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A High Speed Labor Day In California?
A High Speed Labor Day in California?
Get ready to take a deep breath of that Labor Day air! The first of September is shaping up to be a wonderful day to rest, relax and…sit in traffic? According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), 34.4 million Americans intend to travel 50 miles or more this Labor Day weekend. Nearly 84% of those Labor Day vacationers, or 28.64 million people, will be getting to their much-deserved vacation spot by car. We all know what 28.64 million people look like sitting on the road on the same holiday weekend. They look like winding, unending rows of little red brake lights moving at a snail’s pace. And let’s be honest; nothing ruins a great vacation like being stuck in traffic and knowing that you can’t do anything about it. This year, gridlocked Californians inhaling car exhaust and reading bumper stickers on the vehicle in front of them can take solace in knowing that, on future Labor Day weekends, they have the opportunity to travel faster, much faster, with California’s proposed high-speed train. With gas prices pinching pocketbooks, travelers are already boarding Amtrak and other local public transit systems in record numbers. According to AAA President and CEO Robert L. Darbelnet, “More travelers concerned about the economy, gasoline prices and rising airfares are opting to travel by train,” even at the modest pace of our current trains. This Labor Day alone will see a 12% increase in the amount of travelers using trains to get to their favorite vacation spots. While train travel often invokes images of spaghetti westerns and lumbering locomotives here in the United States, high-speed rail systems in Europe and Japan have been moving passengers with remarkable speed and efficiency for over 50 years. For example, Japan’s high-speed train between Tokyo and Osaka carries 375,000 passengers per day and travels at 158 miles per hour. Proposition 1A on the November ballot would fund the construction of a passenger train capable of transporting 117 million passenger trips per year by 2030. By traveling at speeds of over 220 miles-per-hour, the proposed California high-speed train would take travelers from Sacramento to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 17 minutes, or from San Francisco to San Diego in a little under 4 hours. The California high-speed rail would create an 800-mile transportation system that connects to or runs near every major metropolitan area in the state. In addition to being fast, efficient, and convenient, high-speed rail will save taxpayers literally billions of dollars. According to a report released by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, implementing high-speed rail in California would save 42 billion dollars when compared to the costs of expanding California’s highways and airports instead to meet California’s growing transportation demand. Those savings don’t even factor in the tens of thousands of new jobs that will be created all throughout the state. California’s over reliance on cars is expensive and unsustainable. As our state’s population soars to 50 million in the next 20 years, roads and highways will only become more obstructed with traffic and more expensive to expand and maintain. High-speed rail presents a fantastic opportunity for California’s voters to make a smart and practical economic decision that will not only save them money, but also give them more transportation options for the future. So go ahead and take a deep breath of that Labor Day air, knowing that high-speed rail can and will become a reality in California simply by voting yes on Proposition 1A in November. Kevin J. Powers, based in Sacramento, is CALPIRG’s Field Organizer. Prior to joining CALPIRG, Kevin was a Legislative Director, Fellow, and Board Member of the Roosevelt Institution, a national campus-based network of student think tanks. He is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, with an A.B. in political science. CALPIRG is a statewide public interest organization that stands up to powerful special interests on behalf of Californians’ health and wellbeing. This Article was originally published in the California Progress Report on September 1st, 2008 |
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