The ambitious high-speed rail project has faced lots of criticism - so it was almost a bit defiantly that U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood proclaimed…
Lahood: "High-speed rail is coming to America, and real high-speed rail - 200 mile an hour trains - will begin here in California."
Governor Brown praised the legislature for signing off last
week on four-and-a-half billion dollars in state bonds. That
money will go toward the project's first phase in the Central
Valley and regional rail projects elsewhere.
Brown: "It's creating jobs now and it's intimately and inextricably connected to billions of dollars of other local projects in both Northern and Southern California. So it's a job creator and thank god we got it."
The governor also rejected the idea raised by a recent Field Poll that voters might be less likely to support his November tax measure if the high-speed rail project moves forward.