Bay Area needs high-speed rail, and it’s time to finish it
As we begin losing major corporate headquarters, we realize that our valley’s industry needs high-speed rail — not just to travel to Los Angeles but for the huge number of daily Central Valley commuters that sustain our region.
We have a major housing shortage that local government has tried unsuccessfully to meet for a half century. Unless we intrude on our last precious watershed and farmlands or seriously disrupt our single-family neighborhoods, we can’t build the hundreds of thousands of affordable homes that the Bay Area requires.
Pre COVID-19, nearly 200,000 individuals a day made the twoto three-hour trip each direction from the Central Valley to the Bay Area each morning and evening. They leave before their children awake and return after their Little League games. The world’s best and brightest suffer that dangerous and mind-numbing trip while dumping hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and reducing their own standard of living by the ever increasing fuel costs.
Contrast that to less than one hour from Fresno to San Jose by HSR, rain or shine, while enjoying breakfast, a nap, an electronic head start on work and arriving fresh to take a short electric VTA shuttle to their jobs. That creates a new, saner lifestyle not only for our high-tech brethren but also our service employees: the police, firefighters, teachers, nurses, home helpers, store clerks and so many more integral to our daily lives that economics have banished to the Central Valley.
But to do that we need the kind of HSR system that 14 other countries in the world have and are expanding. California is proud of having among the most stringent environmental protection laws in the world. That careful conformance required expensive modifications to the original project: Tunnels and overcrossings are being built where ongrade lines were expected; acquiring land that multiple legal actions and our robust economy have made more expensive; an administrative structure that is learning to do this complex work while working with U.S. contractors who are also learning this new skill as they build.
Why rush? Because construction inflation averages over 5% per year and above that level for the HSR project’s more than 20 years. Five percent or more inflation compounded for 20-plus years more than doubles the cost of the project.
The next extensions won’t be as expensive as the starter line because the policy and technical structure now exists. But $34.9 billion is the updated cost for the 370 miles of HSR line (about $106 million per mile) from San Francisco via San Jose and Gilroy to housing-rich Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield. More than half is now under construction in the Central Valley. At the same time, Caltrain is being electrified. Those projects have created more than 6,000 jobs. That investment and employment will be wasted if the project is abandoned.
Compare our $106 million per mile to England’s rapidly expanding HS2 line from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds (319 miles in similar topography) estimated to be $473 million per mile. The British are proceeding, building for the future. Surely California, the richest state in the richest nation, can do as well.
To stop our project now would condemn our state to continue dumping millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere per year from this rapidly increasing yet dangerous and time-consuming travel corridor. Instead, let’s double down on this great opportunity to create a better future for our children and be a model for the nation by finishing the Valley to Valley connection as a true HSR line. The first step is to apply for the expected new federal stimulus funds to fight climate change, unemployment and gridlock.