The California High-Speed Rail Authority took one giant leap in the state’s goal of building a railway that will connect San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles.

On Friday, the agency released its final environmental document regarding a 30-mile segment of rail line that will stretch between the cities of Palmade and Burbank in Southern California. According to a press release, the document was the “last key environmental document needed” and marks “a major milestone over a decade in the making.”

“This is a huge milestone for the project and it represents the culmination of years of analysis and stakeholder engagement to connect high-speed rail between two of the state’s major metropolitan centers, San Francisco and Los Angeles,” said Brian Kelly, CEO of the Rail Authority.

The environmental document will be presented to the Rail Authority’s Border of Directors during a two-day meeting on June 26 and June 27, according to the release. Connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles is “Phase 1” of the authority’s overall goal of building a high-speed rail that runs through Northern, Central and Southern California.

The authority has said that the track to connect two of California’s most populous cities will be capable of reaching speeds of over 200 mph and make the trip time between San Francisco and Los Angeles under three hours. It takes a little over six hours to drive between the cities.

The section of the track between Palmade and Burbank will be able to reach speeds of up to 220 mph, according to Friday’s release. The authority said that this section of the track will make the trip from Antelope Valley to San Fernando Valley a roughly 17-minute trip, “more than twice as fast as traveling by car.”

The environmental document release Friday includes analysis of six alternative builds for the rail line segment between Palmade and Burbank.

“Pending Board approval, the Authority can begin preparing this segment for construction as funding becomes available,” read the release. “All that remains to environmentally clear the full 494-mile Phase 1 system of the project is the Los Angeles to Anaheim segment, which the Authority expects to finalize next year.”

Phase 2 of the project will extend the railway north from Merced to Sacramento and in the southern direction from Los Angeles to San Diego, according to the authority’s website.

A spokesperson for the Rail Authority told Newsweek Friday night that while there is not an estimated time frame for completion of all of Phase 1, the team does “feel confident” about opening service for the Central Valley—which includes Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties—from 2030 to 2033.

“To move beyond that and create a timeline for the entire trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, [Kelly] has repeatedly stressed the need for the state to extend funding into the 2030s,” said Jim Patrick, director of communications for the authority’s Southern California operations. “So we don’t have a time estimate for completion beyond the Central Valley.”

A separate project by Brightline West aims to build a high-speed rail line connecting Las Vegas and the greater Los Angeles area by the 2028 Olympics. That line would reach speeds of over 186 mph and stretch 218 miles, from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga, California.

More than 660,000 older Americans in California are living below the poverty line, according to an analysis by the health research site KFF, the highest number in the country.

The number—662,000—amounts to about 11 percent of California residents who were 65 or older in 2022. In percentage terms, the District of Columbia was the leading area with more than 20 percent of seniors living below the poverty line.

In 2022, the poverty line was $14,040 for an individual age 65 or older and $17,710 for a home with resident age 65 or older.

Overall, about 6 million older Americans were living in poverty in the United States, according to KFF’s analysis, amounting to about 1 in 10 of that demographic. The U.S. poverty levels fell during COVID-19 as a result of government helping provide support in the pandemic-induced economic crisis.

Housing costs, which typically tend to amount to about one-third of people’s expenses, are substantially high in the Golden Gate State compared to the rest of the country. In 2023, for example, the average rent was $1,837, compared to the national level of about to $1,702, according to Smart Asset. Overall, the cost of living is 38 percent higher in the states compared to the national average, Rent Cafe said.

The lack of affordable housing is particularly significant in putting pressure on older Americans and their incomes.

“The lack of enough affordable housing is forcing low-income older Californians to make hard choices about whether to pay their rent or buy food, medicine, or meet other basic needs,” according to a Justice in Aging, an organization that works in anti-poverty issue affecting seniors. “It is also the primary driver of the continuing alarming increase in older adult homelessness.

