Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Anaheim) today declared her frustration at a recent California High Speed Rail Authority decision to exclude Anaheim as a stop in the initial phase of the $68 billion project.
“Failure to link the high speed rail system to Orange County negatively impacts the county's residents and our local economy, and is a disappointment for the state of California,” Sanchez said in a press statement. “To develop our state for the twenty first century, we must embrace a transportation system that allows our commerce to run.”
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Authority officials claim that it doesn't make financial sense to
include OC in the first phrase of the massive project because the LA to
OC link is projected to cost at least $6 billion and would only shave
about 10 minutes off the current rail commute between the cities.
When completed sometime after 2033 the project will connect San Francisco to San Diego, according to Authority plans.
But
Sanchez isn't willing to wait years for OC's inclusion. She is asking
officials to “honor” the original plan that included a stop in Anaheim, home to the state's world famous amusement park–Disneyland.
Yet,
Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson, a Republican who represents
Anaheim, told reporters that Authority officials made the right
decision.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.