The Loma Prietan
November 2001
High Speed Rail is the Answer
by Patrick Moore
Sierra Club Transportation Committee
You arrive at the station five minutes before your train’s departure, just enough time to grab a cup of your favorite coffee. The train slides smoothly into the station with barely a sound. Your wheelchair-bound coworker has no problem wheeling across the level threshold into the train car. As you stow the five bags in the racks above and behind your seat, your traveling companion plugs her laptop into the convenient wall plug. She gets her cell phone out and starts making calls as the train glides smoothly and quietly out of the station.
South of San Jose, the train reaches its maximum speed of 220 miles per hour on its grade-separated right-of-way. But you barely notice, because you are in the restaurant car talking with fellow travelers. In less than three hours, you and your new friends are saying goodbye in downtown Los Angeles. As you and your co-worker walk/roll a few short blocks to your final destination, you wonder why anyone would think about taking a plane for such a short distance, especially since the train is faster, cheaper and so much more relaxing.
This vision is a reality in much of the modern world, and we now have the opportunity to bring that vision to California. At present there is a proposal for a 700-mile California High Speed Rail (HSR) System to help California deal with the needs of the estimated 50 million California residents in 2025. Without such a system, California would be forced to fill the bay to accommodate the needs of SFO and Oakland airport expansion, and still the air traffic delays would be monstrous. Since 88% of the traffic between Silicon Valley and Los Angeles in 1997 was by car, the additional population would put additional cars on the I-5 corridor, demanding the building of more freeways in the Central Valley as well as further freeway expansion in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.
California’s HSR could serve up to 26,000 passengers/hour with 650-passenger electrified trains passing every three minutes on the main truck line. This is the same capacity as a 12-lane freeway with the footprint of a narrow two-lane country road but without the accidents and congestion. Another way to view this capacity is 200 full 737s in the air every hour shuttling passengers between SFO and LAX.
California HSR Authority estimates that the HSR would reduce the demand for flights to the LA area by half to three-quarters. Demand for flights to the Central Valley would be even more reduced. According to a 1998 European study, “Interactions between High-Speed Rail and Air Passenger Transport (COST-318),” air traffic experiences negative growth when a HSR connection has travel times of less than 3.5 hours. HSR travel time would be 2.5 hours from San Francisco to LA. According to the Metropolitan Transit Committee’s own numbers, 117 flights from SFO would be eliminated if a HSR system was operational.
Because HSR is ground-based, it is more reliable than the delay-prone airlines. Delays at SFO can be triggered by weather problems anywhere in the entire system, not just as a result of local fog. The complex interplay of factors, not just local weather, makes it difficult to provide constant on-time air traffic performance. By way of comparison, Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train has an average deviation from schedule of 24 seconds.
High Speed Rail would result in improvements that would help solve local and regional issues. Along the peninsula, HSR improvements would help an electrified Caltrain provide service that would run so frequently that passengers wouldn’t have to remember the schedule. HSR trains could act as additional express service at the beginning and end of their runs.
So the next time someone says that the only solution to the SFO flight delays is dirt in the bay, tell them you know of a more down-to-earth solution, called High Speed Rail.
For additional information: Check out California’s High Speed Rail Authority’s web site: www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov. Other resources: www.bayrailalliance.com.
What You Can Do
Contact Patrick Moore at 650/969-2966 or patmoore@ieee.org. He is forming a group to help push High Speed Rail in California. Also write Governor Davis or call him at 916/445-2841 to urge passage of AB 1419. This important bill would extend Caltrain in San Francisco to the Transbay Terminal at First and Mission.