#High-Speed Rail Projects

[nnctales]

India's Ambitious Mega Projects: Shaping the Future of Infrastructure and Economic Growth

India, with its burgeoning economy and visionary approach to infrastructure development, is embarking on a remarkable journey through numerous mega projects. These ambitious undertakings span various sectors, from transportation and energy to maritime infrastructure and urban development. These projects not only showcase India’s commitment to innovation and progress but also have the potential to…

[eltristanexplicitcontent]

Critical Infrastructure | FULL ACCESS drone flight

[ookaookaooka]

just had a thought that universal healthcare would be better for the environment because if there’s more people like me who want to live out in the countryside or who want to try homesteading or living off the grid but are tied to the city because of their job benefits, giving everyone free healthcare would free them up to live wherever they choose and something something less people in cities the better

[afrotumble]

Africa's First High-Speed Rail System| Gautrain: Africa's Golden Train |...

[suetravelblog]

Chinse President Xi Jinping Visits Belgrade Serbia

Belgrade Budapest Railway – ZAWYA Belgrade has been buzzing in anticipation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrival yesterday for a two-day visit. It’s Xi’s second state visit to Serbia, amid “high expectations that the ironclad friendship between the two nations will be further enriched and strengthened”. Xi’s visit was also said to be “on the occasion of Serbia marking the 25th anniversary of…

[techmarkethunter]

A Closer Look at Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL)

Title: Revolutionizing Rail Infrastructure: A Closer Look at Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) Introduction: Railways have long been the backbone of transportation infrastructure, connecting cities and fostering economic growth. In the vast landscape of rail development in India, one entity stands out for its significant contributions – Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL). Established in 2003, RVNL…

[rodspurethoughts]

Federal Railroad Administration Selects Pacific Northwest Rail Projects

Amtrak. (2023, December 11). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak_Cascades The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has announced the selection of several projects for its Corridor ID program, which aims to enhance rail infrastructure across the United States. Among the chosen corridors are three in the Pacific Northwest, including proposals by the Washington State Department of…

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #26

July 5-12 2024

The IRS announced it had managed to collect $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth tax cheats. The program focused on persons with more than $1 million in yearly income who owned more than $250,000 in unpaid taxes. Thanks to money in Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act the IRS is able to undertake more enforcement against rich tax cheats after years of Republicans cutting the agency's budget, which they hope to do again if they win power again.

The Biden administration announced a $244 million dollar investment in the federal government’s registered apprenticeship program. This marks the largest investment in the program's history with grants going out to 52 programs in 32 states. The President is focused on getting well paying blue collar opportunities to people and more people are taking part in the apprenticeship program than ever before. Republican pledge to cut it, even as employers struggle to find qualified workers.

The Department of Transportation announced the largest single project in the department's history, $11 billion dollars in grants for the The Hudson River Tunnel. Part of the $66 billion the Biden Administration has invested in our rail system the tunnel, the most complex Infrastructure project in the nation would link New York and New Jersey by rail under the Hudson. Once finished it's believed it'll impact 20% of the American economy by improving and speeding connection throughout the Northeast.

The Department of Energy announced $1.7 billion to save auto worker's jobs and convert factories to electronic vehicles. The Biden administration will used the money to save or reopen factories in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Virginia and retool them to make electric cars. The project will save 15,000 skilled union worker jobs, and created 2,900 new high-quality jobs.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development reached a settlement with The Appraisal Foundation over racial discrimination. TAF is the organization responsible for setting standards and qualifications for real estate appraisers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics last year found that TAF was 94.7% White and 0.6% Black, making it the least racially diverse of the 800 occupations surveyed. Black and Latino home owners are far more likely to have their houses under valued than whites. Under the settlement with HUD TAF will have to take serious steps to increase diversity and remove structural barriers to diversity.

The Department of Justice disrupted an effort by the Russian government to influence public opinion through AI bots. The DoJ shut down nearly 1,000 twitter accounts that were linked to a Russian Bot farm. The bots used AI technology to not only generate tweets but also AI image faces for profile pictures. The effort seemed focused on boosting support for Russia's war against Ukraine and spread negative stories/impressions about Ukraine.

The Department of Transportation announces $1.5 billion to help local authorities buy made in America buses. 80% of the funding will go toward zero or low-emission technology, a part of the President's goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050. This is part of the $5 billion the DOT has spent over the last 3 years replacing aging buses with new cleaner technology.

President Biden with Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and Finnish President Alexander Stubb signed a new agreement on the arctic. The new trilateral agreement between the 3 NATO partners, known as the ICE Pact, will boost production of ice breaking ships, the 3 plan to build as many as 90 between them in the coming years. The alliance hopes to be a counter weight to China's current dominance in the ice breaker market and help western allies respond to Russia's aggressive push into the arctic waters.

