Image: California High Speed Rail Authority

Feeling a bit overwhelmed at the plethora of meetings on various projects such as the Crenshaw, Expo Phase II, Wilshire BRT, Harbor Subdivision, Gold Line eastside Phase II, Westside Subway Extension, Regional Connector now occurring or upcoming?

Too bad! Public scoping meetings are being held this month by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) to solicit public input for the development of the project Environmental Impact Report/Statement (EIR/EIS) for the Los Angeles to San Diego via the Inland Empire Section of the proposed California High-Speed Train System (HST).

Meetings will be held from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. You can arrive and participate at any time during those hours. All will be formatted identically, so attend at the location most convenient for you. It appears the Authority is following the informal drop in/open house format generally favored by agencies in the early stages of outreach with display boards, staff and/or consultants on hand to answer questions, cards available to be filled out with any comments you wish to submit, perhaps some opportunities to make verbal comments or even to see a brief presentation on the proposed project.

The meetings in our area are being held in the San Gabriel Valley, where the line from Los Angeles to San Diego is to be routed through.  A complete list of the L.A. County meetings can be found here, in the Streetsblog calendar section.

Public comments can also be submitted on the Authority’s website or by writing to Mr. Dan Leavitt, Deputy Director, ATTN: Los Angeles to San Diego via the Inland Empire Section HST Project EIR/EIS, California High-Speed Rail Authority, 925 L Street, Suite 1425, Sacramento, CA 95814, or via email with subject line “LA-SD HST Section via the Inland Empire” to: comments@hsr.ca.gov no later than November 20, 2009.

For more information, call: (909) 627-2974 or (916) 324-1541.

For an overview of why the CHSRA chose a route through the Inland Empire instead of down the coast, read on after the jump.

I'm sure some are curious why the CHSRA choose to connect Los Angeles and San Diego via the Inland Empire instead of the more direct routing along the coast. From my years following this project I'll offer my cliffnotes on why this is so.

There are a number of obstacles to using the coastal corridor. The right of way in some places is narrow and also traverses environmentally sensitive areas. As the faq "How is this project different from other previous attempts to implement high-speed train systems in the U.S.?" on the CHSRA website notes:

The California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) considered but rejected a coastal alignment between Los Angeles and San Diego as part of its certified Statewide Program EIR/EIS (November 2005). The Authority concluded that limited existing right-of-way and sensitive coastal resources made high-speed train service on the coastal rail corridor infeasible.  You can read more on the routing choices at the CAHSR's Frequently Asked Questions page.

Another factor is opposition from the coastal communities of Southern Orange County and Northern San Diego County. While cities like Anaheim and Irvine are eager to be part of the system, communities along the coast further south are hotbeds of NIMBY pushback (e.g. San Juan Capistrano and Encinitas). That is why the spur line serving Orange County goes no further South than Irvine. Plus the folks in the Inland Empire want the project to serve their region and have been actively lobbying for it to do so during the past decade. Similar lobbying by Palmdale and Lancaster is the reason why the project goes through the Antelope Valley instead of along the grapevine/I-5 corridor to reach L.A. from the Central Valley.

To see an interactive map of the proposed route, click here.

(Photo: Streetsblog LA)

Under the circumstances, one might think that lawmakers would pay extra attention to oversight over the high-speed rail spending. But that's far from the case, as a senior official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) told the House transportation committee yesterday.

Mark Yachmetz, the FRA's associate administrator for railroad development, noted that the stimulus allowed only "one-quarter of 1 percent" of the high-speed rail pot to be used on oversight as well as the logistics of evaluating applications from more than two dozen different states -- which have totaled $57 billion.

"We're using those funds up right now during application reviews," Yachmetz said. "If the situation isn't addressed, we're going to have significant problems when it comes to project implementation."

Yachmetz also observed that the stimulus law didn't provide for any new positions at the agencies in charge of setting up a national high-speed rail program. "We will handle the applications," he said, "but no, we don't have the resources we need for a mature program."

(Image: DoE)

Page 66 of the Data Book, reprinted on the DoE's website on Inauguration Day, contains a table ranking the energy intensity of various light rail systems across the country.

The DoE lists the "average" energy efficiency of all light rail systems as 7,605 Btus per passenger mile, while the average for cars was 3,514 Btus per passenger mile.

Those numbers were enough to spark inflammatory headlines about the energy consumption of light rail. The only problem: The rail data is wrong.

