Dive Brief:

• Fresno, Calif., is where work is to start on a high-speed, north-south rail connection in the Golden State, and routes are being mapped.
• The plan won with voters statewide five years ago, but opposition is intensifying now where the first tracks are to be laid and people are finding out what they could lose.
• The area definitely needs jobs and the rail project could bring many.

Dive Insight:

When it comes down to whose farmland, home or business will have to go  to make way for a rail right-of-way or a road that has to be rerouted, it becomes a lot harder to be enthusiastic about a major public works project. It does not help, either, when it has taken five years to get going on the project, and it begins to lose its luster because officials have had to agree to use shared, and thus slower, tracks in some urban areas.