Officials break ground on nation’s first HSR terminal

  It may not be known how California's $43 billion high-speed rail line will be financed, but officials hosted the groundbreaking of the northern terminus of the proposed line in San Francisco.

Officials who gathered at the site of the soon-to-be-demolished
Transbay Terminal to break ground on the nation’s first high-speed rail
terminal included Senator Barbara Boxer, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi and others.

Officials said the new Transbay Transit Center
was expected to serve 45 million passengers annually and house nine
transportation systems, including the state’s high-speed rail line and
bus lines from San Francisco Municipal Railway, AC Transit, SamTrans,
Golden Gate Transit and Greyhound.

This first phase of the
Transbay Terminal construction could be done by 2017. Rail authority
officials said they expect service to begin on the full line from Los
Angeles to San Francisco in 2020.