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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Australian high-speed rail has barely left the station – some experts say a new US project shows a better way
Progress has been slow on the proposed high-speed rail line between Sydney and Newcastle since the establishment of the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) in 2023, and the federal government is yet to commit to building the megaproject. But some experts say there may be a cheaper and easier way to do it, pointing to a US example of what can be achieved. The Newcastle-Sydney high-speed rail line is estimated to cost at least $30bn and take well over a decade to build. The HSRA has spent its infancy developing yet another business case, starting with Sydney-Newcastle, to ultimately form part of a Melbourne-Brisbane line in the second half of this century. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Geotechnical drilling has begun to determine how to tackle the mammoth task of traversing the Hawkesbury River with services that can reach a top speed of 320km/h. Meanwhile, Infrastructure Australia is evaluating its business case and will shortly make a recommendation. By contrast, a longer line linking the eastern outskirts of Los Angeles with Las Vegas at similar speeds is being built for a fraction of the cost and time. The private-led Brightline West represents an approach that is in many ways the polar opposite of how Labor is pursuing the technology in Australia, experts say. With construction estimates soaring, experts are now questioning if Australia is letting perfect be the enemy of good and risking a cost blowout that would crush the chance of the line ever being built. The HSRA plans to establish a service between central Sydney and Newcastle's Broadmeadow, running end-to-end in an hour, with a stop at Gosford. The journey on the existing Newcastle-Sydney line takes about 2.5 hours, almost half an hour longer than an express service achieved in the mid-20th century. The HSRA chief executive, Tim Parker, wants to build dedicated dual tracks so that high-speed trains won't have to interact with slower trains, a contrasting approach to how high-speed rail expanded in most countries. Spain's high-speed train, for example, shares sections of track with slower services. While it must slow down in certain sections, this philosophy presents an opportunity to roll out fast train technology in stages and more cheaply. Not only is building a dedicated line more expensive, the Sydney-Newcastle corridor will require an engineering feat to construct what would be the world's longest rail tunnel to allow trains to cross the Hawkesbury River without compromising speed. 'They've picked a starting stretch that is the hardest and most expensive part of the entire east coast,' says Garry Glazebrook, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney. The business case has not yet been made public, but the price tag is expected to be eye-watering. Modelling for the New South Wales government's 2019 plan to build a line without federal help reportedly predicted it would cost about $30bn and take 12 years to build just the first stage from Gosford through the Hawkesbury to a station at Sydney Olympic Park – a cheaper option than Central. The costs proved too great. The then Perrottet government abandoned the plan at the end of 2022. Brightline West broke ground in April 2024. Despite covering a 315km point-to-point distance – nearly three times as long as Newcastle-Sydney – construction is expected to be completed swiftly, with services for the 2hr 10min trip to be operating in time for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The project's most up-to-date budget is US$12.5bn (about A$19.5bn), already overrun from a 2020 estimate of US$8bn, but still a fraction of the cost of the Australian proposal. Brightline West – owned by Fortress Investment Group – is funded by a mix of equity, private finance, federal government grants and California and Nevada state-issued tax-exempt bonds for private ventures in the public interest. It is entirely unrelated to the California state government's plan for an LA-San Francisco line, which has been held up as an example of disastrous infrastructure projects in the US. Approved in 2008, no track has yet been laid and cost estimates have more than tripled to US$128bn. Donald Trump has vowed to block federal funds previously promised to the LA-San Francisco project, but administration officials appear satisfied with Biden-era commitments to the Brightline model. Those costs and timeframe may appear ambitious, but Brightline has already established a Miami-Orlando line that reaches 200km/h – just shy of the high-speed definition. The first section, between Miami and West Palm Beach, broke ground in 2014 and was in service by 2018. Brightline West's impressive price tag and timeframe are only