California Senate Opposition to High Speed Rail Improvements Grasping at Straws

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog

The California Chronicle has two short articles about the State Senate's approach to high speed rail, focusing on Democrat Leland Yee of San Francisco and Republican Roy Ashburn, whose district sprawls across eastern California but is based in Bakersfield. The articles help explain the politics surrounding HSR in our state capital, and may give us a preview of what we can expect to unfold Monday morning at 10 at the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on AB 3034.

The Yee article focuses on his work to restore the "spine" of the HSR corridor, from SF to LA and Anaheim, which as you all know was threatened by AB 3034's provision for building smaller, potentially disconnected HSR corridors instead. The article quotes my comments from Tuesday in support of Yee's position, and includes this portion from a Yee press release:

"The high speed rail bond has always been about finding ways to get millions of people out of cars and airplanes and into a cost-saving and environmentally-sound transportation portal," said Yee. "A piecemeal approach is not what is best for commuters, visitors, or the economy, and is certainly not what is best for our environment. As an advocate for high speed rail, I will continue to be steadfast in securing the San Francisco to Los Angeles corridor of the bullet train and then branching out to other cities."

Yee and I are in full agreement on this. For HSR to have maximal impact on our state's transportation habits, and to provide a badly-needed link between two cities currently connected by an airline industry in crisis, we need to link SF to LA first. I recognize that this can cause worry to those in Sacramento, Stockton, and San Diego who won't get HSR at the outset - but they ought to be reassured that once Californians see this system in operation, and see its value, they will not hesitate to support the extensions to Sacramento and SD, extensions that remain part of the overall state HSR plan.

The article on Ashburn provides some more details on his opposition to the HSR project: