"The California High Speed Rail Authority has a new plan to complete the necessary construction for 119 miles of track in the Central Valley by 2022, as required by federal grant agreements. They’re going to build the track in non-continuous 5-mile segments.

Just when you thought nothing could be more ridiculous than the plan to run the bullet train between San Jose and an orchard near Wasco, the rail authority announces a plan to build segments of track that don’t connect to each other."



This got overlooked 2 weeks ago.

[www.latimes.com]

"The California bullet train authority is moving ahead with an aggressive plan to issue its biggest contract in history, steering into sharp criticism by federal regulators and even the state-appointed peer review panel that it is overreaching.

The agency took a key step last week toward issuing a 30-year-long contract to install track, set up high-voltage electrical lines, create a digital signaling system, build a heavy maintenance train garage and obligate future maintenance of the equipment and track.

It would cover future track from San Jose to Bakersfield, more than half the proposed Los Angeles-to-San Francisco system. It would lock the state into a maintenance contract, as well as equipment, on segments that it currently does not have money to build."


"If the state fails to accelerate its current slow work pace, it could end up not having all the civil work completed to install track by 2022.

To help manage that, the state plans to install track in non-continuous 5-mile segments, a plan that federal regulators said is complex and would prevent a “calculated or logical progression.” The letter was signed by Juliana Shu Barnes, a career civil servant who is a project manager."