CALIFORNIA’S high-speed railway—the largest public-works programme currently underway in America—overcame a serious challenge on March 25th, which would have taken bonds issued to help pay for the railway and reallocated the money to water projects. Unable to collect enough signatures to put the proposition on next November's ballot, the backers have now postponed the measure for two years. Had it been successful, the proposal would have dealt a death blow to the high-speed rail project by deleting its biggest single source of funding.
That is the second time in recent weeks that the $64 billion high-speed rail project linking Los Angeles to San Francisco has come close to being stopped in its tracks. What promised to be the most serious of a number of law suits threatening to derail the project was thrown out by a superior court in Sacramento on March 8th. There was no evidence, the judge concluded, that the California High-Speed Rail Authority had failed to meet its statutory obligations, as the plaintiffs alleged. The court, nevertheless, left the door open for the case to be...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1MKruzW
EmoticonEmoticon