An eagle-eyed Streetsblog Capitol Hill reader discovered that the DoE used simple averaging to obtain its light rail number, without weighting each city's light rail network based on how many passengers it carries.

So Kenosha's streetcars, which carry a bit more than 60,000 passengers annually, were treated the same as Seattle's light rail, where ridership is exceeding 60,000 every week.

Even famously anti-transit Randal O'Toole recognized the DoE's error and pointed out the actual average energy efficiency for light rail is 3,642 Btus per passenger mile -- comparable with the numbers for cars, which don't fully account for the choice of auto driven.

The same averaging error is made on page 67 of the Data Book, which states that the "average" energy efficiency of heavy rail is more than 3,600 Btus per passenger mile. That average put Cleveland's energy-chugging system, which carry about 30,000 passengers on an average weekday, on equal footing with the New York City subway, where the average weekday ridership tops 7 million.

When the Streetsblog reader contacted the DoE to inform them of the error, he got a quick acknowledgement and a promise to correct the data as soon as possible. The incorrect averaging should never have been used, the DoE said.

The court found that the plaintiffs - the Town of Atherton, the City Menlo Park, the Planning and Conservation League, Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, California Rail Foundation, and Bayrail Alliance - had two major legitimate complaints. The Authority failed to recirculate the Final Project EIR after learning that the Union Pacific Railroad would not allow high speed trains to share its right of way from San Jose to Gilroy, which means the train will have an impact either on the adjacent Monterey Highway or residents and businesses along the route, the court ruled.

The ruling, by Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny, also found that the Authority's claim "that mitigation strategies will reduce the vibration impact to a less-than-significant level is not supported by substantial evidence." On related complaints about noise and visual impact, the court ruled in the Authority's favor.

Stuart Flashman, the Oakland-based land-use attorney representing the plaintiffs, told The Almanac newspaper the Authority is "back to the drawing board" as a result of the ruling. In fact, the ruling may not give critics of high-speed rail much of a wedge.

"The assessment of our lawyers," said Authority Executive Director Mehdi Morshed, "is that the court decision is a minor issue and that it's not going to impact our schedule, that we can continue our work and not it's going to have an impact on our project-level work or our federal funding request."

Though the judge has yet to determine what the Authority will need to do to remedy the situation, Morshed does not anticipate it will set the project back. Even before the ruling, the Authority had "accepted the fact that we can't use the UP right of way," said Morshed. "We're proceeding accordingly. So the fact that they're saying, 'Well, how are you going to handle UP right of way,' is something we've been doing, so it's not something new."

The ruling is more problematic for proponents of alternative alignments along the Altamont Pass, I-280, and US-101, since the court sided with the Authority in their review of alternative routes. "We actually think it's a very, very good court ruling," said Morshed. "If you read it, the judge agreed with practically everything we did. All the issues that the people who sued us raised, the judge found them to be invalid. So, it's just these two issues that the judge said we need to do more work on, and we'll be happy to do that. But fundamentally, our big fundamental issue is, the judge agreed with us."

"For those who wanted us to basically give up on Pacheco and go back and look at Altamont, the judge didn't give them that."

Given how contentious the project has been with some Peninsula residents, of course, this is not likely to be the last skirmish. But for now, the Authority doesn't view the ruling as the major setback portrayed in some newspaper headlines this morning.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we've got a post from Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic on the importance of funding both intercity and intracity rail, despite limits on the amount of money available. Freemark takes on the argument that investment in transportation within cities should trump the construction of more efficient rail connections between cities:

High-speed trains in Taiwan. Photo: loudtiger/Flickr.

[I]nvestment is needed in both intercity and intracity corridors. Claiming that we should not fund high-speed rail because urban transit is more important is equivalent to saying that federal subsidies to air travel and non-urban highways should simply end, because metropolitan areas need more investment and travel between cities is less important.

The U.S. certainly has “scarce resources” at the moment; the $9 trillion government deficit over the next ten years will likely force budget cuts and require a reevaluation of spending in all executive branches, including the Department of Transportation. But the question here is not whether to invest in urban or long-distance travel systems. The country continues to grow relatively quickly, and both in-city and intercity travel demand will have to be met. Thus, we simply cannot devote all funds currently designated for the latter type of travel to the former; while we certainly should commit more funds to urban transit, we also need to find new and better ways to move between cities, since more and more people will be doing exactly that.…

Arguing that improving urban transit should be prioritized over high-speed rail is acceptable, but ignoring the needs of long-distance travel is not. The United States has a serious need to invest in both intercity and intracity travel, and for trips of between 200 and 600 miles between large cities, high-speed rail is usually the most appropriate investment. In the pursuit of better transit within a city, we cannot forget that we also need to get between cities.

