Crossposted to Blue House Diaries and Daily Kos
Over the last few months more and more of the netroots have recognized the importance of upgrading our transportation infrastructure to meet our capacity demands while also providing a sustainable and green method of transit. Diaries by apsmith, BruceMcF, quaoar and A Siegel have all zeroed in on high speed rail as a particularly useful and desirable way to provide Americans with an effective, reliable, and green way to travel between our cities.
So far their work has been largely in explaining the theory of why high speed rail would be a good fit for America. While other states kick around abstract ideas, California has had since 2002 a complete plan for high speed rail – with the all important EIR/EIS finalized – to link the state’s major metro areas – San Francisco, Oakland, San José, Sacramento, Fresno, Los Angeles, OC, Riverside, and San Diego – with a true high-speed system.
But even though the plan is ready to go, the LA Times reports it may be Terminated by our “green” governor.
The governor wants “to quietly kill this – and not go out and tell the people that high-speed rail isn’t in the future,” said state Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter). The lawmaker from the southern San Joaquin Valley is counting on the trains to help bring jobs to his district.
Schwarzenegger asked the Legislature in his 2007 budget to slash money for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The governor also wants lawmakers to postpone indefinitely a $9.95-billion rail bond issue that is slated to appear on the November 2008 ballot.
Background
The California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) was created in 1996 to devise a plan to link Northern and Southern California by high speed rail. In 2000 voters authorized the CHSRA to finalize a route and a construction plan, which was presented to the Legislature in 2002. The Legislature then automatically put it on the November 2004 ballot.
And then it was delayed. The early Zeroes were a period of fiscal crisis for California, costing Gray Davis his job and leading Arnold Schwarzenegger to seek to limit state spending. Tom McClintock, a notorious right-wing State Senator, authored a bill in 2004 to kill the project outright. A compromise was reached where the vote would be delayed to November 2006. However, that was the ballot where Arnold was pushing his various infrastructure bonds, for everything from roads to levees to dams, and worried that high speed rail might be a bridge too far and weigh down the vote of the other proposals. Another deal was cut, and now the CHSRA plan is slated to go before voters in November 2008. This is what Arnold is trying to stop.
The Plan
And it’s a shame, too, because the plan is really quite good. It’s worth spending a moment to examine it, to see just how good it is and therefore how awful its cancellation would be.
(From the CAHSR and assumed to be in the public domain)
As you can see, the planned line would link nearly all of the major population centers of California. And even those areas not included, like Monterey Bay (where I will soon be living) will benefit from the system – whereas it currently takes 6 hours to drive from Monterey to LA, it would likely take only 3-4 hours via a drive to San José and then the train to LA.
(A note: the shaded area between the Bay Area and the Central Valley is because the CHSRA hasn’t yet settled on whether to use the Pacheco Pass (along Highway 152) or the Altamont Pass (along I-580) to link the two regions.)
According to the CHSRA Implementation Plan these are some of the core components of the project:
– 42 to 68 million passengers a year by 2020
– Fully grade-separated and built along existing highway corridors (to lower costs and minimize disruption to urban landscape)
– Trains capable of at least 220mph
– Powered by overhead electrical wires, providing a greener source of energy. Trains will also return power to the grid when they brake.
Scroll down to page 13 on the Implementation Plan, and you will see just how much time the high speed trains will save Californians on common trips within the state:
LA to SF: 7.5 hrs by car. 1 hour 20 by plane – but “door to door” (including getting to the airport, security checks, check-in lines, etc) it is nearly 3.5 hours. By high speed train it would be about 2.5 hours on the train and about 3.5 hours door to door – about the same as a plane, but at a much lower cost to our planet.
LA to SD: 2.5 hours by car (unless you hit traffic, then god knows how long!). 2.75 hrs by plane (but few people fly between LA and SD) and 2.25 hrs by train. A significant – and reliable – savings, considering that on the high speed line between LA and SD you won’t have to worry about the East LA Interchange, the bottleneck through Norwalk, the Orange Crush, the El Toro Y, the 5/805 merge.
The line will not be a single point-to-point route but a mixture of express, local, and semi-local trains. It will provide several levels of efficient and quick service to Californians.
What will it cost? The current estimate is around $30 billion. $10 billion of that will come from state bonds, which will seed the project and entice private investment to make up the other $20 billion. Ridership will help pay off these bonds.
Will the riders come? As every other high speed rail project has proven, absolutely. The Acela between Washington DC and Boston has already made a significant dent in air travel along the Northeast Corridor. The Spanish AVE line between Madrid and Barcelona is having a similar impact, even though the line currently only reaches Tarragona (just short of Barcelona, which will be linked by the end of the year). And even California’s existing slower-speed rail corridors are showing record numbers of riders. The demand is clearly there.
Why We Need High Speed Rail
CHSRA is the most important project facing Californians since Pat Brown built the California Aqueduct in 1960. It’s that simple. Here’s why.
First, the state’s existing oil-based transportation infrastructure is reaching the limits of its capacity. Although one can drive from LA to SF in about 6.5 hours (fast if you’re a leadfoot) this can take up to *10 hours* via I-5 on a holiday weekend. Within the megalopolis – SoCal or Bay Area – travel by car is becoming less and less possible, even when tanker trucks aren’t melting away the MacArthur Maze.