achievable through several compromises. Most of the line will initially run along a single track with passing loops , reducing speed accordingly. It will also share its corridor with the Interstate 15 Highway. The track will be built down the I-15's median strip, with trains travelling alongside road traffic, similar to a number of existing rail lines in Perth. This delivers serious savings. Building just one track is cheaper, and land acquisition and permissions are streamlined. Perhaps the greatest compromise is that Brightline West will terminate in Rancho Cucamonga, on the eastern outskirts of LA. While avoiding costly construction in built-up urban areas, passengers will need to connect to existing, slower rail to make the 67km journey to Union station in the heart of the city's downtown. Building anything in Australia is expensive, and rail even more so. Alon Levy is the co-lead of the transportation and land use program at New York University's Marron Institute, and researches why construction costs differ between countries. He believes Newcastle-Sydney already has unnecessary costs baked in thanks to overly prescriptive demands from government. 'It's a foolish requirement this early on to not share any tracks with commuter lines,' Levy says. 'You leave less space for the experts to find cheaper workarounds and drive innovation.' Australia's rail industry is another problem, Levy believes. Australian governments rely heavily on consultants for infrastructure planning, a symptom of the hollowing out of departments of expertise. 'This problem is common in Anglosphere governments,' Levy says. They bring in outside consultants who work on one thing then disband and the expertise vanishes.' Levy believes an Australian government – either the commonwealth or NSW – should establish a 'public sector consultant unit' for rail expertise, which it can then provide to other states to work on their projects at cost, a model successfully proven in France and Italy. The profit motive of companies such as Brightline can also bring down costs by pushing the limits of what is possible. 'They go out to the market and challenge their suppliers … to push the technical limits, so trains can move through difficult stretches and save the company from spending billions moving dirt around,' one rail source who requested anonymity says. 'But in Australia, governments want already proven technology, they want a safer bet that is future-proofed, and that often means being overengineered and double the cost necessary. It's always got to be the gold standard.' Rail unions also increase construction and operating costs. 'Unions have enormous say, it's just the way we work in Australia,' Glazebrook says. Union pressure is broadly seen as having pushed NSW to build new metro tracks for driverless trains with a private operator. A separate rail source, unable to be named due to their work, said the new metro extension under Sydney harbour could not have been built had it been subject to existing Sydney Trains union agreements, due to the line's gradient. Herein lies a catch-22, Glazebrook says. By adopting the proven European approach – staged building using existing tracks already subject to union agreements – construction and operation are beholden to stringent standards that increase the cost and timeframes of projects. Building dedicated tracks is a way to bypass such pressures and can allow for the automation of driving and fewer staffing requirements, saving money on operations once the line is running. But construction costs will soar. 'You throw everything together and you get a real bloody mess,' Glazebrook says. Experts are now questioning if Newcastle-Sydney is the smartest place to start. Glazebrook still backs the proposal put by his group, Fastrack Australia, for the HSRA to begin by upgrading the Sydney-Canberra line in stages to high-speed capability. Its easier terrain makes it lower-hanging fruit, even if trains don't run along the Federal Highway's median strip. Others say Canberra-Sydney more closely resembles the value proposition of Brightline West – the potential to capture market share where air or car trips have dominated. Taxpayers currently foot the huge travel bill of bureaucrats and politicians flying between Canberra and Sydney. The existing train service takes about four and a half hours – a 90-minute high-speed alternative could attract that business to rail instead. The existing Newcastle-Sydney service – ticketed at $11 – takes only an hour and a half longer than the proposed high-speed trip. While local rail experts are not proposing to copy Brightline's model exactly, most agree there are attitudes worth adopting to avoid Australia's high-speed rail ambition being shelved. 'We don't want to let perfect be the enemy of the good,' Glazebrook says.
Miami Herald
13-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Why Is US High-Speed Rail Taking So Long?
