MULTI-MODAL Mondays: What Else Could CA High-Speed Bucks Do?

I'm the biggest fan of rail and high-speed rail. It's critical that passenger rail infrastructure--heavy, light and in-between--be built as soon as possible to encourage related development, and the shifting of transportation patterns away from car-dependency. Doing so would help the environment and our economy. These projects should be integrated with the road system, and encourage bicycle use.

HOWEVER...too often rail projects are used to bolster struggling, small and isolated communities that fail a basic test of passenger rail effiicacy: is there enough population density to support the line to some extent, and to have an impact on congestion and environmental problems? If development and zoning rules are altered, will enough future development around the line justify its existence when judged against some or all of the aforesaid test?

One great example of this is the CA high-speed rail project, which in just a few years has seen costs double. This is never a surprise when publicly-funded projects are being built: developers and construction interests know they can  seek additional public funds through bonds, guilt political leaders into continuing funding "for jobs," and other manipulations. The tax base funding these projects is not going get up and move--although some do--to avoid paying for the project. Hence, costs inevitably--and 'surprisingly'--rise. As well, isolated communities, or those struggling economically, lobby heavily for these lines.

The $14 billion that the initial 164 miles of CA High-Speed rail would fund between Bakersfield, with its 350,000 people, and Merced, a college and farming town of almost 80,000 people--both towns are more than 100 miles from nearest major population centers--could be used to address the environment-killing, economy-crippling congestion in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles (combined population: 20 million-plus), spurring the kind of economic growth that would ultimately benefit the state, and smaller communities.

*$14 billion (let alone the hundreds of billions to complete high-speed rail) could integrate L.A.'s rapid-rail, buses and commuter rail in a way that benefits the 16 million people (more than 25 times the number of people in the initial phase of rail) of Southern California, many of whom can't get to jobs or school, very easily.

*$14 billion would fund the building of 'through-rail' connections in downtown L.A. that allow rapid-rail and commuter rail to go into and out of downtown L.A., increasing by light-years the efficiency of the entire massive system.

*$14 billion would fund rush-hour one-way improvements to major east-west arteries in Los Angeles--one of the few large cities in America that does not do this--which have been delayed for decades (although mostly over political concerns).

*$14 billion would link LAX, one of the worst polluters in the nation's collection of airports, with populations centers via rail, thereby reducing its carbon footprint by millions of tons of emissions per year in reduced combustion-engine trips to the airport complex.

*$14 billion would fund the completion of a network of off-road bikeways and on-street bike-lanes that would be the envy of America--and is taking shape now in ways big and small--and another leg of economic stability for the area.

*$14 billion could upgrade the existing rail line from Santa Barbara to San Diego, eliminating grade-crossings and double-tracking sections that are single-track,along with improving signaling systems, and rolling stock (along with providing more bicycle-friendly coaches on weekends for both the Pacific Surfliner and Metrolink service).

Stay tuned...