Be sure to also check out the piece Freemark had Tuesday on The Infrastructurist, in which he sharpened his pencil and re-ran the numbers on Ed Glaeser's unfavorable analysis of high-speed rail on the New York Times website. Freemark writes:

By populating his model with a better set of assumptions, we hope to show how badly the economist missed the mark even on his handpicked example of an HSR link between Houston and Dallas. In reality, a well-designed high speed intercity rail project between the two largest cities in Lone Star State would likely produce a net economic benefit -- not at all the white elephant Glaeser suggests. In this more comprehensive model that takes into account trivialities like regional population growth and a reality-based route, the annual benefits total $840 million compared with construction and maintenance costs of $810 million. Which is to say, our numbers show that HSR pays for itself rather handily.

St. Louis Urban Workshop takes the stuffing out of another HSR hater today. Check out the site's priceless "re-mix" of Robert Samuelson's Newsweek piece claiming the Obama Administration's rail plan is "a high-speed boondoggle."

Plus: How many folding bikes does it take to fill up a parking space? Cyclelicious has the photographic answer, which is sure to especially delight Brompton-lovers.

Now that the first round of applications to the federal government for the $8 billion in High Speed Rail which means it's more than past time to make the case that California deserves more than its share of those funds.  California has two applications in to the the USDOT for two segments of the project that should eventually connect San Francisco to San Diego.

The first is local and would connect Los Angeles to Anaheim.  The cost for completing that segment is $3 billion.  The second corridor would connect San Francisco to San Jose at somewhere between $4 billion and $5 billion.  The L.A. to Anaheim line could be completed by as early as 2018.

The case has already been made that California is ahead of the game when it comes to planning for High Speed Rail.  In addition to having a route ready to go, last November voters approved a $9.9 billion bond for the project that will cover nearly one quarter of the $40 billion project.

In fact, California is so far ahead of other states, that The Business Insider, a publication that until recently had been questioning the potential success of sending money towards High Speed Rail, suggested that instead of helping every deserving project around the country the federal government should send all of the money to California.  They propose that California's High Speed Rail project could be the "interstate system" of this "great recession."

If we built the train system proposed for California, we would get real, measurable, results. If the train is a flop, at least we'll know for sure. If it's a raging success, then we can choose the next part of the country in which to build a better train system.

However, if we give a $76 million to North Carolina, and $28 million to Pennsylvania, what will really learn?

We've seen a lot of controversy created against the concept of High Speed Rail by east-coast columnists who can't think outside of the box.  Yesterday, DC Streetsblog's Ryan Avant took apart a Washington Post columnist who used the bizarre argument that America didn't have the density to support High Speed Rail as they do in Europe.  While Avant blew that argument out of the water nationally, the California High Speed Rail Blog took it a step further and looked at the density of the counties that would be served by High Speed Rail when it comes to California.

San Francisco County – 9,999
San Mateo County- 1,575
Santa Clara County- 1,303
Merced County- 109.2
Fresno County- 143.1
Tulare County- 76.3
Kern County- 81.3
Los Angeles County 2,344.1
Orange County- 3,607.5

average: 2,138 persons per square mile over nine counties served by HSR.

This is just for the San Francisco to Irvine section, but I think we can safely lay density to rest as an argument.

Despite Glaeser's acknowledgment that his "back-of-the-envelope calculation" doesn't "[represent] a complete evaluation of any actual proposed route," the posts are sure to be read and regurgitated by rail opponents uninterested in having an actual debate on the merits of high-speed rail investments.

Today, the Washington Post's lame excuse for an economics columnist, Robert Samuelson, used numbers from Glaeser's analysis in writing an extremely regrettable piece arguing that investments in high-speed rail are misguided. But this is no honest entry into the discussion of how best to invest in transportation infrastructure. It's a hack job, plain and simple.

Samuelson begins by complaining about Amtrak subsidies, but he can't be bothered to address what those subsidies actually suggest about the competitiveness of fast, intercity rail. On the corridor where service most closely resembles true high-speed service, Amtrak runs an operating profit.

It gets much worse from there. Samuelson argues against rail on the basis of population density, writing:

What works in Europe and Asia won't in the United States. Even abroad, passenger trains are subsidized. But the subsidies are more justifiable because geography and energy policies differ.

Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it's 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile. Trains can't pick up most people where they live and work and take them to where they want to go. Cars can.

This is embarrassingly bad analysis. America's overall population density includes vast expanses of land in the west where few people live and where high-speed trains won't be built (have a look at the administration's map of proposed routes here and note how many low-density states are not expected to get service).

The proper point of comparison is the population densities of metropolitan corridors where lines will be built. A child could understand the point, and yet Samuelson, out of ignorance or deliberate obtuseness, doesn't get it.

He follows that up with a similar error:

Distances also matter. America is big; trips are longer. Beyond 400 to 500 miles, fast trains can't compete with planes.

Again, this is just embarrassing. Distances between major cities on planned corridors will be at most 400 miles. No one is suggesting that rail compete with planes on coast-to-coast routes.

This is a hugely important factual point, and Samuelson seems to be entirely ignorant of it. He simply knows nothing about the policies being considered.

Samuelson goes on to make other mistakes; like Glaeser he fails to consider the costs and benefits of alternatives to high-speed rail -- given current congestion levels and expected population growth, new infrastructure of some kind will be necessary to keep the national economy functioning. But given the basic errors mentioned above, it's hardly worth engaging with the piece.

The Senate's transportation bill, shepherded by senior appropriator Patty Murray (D-WA), provides $1.2 billion for the Obama administration's high-speed rail initiative -- $200 million more than the White House's budget request, but significantly less than the $4 billion that the House set aside for that purpose.

Highways, by contrast, got $41.1 billion from the House but $1.4 billion extra from the Senate, for a total of $43.5 billion in spending. Transit would get $480 million more than the White House requested, along with a $150 million infusion for the cash-strapped D.C. Metro system.

Senators matched their House counterparts on funding for the administration's inter-agency "livable communities" project, which is aimed at encouraging transit-oriented development. And the Senate outdid the House on rail safety, providing the $50 million in grants for technology upgrades that was sought by two senior Democrats after the D.C. Metro crashed  last month.

Will all 11 high-speed rail plans end up getting a piece of the action? (Photo: WSJ)

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), the co-chairman of Building America's Future and an unabashed high-speed rail evangelist, urged senators to shrug off their post-bailout reluctance to approve large spending projects. The White House's $13 billion commitment, Rendell argued, is only a down payment on a workable system.

Building high-speed rail along the California coast, he added, is estimated to cost as much as $40 billion. A northwestern network is projected to cost $25 billion. Similar long-term funding problems, as it happens, are also haunting lawmakers who aim to overhaul federal transportation policy.

Rendell suggested that a national infrastructure bank, independent of the government, should be tapped to direct money to high-speed rail proposals without political concerns influencing the process. "The public wants that," he said. "The public doesn’t want transportation dollars authorized through [the existing] system."

That outcome is highly unlikely, however, given that the federal DOT already has released its guidelines for an internal ranking of regional rail plans. And Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo was on hand to defend the administration's methods.

"Our vision matches, frankly, what they've done in Europe," Szabo told senators. Meanwhile, Rendell kept imploring the lawmakers to reconsider the Obama administration's 110-mph ballpark for defining what constitutes "high-speed".

With high-speed trains topping 200 mph in China and 160 in France, the governor said, "we're absolutely consigning ourselves to second-class citizenship" by setting the benchmark at 110 mph.

Tom Skancke, a member of the transportation revenue panel that last year called for a major gas-tax hike to fund system-wide reform, echoed Rendell's concerns with a call to publicly promote broad reform:

I don't think the nation as a whole has a plan for high-speed rail. ... The way we get there is, we have to sell the American public, particularly on rail, as we get people out of their horse and buggy. It is a cultural shift. We have to convince the American people that high-speed rail is going to be predictable, going to be on time, going to be affordable. ... We know what the alignment should look like. I just believe we need to step up and do it.

Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman also sought to bring Rendell and Skancke's ambitions down to earth.

Citing the Acela train's moderate progress in taking over market share in the northeast corridor, Boardman said the U.S. is "not a train-riding culture" -- an eyebrow-raising admission from the chief of the nation's largest passenger rail service. "With high-speed rail, speed is not the issue," he said. "Convenience and trip times are."

Boardman also did his part to guard Amtrak's turf, suggesting that high-speed rail planners "build a culture of riding the train" by ensuring that the projects receiving funding are easily connectable to the network he runs. "People want to be seamless," he said.