High-speed rail has been touted as one of the top priorities by many politicians in the U.S., but despite almost two decades of talk, the country's top projects are barely taking off. In the past 20 years, in which countries like China have laid more than 25,000 miles of high-speed rail track, the top U.S. projects have barely gotten started, causing the technology's top proponents to ask the big question: What's taking so long? The largest high-speed rail project being worked on is in California, where 500 miles of track are planned to connect San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. Originally approved by voters in 2008, the project is only ready to start laying track this year, after costs spiraled from $40 billion to as high as $128 billion. The smaller-scale Texas high-speed rail project, which would connect Dallas with Houston over 240 miles, was first proposed in the 2000s but has yet to break ground, despite partnerships with investors from Japan who have a proven track record with bullet trains. On their current timelines, neither project is set to become fully operational before 2030, meaning from beginning to end, their planning and construction will take more than two decades, assuming there are no further delays. One of the biggest barriers the projects face is political opposition. Infrastructure projects are costly, take a long time to yield any benefit, and the nature of high-speed rail means that a lot of stakeholders in a variety of locations need to be on board. In the U.S., that consensus does not exist. The California high-speed rail system has faced repeated attempts from local legislators to shut it down, with many California Republicans fearing that the project is a money pit with no end. As recently as this February, state legislators have called on Governor Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump to put a stop to the project, with an open letter condemning high-speed rail reading: "Promised to be completed by 2020 with a price tag of $34 billion, HSRA's projected budget ballooned to over $128 billion. "Voters were told that more than 20 percent of the project would be privately funded. Instead, taxpayers face the reality of single-handedly funding massively inflated costs for a project that many will never use or see completed. By all metrics, the High-Speed Rail is a colossal failure." Texas' project faces a similar issue, with the state Legislature having misgivings over the transparency of Texas Central Rail, the company spearheading the Houston-Dallas line. In April, the state's transportation committee held multiple meetings on the project's finances while the wider Legislature debated whether or not funding should be revoked. On top of that, the projects have to deal with the position of the federal government, which, for the last eight years, has see-sawed between support and hostility. During his first administration, Trump branded high-speed rail as a "green disaster" and a "waste" and demanded that California return $3.5 billion in federal funding allocated for its project. The Biden administration reversed the approach in 2020, only for Trump to then reverse it back this year, cutting off all future federal funding and prompting Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to initiate a review into whether the project complied with funding requirements. The impact of the legislative hurdles is being felt at the construction site. "The [California] project has faced many challenges, including right-of-way acquisition, pre-construction activities like third party agreements to relocate utilities in the system's path, various permitting requirements under state and federal law, time consuming and redundant state and federal environmental review processes, legal challenges related to those reviews, and a lack of full project funding which has resulted in costly delays and inefficient delivery," a spokesperson for the California High-Speed Rail Authority told Newsweek. "The Authority has taken measures to mitigate schedule related to right-of-way acquisition based on lessons learned, including staged delivery process where major construction begins only after right-of-way has been acquired." One of the other biggest delays facing U.S. high-speed rail is the very ground it's being built on. Before shovels can even touch the soil, landowners, environmental agencies and local authorities need to be consulted and convinced that the project can go ahead, and for such long-term and complex constructions, that can be a tough sell. "High-speed rail is extraordinarily complicated to engineer for and severely disrupts the terrain upon which it operates," John Sitilides, a federal affairs adviser to ReRoute the Route, the business and civic coalition opposing the current Texas project model, told Newsweek. "It has a profoundly detrimental effect on the environment and as such often requires a dense and lengthy federal regulatory NEPA review to protect the public. "Also, private project backers often try to value-engineer the route and project to save money, even when this approach may not result in the best outcome for transportation users, the environment, landowners or the general public. This cheap approach will often receive needed pushback from governing authorities, landowners, and other affected parties in the form of lawsuits and required changes. For example, the original backers of the proposed Texas project chose what they thought was the cheapest route to construct on, even though it did not best serve the public or advance the goal of transporting people efficiently and cost-effectively." For property owners along the route of any proposed rail network, their relationship with the construction project becomes antagonistic, as legislators are able to prevent private development in areas that the trains might need to pass through. In response, landowners dig in their heels and drag