PrairiePundit

 Fox News: Railroad worker eviscerates Biden for pushing Middle East railway project: 'Slap in our face' Biden officials met with leaders in Saudi Arabia over the weekend for a railway project The railroad workers think we should be upgrading domestic railroads instead of those in the Middle East. 

 Christian Datoc: Freight railroad companies are pressuring the Biden administration to abandon a proposed rule they say could further complicate the country's supply chain problems. The Department of Transportation's Federal Railroad Administration currently allows freight railroad companies to set their own crew requirements, but the Biden administration is seeking to implement a regulation first proposed in 2016 by the Obama administration that would permanently require all freight trains to operate with traditional engineer-conductor teams. Former President Barack Obama left office before the rule could be finalized. President Joe Biden, however, made a 2020 campaign promise to the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers that he would mandate the "Rule of Two." ... This is usually called featherbedding requiring unnecessary workers to be hired to please the unions so they can collect more dues and drive up the cost of servic...

LA Times: John Diepersloot squinted under a bright Central Valley sun, pointing to the damage to his fruit orchard that came with the California bullet train. He lost 70 acres of prime land. Rail contractors left mounds of rubble along his neat rows. Irrigation hoses are askew. A sophisticated canopy system for a kiwi field, supported by massive steel cables, was torn down. But what really irritates Diepersloot is the $250,000 that he paid out of his own pocket for relocating wells, removing trees, building a road and other expenses. “I am out a quarter-million bucks on infrastructure, and they haven’t paid a dime for a year,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of money.” Up and down the San Joaquin Valley, farmers have similar stories. The state can take land with a so-called order of possession by the Superior Court while it haggles over the price. But farmers often face out-of-pocket costs for lost production, road replacement, repositioning of irrigation systems and other...

LA Times: Trump administration to cancel $929 million in California high-speed rail funding The fate of California’s high-speed rail project was cast into further doubt Tuesday when the federal government announced plans to cancel $929 million in grant funds, a move U.S. officials linked to violations of the grant agreement but some view as political payback. The action marks an escalation in the battle between President Trump and the state of California since Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week that the project lacked a path to complete a statewide system and vowed to scale back the $77-billion mega-project. The Transportation Department also said it was “actively exploring every legal option” to get back an additional $2.5-billion grant that is being used to finance the construction of 119 miles of rail line in the Central Valley. ... It looks like a good business decision to cut losses on the boondoggle.

Jack Hellner: Can Democrat politicians, who can't even complete a single state train project, be trusted to control the climate? From New York to California and Illinois in between their policies are leading to wreck and ruin.

Joel Kotkin: This Train Won’t Leave the Station If high-speed rail can’t make it in California, it can’t make it anywhere. ... Perhaps the most critical national casualty may be the Green New Deal proposed by New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Much of her platform for a ten-year transformation of the American economy centers on transportation. In her bid to kill the internal-combustion engine, Ocasio-Cortez apparently seeks to eliminate both cars and planes. Her favored solution for cross-continental travel: a massive network of high-speed trains. Some of this must seem fanciful even to the democratic-socialist heartthrob from the Bronx. In contrast with Western Europe, where several high-speed rail lines operate, the United States has huge distances between cities; its average population density is between three and ten times less compact than that of the European continent. Even on the California coast, a 450-mile high-speed rail trip from Los Angeles to San Fra...

LA Times: How the bullet train went from peak California innovation to the project from hell It was billed as the most ambitious public works project since the transcontinental railroad opened up the West. The high-speed rail network would transform California — ​cleaner air, less congested freeways and airports, and more limited suburban sprawl with a whole new style of housing around rail stops. “Fresno could become a bedroom community of the Silicon Valley,” the California High-Speed Rail Authority said a month before voters approved Proposition 1A in November 2008. Yet bite after bite, huge cost overruns, mismanagement, political concessions and delays ate away at the sleek and soaring vision of a bullet train linking San Francisco to San Diego. A project meant to drive home California’s role as the high-tech vanguard of the nation was looking more and more like a pepped-up Amtrak route through the Central Valley. ... If California regulations and liberals had been ...

Linkedin: Texas’s $15 billion Bullet Train on track to roll out next year It is basically a Houston to Dallas connection and appears to cost much less than California's troubled "bullet train to bankruptcy."

NY Times: Train Traveled at 80 M.P.H., Far Over Limit, Before Derailing The first passenger train on a newly opened Amtrak route jumped the tracks near Tacoma, killing three and injuring dozens. The National Transportation Safety Board said that before it derailed, the train had been traveling at 80 miles per hour instead of the allowable 30 m.p.h. Was the operator of the train ignoring the speed limit or was the train malfunctioning causing it to go that fast?  If the engineer survived the crash, he will have several questions to answer.

LA Times: California's bullet train is hurtling toward a multibillion-dollar overrun, a confidential federal report warns I think it was Sarah Palin who tagged it with the "bullet train to bankruptcy" early on in the Obama administration and she was right.

Fuel Fix: As some energy companies lose their grip on monopolies and can no longer rely on customers to help finance their survival, one Columbia University researcher says they could learn from the near-disappearance and resurgence of another historic American monopoly: railroads. A.J. Goulding, president of the consulting firm London Economics International, thinks that American utility companies need to brace themselves for the end of dominant energy providers and a world where customers have more choices when it comes to energy and how much they pay for it. In short, Goulding, who favors a free-market approach to utilities, thinks Texas offers a glimpse of the future, with some big adjustments. “Where we are today is trying to figure out how do we continue to have a viable electric utility sector in a more dynamic environment,” said Goulding, whose report was published by Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “Most utility executives have never lived in a world where the...

