 |
|
|
|||||
The Trump administration is once again targeting California’s controversial high-speed rail project, with federal transportation officials on Thursday announcing an investigation and possible withdrawal of about $4 billion in federal funding.Voters first approved $10 billion in bond money in 2008 for a project designed to shuttle riders between San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. It was slated to cost $33 billion and be finished by 2020. But the project has been beset by funding challenges, cost overruns, and delays.Now, state officials are focused on a 171-mile (275-kilometer) stretch connecting the Central Valley cities of Bakersfield and Merced, which is set to be operating by 2033. The entire San Francisco to Los Angeles line will now cost an estimated $106 billion to finish and officials hope to complete it in the next 20 years if there is money.“I am directing my staff to review and determine whether the (California High-Speed Rail Authority) has followed through on the commitments it made to receive billions of dollars in federal funding. If not, I will have to consider whether that money could be given to deserving infrastructure projects elsewhere in the United States,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a news conference in Los Angeles.President Donald Trump canceled nearly $1 billion in federal funding for the high-speed rail project in 2019, during his first term. The Biden administration later restored the funding and, in December 2023, allocated $3.3 billion more.Losing that money would be a major blow to the project. The rail authority’s most recent business plan counts on receiving up to $8 billion in federal money to help close a funding gap.Ian Choudri, CEO of the California’s High-Speed Rail Authority, which oversees planning and funding for the project, said he welcomes the investigation.“With multiple independent federal and state audits completed, every dollar is accounted for, and we stand by the progress and impact of this project,” Choudri said.He said the project has created nearly 15,000 jobs and that more than 50 major structures have been completed so far.Several Republican Congress members have taken aim at the project over its costs. On Thursday, Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley, who represents 3rd Congressional District that stretches alongside much of the state’s border with Nevada and includes Sacramento’s northeastern suburbs, called the California high-speed rail “the worst public infrastructure failure in U.S. history.”“There is no plausible scenario where the cost to federal or state taxpayers can be justified. It is past time to stop throwing good money after bad, and we must formally end this project,” said Kiley, who introduced a bill earlier this year to make the project ineligible for further federal funding.Kiley joined Duffy in Los Angeles’s Union Station for the announcement of the probe. Those present were interrupted at times by booing by about 30 demonstrators. The protesters also chanted “build the rail!” and held up signs that read “CA has no king” and “Don’t delay our train.”Eli Lipmen, executive director of Move LA, an organization that advocates for efficient public transit systems, said the high-speed train project remains popular among many Californians.“They said they’re going to start an investigation, but come on, this is a sham investigation,” Lipmen, who was at Union Station during the announcement, told KABC-TV.Greg Regan and Shari Semelsberger, president and secretary-treasurer of the Transportation Trades Department coalition that includes all the country’s rail unions, said the project is the most ambitious and innovative transportation project in the country and urged Trump to become “a Builder-in-Chief by bringing high-speed rail to America.”“Building ambitious projects requires bold leadership and a commitment to getting the job done. Just last year, President Trump complained that the United States does not have bullet trains similar to Japan. We agree with him that it is past time for our country to have these kinds of modern, efficient, high-capacity transportation systems,” they said in a statement.
Category:
E-Commerce
The one-bedroom cottage with a woodsy vibe reminded Heather McAlpine of the home she lost to the brutal Los Angeles-area wildfires. But only two hours after seeing the listing, the rental was snapped up.She is one of tens of thousands of people displaced by the fires who is now competing for housing in a region that is among the most expensive and competitive in the country, partly due to lack of supply.McAlpine, had lived in her Altadena house for four years and is now staying with her boyfriend. She isn’t surprised by spiking rents.“I know they’re expensive, and it sucks,” she said.Tenants who were just getting by before the fires now face a daunting housing search after the January fires leveled entire neighborhoods. The L.A. fires destroyed more than 16,000 homes, businesses and other structures in upscale Pacific Palisades and working-class Altadena, where the U.S. Census reports 22% of homes were occupied by renters.It’s hard to quantify exactly how the wildfires are affecting the rental market, but L.A. rents rose faster than prices nationwide in January compared to the previous month, according to housing platform Zillow.The added competition from residents displaced by the fires is likely to worsen housing affordability, increase overcrowding and contribute to homelessness, says Sarah Karlinsky, research director at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. Already, more than half of all renter householdsor a little over one million householdsin L.A. County spend 30% or more of their income on rent.Shane Phillips, housing initiative project manager at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, expects prices to increase significantly for months, if not a few years.“There’s only so many people moving at any given time, and suddenly adding another 20,000 households to that amount is just an extraordinary pressure,” he said.Rental pageviews in L.A. County on the real estate platform Redfin are up 50% from a year ago, said Daryl Fairweather, the company’s chief economist.She said people will feel the impact of “shorter supply, more fierce competition for rentals.”Egregious rents cropped up soon after the fires broke out, prompting an ad-hoc group of tenant organizers, web programmers and others to crowdsource examples. The Rent Brigade found more than 1,300 examples of illegal rent increases advertised between January 7 and January 18. Many have since been removed or relisted at lower prices.California Attorney General Rob Bonta has warned repeatedly of the state’s anti-gouging laws, which limits price increases to no more than 10% from whatever the price was before the emergency. His office has so far filed three misdemeanor criminal price-gouging charges.A 10% cap is still too high for Wendy Dlakic. She was paying about $3,000 a month for a now uninhabitable two-bedroom condo in Altadena, a community she loved. She’s searched rental websites, but for now is staying with friends, family and at Airbnbs.“It was already expensive,” said Dlakic, an educator who moved to Southern California two years ago. “It’s tough to be in L.A. on one income. You’re right on the edge, you know?”The “typical rent” in the U.S. was $1,968 as of January 31up 0.2% from the previous month, according to Zillow. But in the L.A. metro area, the typical rent was up 0.8% to $2,954. Zillow calculates the typical rent figure by averaging the middle 30% of rents.Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, says fears of rent-gouging have been overblown by tenant advocates and he’s angry that Bonta has filed criminal charges.“Some mistakes were unknowingly made,” he said. “If these infractions were pointed out to these few owners, corrections would have surely been made immediately.”McAlpine, the displaced tenant, realized the Eaton Fire was coming for her in-law unit while she was helping to evacuate neighbors as a Altadena Mountain Rescue Team volunteer. She scooped up her cat, ski gear and camera equipment and fled the 300-square-foot (28-square-meter) cottage.She’s grateful for donations through GoFundMe, which will help with essentials, but is worried about finding a standalone unit close to nature and within her monthly budget of $1,800 for rent and utilities.The cottage that McAlpine, a photographer, and her boyfriend wanted was listed for $2,750 a month. Even though they have a bigger budget together, the hunt has been dispiriting.“I’m quickly looking for the photos. ‘Oh, does this look sketchy or not?’ Or, ‘you know, is this the right price?'” she said. “It’s just very different from how I would normally look for a place to live.” Janie Har and Damian Dovarganes, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
The termination letters that ended the careers of thousands of U.S. Forest Service employees mean fewer people and less resources will be available to help prevent and fight wildfires, raising the specter of even more destructive blazes across the American West, fired workers and officials said.The Forest Service firingson the heels of deadly blazes that ripped through Los Angeles last monthare part of a wave of federal worker layoffs, as President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting measures reverberate nationwide.Workers who maintained trails, removed combustible debris from forests, supported firefighters and secured funds for wildfire mitigation say staffing cuts threaten public safety, especially in the West, where drier and hotter conditions linked to climate change have increased the intensity of wildfires.“I’m terrified of that,” said Tanya Torst, who was fired from her position as a U.S. Forest Service partnership coordinator in Chico, California, on February 14. Torst, whose probationary period was set to end in March, worked with groups to bring in nearly $12 million for removing dead trees and other fuels in the Mendocino National Forest.“This is 100% a safety thing,” she said of her concerns, recalling the deadly Paradise blaze that killed 85 people east of Chico in 2018. “That’s why I’m speaking out.”The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said in a statement that Secretary Brooke Rollins supports Trump’s directive to fire about 2,000 “probationary, non-firefighting employees,” which he said was for efficiency’s sake. Rollins is committed to “preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted,” the statement said.The statement didn’t address the fired workers who were responsible for removing combustible fuels and other projects aiming to lower a wildfire’s intensity.The Trump administration has frozen funds for wildfire prevention programs supported by legislation championed by former President Joe Biden, the Associated Press reported. Programs not funded by that legislation can continue, an Interior Department statement said.U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, a Washington state Democrat, said on the social platform X that the Forest Service layoffs are already hurting the state, “and it is only going to get worse. Fire season is coming.”The Washington state Department of Natural Resources said the firings forced them to develop contingency plans to deal with a “degraded federal force this coming fire season.”Melanie Mattox Green, who was fired from her land management and environmental planning job at the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana, said their fire-prevention efforts prioritized areas where towns border forest lands. Staffing cuts put those towns at risk, she said.“If a fire breaks out now without these projects occurring, that fire is going to be far more dangerous to our local communities,” she said.The cuts also mean fewer people will keep trails free of fallen trees and other debris, she said. Maintaining trails is critical in remote areas that firefighters access by foot.“Without those trails being cleared, it means that now firefighters cannot easily and more effectively get to these fires to fight them,” she said.Many Forest Service workers who don’t occupy official firefighter positions still have firefighting certifications, known as a “red card,” that must be renewed annually. Josh Vega, who maintained 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers) of trails as a forestry technician in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana before being fired, said his crew was the first to arrive at a wildfire that broke out in 2023.For about two days, Vega’s crew monitored the blaze before firefighters arrived. “We spent the next few days keeping an eye on the fire, making sure that the trailheads were all closed and that the public knew what was happening so that they wouldn’t find themselves in a predicament.”Many Forest Service operations involve supporting firefighters beyond fire season, including surveying areas for prescribed burns or ensuring trail access, said Luke Tobin, who was fired from his forestry technician role in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest.“Everybody helps with fire in some aspect, some way, shape or form,” he said.Gregg Bafundo, who was fired last week from his post as a wilderness ranger and wildland firefighter at the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest, said the staffing cuts came at a critical time.“This is the time of year when they hire everybody,” he said during a press conference organized by Washington Sen. Patty Murray. “It’s the time of year when firefighters renew their red cards and practice redeploying their fire shelters. This is when they train to be ready to fight next summer’s fires.“We can’t train while the fire is burning over the hill.” Martha Bellisle and Claire Rush, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||