California leadership is delivering truly high-speed rail. Now is not the time to return to yesterday

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“Let’s get this 171-mile project done,” Gov. Gavin Newsom declared.

At a recent economic summit in Fresno designed to further his Regions Rise Initiative, the Governor reiterated his commitment to delivering the nation’s first truly high-speed rail system in America. The Regions Rise Initiative targets investments to areas of the state that have been left out of California’s economic growth for too long.

“The project is taking shape; people are working; we are bringing some clarity and focus with new leadership, new transparency, and new accountability; and we are 18-24 months out from all environmental work getting done for the entire first Phase 1 system from San Francisco to Los Angeles,” the Governor said.

Indeed, the project now in construction in the Central Valley has dispatched more than 3,000 workers to job sites, employed more than 500 small businesses, and generated nearly $8 billion in economic output. This is the clearest example of California phasing out yesterday’s diesel-fueled passenger rail system and modernizing it to what we need today – a cleaner, faster electric system powered by renewable energy.

The 171-mile project Governor Newsom referenced is the first operable building block of true high-speed rail in California. It is part of 350 miles of electrified high-speed train service set to go to construction throughout the state in the next 24 months—in the Central Valley, the Bay Area and Southern California.

This stretch in the Central Valley sensibly extends the initial construction segment that was criticized as a “train to nowhere” (connecting the town of Madera to an orchard north of Bakersfield) to connect three of the state’s fastest-growing cities—Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield—located in three of the state’s fastest-growing counties.

This approach will not only allow for the demonstration of this technology’s viability here in the United States by 2025, it will also provide numerous passenger benefits for the traveling public by 2028-29:

▪ It will reduce travel time through the Valley by 90-100 minutes;

▪ It will provide faster, more frequent and more reliable passenger service than is currently available in the Valley with a lower state operating subsidy;

▪ Through partnerships with other operators, it will enhance connectivity and accessibility to other passenger rail services in Merced, where the Legislature has committed nearly $1 billion to bring the ACE service and connect to our system and Amtrak;

▪ With faster service and greater connectivity, it will provide the highest ridership potential and fare revenue of any other Central Valley option;

▪ Air quality in the Central Valley will improve by shifting from diesel to clean, electrified trains; and

▪ It will allow us to put assets constructed for high-speed rail to use by allowing for early testing of electrified, high-speed operations.

Advancing high-speed rail is both consistent with California’s program to modernize its passenger rail systems and with the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s mission to deliver electrified high-speed rail to Californians by connecting the communities of the Central Valley to our coastal areas in Northern and Southern California. This mission advances California’s best-in-the-nation policy objectives of protecting our environment while improving mobility and creating greater economic opportunity for all.

For too long the project has been regarded in California as some abstract concept—some futuristic, maybe unachievable, endeavor. It is not that.

Electrified high-speed rail operates in virtually every industrialized nation in the world. In California today it is happening: Caltrain is being electrified in the Bay Area; a new line is being developed connecting Las Vegas and Southern California; and we are advancing the 171-mile line in the Central Valley as the first building block of a 520-mile system.

Now is not the time to move backwards and return to yesterday’s rail technologies. Let’s get on with the achievable. We need to progress with a sense of purpose, urgency and realism.

Perhaps Governor Newsom summed up this approach best: “For me this is not an ideological endeavor; it’s a pragmatic endeavor, and we’re going to drive it.”

This story was originally published December 1, 2019 at 3:01 AM with the headline "California leadership is delivering truly high-speed rail. Now is not the time to return to yesterday."