High Speed
Rail
TRANSDEF has long been a supporter of
High Speed Rail over the Altamont Pass into the San
Francisco Bay Area. See: California High Speed Rail
Authority. This
route makes tremendous sense from the standpoint of
cost-effective regional transportation planning. The two
interregional connections most in need of additional
transit capacity are the Bay Area-to-Central Valley and
the Bay Area-to-Sacramento routes. The Altamont
alignment (orange on the map below) would provide the
infrastructure for both of these key connections,
essentially for free.
The Pacheco alignment (blue on the map below) would provide
no additional public benefits for our region, doing nothing
for congested corridors. In controversial (and we suspect
corrupt) actions, the Pacheco alignment has nonetheless
been recommended by both MTC and the High Speed Rail Authority
staff. The only
substantial beneficiaries of Pacheco we can see are
speculators, who would open up vast areas of undisturbed
wetlands habitat for sprawl development (the dark areas
in the map below). For these people, public investment
in High Speed Rail in the Pacheco Corridor would shower
windfall profits on their holdings.
Lawsuit Against the California High-Speed Rail Authority
We are part of a coalition of environmental groups and transit advocacy organizations that together submitted extensive comments on the DPEIR/S. Our coalition also furnished a very large appendix, bringing our comment package to a total of 250 pages. A smaller coalition furnished comments on the FPEIR/S.
In addition to contributing to the joint comments, TRANSDEF submitted its own comments on the DEIR/S.
On August 8, 2008, a coalition of environmental and transit advocacy groups, along with the Town of Atherton and the City of Menlo Park, filed suit to challenge the Final EIR. See the Press Release and the Lawsuit.
TRANSDEF Opposes Proposition 1A, the California High-Speed Rail Bond Measure
The TRANSDEF Board adopted a position of opposition to the Proposition: TRANSDEF strongly supports High-Speed Rail, but feels the current California High-Speed Rail Authority Board and its staff cannot be trusted. Therefore, TRANSDEF opposes Proposition 1A.
The President of TRANSDEF, David Schonbrunn, debated Quentin Kopp, the Chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, on October 22, 2008 on KALW-FM. A podcast is available here. (A broadband connection is needed to download this 27 Mb mp3 file.)
High-Speed Rail expert Joseph Vranich testified before the California Senate Transportation and Housing Committee on the flaws of the High-Speed Rail Authority's proposal, and concluded "It's time to dissolve the California High-Speed Rail Authority."
Here's a podcast of a KGO-AM show about Prop. 1A. David Schonbrunn appears about 15 minutes in.