And riding for only two hours and forty minutes. That’s right, we’re not talking Amtrak here. (The Coast Starlight, while romantically named and fun to ride, takes twelve hours to traverse the state from Los Angeles to Oakland.)
This is the hopeful vision of the California High Speed Rail Authority. I got to hear a presentation on one possible future for California’s transportation system this week, courtesy of the Women’s Transportation Seminar, Los Angeles Chapter. CHSRA Executive Director Mehdi Morshed presented the concept: an 800-mile rail system that would ultimately connect Sacramento to San Diego, while also reaching San Francisco, Riverside, and Irvine. (No, the system won’t directly serve Long Beach.)
At a promised 220 mph, travel times would be competitive with those of flying, while according to the CHSRA, the cost of the infrastructure would be only about half that of new runways and departure gates at airports. And I can see the value in having diverse transportation options. (Particularly since my husband’s family is in the Bay Area and for some reason we keep driving up there instead of flying. I bet you won’t be able to smell the congregated cows of Coalinga from inside the train!)
A statewide high-speed train system promises other benefits, not least among them the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to business-as-usual levels. Yes, I know you still need to generate electricity to run the train, but the CHSRA web site says that travel by high-speed rail will move each passenger for 1/3 the energy of a comparable flight and 1/5 the energy of a passenger car trip. I can also believe the argument that having a high-speed rail option will relieve congestion on metro area and Central Valley freeways. And of course the project will create thousands of direct jobs and enable the creation of many more.
This November, Californians, including us Long Beachers, will be asked to approve a ballot measure putting in place one of three essential pieces of the $40 billion needed for this system: a general-obligation bond amounting to nearly $10 billion. Nine billion of this is for the high-speed rail system and the remainder, almost $1 billion, is for local systems that will connect to it. The other main funding portions will come from newly approved federal funding for high-speed rail, and from private investments.
According to Mr. Morshed, polling for the CHSRA ballot measure indicates levels of support running from 56% to 60% of voters. However, this is not the only public funding measure we will see on the ballot this fall: Los Angeles County residents will be asked to approve another half-cent sales tax for transportation projects, and here in Long Beach we’ll be seeing the Mayor’s infrastructure bond, funded by a parcel tax, and a bond for the Long Beach Unified School District.
And still I hope we support this investment, because that’s what it is. The presentation this week naturally included a 5-minute video showing the sleek blue-and-yellow trains whooshing past green landscapes and nosing into airy, futuristic stations. Normally these kinds of videos leave me excited about the future, but this one left me despondent about the barriers that I fear stand between now and this vision of the future. Over the last several decades, as a state and as a country, we’ve turned away from public investment, for a variety of reasons, good and bad. We’ve also learned how to examine proposed public investments in such minute detail that we get lost in the flaws instead of keeping our eyes on the prize.
Here’s a list to consider – a direct quote from the CHSRA brochure – “High-speed train systems currently operate and are expanding in Japan, Korea, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, England, Belgium, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and China.” I’ve been lucky enough to ride a few of those trains. Most of these countries outrank the U.S. in terms of life expectancy and environmental quality – just to pick a couple of arguably relevant measures – so maybe they’re doing something right. Do we really want to keep sinking into the second tier of nations?
According to Mr. Morshed, if the voters do not approve the bond this fall, that’s the end of the effort – which I should mention has been going on for close to ten years now. We don’t get another chance next year to reconsider our decision. This is it, now or never. So let’s do it. Let’s not be the Californians who say, “Yes, but…”. Let’s be the Californians who say “Yes!”