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Opinion
High-speed rail isn’t pork — it’s an organic green
By: Quentin L. Kopp
Special to The Examiner
July 20, 2009
In 1986, I was elected to the California Senate from my home district as an independent — an event not achieved in the state Senate since 1878. In part, my election (and re-election two times) was attributable to my record of protecting public tax dollars and a philosophy and practice of fiscal restraint, responsibility and accountability.
As such, I took great umbrage at the July 9 Examiner editorial entitled, “High-speed rail projects are about pork, not transit.” Such peckish pap. What’s more befuddling for regular readers, the same editorial page has opined in the past in support of high-speed trains, urging the 800-mile system not be derailed.
The latest editorial suggests that federal stimulus dollars to the high-speed rail project are attributable to backroom, smoke-filled dealings with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Such leaps of logic would be silly and worth a chuckle or two if not so dangerous in misinforming California residents. On the contrary, federal stimulus dollars will provide needed impetus to our dreary economy. Moreover, California is in the pole position for those critical dollars thanks to decades of vital work by the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
Just since 2000, the system has received a certified statewide program environmental impact report and statement under state and federal law, following thousands and thousands of government agency and citizens’ comments and hundreds of public meetings reviewing the project. Cooperation with regional transportation agencies such as BART and Caltrain to integrate the high-speed rail and local and regional commuter systems for the benefit of the public is unceasing. The general alignment and station locations have been chosen for a majority of the system, designed to carry millions of passengers at speeds up to 220 mph by 2030.
Yet another critical environmental document has been certified, establishing Pacheco Pass as the preferred high-speed train route connecting San Francisco and the Peninsula with the Central Valley, while pursuing a partnership with local regional transit agencies to develop a joint-use high-speed rail infrastructure project in the Altamont Pass corridor. The Authority has also created an institutional structure to manage construction of high-speed train infrastructure and technology adaptable to California’s unique needs, and launched a program for comprehensive long-term management of operations and assets of a fully functioning system. Project level environmental work and analysis has commenced throughout the first phase of the project to Anaheim, and here in the Bay Area a draft scoping report capturing 995 public comments has been released.
Securing federal grants represents one part of a financing plan that shares responsibility between local, state and federal governments together with significant private equity investment. That’s not pork. It’s USDA prime.
Yet another indicator of the lean and mean condition of the project is the passage of Assembly Bill 3034 (Cathleen Galgiani, D-Livingston) signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which includes significant project and financial oversight and other taxpayer protections.
California residents overwhelmingly supported Proposition 1A, a down payment on an economically viable and environmentally essential transportation improvement for a burgeoning population with bursting travel demands and needs.
Don’t politicize high-speed rail and lambaste it in some overarching dissatisfaction with the U.S. stimulus bill. “Track to Nowhere” may be an easy, sophomoric chant, to which millions more will chant back, “Build, baby, build.” Construction of a high-speed train system constitutes the premiere opportunity for California to lift itself into the 21st century. I’ll put my faith in independent residents of California who understand the benefits of high-speed rail, not as a partisan policy position but as a nonpartisan solution for our state’s stressed transportation system.
Retired Judge Quentin L. Kopp is a member of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
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