out the process as long as possible. "High-speed rail destroys property, period," Sitilides said. "The only properties that benefit are terminal sites. Every other property is irreparably harmed by being bisected or severely impacted with no cross access. "Landowners who receive no benefit resist these takings of their property by inept project planners who have no clear path to financing their project, yet can thwart or prevent the use and development of private lands by landowners along the route for many years, as has occurred in Texas since 2015 with no end in sight. "Publishing a proposed 'route' harms property values along or adjacent to that route for hundreds of miles, whether in California or in Texas, even if the project ultimately is never built. It is similar to an inverse condemnation or a taking without an actual taking. "There will be natural resistance from landowners, taxpayers, and the general public in such scenarios that government bureaucrats easily neglect or dismiss, much to their eventual dismay and consternation." Despite the setbacks, the California and Texas projects maintain an optimistic outlook. "California's high-speed rail program continues to deliver on its promise to build a fully electrified, high-speed rail system between the Bay Area and Los Angeles-creating jobs and economic opportunity, supporting housing affordability, and laying the foundation for a modern, connected transportation network that serves all Californians," a spokesperson for the authority told Newsweek. Texas' project struck a similar tone when approached by Newsweek, thanking the first Trump administration for its original approval. A Texas Central spokesperson said: "No other state can match Texas' healthy, 'can-do' business environment-or better understands how to meet the needs of its people. The first Trump Administration gave this project the greenlight and, unfortunately, it got hung up in Biden Administration politics. "We're proud to once again be moving forward under President Trump," the spokesperson said. "Texas Central is shovel-ready. The project will improve mobility and safety for Texans, create significant new jobs, and accelerate economic growth in the Lone Star State." For both projects, construction is only just beginning, and the political opposition isn't going anywhere. Related Articles How California's High-Speed Rail Progress Compares To TexasGavin Newsom Attacks Trump Over High-Speed Rail Threat: 'Reckless'California High-Speed Rail Hits New MilestoneCalifornia High-Speed Rail Reaches 'Momentous Milestone' 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Newsweek
13-05-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Why Is US High-Speed Rail Taking So Long?
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. High-speed rail has been touted as one of the top priorities by many politicians in the U.S., but despite almost two decades of talk, the country's top projects are barely taking off. In the past 20 years, in which countries like China have laid more than 25,000 miles of high-speed rail track, the top U.S. projects have barely gotten started, causing the technology's top proponents to ask the big question: What's taking so long? All Aboard In America The largest high-speed rail project being worked on is in California, where 500 miles of track are planned to connect San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. Originally approved by voters in 2008, the project is only ready to start laying track this year, after costs spiraled from $40 billion to as high as $128 billion. The smaller-scale Texas high-speed rail project, which would connect Dallas with Houston over 240 miles, was first proposed in the 2000s but has yet to break ground, despite partnerships with investors from Japan who have a proven track record with bullet trains. On their current timelines, neither project is set to become fully operational before 2030, meaning from beginning to end, their planning and construction will take more than two decades, assuming there are no further delays. Federal And Local Opposition One of the biggest barriers the projects face is political opposition. Infrastructure projects are costly, take a long time to yield any benefit, and the nature of high-speed rail means that a lot of stakeholders in a variety of locations need to be on board. In the U.S., that consensus does not exist. The California high-speed rail system has faced repeated attempts from local legislators to shut it down, with many California Republicans fearing that the project is a money pit with no end. As recently as this February, state legislators have called on Governor Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump to put a stop to the project, with an open letter condemning high-speed rail reading: "Promised to be completed by 2020 with a price tag of $34 billion, HSRA's projected budget ballooned to over $128 billion. "Voters were told that more than 20 percent of the project would be privately funded. Instead, taxpayers face the reality of single-handedly funding massively inflated costs for a project that many will never use or see completed. By all metrics, the High-Speed Rail is a colossal failure." A map of the Houston-Dallas high-speed rail system, designed by Texas Central. A map of the Houston-Dallas high-speed rail system, designed by Texas Central. Texas Central Texas' project faces a similar issue, with the state Legislature having misgivings over the transparency of Texas Central Rail, the company spearheading the Houston-Dallas line. In April, the state's transportation committee held multiple meetings on the project's finances while the wider Legislature debated whether or not funding should be revoked. On top of that, the projects have to deal with the position of the federal government, which, for the last eight years, has see-sawed between support and hostility. During his first administration, Trump