Robert Cruickshank, in his very useful California High Speed Rail Blog, offers links to op-ed pieces in Capitol Weekly by a pair of strong advocates for the proposed system: Quentin Kopp, the former state legislator and retired judge who is now chair of the state's High Speed Rail Authority, and Rep. Jim Costa, the Fresno Democrat who, as a member of the state Legislature, pushed the original legislation to create the high-speed authority.
Kopp and Costa make the strong case -- again -- that high-speed rail will be an environmental and economic bonanza for the state.
Costa writes: "Construction of the system is estimated to generate almost 300,000 jobs. Following construction, the system will provide 450,000 permanent jobs in California. These jobs will have a huge ripple effect into other areas of California's economy, such as the service and manufacturing industries. Overall, for every dollar invested in this system, we will see two dollars in return."
Kopp offers this: "High-speed trains will eliminate nearly 18 billion pounds of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming each year. That's equivalent to removing more than one million vehicles from our roads annually. They will also reduce dependence on foreign oil by up to 22 million barrels per year."
Cruickshank speculates that the arguments presented in the two op-ed pieces are the framework for the coming campaign to pass the November bond measure, which would raise almost $10 billion to actually begin construction of the long-delayed and much-needed high-speed rail system.
With gasoline prices soaring and oil running out, with greenhouse gas emissions threatening us in many ways, with unemployment rising, especially in the construction trades, the case for high-speed rail has never been more compelling. California's growing population will demand more of everything, including transportation, and the cost of meeting that demand by just building more freeways and bigger airports would be several times the cost of the high-speed rail system.
California has always bragged about its leading-edge mentality. This is the place where the world is re-invented every day, we like to believe. But in rail transportation, the state and the nation have fallen behind the rest of the developed world. This nation invented passenger rail travel, and now we have a chance to take the lead again -- if we have the vision and the courage to seize it.
We can make a case for a lot of things. California is bankrupting itself on education and healthcare spending, with almost no incremental, positive results from lavish spending increases over the past ten year.
High speed rail may be a great idea, but we are broke, can't really borrow, and have squandered record high state tax revenues on a government that has produced nothing in return.
I think the idea is a great one but also don't believe the state can afford to do it at this time. I don't see how we are bankrupt because of education and healthcare when both are the worse of than any other time that I have been alive. The state spends too much money on crap and not enough on important things. They need someone who has a sense of living barely check to check to cut through some of the unnecessary spending.
Maybe Santa will bring you a choo-choo for Christmas Russ.I don't know about Kris Kringle but the Golden State is broke financially and functionally so look elsewhere.Are we really to trust the numbers Kopp and Costa have come up with to further this position.St.Nick is more beleivable.
Most of the comments seem rather short sighted so far. Do people assume this downward turn in the business cycle will last forever? Do they just assume we'll never fix our budget problems? If that's going to be the assumption, we might as well just accept our status as a second-rate state.
What some people seem to fail to comprehend is the difference between spending and investing. Building high-speed rail is an investment which will generate economic activity and revenue in more ways than one. This isn't a zero-sum game. We've been dragging our feet on this far too long. It's time to get it done.
I believe it would be a good investment but we have to have the money to build it.
Can we afford not to? It's expensive adding more and more lanes to our freeways. And there's only so much you can do to expand them. If the price of gas keeps going up (and there's no reason to believe it won't), California will be at a severe competitive disadvantage in the world economy if we are still mostly dependent on autos and trucks for getting around the state.
This is something we should have started building a long time ago - and probably would have, if not for our short-sighted politicians.
Politicians are usually the ones that screw things up. I believe you are right on this one and I would not like more freeways cause I mostly avoid the ones we have now. I don't think they are designed all that well.