California bullet-train route OK’d from San Joaquin Valley to Bay Area

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A proposed route between the San Joaquin Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area for California’s bullet-train system received final approval Thursday from the California High Speed Rail Authority. The agency’s board of directors, meeting in Sacramento, voted to certify a massive four-volume report of environmental and social impacts that the route would have on communities, farms, parks and wildlife habitats along the 89-mile stretch of the line from San Jose through Gilroy into Merced County. That vote set the stage for a second action that formally approved the preferred ...