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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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Briefs: High-Speed Rail Station, Rocketdyne

Palmdale and the California High-Speed Rail Authority announced on Monday an agreement to begin the planning process for a rail station. The city will receive $600,000 in state and federal grants through the authority to review options and hear public comment on the station. It would be located at the existing Palmdale Transportation Center, also the site of the city’s Metrolink station. Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford called the station a key step to bringing high-speed rail to the Antelope Valley. “We’re eager to get this station planned and built with trains providing critical and essential mobility for our residents,” Ledford said in a statement. The authority has similar station-development agreements with Fresno, Gilroy and Merced, and is in talks with other cities, including Burbank. The ambitious high-speed rail project is projected to cost $68 billion to $80 billion and would connect Los Angeles and San Francisco by 2029. A groundbreaking was held in January for the first 29-mile segment between Fresno and Madera. Aerospace giant GenCorp Inc. changed its name on Monday to Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc., highlighting the importance of its San Fernando Valley subsidiary. The Sacramento company acquired Rocketdyne in 2012 from United Technologies Corp., in Hartford, Conn., and combined it with its own Aerojet rocket-engine division. Rocketdyne, in Chatsworth, is a storied rocket engine developer and manufacturer that made the engines for the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo program and the main engines for the Space Shuttle program. Despite recent cutbacks, the Valley location employs about 1,300 working on multiple projects, including a rocket engine to replace the Russian RD-180 now used to power the Atlas V rocket that launches U.S. military and spy satellites. The company changed its ticker symbol on Monday to AJRD to reflect the change. The GenCorp board of directors gave its approval in March. Shares closed up $1.50, or more than 7 percent, to $22.39 on the New York Stock Exchange.

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