As for the senators in attendance, most put in palpable plugs for their own home-state proposals. Texan Kay Bailey Hutchison, the commerce committee's senior GOPer, was abuzz with the possibilities of the Texas "T-Bone." Sen. Mark Udall (D-NM) spoke of a western corridor linking Albuquerque and Texas.

Photo: Sacramento Bee

Yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden, met with governors from eight different states that are competing for High Speed Rail funding.  Streetsblog's D.C. Correspondent wrote a story about the national implications of the meeting available at our New York site.  While neither Schwarzenegger nor another representative from California was present, there was good news for California.  From today's Times,

"The reason why California is looked at so closely -- it's been a priority of your governor, it's been a priority of your Legislature, they've talked about it, a lot of planning has been done," Biden said in a conference call with reporters.

The vice president said the administration wants "to get shovel-ready projects out the door as quickly as we can. . . . So California is in the game."

In other words, because California has been working on the San Francisco to San Diego High Speed Rail Corridor, and because voters put up funds for the project in the form of bond money; we have a leg up in applying for federal funds as the Obama Administration makes them available.

And let's be clear, it's not as though the entire corridor were "Shovel Ready" but there are two sets of track that the California High Speed Rail Authority says are ready to go.  The first is local, as the state could connect Los Angeles to Anaheim at a cost of $3 billion.  The second corridor would connect San Francisco to San Jose at somewhere between $4 billion and $5 billion.

Back when the federal stimulus was first passed, Ben Fried out of our New York office wrote a pretty brutal takedown of the final bill that I re-posted at the LA Streetsblog.  Supporters of California High Speed Rail were upset for obvious reasons and I defended Fried's post in the comments section by saying.

But that so much of the negotition was done in Harry Reid's office (to the point that Pelosi actually pitched a fit about it according to Politico) and he's already talking about funding for the gamblin' train to Las Vegas, I am mighty sceptical that much, if any, of that money is going to end up being spent on the line we supported last fall. If it does, I'll do a mea culpa post and you can all "I told you so'd" me. I've certainly been willing to do them in the past.

Well, let's just say I'm not quite ready to eat crow just yet, but I got it marinating.  In this case, the crow would taste awfully good.

A bullet train is not necessarily a silver bullet. Photo by rikdom via Flickr.

[S]tart with the corridors where there is a certain density, and a high demand for something other than driving and flying. Prove out the concept with truly high speed rail, and then as people see the benefit of it, the demand for it in other places might increase.

In addition, we have to think about tolls and higher fuel taxes to discourage driving on the same corridors that have a lot of congestion on the road so that you drive people appropriately to the transit option. And then the third thing is, the U.S. has a growing population. You want to make sure that growth occurs along these corridors so that you have more density and more riders. Not just to get the riders, but so that you have your infrastructure and your demand in the same place because that’s the only thing that will make it cost effective and carbon efficient.

Most people don’t know how much it costs them to drive their own car. We have these externalized costs associated with owning the car, which we don’t pay every time we drive, so once we own a car and we’ve paid those costs, we only see the fuel costs... If we made it clearer, like with pay-as-you-drive insurance, and with fuel prices that more accurately reflected the cost of building and maintaining the road system and protecting the fuel supply, which is related to keeping peace in the Middle East and keeping our access to a steady supply of oil and all the environmental costs... if the driver paid all those every time he/she filled the tank, we would be paying much higher costs all the time and would make different decisions about how much we drove our cars.

While President Barack Obama promoted wind power and cap-and-trade legislation, VP Joe Biden spent Earth Day talking up transit. Public radio's "The Takeaway" reports that Biden held a presser at a bus maintenance facility in Landover, Maryland, to tout a $300 million investment in hybrid buses and other municipal vehicles as part of the federal stimulus package. Said Biden:

This program, the Clean Cities program, is in its 15th year. Already it's saved two billion gallons of petroleum used since its inception. And now, it's time to ramp it up. Ramp it up in a big way. We know it works.

As reporter Andrea Bernstein points out, this is not breaking news. What's interesting, she says, is the seemingly intensifying focus of the White House on transit as the fight over the next round of federal transportation spending approaches.

I would say that up to now there has been mostly disappointment among people who care about mass transit in the Obama administration. People felt that the recovery act only had $8 billion dollars, now that's $8 billion but it's $8 billion out of $800 billion, so that's 1% and that's all the money for transit, and they were saying that isn't enough money, it doesn't show a real commitment, you can't really change things with that.

