California High Speed Rail Authority

The $2.25 billion in federal stimulus funds awarded this week to the California high-speed rail project ensures that construction can proceed on a 520-mile route between Anaheim and San Francisco within three years, rail officials said Thursday. Mehdi Morshed, executive director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said the infusion of federal dollars would pay for completion of the project's engineering and environmental reviews and provide a significant amount of seed money to start building the system by September 2012, as required by the federal grant.

Re "Rail requires high-speed spending," May 14 Your article on the feasibility of mounting a construction effort that could put $3.5 million of work in place each day was unduly negative. I worked on the Alameda Corridor and on the Utah I-15 programs, which showed the feasibility of delivering large civil works projects on an aggressive schedule. While they did not reach the peak volume planned for California's rail project, we have seen this volume in L.A. during the peak years of rail construction in the early 1990s.

The state's High-Speed Rail Authority on Wednesday indicated it may bypass Orange County with a proposed bullet train that would snake up California and link San Diego and Sacramento. The rail authority voted in favor of routing the 680-mile rail system from downtown Los Angeles through Riverside County to San Diego, but did not completely dismiss an alternative route through Norwalk, Anaheim and Irvine.

The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight. At a state Senate hearing, Chairman Dan Richard also said the agency plans to spend the entire $6 billion of initial construction money within a 2017 deadline set by the federal government.

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law. The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included -- the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight. At a state Senate hearing, Chairman Dan Richard also said the agency plans to spend the entire $6 billion of initial construction money within a 2017 deadline set by the federal government.

In a surprising and controversial move, California bullet train planners on Thursday revived a long-discarded route option following Interstate 5 over the Grapevine that could save billions of dollars and eliminate a sweeping dogleg through Los Angeles County's high desert towns. The sudden reversal comes after years of planning focused on a circuitous path south of Bakersfield crossing the Tehachapi Mountains to serve Palmdale and Lancaster. Reopening what had been a settled issue highlights a critical tension in one of the nation's costliest transportation projects: As officials rush to start building, they still have not resolved an array of political, financing and engineering challenges.

So, the California High-Speed Rail Authority was wrong. The bullet trains from Anaheim and Los Angeles to San Francisco will not cost $34 billion as originally estimated, or $43 billion as the authority insisted just two years ago, but closer to $100 billion. Critics say the agency's new $98.5-billion estimate is low, and the authority admits it might go as high as $117.6 billion, but for sake of argument call the cost $100 billion. The authority is offering us less for more.

The leadership structure of the agency charged with building California's 800-mile high-speed rail system would be completely overhauled under legislation introduced Friday by a state senator. Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) wants to recast the make-up of the board at the quasi-independent California High-Speed Rail Authority and move the operation directly under the business branch of state government. Lowenthal, a former chairman of the Senate's Transportation Committee, has criticized what he sees as a lack of accountability at the agency, which has been the subject of several critical audits in recent years.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission has cleared members of the California High-Speed Rail Authority board after an investigation into a series of overseas trips and whether they were properly disclosed to the public. The Times reported in October that the rail agency was unable to document officials' trips to various countries, including France, Spain and Germany. The trips, which typically included visits with manufacturers, government officials and rail operators, as well as rides on high-speed systems, were paid for by foreign governments trying to help their homeland firms win large contracts.

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law. The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included -- the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

State bullet train officials Thursday approved the environmental impact studies for an initial section of high-speed track to be built from Merced to Fresno, a decision that sets the stage for possible legal challenges from powerful Central Valley farming interests. Certification of the final state and federal environmental reports is a critical step before the California High-Speed Rail Authority can begin to secure government permits and award construction contracts for the first phase of the $68-billion project that would link Los Angeles and San Francisco with 200 mph trains.

The plan to build a bullet train has so many funding uncertainties and so many other details that remain unclear that the state should delay any decision this year to commit billions of dollars to the project, the nonpartisan research branch of the Legislature recommended Tuesday. The tough advice came on the day before two key legislative committees are to examine the plan and an accompanying request by Gov. Jerry Brown for funding to start a $6-billion construction segment in the Central Valley.

SAN FRANCISCO - A formal plan to build a California bullet train that would become partially operational in 10 years was approved by the state rail agency Thursday, though the blueprint was amended at the last minute to include a goal of providing service to Orange County. The decision represents the culmination of more than two decades of planning and political battles over a project that aims to reshape the future, transporting passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes but at a staggering cost of $68 billion.

A transportation expert hired by California bullet train officials to ensure the accuracy of critical ridership forecasts worked for the company that prepared the estimates and maintains a close relationship with one of the firm's top executives. The consultant, Frank S. Koppelman, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at Northwestern University, has chaired the California High-Speed Rail Authority's ridership review panel since December 2010, assessing the projections of Cambridge Systematics Inc., a Massachusetts-based research company.

In a blow to Orange County's hopes for a boost to business and tourism, the California bullet train project has dropped a link to Anaheim from its current, $68-billion plan. The rail agency confirmed the shift Friday, marking a significant departure for the Bay Area-to-Southern California high-speed rail system that state voters approved in 2008. Under newly revised plans, the first phase of the line would have its southern terminus near downtown Los Angeles rather than in Orange County.

A transportation expert hired by California bullet train officials to ensure the accuracy of critical ridership forecasts worked for the company that prepared the estimates and maintains a close relationship with one of the firm's top executives. The consultant, Frank S. Koppelman, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at Northwestern University, has chaired the California High-Speed Rail Authority's ridership review panel since December 2010, assessing the projections of Cambridge Systematics Inc., a Massachusetts-based research company.

Transit executives from Los Angeles and Orange counties are pressing officials with the state's high-speed rail project to consider resurrecting a plan to share existing track between Anaheim and downtown L.A.'s Union Station. The idea was considered and discarded by the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 2008, but key local leaders now believe it could save up to $2 billion and avoid the need to condemn hundreds of homes and businesses. Bullet train officials have been pursuing the more costly and disruptive option of adding their own, exclusive tracks and widening sections of the 34-mile route through the region's dense industrial and residential core.

Several Los Angeles leaders backed a revised business plan released Monday by the agency overseeing California's ambitious high-speed rail effort, saying it lowers costs and speeds construction while bringing jobs and world-class transit to the region. By embracing a "blended" approach, the plan shaves $30 billion off the cost by using some tracks that now carry regional passenger lines rather than building new ones exclusively for the bullet train. "High-speed rail is the natural extension of the transportation network we are building in Southern California," said L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

California's bullet train authority and representatives of the Brown administration are exploring ways to relax environmental review procedures on the massive project to help meet a tight construction schedule, The Times has learned. Major environmental groups confirm they have been in discussions with state officials about some type of relief from possible environmental challenges to the project, which is falling behind schedule and risks losing federal funding if it must conduct new reviews of construction and operational effects.