The one thing, though, is not to wave sprawl around recklessly in hopes of affecting a reaction in our audience.

It sounds like the prospect of a Fresno to L.A. or Fresno to Bay Area trip as a daily labor shed is a recipe for sprawl on steroids.

Well, high-speed rail used for commuting such unprecedented lengths is overwhelming at first. But there are also reasons why it’s not a bad thing, and how such behavior can be economically beneficial:

*The sprawl came to the Central Valley first. The rampant home-building had already occurred, and the bubble had led to an oversaturation of housing. Those homes will be there for years. At least with high-speed rail, there will be a market for those homes that’s far better than the alternative of HUD scooping them up. Ask the Antelope Valley how well that worked out.

*The Central Valley is an urbanized agricultural belt. The area between Sacramento and L.A., of roughly 250-300 miles, is home to about 5 million people. The urbanized cities are mostly along Highway 99, surrounded by mostly farms and mountains.

*The urban Central Valley is an economic basket-case. The cities are far too dense to support everyone working in the agricultural sector. The Central Valley is home to 4 public universities, yet they produce more graduates than the local job base can support. Professional jobs are lacking outside of the public sector. Universities alone aren’t enough to produce a professional job base. So, many of the grads from CSUs Bakersfield, Fresno and Stanislaus and UC Merced will have to go elsewhere for work. If they stay in the state, they’ll likely go to where these jobs exist: the Bay Area, Sacramento or Southern California.

*At least with high-speed rail sprawl, there is no way the highways can be widened or straightened enough to make a car commute even come close to a train trip. Fresno to L.A. will still take 4-5 hours each way.

*High-speed rail will give California’s businesses comparative advantage. California will continue to remain a high-value, high-cost economy for the future regardless of whether we reform government and taxation. If there is a job that can be done cheaper and/or better overseas, it will be. However, there’s still a large cluster of the economy that cannot be exported to lower-cost areas and is location-dependent.

Most of these sectors, though, are in the high-cost Southern California or Bay Area megalopoles. The Central Valley, with high-speed rail, can take some of the more price-sensitive functions out of the coastal areas and yet still be within reasonable reach of those markets.

This comparative advantage would correct the education-jobs imbalance of the Central Valley, and allows coastal California companies to maintain key high-value functions in high-cost areas.

I also hope we don’t end up subsidizing mega-commuting and accidentally working against environmental goals (e.g. if there were high-speed rail, couldn’t I, theoretically, take a job in Fresno while living in LA?). We shouldn’t forget that transit can fuel sprawl too.

Since it’s happening, I hope HSR is successful and makes people advocate for intra-regional transit more. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

If HSR were scrapped, it does not follow that this money would go to intraregional transportation instead, anymore than if we scrapped all intra-regional rail for the BRU’s bus-only paradise, that all those rail transit dollars would go toward providing bus service.

The proposed california system linking the bay area to the L.A. area is a no-brainer. The distance scales are directly comparable to Japan/Spain/Germany/France.

As for competion between inter-regional and intra-regional systems for funding, they are really more complementary than that. If we get HSR running from L.A. Union station to S.F., more of the public are going to demand better intra-regional public transit within L.A.. Yes, the money is not infinite, but I think raising the public awareness of these different options is every bit as important as actually having the money. It’s people’s awareness that will inform their votes, and its their votes that will drive the successful policies of the politicians who can make these decisions.

There already are many transit options that link far-flung regions together, such as buses (e.g. Greyhound). High-speed trains would be cleaner than buses, driving or flying, but is that a good enough reason to take money away from intra-regional transit subsidies or other measures designed to protect the environment? Is it really that important that I be able to travel from LA to San Francisco in a couple hours on a train? No matter how you make that trip, it’s not great for the environment.

We have limited resources and we should attempt to apply them in a way that will produce maximum benefits for the environment, the economy, and social equity.

I have trouble supporting inter-regional high-speed rail while my region still has a long way to go in offering an excellent intra-regional transit system.

Great post though!