California Democrats are up in arms because a $647 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to Caltrain for system electrification has yet to be provided.  They blame the 14 California House Republicans in D.C. who all signed a letter January 24, 2017, saying simply this:  no further money should be provided, until California...

Editor’s Note:  It is difficult to find a better example of how California’s labor movement fails ordinary workers than their support for high speed rail. Because that project, using foreign sourced materials and yielding virtually no benefits – economic, environmental, or societal – that justify the cost, is at the expense of projects that are...

Editor’s Note: There are dozens of major infrastructure investments that would yield positive economic returns to Californians. Spending over $100 billion on high-speed rail is definitely not one of them. But as Kevin Dayton explains in this article, even the environmental benefits of high speed rail are questionable, if not a complete fabrication. This isn’t...

Before submitting its business plan to the state legislature every two years, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is required to produce a draft and encourage public comments. Its new 2014 draft plan includes a deceptive paragraph touting the union Project Labor Agreement added to bid specifications without any public deliberation or vote. This deserves public...

Even close observers of the California High-Speed Rail Authority have struggled to track developments for the state’s planned bullet train. The debacle began in November 2008, when 52.7% of California voters approved Proposition 1A and triggered serious planning for what could be the most expensive construction project in human history. With that kind of money...

A common and enduring complaint of the political Left is that constitutional structures established in the country’s republican form of government hinder progress and subvert the democratic will of the people. According to such thinking, those constitutional structures need to be reformed and modernized so that government can be more “democratic.” A few astute political observers...

On May 28, 2013, the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for the U.S. House of Representatives held a field hearing in Madera, California on oversight of the California High-Speed Rail project. Unlike San Francisco, where 78.4% of voters approved Proposition 1A in November 2008 to authorize borrowing...

The explosion of Project Labor Agreements on government projects in California since the November 6 elections is not surprising to long-time observers of labor union initiatives at local governments. In the six months after the November 2008 Presidential Election, emboldened and confident construction trade unions won Project Labor Agreements at eleven local governments in California. It...

Documents obtained on April 29, 2013 through a request under the authority of the California Public Records Act reveal behind-the-scenes maneuvering for a government mandate that construction companies sign a Project Labor Agreement with the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California as a condition of building California’s High-Speed Rail. Getting these records was not a simple task....

It’s a heady time to be a top construction union official in California, as the California High-Speed Rail Authority presumably now holds proposals from as many as five design-build consortiums to build the first segment of the $68 billion project. If this project moves forward, it will become part of the pantheon of huge American infrastructure projects...