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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1982)
HHi ■ Texas A8cM mm ■ ■ The Battalion Section B April 1, 1982/Page 1B U.S. ‘bullet train’ to reduce trip time ■ (■■y •■.V •*w Tiny bubbles photo by Suzanne Hemby Herman Reyes, a sophomore pre-med major from Houston, blows bubbles during a study break between Puryear and Law Halls while disinterested dog, Chucko, chews on a plastic bag. his United Press International NEW YORK — Amtrak announced plans today for a “bullet train” that will travel be tween Los Angeles and San Diego at a speed of 160 mph. Similar rail systems are being considered for the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas, an Amtrak vice president said. The train will make the trip in 59 minutes. This compares with 2 hours and 40 minutes on a conventional train and 2‘/a hours by car. The fare will be about $35 — about the cost of an airline flight. For most of the trip, the train will travel on elevated tracks built on the median strip of the San Diego Freeway, a six to eight-lane road. The project is being de veloped by the American High Speed Rail Corp., which was formed by Amtrak and a group of private investors. The trains will go into service in about six years, Lawrence Gil son, a vice president of Amtrak and president of the new com pany, said. Test runs will begin in about three years, he said. Building the line will cost $2 billion, $500 million of which will come from Japanese sources. Bullet trains have been oper ating in Japan since 1964 and in France since 1981. The Japanese train, which runs between Tokyo and Osaka, travels at 150 mph and this speed will soon be increased to 160 mph. Gilson said that since 1964, the Japanese have carried two billion passengers “without a single fatality.” The French trains, which op erate between Paris and Lyon, travel at 160 mph. An ex perimental version has gone 235 mph and the French are also ex pected to increase their operat ing speed. Amtrak decided to use Japanese rather than French equipment because the Japanese had been operating bullet trains longer, Gilson said. The new line would operate more than 100 trains a day, 50 in each direction, he said. There will be telephone ser vice on the trains, he said. Gilson said he expects the ser vice to attract 12 million to 15 million passengers a year. Cur rently, 110,000 trips are made between the two cities each day, he said. He also foresaw the possibil ity of line from New York to Washington. “We think this thing will be come a growth industry in the United States and the demand for routes will be very great all over the country,” he said. Employee reveals possible mergy department oil scandal Highlighting, Perms Free Consultations United Press International BATON ROUGE, La. — Fed eral prosecutor Stanford Bard- well says he was aware of accusa tions made by a state employee that $8 billion worth of crude was siphoned from a Depart ment of Energy crude oil stor age program and replaced with hazardous wastes. The allegations made by Steve Johnson, who claimed to be an investigator for a state agency he refused to name, were being investigated by officials in Washington, Bardwell said. “We have very little informa tion at this point,” he said. The allegations surfaced sev eral weeks ago, he said. Louisiana Attorney General William Guste was out of town and unavailable for comment. Tuesday, Johnson and his attorney said they had given documents to federal author ities showing crude oil purch ased by the Department of Ener gy for the Strategic Petroleum Storage Program had been sold for private profit. Underground salt domes where the crude was to have been stored had been filled in stead with hazardous waste. “What we’ve been told is this is probably the largest scandal to hit the United States,” Johnson said. The alleged scheme was car ried out over a six-year period and involved “lots of people, lots of names and lots of com panies,” he said. Mike Gonnelly, Johnson’s attorney, said Johnson came for ward publicly after information turned over to federal agencies was leaked to news agencies last week. Johnson said he turned over “volumes and volumes of infor mation” three months ago to attorney Connelly, who then de livered it to the FBI and other federal authorities. “The United States govern ment has been buying high- grade, sweet oil from Saudi Ara bia and some time after it is un loaded, before it is pumped into the reserves, it is being replaced with hazardous waste material and sold,” Connelly said. “It is being sold to private companies for refining into gasoline. An operation of this kind has so many people in volved someone was bound to find out.” Gonnelly said federal officials from five different agencies he refused to identify promised to investigate operations at Bayoti Choctaw and another DOE site at Hackberry, La. “There was a deplorable lack of security in the salt domes that the (Louisiana) investigators dis covered,” Connelly said. The Strategic Petroleum Storage program was initiated of during the administration former President Carter in an attempt to provide the country with an emergency supply of crude in the event Arab oil sup plies were shut off. Connelly and Johnson both refused to identify agencies in volved in the investigation or possible suspects, saying they did not want to damage the in vestigations. * Suite 805 College Staton 846-4771 MSC CAMERA COMMITTEE APRIL 3 |0am -6pM for Brazos County ■3L- STOPPERS I 775-TIPS sponsored by TEXAS A&M Krueger Dormitory, ~ NNTAM< & 92/W ANNUAL JURIED STUDENT PHOTO COMPETITION r;* Lots of Ice Cold tbaU! AJm hSSion Free Follow 5<gns Judging: Sunday April 4 8:00-6:00 Rudder Forum Open to public Prints accepted at: MSC 1st floor tables March 29 - April 2 10:00-4:00 Entry fee: $2.00 per print 2 Miles South of College Station on Highway 6 For Information, Call: 260-5583, 260-5581, or 696-6818 Prizes donated by Campus Photo Center For copy of rules or more info drop by our cubicle in rm.216 of the MSC