California’s airports are already stressed. LAX expansion plans have been frequently postponed because of soaring costs, and other SoCal airports from John Wayne to Burbank face similar limits. SFO cannot be expanded at all and OAK is nearing its limit. SAN (SD’s airport) is one of the nation’s worst, but efforts to move it to Miramar have been blocked by the US Navy. And yet more and more people are using California’s roads and airports – our population is pushing 40 million and may be nearing 50 million in a few generations. Clearly alternative capacity is needed.
And that doesn’t even take into account Peak Oil. As many of you know, the production of oil around the world is near or has reached its peak. From here on out we will not only be extracting less oil, but will be paying more for it because much of the remaining oil is harder to reach.
Already we are seeing soaring gas prices. Many Californians are now paying around $3.50 a gallon and will likely be the first in the lower 48 to hit $4 this summer. This will also make air travel even more costly.
To protect our environment, to slow global warming, to protect against peak oil, and to provide a less expensive way for residents of our great Golden State to connect with each other, we have NO OTHER CHOICE but to build high speed rail.
We have a solid plan. We have the clear need. We have pent-up demand.
And now we have political support.
At the California Democratic Party Convention over the weekend in San Diego, a strong resolution was passed in favor of the HSR plan. As transcribed by dday over at Calitics, the resolution reads:
WHEREAS, the CA High Speed Rail Authority has made significant progress since it was established in 1996 to create fast rail service between Southern CA and San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and the Central Valley to give the public a travel choice between HSR, automobiles and airplanes – thus relieving the growing highway and airport congestion in a state in which the population is expected to grow by 12 million to a total of 50 million by 2025; and
WHEREAS, high speed rail is already successful in Japan, Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Australia, China, Taiwan and South Korea, and construction is underway in North Africa, Turkey, Mexico and South America – setting a standard for California, where HSR could carry passengers between downtown San Francisco and Los Angeles in about 2 1/2 hours in more comfort and safety and in less time than it takes to travel to and from and check in and out of airports, thus enabling airlines to better serve long-distance travelers; and
WHEREAS, high speed rail will be a significant weapon against air pollution and global warming as it uses much less energy per passenger than cars and airplanes – and HSR will be even more essential if, as expected, petroleum supplies diminish in the future;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the CDP asks that all CA elected officials give full support to establishing HSR in CA at the earliest possible date.
Why Arnold Is Trying to Terminate It
Given the obvious arguments in favor of the project, and its widespread political support (virtually all cities along the proposed line have been clamoring for a stop, and workers and unions eye the good middle-class wage paying work that will come with building the line), why on earth is Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to kill it?
Although Arnold has received a reputation lately for being an environmentalist, this is complete and utter nonsense. Arnold gutted many of the mandatory trading provisions of the global warming emissions cap proposal. The League of Conservation Voters gave Arnold a 50 rating (out of 100) and said his record remained “mediocre.” And he has received well over $1 million in campaign contributions from Big Oil.
In his infrastructure funding priorities Arnold is as Republican as it gets in his emphasis on freeways over public transportation. LA and the Bay Area are getting showered with money out of the infrastructure bond to build more freeway capacity, yet Arnold’s budget still projects a CUT in public transportation funds. (Look for a diary on specifically this issue soon.)
Further, Arnold personally has little interest in mass transit. He owns a Hummer, and thinks environmentally friendly transportation is converting the Hummer to hydrogen – finding non-auto based forms of transportation seems totally off his radar screen. When he goes on MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” he’s not there to explain how California needs to adapt to the 21st century, he’s there to tell viewers that the fantasies of the 20th century regarding endless gas supplies and a limitless car culture can somehow still remain viable.
Between his own blinders, his very real debt to the oil companies (who have a strong motive to see HSR killed) and his fraudulent rhetoric on the environment, it is unsurprising, yet all the more maddening, that Arnold wants to kill this important project.
What You Can Do
But so far as I can tell, California remains a democracy, whatever else has happened to it on the national level. And we the people can still push back against Arnold and protect this transformative and vital project against his efforts to Terminate it.
Perhaps the first thing to do is let Arnold know that you think he is totally and completely in the wrong on this. Contact him!
Call him! (916) 445-2841
Write him a letter! Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Equally as important is the state legislature. We need to target Democrats to ensure they stand by us and by their party convention in protecting high speed rail. Important Democrats include the following (links are to contact pages):
Sen. Don Perata, President of the State Senate (510) 286-1333 or (916) 651-4009
Sen. Alan Lowenthal, chair of Senate Transportation Committee (562) 495-4766 or (916) 651-4027
Fabian Núñez (e-mail link), Speaker of the Assembly. (213) 620-4646 or (916) 319-2046
Assemblymember John Laird, head of Assembly Budget Committee (hence a powerful person). (831) 649-2832 or (916) 319-2027
There may also be value in going to the dark side – that is, Republicans. Assemblymember Bob Huff was quoted in the /LA Times/ as saying he thought this might be a good transportation alternative but worried about the cost. Pushing him into a pro-HSR camp might pay big dividends. His webpage is here (it loads poorly on my Firefox, though) and phone numbers are 909-860-5560 or (916) 319-2060.
I supposed you could try Sen. Tom McClintock, who has repeatedly tried to kill HSR and is one of CA’s most notorious right-wingers. If you want to, a Google search for his name should provide all the info you’ll need.
Finally, there is this video put out by the CAHSR on YouTube about the project:
Spread the information far and wide. Let’s build support for this vital and sensible project, and stare down Arnold Schwarzenegger and save California’s high speed rail.