The Department of Transportation announced $1.1 billion for greater rail safety. The program seeks to, where ever possible, eliminate rail crossings, thus removing the dangers and inconvenience to communities divided by rail lines. It will also help update and improve safety measures at rail crossings.

The Department of the Interior announced $120 million to help tribal communities prepare for climate disasters. This funding is part of half a billion dollars the Biden administration has spent to help tribes build climate resilience, which itself is part of a $50 billion dollar effort to build climate resilience across the nation. This funding will help support drought measures, wildland fire mitigation, community-driven relocation, managed retreat, protect-in-place efforts, and ocean and coastal management.

The USDA announced $100 million in additional funds to help feed low income kids over the summer. Known as "SUN Bucks" or "Summer EBT" the new Biden program grants the families of kids who qualify for free meals at school $120 dollars pre-child for groceries. This comes on top of the traditional SUN Meals program which offers school meals to qualifying children over the summer, as well as the new under President Biden SUN Meals To-Go program which is now offering delivery of meals to low-income children in rural areas. This grant is meant to help local governments build up the Infrastructure to support and distribute SUN Bucks. If fully implemented SUN Bucks could help 30 million kids, but many Republican governors have refused the funding.

USAID announced its giving $100 million to the UN World Food Program to deliver urgently needed food assistance in Gaza. This will bring the total humanitarian aid given by the US to the Palestinian people since the war started in October 2023 to $774 million, the single largest donor nation. President Biden at his press conference last night said that Israel and Hamas have agreed in principle to a ceasefire deal that will end the war and release the hostages. US negotiators are working to close the final gaps between the two sides and end the war.

The Senate confirmed Nancy Maldonado to serve as a Judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Maldonado is the 202nd federal Judge appointed by President Biden to be confirmed. She will the first Latino judge to ever serve on the 7th Circuit which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Bonus: At the NATO summit in Washington DC President Biden joined 32 allies in the Ukraine compact. Allies from Japan to Iceland confirmed their support for Ukraine and deepening their commitments to building Ukraine's forces and keeping a free and Democratic Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. World leaders such as British Prime Minster Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, praised President Biden's experience and leadership during the NATO summit

[foone]

The US should revive the Superconducting Supercollider project (IT WOULD HAVE BEEN 3 TIMES BIGGER THAN THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER, A DECADE EARLIER) and the US should also heavily invest in high-speed rail.

What if we combined these two projects? We build a system that can get you from New York to LA at 0.999999991c!

6 and half hours to fly across the US? What about getting there in 13 milliseconds?

Minor downside, if the brakes fail the train will hit the LA terminal with more energy than a supernova, instantly annihilating the earth, solar system, and any inhabitable planets within 53 parsecs.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I do not think that RealLifeLore is bad or something let me make that clear I’m not trying to cancel him or something god no but I’ll be honest I don’t trust him as much since he made that video about California high speed rail that he ended up deleting.

It’s kinda hard to continue to trust an educational YouTuber after he mispronounced the name of a major town in your region and calls the train project that would make travel in your region so much easier and help your economy and help families see each other more “a train to nowhere” because like 3 million people live in that stretch of nowhere and you happen to be one of those people whose life will be impacted by that train once it’s built

[loveerran]

I am reblogging @amtrak-official for the Mormon interest angle. Not actually a sentence I thought I would write today. But seriously, there has never been a location more specifically begging for public transit and instead they want to widen the existing interstate problem.

Almost the entire state population lives along the ~2hr long I-15 corridor between Ogden in the North and Provo in the South, and it seems like everything is (aptly) within 15 minutes of I-15. Source: I drove it.

I have never seen a situation begging for public transit harder than this one. Too bad there isn't a strong, powerful, rich organization and its people in the area - all of whom claim to care about stewardship of the earth.

I did a map of a workable rail system supported by strong bus routes (feel free to do your own - see link):

[transit-fag]

So uh

You do realize construction is going on with the California High-speed Rail

Like it's actively under construction and a massive amount of work has been done on it.

This viaduct isn't the only construction project they have done

The CAHSR Authority literally posts updates constantly

[probablyasocialecologist]

Musk never had any intention of building the Hyperloop. He only needed it to help kill or substantially delay the high-speed rail project and the alternate vision of sustainable collective transportation it offered. It threatened his interests as an automaker and his elite vision of “individualized” mobility that simply worked better for him.

[...]

In the time since California started talking about high-speed rail and Elon Musk interjected with his fantasy to help sidetrack it, China moved ahead and built a network consisting of 42,000 kilometres (26,000 miles) of track. Europe is continuing to expand its own network, and Japan is building a maglev line that will run at speeds of over 500 km/h (310 mph). The first segment from Tokyo to Nagoya could open by 2027. Not to be outdone, China is working on a maglev of its own to beat its Japanese rivals. While the Hyperloop deception spread far and wide, nowhere was it stronger than in the United States. As countries around the world moved forward with real transport improvements, North Americans were distracted by the fantasies of clueless, but self-confident tech moguls. They left people trapped in their cars and denied better options to get around that people in many other parts of the world — even those that are quite a bit poorer — take for granted. Now all they can do is shovel money at automakers to try to power cars with batteries instead of internal combustion engines. They have no vision for a better, less car dependent alternative.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Trudeau government will announce plans for a high-speed train linking Quebec City and Toronto in the coming weeks, Radio-Canada has learned.

