Just over a week ago, as I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on US 101 southbound in San Martin, on a freeway packed full of traffic headed to the Gilroy Garlic Festival, I asked my wife rhetorically “how on earth can anyone in Gilroy look at this traffic and not be beating down the door to improve rail service to their city?”

As Caltrain seems increasingly likely to end its Gilroy service, you’d think that the city council there would recognize that its future prosperity depends upon getting a train station that can enable their residents to reach jobs in Silicon Valley and San Francisco – and can enable people from across California to come to Gilroy for events like the Garlic Festival.

Unfortunately, as a recent article makes clear, there’s still some work to do to show Gilroy why HSR is a godsend the likes of which they haven’t seen since the 101 freeway was built 50 years ago:

Though the severity of their distaste for the state’s high speed rail project ranges from mild irritation to unreserved outrage, Gilroy city council members aren’t ready to collectively speak out against the undertaking.

Unlike Orange, a city in Southern California whose city council recently voted unanimously to oppose California’s proposed bullet train, Gilroy council members aren’t ready to formally cast their vote against the project, but their frustration with a lack of answers from the organizing agency is rising.

This is how a city should respond to the high speed rail project when they have concerns: be open about those concerns, but don’t try to destroy the whole project over it.

As we’ll see, it’s not exactly clear that the problem is the California High Speed Rail Authority not providing answers, but Gilroy not getting the answers they want. But given some of the anti-HSR attitudes among some Gilroy council members, it’s good that they’re not trying to stop HSR from happening, and recognize their duty to implement the will of the voters. Especially when you read Councilman Bob Dillon’s comments:

“I wish they would go away,” Councilman Bob Dillon said. “I’ve been against it since the get-go. It stands no chance.”

According to his calculations, the $45-billion, 800-mile system will cost more than $56 million per mile of track, and nearly $1,000 per inch, Dillon said.

“I would rather have my teeth pulled with no anesthesia” than support the project, he said.

As we know, HSR is going to happen – it doesn’t “stand no chance,” especially after voters approved the project and Congress funded part of it. Another Gilroy city councilmember, Dion Bracco, indicated he would “definitely” support an anti-HSR resolution along the lines of what Orange recently passed, but other councilmembers aren’t ready to go there.

For Gilroy city councilmembers who aren’t HSR deniers, the issue they have is with the Authority’s presentations to the city, and what they consider to be a lack of detail:

“Initially, there was a lot of optimism but I think that has changed a little bit as we learned more about the project,” Gartman said. “In listening to (the High Speed Rail Authority’s) presentations, it doesn’t seem like they’re very well organized. I can’t believe that they aren’t better prepared. They don’t know the answers that they should.”

However, the council appears to be frustrated that the plans at this point are conceptual and that the specific route hasn’t been finalized. Instead of just doing whatever the Authority tells them, Gilroy actually has the ability to help shape the route. They’re not passive actors, but active collaborators. I’m not sure the council recognizes that.

Here’s what the CHSRA project manager for the segment had to say:

According to Gary Kennerley, a regional project manager with the California High Speed Rail Authority, part of the challenge is relaying to residents that what the authority proposing isn’t set in stone.

Last month, the rail authority released a draft document outlining the possibility of aligning a rail line with the Monterey Street corridor, with U.S. Route 101 east of Gilroy or a combination of those two routes.

“It has been hard to convey to people that this is just an identification of alternatives,” Kennerley said. “No final decisions have been made.”

Gilroy needs to decide where it wants the trains to go. On the east edge of town, where it will fuel sprawl? Or along the existing rail corridor, where growth can be channeled into the city center and help grade-separate the tracks, improving safety and traffic flow while promoting economic growth?

The deeper problem seems to be that Gilroy officials just haven’t recognized that HSR will be a major benefit to their community, enabling it and its residents to enjoy prosperity for the rest of the 21st century:

Councilwoman Cat Tucker, who has expressed concern about the lack of hands-on meetings thus far, said she would prefer if the rail authority would run the bullet train over the Altamont Pass instead of the Pacheco Pass and bypass Gilroy altogether. Even though she considers herself an advocate for public transportation, she found both alternatives – either running the tracks through farmland or through downtown – unfavorable.

