High Speed Rail: Train is a Comin’

Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

Train is a comin’, Train is a comin’, Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

African American Spiritual

High Speed Rail (HSR) sounds great to most of us. Who can ignore current and future challenges when it comes to transportation? But must we recreate problems from the twentieth century?

Urban planners across the country work, to resolve the problems created by elevated rail structures typically, built between the early part of the 19’th century up until the 1980’s. Citizenry in places like Boston and Chicago, deal with problems created by these wide platforms that appeared like the tentacles of a giant squid from a Disney movie. Massive walls and roofs divided once flourishing communities, where trees and fresh air once flourished, children walked to school and neighbors of all ages walked easily to the grocery store, or socialized on an afternoon stroll. This past-times scenario sounds familiar, in fact it sounds like my own community today.

Of course these days, sane analysts and engineers don’t favor these type of urban constructions. They’ve learned from experience that these type of comparatively cheap, monstrosities lead to urban blight of the worst kind. It isn’t only the individual property owner who suffers when her backyard or entire house is consumed by the gaping maws of elevated rail tracks, it’s the entire society. Children and elderly neighbors can’t walk to school or the grocery store safely, or easily, anymore because walls below the elevated tracks have changed the outline of the town. Besides you wouldn’t want to anyway. The cops don’t have the resources to police the danger zones that flourish beneath the shelter of overpasses. Want a good place to meet up with your gang or shoot up? These constructions are the place for you! High track rail doesn’t tend to deposit a large, long-lasting fund for perpetual cleanup services needed within the area, and history has shown us that cities have typically lacked the resources needed to deal with the results. Could you design a better spot to attract garbage and vermin? Local business and industry suffers too. People don’t want to shop or work in a place like this.

As a matter of fact, communities across the country, like this one in New York, http://www.good.is/post/high_line_gets_off_the_ground/, are working to tear down, cleanup and rededicate these symbols of urban blight. It’s taking tremendous community efforts to turn these dangerous and unbeautiful community eyesores into parks and greenbelts. It’s clear that commercial, industrial and residential users have suffered where elevated tracks grew. But surely we’re a lot smarter than that now? I mean – we must have learned from experience, right?

Apparently not. The California High Speed Rail Authority thinks they know better. Out of four original plans for constructing a system for fast trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles, they simply chose the cheapest. The Feds put seed money on the table, and we need to grab it, and do something with it, while the grabbing is good. Seductive images of High Speed Rail, just like they’ve got in Europe!, will streak residents down south in two and a half hours. It’s only those NIMBY’s (not-in-my-back-yard-ers) whose houses back up on the new elevated tracks – five freeway lanes wide up and down the peninsula and eight wide at crossings - who aren’t willing to sacrifice for the common good. Ridership estimates? Sure everybody will be jumping on board, no matter what we charge ‘em! And the funding we still need to pay the lowest construction costs we can come up with? It’s in the bag!

Hey, you can count on us to know what we’re talking about. Our best people told us so. Just ignore that study released in June by the Institute Of Transportation Studies University Of California, Berkeley at the request of the California Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, “Review of “Bay Area/California High-Speed Rail Ridership and Revenue Forecasting Study” http://www.its.berkeley.edu/publications/UCB/2010/RR/UCB-ITS-RR-2010-1.pdf

Better public transportation - we need it. But we need it good and we need it done right. If we destroy the vibrant communities of the Peninsula in order to get it, then just who are we serving?

. . .

* Peninsula residents know it can be done better http://www.peninsularail.com/main/Call_for_Common_Sense/page63.htm The Peninsula Cities Consortium (PCC) If you want to stay on top of ideas and activities involving local people, sign-up to get the PCC newsletter. http://www.peninsularail.com

* Another regular e-newsletter is available from CC-HSR. Current “Hot Topics” at the Community Coalition on High Speed Rail (http://cc-hsr.org/) include: financial risks of HSR, report on HSR activities, and update on litigation. This group’s efforts to involve * Peninsula citizens in the Environmental Impact Report for High Speed Rail, led to it’s decertification. An excerpt from their site (http://cc-hsr.org/) reads, “The program-level EIR for the SF Bay Area was decertified in December as a result of the successful lawsuit. CHSRA had to re-do this EIR and accept new evidence and public comments. CC-HSR coordinated with peninsula cities, rail advocates, and the general public to make sure we built the strongest possible case under CEQA for a routing decision that didn't destroy our communities or undermine our economy.”

* A recent San Francisco Chronicle article talks about where we stand now in regards to building and funding

“San Joaquin award helps set high-speed rail's path”

o “…state high-speed rail officials say the decision on where to start building the 800-mile high-speed rail network has yet to be made.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/28/BAH11G3J0L.DTL#ixzz150dAb7Dj