California Republicans are proposing to divert federal grants for the state’s high-speed rail program to improving U.S. Highway 99 instead. Highway 99 is the major route through California’s Central Valley connecting Modesto, Fresno, and Bakersfield, while Interstate 5 skips those major cities. Highway 99 is highly congested and is in relatively poor shape, and Representatives Denham, Nunes, and McCarthy argue that fixing and expanding it would do more for the region’s economy at a lower cost than high-speed rail.
Over in China, the head of the country’s high-speed rail authority was fired for some combination of corruption and poor quality construction. Recent reports found that low-quality concrete was used in constructing some Chinese high-speed rail routes, which is likely to create maintenance headaches and force slow-downs in the trains in as little as five year.