History
The cost of the initial San Francisco-to-Anaheim segment was originally estimated by the CHSRA to be $35.7 billion (2009) / $38.7 billion (2012) / $42.5 billion (YOE), but a revised business plan released in November 2011 by the CHSRA put the cost at $65.4 billion (2010) / $69.7 billion (2012) / $98.5 billion (YOE). The latest plan has revised the costs down to $53.4 billion (2011) / $55.2 billion (2012) / $68.4 billion (YOE). An implementation plan approved in August 2005 estimated that it would take eight to eleven years to "develop and begin operation of an initial segment of the California high-speed train." It would have also shared tracks with Caltrain and Metrolink using a quadruple track configuration.
On December 2, 2010, the CHSRA board voted to begin construction on the first 54 mi (87 km) of the system 3 mi (4.8 km) south of Madera at Borden, and continue through downtown Fresno to Corcoran. On December 20, 2010, with the infusion of an additional $616 million in federal funds reallocated from states that canceled their high-speed rail plans, the initial segment of construction was extended to Bakersfield. Another $300 million was reallocated on May 9, 2011, extending the funded portion north to the future Chowchilla Wye, so that the train can be turned. Construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2013.
In September 2012, the Obama administration gave California's high speed rail project the green light. President Obama put the project on a fast track. President Obama's plan would streamline the permitting process for the 114 mile section of the project which starts just North of Fresno in Madera County and runs South to Bakersfield. The White House says it will shave six months off the construction time.
Read more about this topic: California High-Speed Rail
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)