So when they begin to see the administration talking about high speed rail, when they begin to see the administration talking about mass transit going as Joe Biden did yesterday to a transit station for his Earth Day thing, they're thinking ok, so maybe this administration is going to put serious muscle behind this. As a reauthorization fight comes up, speaking to a lobbyist from NRDC who has expressed great disappointment up to now, and he said you know, I think things may be beginning to turn.

You've probably seen this already. It's the latest graphic representation of the nation's proposed high-speed rail corridors, and it's been all over the transportation blogosphere since President Obama stood beside it at a press conference last week.

Those corridors are likely to change somewhat as the administration refines its new strategy for high-speed rail, says Transport Politic blogger Yonah Freemark, who credits the administration for taking serious steps toward a national rail plan.

Perhaps the biggest positive from yesterday's presser is that Obama linked the idea of high-speed rail to local transit, center cities, and car-free transportation:

Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes. (Laughter.) Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination. Imagine what a great project that would be to rebuild America.

This week Governor Schwarzenegger joined Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Meet the Press.  A partial clip of the Governor's statement on transportation can be found above and the full segment can be viewed at the Meet the Press website; but for those at work, here's what the governor had to say about traffic and funding after each politician's opening statement:

Well I think that, as Governor Rendell has just mentioned, in the latest polls it shows that people are very interested in rebuilding America and they're willing also to pay for it.  Look, everyone gets stuck in traffic.  There's no reason we should get stuck in traffic.  I mean, what we have to do is have a plan in America to see how do we move goods and people around?  Is it through rail, through High Speed Rail, I'm a big believer in High Speed Rail.  Is it through roads?  Which direction should we go?

People want to move faster and companies want to move their goods much faster.  We want to upgrade all those things rather than being stuck with that.

After a question from David Gregory about possible financing of these projects, and specifically a gas tax, the governor responds:

I think it's something to look at...that's the next question: How do you finance all this?  I think the important thing is that there is a willingness amongst the people to pay for it.  It doesn't all have to be done through public money.  We are talking about Public-Private Partnerships.  There are many companies that are interested in coming in and financing the High Speed Rail and other rail systems, light rail and so on.

First, it's funny that the Governor can't bring himself to say the words "gas tax" even when asked directly about it.  Second, as much as I agree that we need to improve America's infrastructure, the Governor is missing the point that we need to reinvest in fixing our crumbling transportation infrastructure in addition to or before investing in massive expansion of infrastructure.  CALPIRG detailed why stimulus funds for Californians should be used to "Fix-It-First" and there's no reason that a similar push shouldn't be made to spend "regular" federal transportation dollars in the same way.

And last, Governor, I don't get "stuck in traffic" very often because I don't drive or ride in a car very often.  Don't forget there's a lot of us that have opted out of congestion either by biking or taking transit.  We deserve some of those federal transportation dollars too.

Yesterday CALPIRG released a new one-minute video short showing members discussing why they are supporting Proposition 1A, the High Speed Rail bonding measure that will appear on next week's ballot.  Reasons to support the proposition range from California's needs, to the environmental benefits of rail, to it just being "hella awesome."

To support their video and other efforts, CALPIRG is also asking supporters to get behind an email campaign based on the popular game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon."  Despite Prop 1A's popularity with rail enthusiasts and environmentalists, CALPIRG argues that this grass roots email campaign is necesary because mos trank and file Californians aren't aware of the ballot proposition, High Speed Rail, or what's at stake for our state transportation infrastructure in California.

I can't possibly do justice to the "Prop. 1A Kevin Bacon Game" so just read their message to supporters and draft email to send to your contacts, after the jump.

We need your help to get the word out about why it's important to vote YES on Prop 1A, which would bring a high-speed train to California.

Our target: Kevin Bacon. (And millions of Californians.)

If you've ever played the game, then you know that everyone is connected within Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. We're asking you to forward this email far and wide. If we can get enough people to forward it along, eventually it will get to Kevin Bacon - and it should reach millions of Californians along the way, educating the public about why we need high-speed rail.

Some specifics: Prop 1A would start the process of building the California High-Speed Rail line. This train would run from Sacramento to San Diego, taking passengers between northern and southern California way faster than driving. For example, travelers could get from LA to San Francisco in less than three hours.