Proponents of the project hope the train will take passengers from Montreal to Toronto in three hours. By car, it takes about five-and-a-half hours to travel between the two cities.

Sources told Radio-Canada the train will travel 300 kilometres per hour — double the speed of Via Rail's current trains.

Ottawa announced plans back in 2021 to build what it called a "high-frequency" (HFR) rail corridor with stops in Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Laval and Quebec City. Sources told Radio-Canada the federal government has now decided the Toronto-Quebec City link will be high-speed. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[mapsontheweb]

The state of high-speed rail projects in the United States

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #36

September 27-October 4 2024

President Biden and Vice-President Harris have lead the federal response to Hurricane Helene. President Biden's leadership earned praise from the Republican Governors of South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia, as well as the Democratic Governor of North Carolina and local leaders. Thousands of federal workers are on the ground in effected communities having given out to date over 8 million meals, over 7 million letters of water. Both President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been on the ground in resent days meeting with effected families. During her trip to Georgia Vice-President Harris announced that the federal government will reimburse state and local government 100% of the costs from Hurricane Helene.

A strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association that briefly shut down ports on the East Cost and Gulf ended in a tentative deal. Both sides thanked Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for helping push the deal through. President Biden and Vice-President Harris had expressed solidarity with the works when the strike was announced and President Biden directed Secretary Buttigieg to take the lead in pressuring management to make a deal with the Longshoremen. The ILA got a 62% raise as part of the agreement.

Vice President Harris announced new actions to help those struggling with medical debt. This actions include new standards from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on debt collection. the CFPB plans on requiring debt collectors to confirm debts are valid and accurate before engaging in collection actions. As well as cracking down on debt collectors that collect on debt that is not owed by patients. Other actions included an announcement by the DoD that it was reducing pricing for civilians who get medical treatment at DoD hospitals and a track down on tax-exempt hospitals who are required by law to offer financial assistance but often do not. These steps come after Vice President Harris in June announced plans to remove medical debt from credit scores. Following the Vice President's call to action North Carolina moved forward a plan to eliminate medical debt for 2 million people in the state. President Biden's American Rescue Plan funds have been used by state and local Democrats to eliminate $7 billion dollars in medical debt.

The Department of Transportation announced $62 Billion in infrastructure funding for 2025. Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by President Biden this will be $18 billion dollars more than was spent in 2021. The Biden-Harris Admin has helped support over 60,000 infrastructure projects across all 50 states, rebuilding roads and bridges, breaking ground on America's first high speed rail, updating ports and airports, and breaking high speed internet to rural communities.

The Department of Transportation announced $1 Billion dollars of investment in America's passenger rail future. This comes on top of $8.2 billion in investments announced in December 2023. The funds will help expand and modernize intercity passenger rail nationwide.

The Departments of Energy and Agriculture announced a $2.8 billion joint project to bring 100% carbon pollution-free energy to the rural midwest. The DoE is investing $1.5 billion into helping bring the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan back on-line. Shut down in 2022 plans to refit and reopen it to allow the plant to keep generating clean energy till 2051. Once back online the Palisades Nuclear Plant will help stop an anticipated 4.47 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year, or 111 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime. The USDA is investing $1.3 billion in two rural electric cooperatives, Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy, which cover rural communities in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. This investment will help Wolverine and Hoosier connect to the Palisades Plant, reduce prices for customers, and reduce climate pollution, putting Wolverine Power on the path to be 100 percent carbon-free energy before 2030.

The Treasury and the IRS announced that 30 million Americans, across 24 states will qualify for free direct filing of their taxes in 2025. The IRS says that the average American spends $270 dollars and 13 hours filing their taxes. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by President Biden with Vice President Harris' tie breaking vote, Americans will be able to file their taxes quickly and for free directly with the IRS. Tax payers in Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming will in 2025 be able to use direct file.

The USDA announced $7.7 billion in funding for Climate-Smart Practices on Agricultural Lands. This represents the single biggest investment in these programs in USDA history. Since implementation began in 2023 this conservation assistance has helped over 28,500 farmers and ranchers apply conservation to 361 million acres of land.

The Department of Energy announced $1.5 billion in investments in transmission infrastructure to help ensure our grid is reliable and resilient. This will help support nearly 1,000 miles of new transmission lines across Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. These lines will bring 7,100 MW of new capacity and create 9,000 good paying union jobs. Studies find to keep up with growth and meet our climate goals of carbon free energy the US will need to triple the 2020 transmission capacity by 2050. This is an important step to meeting that goal.