branded high-speed rail as a "green disaster" and a "waste" and demanded that California return $3.5 billion in federal funding allocated for its project. The Biden administration reversed the approach in 2020, only for Trump to then reverse it back this year, cutting off all future federal funding and prompting Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to initiate a review into whether the project complied with funding requirements. The impact of the legislative hurdles is being felt at the construction site. Why Is U.S High-Speed Rail Taking So Long? Why Is U.S High-Speed Rail Taking So Long? Newsweek illustration/ Getty Images "The [California] project has faced many challenges, including right-of-way acquisition, pre-construction activities like third party agreements to relocate utilities in the system's path, various permitting requirements under state and federal law, time consuming and redundant state and federal environmental review processes, legal challenges related to those reviews, and a lack of full project funding which has resulted in costly delays and inefficient delivery," a spokesperson for the California High-Speed Rail Authority told Newsweek. "The Authority has taken measures to mitigate schedule related to right-of-way acquisition based on lessons learned, including staged delivery process where major construction begins only after right-of-way has been acquired." The Lay Of The Land One of the other biggest delays facing U.S. high-speed rail is the very ground it's being built on. Before shovels can even touch the soil, landowners, environmental agencies and local authorities need to be consulted and convinced that the project can go ahead, and for such long-term and complex constructions, that can be a tough sell. "High-speed rail is extraordinarily complicated to engineer for and severely disrupts the terrain upon which it operates," John Sitilides, a federal affairs adviser to ReRoute the Route, the business and civic coalition opposing the current Texas project model, told Newsweek. "It has a profoundly detrimental effect on the environment and as such often requires a dense and lengthy federal regulatory NEPA review to protect the public. "Also, private project backers often try to value-engineer the route and project to save money, even when this approach may not result in the best outcome for transportation users, the environment, landowners or the general public. This cheap approach will often receive needed pushback from governing authorities, landowners, and other affected parties in the form of lawsuits and required changes. For example, the original backers of the proposed Texas project chose what they thought was the cheapest route to construct on, even though it did not best serve the public or advance the goal of transporting people efficiently and cost-effectively." For property owners along the route of any proposed rail network, their relationship with the construction project becomes antagonistic, as legislators are able to prevent private development in areas that the trains might need to pass through. In response, landowners dig in their heels and drag out the process as long as possible. A map showing California's proposed high-speed rail network from February 2021. The initial operating segment, between Merced and Bakersfield, is expected to begin services between 2030 and 2033. A map showing California's proposed high-speed rail network from February 2021. The initial operating segment, between Merced and Bakersfield, is expected to begin services between 2030 and 2033. California High Speed Rail Authority "High-speed rail destroys property, period," Sitilides said. "The only properties that benefit are terminal sites. Every other property is irreparably harmed by being bisected or severely impacted with no cross access. "Landowners who receive no benefit resist these takings of their property by inept project planners who have no clear path to financing their project, yet can thwart or prevent the use and development of private lands by landowners along the route for many years, as has occurred in Texas since 2015 with no end in sight. "Publishing a proposed 'route' harms property values along or adjacent to that route for hundreds of miles, whether in California or in Texas, even if the project ultimately is never built. It is similar to an inverse condemnation or a taking without an actual taking. "There will be natural resistance from landowners, taxpayers, and the general public in such scenarios that government bureaucrats easily neglect or dismiss, much to their eventual dismay and consternation." Future Of U.S. High-Speed Rail Despite the setbacks, the California and Texas projects maintain an optimistic outlook. "California's high-speed rail program continues to deliver on its promise to build a fully electrified, high-speed rail system between the Bay Area and Los Angeles—creating jobs and economic opportunity, supporting housing affordability, and laying the foundation for a modern, connected transportation network that serves all Californians," a spokesperson for the authority told Newsweek. Texas' project struck a similar tone when approached by Newsweek, thanking the first Trump administration for its original approval. A Texas Central spokesperson said: "No other state can match Texas' healthy, 'can-do' business environment—or better understands how to meet the needs of its people. The first Trump Administration gave this project the greenlight and, unfortunately, it got hung up in Biden Administration politics. "We're proud to once again be moving forward under President Trump," the spokesperson said. "Texas Central is shovel-ready. The project will improve mobility and safety for Texans, create significant new jobs, and accelerate economic growth in the Lone Star State." For both projects, construction is only just beginning, and the political opposition isn't going anywhere.