The train would create 450,000 jobs once finished. It would reduce our dependence on oil by 12.7 million barrels a year, eliminate 12 billion pounds of harmful greenhouse gasses, and reduce traffic congestion. Get more information

Right now, most people don't know that High-Speed Rail is on the ballot and we don't have the money to buy TV commercials to educate people about Prop 1A. That's why we're counting on you to help us get the word out, by sending this message to all the Californians you know.

So keep this message going - if it reaches Kevin Bacon, then we can be pretty sure we've gotten the word out across the state! Please forward this email to friends, co-workers, moms, dads, aunts, uncles - everyone.

When you're done, go to our website and let us know how many people you forwarded the email to so we can see how many people we're reaching. You can also pledge to vote "yes for Prop 1A" there

http://www.calpirgstudents.org/high-speed-rail

Thanks for all you do,

CALPIRG students from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, USC, UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, San Diego State, Cal State Bakersfield, Cal State LA, Sac State, San Jose State, and SF State.

P.S. If you ARE Kevin Bacon and you are receiving this message, please let us know!

CALPIRG, one of the most visible supporters of Proposition 1a, which would provide funds for a High Speed Rail service from San Francisco to San Diego, hosted an open forum on the project earlier today at UCLA.  Handing out t-shirts, buttons, signs and other paraphanalia, the forum almost seemed more of a sporting event than transportation forum, as most students were already supporters of the project.

Speaking at the forum were CALPIRG's Emily Rusch, the Sierra Club's Darrell Clarke and Alex Pugh of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

Pugh spoke of the economic benefits of building the rail line.  Proponents estimate that construction of the line will create 160,000 construction jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs:

Voting Yes on Proposition 1A this November is about investing in our community to make it a better place to live in the future.  Building high-speed rail will reduce our dependence on expensive oil and reduce traffic congestion.

However, most of the audience was more interested in the environmental and transportation impact of the proposed project.  Clarke told students,

I'm supporting High Speed Rail for California as an alternative to the imported oil that we use to fuel our airplanes and automobiles.  High Speed Rail will replace these trips with cleaner, faster, and electrically powered High Speed Rail.

Clarke's comments were echoed by Coreen Weintraub, a UCLA graduate from Oakland who wishes that High Speed Rail were already an option for her to visit family and get back to school.

 If we had High Speed Rail now I would use it at least five times a year...(Prop. 1A) is the right choice for California.  We're a big state.  We have a big economy.  We need a way to get from one part of the state to another quickly without leaving a large carbon footprint.

As I was leaving, CALPIRG staff were shooting interviews for a commercial that will be released next week as part of a statewide day of action for Prop. 1A on October 28.

(As we've already seen today with Measure R, the campaign for and against Proposition 1A, a bonding measure to pay for High Speed Rail, is also heating up as the weather cools down.  Today, the Times profiled the efforts to support and oppose the ballot prop.  Speaking for those in favor, Dana Gabbard writes below some of the many reasons that Californians should support High Speed Rail in a couple of weeks.)

While attending a stakeholders meeting for one of Metro's long range plans about a decade ago I was listening to the comments of someone from the League of Women Voters discussing our challenges in dealing with traffic 15-20 years from now. And it struck me that she was assuming that most people would still be getting around in automobiles. And I had a sudden epiphany, one of those rare nuggets of insight that help shape my approach to advocacy. What I realized is often the great challenge new ideas face isn't facts or cost but dealing with perceptions and assumptions. This comes to mind as I recall a conversation I had a few years later with a reporter from the business section of the Los Angeles Times. Somehow the subject turned to the proposal for a statewide bullet train network. She stated "Dana, I just don't see it". I believe the main challenge the high speed rail faces isn't feasibility--the technology is well established with a sterling safety record (the only major high speed train accident occurred in Germany in 1998)--but the changes implicit in its creation which challenges people's conception of our state. But if it makes sense than while it will be a dauntingly expensive project and on a scale akin to the building of the state aqueduct, it really comes down to priorities and a matter of will, if we desire to have it.

In my recent commentary on Measure R I wrote about its path to the ballot being like a soap opera.

But it has nothing on the proposed bullet train which literally has been 15+ years in the making. It was in 1993 that an Intercity High-Speed Rail Commission was established to study the feasibility and advisability of a high speed network. After the Commission concluded that such a system was worth pursuing the California High-Speed Rail Authority was established in 1996 to begin planning it. In 2002 after extreme exertions State Senator Jim Costa was able to have placed on the ballot $10 billion of bonds as a down payment for a bullet train network. Slated to be voted on in 2004 the vicissitudes of politics caused the measure to be bumped twice before the body politic decided this was the year it deserved its shot. And like Measure R this is a do or die situation--if the program doesn't go forward soon environmental documents are in danger of starting to expire and needing redone. Plus development imperils necessary right of way acquisition in the Central Valley. If the bonds fail by all accounts the Authority will fold its tent and it could easily be 50 years before another effort for a high speed train may be undertaken. 