Michael Barone: California's "High-Speed" Rail boondoggle: Getting worse all the time Among its many problems: ... The fact that no airline currently offers nonstop service from either Bakersfield or Fresno, its larger neighbor to the north, to San Jose suggests that the demand for high-speed service over this stretch is severely limited. ... Another point: As McQuillen and Park point out, the High-Speed Rail folks have abandoned the original plans for dedicated track from San Jose to San Francisco and from Los Angeles to Anaheim. Genuine high-speed rail, like Japan's Shinkansen (which was opened in 1964) and France's TGV, requires dedicated track. Otherwise, the trains have to slow down so they won't run into commuter or freight trains on the same track. So instead of the promised two hours and 50 minutes to get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco, the "high-speed" train is going to take about four hours. ... There is m...

Zero Hedge: One Day After Obama Kills Keystone XL Pipeline Another Buffett-Owned Oil Tanker Train Derails In Wisconsin The anti energy forces alternatives means of transportation that is more dangerous for the environment.  And, as further proof of the point Fuel Fix reports: 2nd train derails in Wisconsin in 2 days, spills crude oil Those who oppose the pipeline need to have their right to buy fuel restricted until they come to their senses. Update: Third Freight Train Derails (Second Owned By Buffett) Days After Obama Kills Keystone Pipeline You may want to short his insurance carrier?

NY Times: Senate Democrats Press G.O.P. to Fully Fund Amtrak Senate Democrats have asked their Republican colleagues to fully fund Amtrak in the wake of last week’s deadly accident in Philadelphia and after a House panel cut the railroad’s appropriation. Democrats want the rest of the country to subsidize nineteenth century technology mainly for the benefit of blue states in the northeast.  Even with a government monopoly, and subsidies this form of transportation struggles to survive.  Buses are probably a more economical alternative.  Using a train wreck as a sales pitch is laughable.  Before making this pitch they should at least figure out why the train sped up to over twice the speed limit going into a curve.  Since that was the obvious cause of the accident, infrastructure spending is not going to solve that problem.

NY Times: Amtrak Wreck Took Place at 100 M.P.H., Investigators Find The Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, killing at least 7 people, was traveling at twice the speed limit on that stretch of track, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. This will create quite a liability issue for Amtrak.  Which means tax payers maybe on teh hook for much of the damages caused by a speeding train.

AP/Fuel Fix: Fuel-hauling trains could derail at 10 a year The federal government predicts that trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades, causing more than $4 billion in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people if an accident happens in a densely populated part of the U.S. In their attempt to inconvenience the transport of fossil fuels the anti energy left is creating a more dangerous situation forcing producers to transport more of their oil on trains.  They are making things more dangerous for people and the environment and driving up costs to consumers.  It is a further demonstration of the bad faith of some environmentalist and Democrats with their opposition to such projects as the Keystone XL.

Michael Barone: President Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown are enchanted with high-speed rail projects. They argue that it is the transportation mode of the future (though Japan’s Shinkansen, the bullet train, went into operation in time for the 1964 Olympics, more than 50 years ago), that it will save energy (even though it uses electricity, which California is currently importing from high-carbon-emitting coal-fired electric plants) and that it will be convenient to users (who, though residents of spread out metro areas, are expected to flock to high-density and low-parking-facility station areas). I have another nominee for the transportation mode of the future — or actually the present: buses. As this article by Wendell Cox at Joel Kotkin’s newgeography.com website shows, there has been a significant increase in intercity bus lines in recent years. And not just in the Northeast Corridor, but in Texas as well. Cox argues that buses make economic sense on trips of 350 miles o...

Politico: A streetcar not desired? Efforts to resurrect a classic type of transit have derailed. The Obama administration is pushing them, but they are suffering from cost overruns and low ridership.  This attempt to return to 19th century transportation is as misguided as their other rail projects.

Reuters: With high-speed rail in the United States long on plans and short on construction, a Texas company is aiming to fast-track service between Dallas and Houston. The Texas Central Railway Company plans to use private investment and Central Japan Railway bullet train technology to run a line between two of the largest U.S. cities. Company officials say service could begin in 2021. "If we can’t do it in Texas, I don't know where in the United States you could do it," said Richard Lawless, chairman and chief executive officer of Texas Central Railway, a private company set up about four years ago to build high-speed rail. Lawless said the project, which has been estimated to cost $10 billion, will be financed through a combination of debt and equity. Backers of the service contend that if they can get their line built, it will show the benefits of high-speed service and could help jump-start other projects that have languished. Dallas and Houston are separated by abo...

AP/Fuel Fix: North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple opened a federal hearing in Fargo about rail service delays in the upper Plains by reading a letter from a grain elevator that said Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. was 525 cars behind in its service. The Wilton Farmers Union Elevator also told the governor that as of last month it was still waiting for a train that had been scheduled to arrive on April 8. That backlog has caused what Dalrymple told the National Surface Transportation Board on Thursday was an “emergency situation” — acres of corn, soybeans and wheat are at record levels in the Dakotas and Minnesota, but there’s no place to move it. In North Dakota alone, more than 15 percent of the 2013 grain is still in storage, although that number is more like 90 percent at the Wilton elevator. “I would seriously ask you to consider this an emergency situation,” Dalrymple told the three-member panel that oversees railroad service issues. He was among dozens of officials from the Dak...