A Different Future with California High-Speed Rail [View all]

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from the Transport Politic blog:



A Different Future with California High-Speed Rail


Last week, America’s future in high-speed rail took a modest step forward. On Thursday, California’s State Assembly approved by a 51 to 27 margin the release of $2.5 billion in state bonds for the construction of a 130-mile segment of 220-mph tracks through the Central Valley and the implementation of $2 billion in commuter rail improvements in the Bay Area and Los Angeles regions. On Friday, by a vote of 21 to 16, the State Senate expressed its agreement.* If all goes as planned, the project could be under construction by the beginning of next year. Tracks between Madera and Bakersfield could be ready for use by 2017, the first step towards what could be an eventual 2h40 journey time for trains traveling from downtown San Francisco to Los Angeles.

The passage of the bill, which also frees up $3.2 billion in federal funds allocated for the project, is a major success not only for Governor Jerry Brown and California’s Democratic Party (no Republicans in either chamber voted in favor of the program), but also for President Obama and his Department of Transportation, which have championed high-speed rail as an essential element of America’s future transportation system. Moreover, it is a victory for those who argue that, despite the challenges and the compromises, in order to advance societal change on a grand scale, major investments in projects such as this are necessary.



The line section that will be built first has not been without controversy. Choosing to begin construction in the Central Valley, away from the population centers of the Bay Area and L.A. Basin, has induced the expected calls of a “railway to nowhere.” Yet the route selected in fact serves an area with a population of 3 million people and offers the crucial link between the two large metropolitan areas to the north and south. It is the only section of the system where sustained speeds of 220 mph can be offered by trains cruising down the straight-aways through farmlands. And it can be done at the moderate cost of about $44 million per mile, in a similar range as projects such as France’s LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique, now under construction (211 miles at a cost of €6.2 billion, or $7.6 billion, so about $36 million per mile).

If the only goal of the project were to connect L.A. and San Francisco as quickly as possible, the project could have been built to run around I-5, which charts a slightly straighter route through the Central Valley — not doing so, the L.A. Times told us today, could be a major flaw in the project.** But that alignment would skip over the Central Valley’s cities, depriving them of the direct access to California’s biggest regions. Because they currently do not have good airline service, they stand to be some of the places that benefit most from the project. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/07/09/a-different-future-with-california-high-speed-rail/