>Yes, yes, we've been talking about that for years.
Rail has been part of this years long conversation too. Here's something from Michael Dukakis, now visiting public policy prof at UCLA, that brings discussion of toll-road and rail together:
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/835703.html
Michael Dukakis: Toll road bad news is high-speed rail good news
By Michael Dukakis and Arthur Purcell - Special to The Bee Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, April 4, 2008
The recent 8-2 California Coastal Commission vote against the Foothill-South Toll Road extension through Orange County may have been bad news for those who like to build and drive on crowded freeways, but it was great news for the traveling public.
Besides underscoring strong concerns about potential long-term environmental damage in a project of this type and size, the lopsided vote sent out an important message: Californians are tired of the freeways-as-usual approach that creates more traffic congestion, not less.
The Transportation Corridor Agency, the Orange County entity behind the extension of the toll road through San Onofre State Beach, says it will appeal the ruling to the U.S. secretary of commerce because the road is considered a federal project. But the betting is that the Coastal Commission's ruling will not be reversed, and even if it were, the agency would have to go back to the Coastal Commission for final approval.
What the commission really said is that if close to $1 billion is available to build this project, let's use it on projects that will deliver more bang for the buck, reduce environmental impacts and energy use, and make a real dent in the highway congestion that plagues Orange County and most of California.
And that means high-speed rail. The $1 billion its sponsors wanted to spend on a toll road could go a long way toward paying for the cost of that portion of the state's high-speed rail plan that could take travelers from Los Angeles to San Diego in 55 minutes and from Irvine to either of those cities in less than a half-hour while eliminating a lot of congestion on Interstate 5, not only in Orange County but along the entire route.
This is not pie-in-the-sky technology. It is the same kind of rail passenger system that people in Europe and Japan have been enjoying for years and that currently takes passengers from downtown London to downtown Paris and from Kyoto to Tokyo in 2 hours and 15 minutes. Countries all over the world are investing in high-speed rail. In fact, it will be Mexico, not the United States, which will build the first truly high-speed rail system in North America over the next few years.
Unlike most of the country, California doesn't have to start from scratch. Its High Speed Rail Authority, which was created under the administration of Gov. Pete Wilson, has already developed a plan that would provide Californians with modern, efficient high-speed rail service connecting Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose with the Central Valley, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego. Downtown to downtown service from San Francisco to Los Angeles would take 2 hours and 40 minutes. Sacramento to San Jose would take 1 hour and 24 minutes.
And don't let anybody tell you that Californians won't ride the trains if they are fast, safe and efficient. Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner from Los Angeles to San Diego is the second most popular train in the entire Amtrak system and carries more than 2.5 million people a year. Imagine how many people a high-speed train connecting those two cities would carry with a running time of less than an hour – one third of what it currently takes on the Surfliner and less than half the time it takes to drive it, even on a good day.
Poll after poll tells us that reducing congestion and doing something about global warming are at the top of Californians' concerns about their quality of life. Building new freeways and expanding old ones is a last-century approach that will do neither. And with gasoline now hitting $4 a gallon, it's pretty obvious that California's long-standing love affair with the automobile is on the rocks.
The proposed high-speed rail bond issue that will be on the ballot in November will carry an estimated cost of $9 billion. It would be matched by the federal government with a contribution that is less than the cost of a month of the Iraq war. And it could be supplemented by billions in contributions by major investors in development around the system's stations.
The bond issue is a small price to pay for a high-speed rail plan that will create thousands of jobs, reduce congestion on our highways and at our airports, cut pollution and global warming, help revitalize the state's older cities, preserve our parks for generations to come and save us a lot of pain at the pump.
It ought to be one of California's top priorities.