Cal High Speed Rail Building Progress

There is a new site by the Cal High Speed Rail Authority which shows progress of the construction of the high speed rail. It is www.buildhsr.com It shows a list of all the projects https://www.buildhsr.com/projects/ Interactive Maps https://www.buildhsr.com/interactive_map/ with projects along Hwy 99 from Madera to Fresno. For instance here are some details with The Cottonwood Creek Viaduct OVERVIEW The Cottonwood Creek Viaduct is a 250-foot long crossing that will carry high-speed trains over a creek bed in rural Madera County. LOCATION North of Avenue 13 and south of Avenue 15, crossing over Cottonwood Creek in Madera County parallel to the BNSF railroad tracks. CURRENTLY Barrier walls have now been poured, and as at the Fresno River Viaduct, much of the work for the Cottonwood Creek crossing is complete. To the north and south of Cottonwood, preparatory work will begin next for the first section of guideway. This involves specific earthwork to convey the high-speed train at-grade. TIMELINE Work began in the summer of 2016 and crews are working to complete this bridge by the end of summer 2017. If your wondering what is going on and the progress you can see it for yourself and get timelines and pictures.

Hyperloop Progress….

Not long ago Elon Musk challenged the Cal High Speed Rail authority insinuation a better solution to a High Speed rail would be a Hyperloop. A Hyperloop works like a vacuum tube thrusting a pod at speeds greater than the speed of sound. There are at least three firms engineering a Hyperloop system in order to make this theory a reality. News reports indicate Hyperloop One completed a test in Las Vegas and propelled a pod 192 mph. This is about a third of the way to the final speed of 700 mph. Some say human can’t take that speed on the ground. It would do funny things to the stomach. We bring this up as the CalHighSpeedRail continues its construction and journey to provide human transport in California with a stop in Palmdale. It is possible that Hyperloop technology will only be used for freight. A technology that will seriously damage freight trains and long haul trucking. A job killer. A Hyperloop may not be a California or US solution as Russia and Middle Eastern Countries have interest in feasibility studies. Elon Musk who has said he would not develop the tech commercially recently tweeted that he had verbal government approval for the Boring Company to construct a Hyperloop system in the East Coast from New York to Washington. Washington never seemed to be in a hurry to go to work, so we will see how far this goes. Hundreds of mile underground? That maybe as much fantasy as a fully funded High Speed Rail in California. The jury is out on both.