“It’s going to be one big, ugly monster coming through Gilroy,” she said.

You’re not an “advocate for public transportation” if you place aesthetics over usefulness, and especially not if you are willing to close your city off from the workhorse method of travel in 21st century California.

Mayor Al Pinheiro said he originally thought a downtown alignment might be beneficial for the local economy, attracting business from commuters who catch the bullet train in Gilroy.

But after further consideration, “I’m not thinking people are going to do much collateral spending in the downtown,” he said.

I don’t think Pinheiro has thought this through completely. It’s not just commuters from Hollister, Los Banos and Monterey who would use the station. With an HSR station, Gilroy itself would become a destination for commuters to live in – and instead of wanting to live in a sprawl-based community on the edge of town, they’d likely prefer to live downtown, in close proximity to the train station.

More than any other city in California, Gilroy has the potential to be the Ciudad Real of the California HSR system – a reference to the Spanish city that is 50 minutes away from central Madrid via the AVE high speed rail line that opened in 1992. As the Wall Street Journal described it last year:

Perhaps the most striking example is Ciudad Real, a scrappy town 120 miles south of Madrid in Castilla-La Mancha which, Mr. Ureña says, “had completely vanished from the map.” In medieval times, the town was a key stopover point on the route between the two of most important cities of the time, Córdoba and Toledo. But the railway and the highway south later bypassed the town, and Ciudad Real began to wither.

Now it has an AVE station that puts it just 50 minutes away from Madrid, and Ciudad Real has come alive. The city has attracted a breed of daily commuters that call themselves “Avelinos.” The AVE helped attract a host of industries to Ciudad Real, and the train is full in both directions.

Indra, an information technology company, moved a “software factory” to Ciudad Real a decade ago. “Along with the University, the AVE was one of the key reasons we moved here,” says Ángel Villodre, the director of the center.

The University of Castilla-La Mancha’s campus here has grown sharply in size and importance. “The school is here because of the AVE,” says Mr. Menéndez, the department head. “Without it, it would be impossible to attract the high-level staff we need.”

Gilroy leaders need to pay very close attention to what is being said here. Ciudad Real went from being a small town outside the Madrid urban core to a major center of residential and high-tech activity. Gilroy doesn’t have a major university, but it could very easily be a hub for high-tech industries that would love the lower costs of the South County region and the connectedness to Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and the rest of the state.

Mayor Pinheiro seems to be looking at HSR from a 20th century mindset. And true, from that mindset, an HSR commuter station in the middle of downtown might not seem all that valuable. But from a 21st century perspective, when access to high speed trains will be a very desirable thing, the station will be what gives Gilroy a huge competitive advantage over competing cities like Morgan Hill, Hollister, Los Banos, and even places like Salinas.

The HSR station makes a compelling reason for people to want to live in Gilroy as opposed to an automobile suburb, and a compelling reason for employers to want to locate there as opposed to some other place that has to be reached by automobile.

There’s no doubt that the process of designing and building HSR isn’t easy. It requires cities to make tough choices, including in Gilroy. But they can and should take a more constructive approach to this. Decide whether they want the station in town or on the edge of it – the CHSRA is more interested in hearing what Gilroy wants rather than forcing something on them.

I’m cheering for Gilroy here. As I said before, I taught at Gavilan College for a time when I returned to California in 2007, and got to know the city and its residents well. I like Gilroy a lot and think it has amazing potential, especially with a downtown that can easily accommodate transit-oriented development and the businesses that will sprout up to serve those residents. It would be a place many companies would seriously consider locating, especially high-tech businesses – and that growth can happen without fueling sprawl, which Gilroy has fought to prevent.

All this requires Gilroy to recognize that the 20th century is over, and that they need to position themselves for a 21st century economy and 21st century methods of travel. The people of California have delivered a gift to Gilroy that may be quite literally priceless – after HSR opens, cities across the state will be clamoring to get a station of their own. Gilroy will already have one, and be well on the way to prosperity. Let’s hope their current leadership recognizes the opportunity they have, and is willing to make the most of it.