You may be shocked to learn I have just two chief reason why I think we should pass the bonds. The first was made all the way back in 1996 by the Commission in its Final Report: given the unlikelihood of our major airports being expanded it would make sense to shift intra-state travel to high speed rail while having air space mostly reserved for long distance travel. Certainly in the intervening 12 years the tensions between the major airports (LAX, John Wayne, SFO, Oakland, San Jose, Lindberg) and their surrounding communities over expansion etc, have become if anything more heated. In this context high speed rail has a logical and prudent role in our state's transportation network.

The other reason was first stated by former state librarian Kevin Starr in an interview two years ago in CityBeat L.A.: that building a bullet train would help unite Southern California and Northern California. Much too much of our state's culture and politics has been dominated by the north/south divide. Investing billions so our residents think of themselves as Californians not simply residents of whatever enclave or region they inhabit would be money well spent. Sometimes the most powerful idea is the simplest, most straight forward one.

http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/kevin_starr/4406/

We can do it. It makes sense. And once again, as our state has been so often in the past, we'll be pioneers leading the way for the rest of the county. The bullet train partakes of the very spirit that created and built this state. We don't think little. And we have the confidence to do what others would believe impossible. Vote for Proposition 1A, and for a renewal of the spirit that has made our state great in the past and can make it great again. Or as the Romans put it: Fortes fortuna adiuvat (translation: fortune favors the bold).

Image: Pacifica Radio

(The following piece is by Erin Steva, CALPIRG's high speed rail coordinator for the Greater Los Angeles area.  Her contact information is at the bottom for anyone interested in helping to get a bonding ballot proposition passed next November.)

Ready to start laying the tracks for a high-speed rail? We have less then 28 days to pass Prop 1A which would allow the high-speed rail to move forward. We are right on the cusp of winning, but do need swing the state by educating undecided voters.

That is why we are doing a series of events in upcoming weeks to make sure secure those critical votes. If you have an hour or two open, come on by to one of the following:

Sunday (October 12)- Voter Education Table, 2:30-6: We will be at the Franklin Village Street fair, meeting at Franklin and Bronson. We are asking volunteers to pitch in whatever they can.

Wednesday (October 15)- High-Speed Rail Action Meeting, 7-8:30: Volunteers can learn more about Prop 1a, and what we need to do to win. After the briefing, we will write letters to the editor to key newspapers, and also start to plan the next big event. Meeting is at 3435 Wilshire Blvd Suite 385, Los Angeles.

If you have any questions, or would like to be updated on future events, please contact esteva@calpirg.org. Looking forward to helping build the rail!

Image: California High Speed Rail

Schwarzenegger's office sent a letter to the legislature asking that four pieces of legislation be sent to the Governor's Office, be sent so he could sign them.  These four bills include A.B. 3034, legislation that would replace the current ordinance with new language that includes oversight and a budget.  Until this announcement, it seemed certain that the ballot would contain a previously approved bonding proposal with no oversight provisions making it less likely to receive statewide support.  The California High Speed Rail blog jokes, that:

Nothing's certain until we see the printed ballots, but it does look like we're going to have to get used to "Yes on 1A." Thank god I didn't order those bumper stickers yet...

In what could be considered good news for supporters of Metro's plan, the Governor claims that regardless of the budget impact, Californians deserve the right to vote on ballot measures.  The Sacramento Bee explains:

Schwarzenegger plans to sign the bill when it reaches his desk, according to his press secretary, Aaron McLear. The Assembly passed it earlier this month but withheld it due to the governor's threat.

In the letter, Schwarzenegger asked leaders to send him four proposals immediately so they can be placed on the November ballot. Besides high-speed rail, they include a water bond, a plan to expand the California Lottery, and a budget reform plan to strengthen the state's rainy-day fund. The latter two proposals are part of budget negotiations that remain unresolved 57 days into the current fiscal year.

"The governor believes Californians ought have the opportunity to vote on these four measures on the November ballot despite the fact that the Legislature is two months past their deadline in passing a budget," McLear said.