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Rail authority approves plan to bring bullet trains to California
File: A picture taken on August 11, 2011 show two CRH380BL bullet trains (bottom) sitting at Beijing south railway station.
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Rail authority approves plan to bring bullet trains to California
California’s High-Speed Rail Authority has approved a revised business plan to bring bullet trains to the Golden State, promising to put Anaheim back on the high-speed route.
The revised business plan costs $68 billion, about $30 billion less than last year’s plan. It plans to use some existing rail lines instead of building all new ones.
It invests $2 billion in upgrading commuter trains in San Francisco and the greater Los Angeles area. It hopes to get high-speed rail trains running within a decade.
Orange County leaders didn’t like the revised plan because riders would have to transfer at Union Station to continue on to Anaheim on a Metrolink diesel train instead of a bullet train.
Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, state lawmakers and a business group that included the Disney company all contacted high-speed rail chief Dan Richard.
He said that when it "looked as though they might be pushed back in terms of service, or have a second class of service because of a transfer, they immediately realized that’s not what they want for their county."
Just moments before the Rail Authority approved their plan, they adopted an amendment promising to restore Anaheim as a bullet train destination... without specifying how to do that.
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Richard said they could electrify Anaheim’s existing tracks and figure out a way to share them with Amtrak and Metrolink.
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