The negotiation of the CHSRA bond funding commitment MOU with the Southern California agencies took less than a month. This MOU on funding shared investments in the Bay Area is taking slightly longer, but will have the same result. This new tone is a major change in direction at the CHRSRA by the new Brown majority.

It is quite clear that the "cost is no object" nonsense that was being pushed by Pringle, Kopp, Umberg, and the former majority on the CHSRA Board, which had wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on useless planning for a bloated and unaffordable system design, is just about over.....

If they keep up this up kind of sane/almost responsible behavior, the CHSRA and the Federal funds they have received might actually build a few things California passenger rail could actually use?

The next move will be what to do with the Oildale to Coalinga segment from nowhere to nowhere. It's purely my intuition on this one, but these moves appear to be setting up options for possibly reprogramming those funds. This would have to be done within the next three months to keep the funding from lapsing, if this segment cannot be programmed, due to likely lengthy legal challenges. There are reports that this is one of the issues that may have been discussed with the Secretary when he was in LA, this week.

There are rumors that the Florida ARRA "turn back" funds for "HS" grade separations in Fresno, may also be the subject of yet another CHSRA Local Agency MOU, which would let the local agencies take over that "troubled" project segment from the CHSRA.