Scroll.in
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
‘Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper': A thrilling account of a persistent voice of dissent in India
Chandar Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan's Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper opens with a tense and unfortunate moment in the history of Pratap, when its Jalandhar newspaper office became the target of a parcel bomb on June 24, 1983. Chandar Mohan had dismissed the tightly packed, difficult to open parcel when the peon first brought it into the office: 'Thinking that it must be the usual propaganda stuff that newspapers were being flooded with in those days'. However, 'The package had exploded – three employees were grievously injured, two of whom died in the nearby Civil Hospital'. Receiving a parcel bomb at a newspaper bureau was unprecedented, and the Pratap office became its unfortunate first victim. However, this terrible incident was immediately coded in the language of sacrifice. The authors record that Indresh Kumar, one of the employees who died, said on the way to the hospital, 'Sir, I have also made a sacrifice for the country.' This poignant snippet sets the stage for the book that presents the Urdu language daily Pratap and its Hindi language counterpart Vir Pratap as two of the most persistent voices of dissent in both pre- and post-partition India. Revolution and freedom The book's authors, journalists Chandar Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan, are very much part of the history of the newspaper that they set out to recount – Chandar Mohan ran the newspaper till it closed down in 2017, and his grandfather, Mahashay Krishan, established it in March 1919 in Lahore. Pratap' s story is interwoven with the story of the city's anti-colonial struggle. Mahashay Krishan's son Virendra was a college-going student when he encountered the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). HSRA was a prominent revolutionary organisation boasting strident members like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and Raj Guru, revered household names today. The authors recount HSRA events from the point of view of Mahashay Krishan and Virendra. At several points in the book, the authors paint the figure of the revolutionary as exceptional – 'Indian revolutionaries led a life less ordinary'. However, the book's specific contribution lies in situating Virendra's story: he was one of the relatively minor protagonists in the constellation of glistening HSRA figures whose stories are often better documented and celebrated. Virendra was part of the sea of dissenting figures who grieved Lala Lajpat Rai's death following the brutal lathi charge in Lahore. He was also one of the students who was immediately arrested after prominent HSRA members carried out the murder of John P Saunders to avenge Lala Lajpat Rai's death. He was apparently taking an examination when Saunders was killed, but was immediately locked up as one of the perpetrators who carried out the murder. Here, the authors signal at another experience, far more common perhaps, of the revolutionary who, like Virendra, was many times young, able-bodied, never lacking in zealous anger or energy, but 'exhibiting the distance between their passion and experience'. Historians like Kama Maclean, Daniel Elam and Aparna Vaidik have in recent years engaged with the potent idea of uncertainty, tentativeness, and failure embedded in the anti-colonial revolutionary impulse: not all went to plan, yet it was significant and mattered. Virendra himself went to jail nine times in the anti-colonial struggle for freedom. The book brings to life some other vivid details of unknown almost-heroes and almost-foiled plans. The authors recount a plan that Virendra and his friends Durga Das and Ranbir made to bomb the ballroom at Lahore's Lawrence Gardens. They did the recce, found the execution too ambitious, and decided to target instead the Governor of Punjab. Of Virendra and friends, the only one who knew how to shoot was married with a one-year-old child, which disqualified him. The friends then recruited a student of Law at Punjab University called Kamala to do the deed. Kamala volunteered to learn shooting, but they ultimately dropped the plot because of Durga Das' misgivings: 'The three revolutionaries…would be branded cowards for using a woman for such a dangerous mission – more so if she were to name them'. The authorial voice turns sardonic here with respect to women's roles in these revolutionary spaces, writing: 'The time had not yet come, after all, for Bhagat Singh's female counterpart to rise'. Kamala remains entirely anonymous: she went by her pseudonym and promptly got married after this incident: 'the chapter of the mysterious Kamala ended there'. Witnessing history Another meaningful recovery the book makes is its lingering focus on language politics, particularly significant given that in contemporary Indian imagination, Hindi and Urdu have been neatly divided along religious lines. This is a book about pre- and post-partition Punjab and makes an evocative point about Punjab's relationship to Urdu, where it was widespread: 'In Punjab, if a report was not published in the Urdu press, it was not credible enough from an Indian nationalistic perspective'. Naturally, therefore, the Urdu Pratap came first, followed by the Hindi Vir Pratap. (It also must be noted that these newspapers are not related to Kanpur's better-known Pratap, under the editorship of Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi). The book is pieced together from a variety of sources: scholarly research, first-hand accounts, personal interviews, Virendra's memoir Ve Inqalabi Din (Destination Freedom) and Chandar Mohan's own memory of working in the company. One rich source is the newspaper/s itself, which readers can catch some tantalising glimpses of via accompanying images. For instance, Pratap 's editorials being left open as big blank white gaps during the Emergency serve as a spectacular source that palpably places Pratap 's protest against press censorship. However, given the undeniable access both authors possess to the primary archives, we find barely any information about what Pratap actually published through its century-long run. This gap should perhaps serve as an invitation to scholars and writers interested in an investigation of these newspapers. The book often reads like a thriller, with fearful twists and turns at every corner. It also reads hurriedly, as if it needed to be pieced together fast, and the narrative needed to run uninterrupted. It sometimes leads to giving us a strong sense of urgency about the time. This particularly holds true for the years a young Virendra was actively participating in revolutionary politics – his incarceration years make for poignant reading. At times, however, this urgent writing style also makes it difficult to follow. Overall, the book provides an accessible way to delve into the history of a notable newspaper house's anti-colonial struggle against the British in India.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
California watchdog says high-speed rail on track to blow more deadlines
California's multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project is behind schedule on obtaining the land it needs to complete its construction plans, according to a state inspector general report published Friday. The new report highlights the continued hurdles the project, with an estimated price tag of $88 billion to $128 billion, faces as it attempts to begin passenger service between the central California cities of Bakersfield and Modesto between 2030 and 2033 — just as President Donald Trump casts it as a boondoggle. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Thursday that the Federal Railroad Administration would review $4.1 billion in federal grant agreements with the state — and determine if that funding should be withheld. The report found that progress on 52 miles of track not yet under construction is at risk of being delayed because of challenges state officials face in securing agreements to relocate utility facilities, like power lines and water supply. Friday's report comes on the heels of another one earlier this month that found construction on the initial 171-mile Central Valley line is unlikely to be completed by the High-Speed Rail Authority's 2033 timeline. State Republicans jumped on that report, encouraging Trump to follow through on his threat to investigate the decades-long project to connect Los Angeles to the Bay Area. The independent auditor, established by state lawmakers in 2023, laid part of the blame at the feet of the High-Speed Rail Authority, noting that the public agency has a limited number of lawyers to review agreements with third-party groups and no clear guidelines on how quickly staff must complete internal processes. HSRA Inspector General Benjamin Belnap, an appointee of Gov. Gavin Newsom, said that much of the delay, however, has been generated by the companies and government agencies that need to relocate facilities and infrastructure to accommodate the rail line. The review found that utility providers are often slow to respond to communications with HSRA and generally don't feel pressure to move quickly. 'The baseline schedules for the Merced and Bakersfield extensions showed the final configuration footprint being submitted by the end of 2024, which should have included approved utility relocation designs,' the report says. 'However, the Authority did not meet this deadline.' The review found that HSRA still needs to complete 12 of the 38 needed agreements the agency has identified before moving on to the construction phase. The report called on HSRA and state lawmakers to take legislative steps to speed up the process of relocating utilities. Those recommendations included giving HSRA the authority to proceed with 'necessary designs and utility relocations' if third parties are nonresponsive after a defined period of time, and pushing local governments and state-regulated utility owners to make the 'timely completion' of the rail system a high priority. The report also laid out steps HSRA can take to move faster, including the development of internal timelines and tracking tools by May 2025, and determining if vacant positions in the agency can be repurposed to hire more legal staff. The agency in response said it largely agrees with the report's assessment and is already in the process of making the internal changes recommended. HSRA also said it is seeking support from state lawmakers on legislation to require local governments and utility owners to cooperate to advance the project and to expedite the eminent domain process. State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, introduced a bill this week, SB 445, that would require third parties like utilities to quickly respond to communications from 'sustainable transportation projects,' including high-speed rail. That bill has yet to be assigned to a committee.