“Six out of ten of all older renter households in California face unaffordable rents—and that has not improved in five years. California renters are more likely to struggle to pay their housing costs as they age.”

The group found that older female retirees struggled the most with the high cost of housing.

“One group that is particularly hard hit is women age 75 and older who are living alone,” Justice in Aging said. “These older female renters are at particularly high risk of housing instability, with 72 [percent] rental cost burdened and 51 [percent] paying more than half of their income for housing costs.

“Women in this age group are more likely to have lost their spouse or partner. Older women have also been subjected to a lifetime of reduced earnings due to the gender wage gap and interruptions from the workforce for caregiving.”

With women outlasting men with on average and with diminished earnings, older female retirees find themselves struggling.

“Older women, who are living longer on average than men, are living on a low, fixed retirement income, and have exhausted their savings,” Justice in Aging said.

Police in a California community are investigating a jewelry heist at a local business where thieves got away with nearly $1 million in jewelry, diamonds, gold and cash. 

The owner of jewelry store Desiré Jewelry, in Glendora, shared surveillance video of the May 15 robbery, showing four to five thieves entering the store through the roof and drilling through two steel safes for approximately six hours before finally leaving with $800,000 in goods. 

Monir Kassis, the owner of Desiré, told Fox News Digital he did not even discover the burglary until he returned home from an anniversary trip with his wife, Jennifer, on May 18.  

“It’s a nightmare what we are going through right now,” Kassis said. 

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Kassis said that the store’s surveillance cameras captured the whole heist, which took over six hours, and showed the thieves enter the store through the roof and using power tools, believed to be drills and torches, to break into two of the three steel safes.

 “They got my personal jewelry, my wife’s personal jewelry, our customers’ jewelry. It’s devastating, you know, customers have been coming in this week to pick up, and I’ve had to tell them what’s going on and say “sorry, we’ll make it up to you.” So we are trying to get back to business and see how we can pay and make it up to our customers, that’s the most important thing,” Kassis explained.

Among the items stolen from the store, Kassis said he had several family heirlooms that are irreplaceable.

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Police are investigating the theft of more than $800,000 in jewelry, cash and guns from a Glendora, California, jewelry store. (GoFundMe/Jennifer Kassis / Fox News)

“I just want my wife’s personal jewelry that I have been gifting her for the last 23, 24 years we’ve been married, and it’s very sentimental items for her and our children. Like one of the rings that she was keeping for my daughter when she gets married. And she wanted to give another ring one day for my son’s future wife. You know, it’s all gone, those sentimental items I cannot replace,” Kassis said. 

Kassis said he also hired a private investigator in conjunction with the local police investigation, who believes that this was not a random theft and that he believes someone was watching his store. 

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Thieves were able to break into two out of three steel safes inside Desiré Jewelry on May 15. (GoFundMe/Jennifer Kassis / Fox News)

“The private investigator thinks he may have a lead already, which matches what the police have been telling us. They say this is bigger than what we think. It almost feels like something out of a movie script,” Kassis said.

Police told Kassis that they are also continuing to review evidence from the scene, including what they believe is blood left on one of the safes and hope that DNA can help lead them to a suspect. 

Kassis, a man of faith, said despite this horrible experience his family has endured, his life could be much worse, and he’s grateful for many other things he has.

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A California family’s business was robbed of nearly $1 million in jewelry and other goods last week. (GoFundMe/Jennifer Kassis / Fox News)

“It’s a nightmare, but we are going to get through it. I can tell you that in the Bible, Job, he went through a lot more than what we did. He lost his family, he lost his mind, money, he lost his wife, children, and health, but God blessed him more because he was faithful, and we are faithful and no matter what, we still have our family and health and, hopefully, our jewelry is returned to our customers and my wife and children,” Kassis said. 

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Police are urging anyone with information about the incident to contact the Glendora Police Department at 626-914-8250.  

Fox News Digital reached out to the Glendora Police Department for comment.