This is a welcome letter:

In an effort to deal with California's spiraling unemployment rate, Gov. Schwarzenegger and the state's two senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, sent a letter Monday to President Obama urging funding of the state's high-speed rail project and improvements in its intercity rail service.

They urged Obama to fund the projects through federal stimulus funds, the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

As we await the Federal Railroad Administration's decision on awarding the $8 billion in HSR stimulus funds, some observers are wondering how exactly the projects will be selected - and what the role of merit and politics will be. Over at Railway Age, editor William Vantuono suggests the FRA will be caught between those two considerations:

Friday morning at 9 AM supporters of high speed rail, including CHSRA board chair Curt Pringle, members Lynn Schenk and Richard Katz, and various unspecified "members of Congress, legislators, city and county officials, and representatives from labor, business and environmental groups" will gather at Union Station in LA to hold a rally in support of the state's application for $4.5 billion in federal HSR stimulus money.

Major newspapers in the state are getting into the act, including the San Jose Mercury News:

Although most Americans who know anything about high speed rail associate the trains primarily with France and Japan, it is Spain that has had some of the most dramatic success with high speed rail this decade. The AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) trains have attracted significant numbers of riders in a nation whose geography and population densities are quite similar to California, and operating profits from the existing lines have been plowed back into expansions of the system.

Whether it's a prelude to a grand bargain or not isn't clear, but Gary Richards is reporting in the Mercury News today that UPRR and the CHSRA have begun discussions about resolving the dispute over the ROW between San José and Gilroy:

Congress is moving full steam ahead on HSR funding:

Yesterday, the House approved a $123.1 billion transportation and housing bill for fiscal-year 2010.

by Robert Cruickshank

The US Congress is getting a reputation as the place where good ideas go to die. Although currently held by the Democratic Party, the real power lies with center-right Democrats who are generally skittish about significant change, and certainly wary of either spending money, finding new revenues for programs, or both.

Heads up: The Blogger service will be down for about 10 minutes of scheduled maintenance at 12:00AM PDT on Monday, June 15. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Also, I will be traveling to Germany this week for a few days on business. There will be Open Threads on both Monday and Tuesday, followed by the promised post on the new features and poll on the new banner options later in the week.

by Rafael

I'm here in Washington, DC for the week for other business, and unfortunately I wasn't invited to the big HSR confab that Joe Biden and Ray LaHood held today with state leaders. But the outcome was further evidence that California's HSR project is in line for a big windfall this year from the HSR stimulus: