traveling up to 220 mph has been hobbled by complications ranging from land acquisition to utility relocation to funding to political opposition, since voters approved a bond measure that paid for it in 2008.”
There are currently 171 miles of rail line under construction between Merced and Bakersfield in the Central Valley. According to the CHSRA, “Up to 24 stations will be constructed and the project will soon begin the phase of laying track and erecting the overhead catenary system of wires supplying electricity.”
The project will eventually connect to Palmdale, a desert community north of Los Angeles and a hub for the regional Metrolink train, in the south and to Gilroy, a town south of San Francisco with a Caltrain station, in the north.
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