“What a day to be celebrating the future of American infrastructure and to see it taking shape before our eyes,” remarked U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at yesterday’s groundbreaking for Brightline West’s high-speed rail connection between Las Vegas and Southern California. Buttigieg praised the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that contributed $3 billion to making this project happen, noting that the project spans not just two parties, but two states, and public and private sectors. Brightline West will be a 218-mile rail line from Vegas to the San Bernardino County city of Rancho ..read more

Note: GJEL Accident Attorneys regularly sponsors coverage on Streetsblog San Francisco and Streetsblog California. Unless noted in the story, GJEL Accident Attorneys is not consulted for the content or editorial direction of the sponsored content. The legislature this week held two oversight hearings to discuss the CA High Speed Rail 2024 Business Plan. Both the Assembly Transportation Committees and the Senate Transportation Committees held sessions to quiz CAHSRA staff on progress made, plans for the coming year, and the future shape of the program. Also appearing at both hearings were repre ..read more

It’s time for Streetsblog L.A. editor Joe Linton to make some predictions for 2023. Note that in the past, my overly-rosy predictions were not all that successful, so don't take these for granted, either. Continued Metro Ridership Growth Prediction: Metro weekday transit ridership will surpass one million – by April. After restoring service cut at the outset of the pandemic, Metro has seen steady transit ridership growth throughout 2023. Earlier this month, Metro increased light rail service, so the ridership increases should continue. 2021 daily weekday ridership was around 500,000-800,000 ..read more

Note: GJEL Accident Attorneys regularly sponsors coverage on Streetsblog San Francisco and Streetsblog California. Unless noted in the story, GJEL Accident Attorneys is not consulted for the content or editorial direction of the sponsored content. The Federal Railroad Administration announced a handful of rail grants this week, among them $3 billion for the California’s High-Speed Rail program (CAHSR) and another $3 billion for the Brightline West High-Speed Rail from Las Vegas-to-Southern California. Those were not the only grants from the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rai ..read more

Today’s headlines mostly focus on a $3 billion federal grant for Brightline West, one of the largest-ever federal grants for a privately owned transportation project. In case you haven’t heard, Brightline West high-speed rail is planned to extend from Las Vegas to Southern California, just east of Los Angeles. This is great, historic big news for sustainable transportation connecting western states. But don’t lose sight of the arguably even better news that the California High-Speed Rail Authority also got its own, equally substantial chunk of federal funding. The U.S. Department of Transporta ..read more

The fifth most populous city in California – that would be Fresno – hosted an international transportation innovations summit last week. Keynote speaker Gil Peñalosa encouraged city leaders to embrace making life in Fresno enjoyable and fun. “Playfulness and fun are what will make future cities economically competitive and attract residents and jobs,” he said. “Fun is not a frivolity,” he said. Fun and play not only positively affect mental and physical health, they are key to a city’s economic prosperity. “And the only way people in Fresno will be physically active is if they walk, bike, and ..read more

For more than a decade, a private company called Texas Central has been promising, and struggling, to build a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston, two of the state’s largest cities. By 2020, the company boasted, Japanese-style bullet trains would take passengers 240 miles in about 90 minutes – less than half the time it would take to drive the same distance.  Needless to say, it didn’t happen. Most of the land on the bullet train’s proposed route is privately owned, and landowners weren’t eager to sell, forcing Texas Central to fight an uphill battle to gain the powe ..read more

Can the state complete its Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train project faster? The answer is yes, with stronger cooperation and buy-in from state and federal leaders. That was the conclusion of a panel hosted by Streetsblog this week on how to accelerate the pace of construction on California High-Speed Rail. The panel was hosted by Streetsblog San Francisco editor Roger Rudick and sustainable transportation advocate Carter Lavin, and included Boris Lipkin, the Northern California Regional Director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, and Eric Eidlin, Station Planning Manager for ..read more

The California High-Speed Rail project will fundamentally transform how people move around the state, spur economic growth, and create a cleaner environment–and construction continues every day on the project with service slated to start in the Central Valley in 2030. Save the Date: Wednesday, August 16, 6-7 p.m. Pacific., 9-10 p.m. Eastern. But wait, why 2030? That means it’ll be another seven years just to finish a project that’s already substantially completed, and then just from Merced to Bakersfield. Meanwhile, China is building thousands of miles of HSR in less time. Moreover, the U.S ..read more

Note: GJEL Accident Attorneys regularly sponsors coverage on Streetsblog San Francisco and Streetsblog California. Unless noted in the story, GJEL Accident Attorneys is not consulted for the content or editorial direction of the sponsored content. The California High-Speed Rail Authority this week celebrated the completion of another piece of the project that will one day extend from the Bay Area to Los Angeles: the McCombs Road overcrossing in Kern County. That’s the fifth major infrastructure piece completed this year alone. This project realigned McCombs Road slightly to take traffic over b ..read more