James Fujita Reply:
February 2nd, 2011 at 2:09 pm

I suspect the real concern here is that HSR-oriented development be done in the right way, so that it actually is transit-oriented.

as with the downtown Los Angeles football stadium, the rich may get the most benefit in any case, but I still think it is important to fight for those transit connections and other improvements which would help those who never even leave Fresno on one of the shiny new HSR trains.

I’ve been to Kyoto Station and I know that it has become a gathering place, a town within a town, for the city of Kyoto, and not just a fancy front door for the Shinkansen.

Wad Reply:
February 2nd, 2011 at 4:25 pm

Spokker, it’s a niche that needs to be filled.

For one thing, look at the other side. A lot of discussion over high-speed rail has opponents whose maximum level of understanding is limited to the “19th century technology” or “choo choo.” (Think Godwin’s Law when you come across these terms.)

And another thing, high-speed rail needs to have a public show of force. You don’t want it to be about land speculators working in the shadows, with all of the unconnected “us” being the marks. High-speed rail has California mostly evenly divided. I don’t consider a 2% margin comfortable enough to call it a mandate (HSR won 52% to 48% in 2008).

And Spokker, this is the kind of project that will make a few people rich — but most others better off in the end. The biggest economic benefit to the state will be to make the Central Valley into Orange County. I don’t mean that as a joke.

Understand this: Orange County is thoroughly urbanized. It can’t really be called a suburb, as the county itself is now a job magnet. Fewer Orange County residents need to commute to Los Angeles or San Diego Counties, as there is plenty of work within the county. It also has some of the state’s housing prices, and as a result, many workers now have to commute there from the Inland Empire or even Los Angeles County.

It was a slow process, but it happened because Orange County was in between two great neighbors: Los Angeles and San Diego. In the span of 100 years, Orange County went from agricultural hinterland, to a series of small towns connected by railroads, to bedroom community, to its present state of fully urbanized cities.

Orange County also has above-median housing prices and an unemployment rate 3 percentage points below the California average.

Most Central Valley cities have unemployment rates double that of Orange County’s. Economically, the Central Valley is an economic basket case. The populations are too large to be supported by an agricultural economy, but they’re not large enough to attract the kind of urbanized economy you see in Southern California or the Bay Area-Sacramento megalopolis.

Geography also works against the Central Valley. Residents can effectively go only north and south. To the west is a mountain range that divides it from the wealthy, yet economically passive Central Coast. To the east is the emptiness of Central Nevada.

Right now, the Central Valley has the burdens of being stuck inside California with very few of its benefits. The Central Valley is too similar to many other Sun Belt cities in similar circumstances. Why pick Fresno, Bakersfield or Modesto over a place like Chattanooga, Greenville/Spartanburg, Greensboro/Winston-Salem, Knoxville, Midland/Odessa, Tulsa, etc.?

A high-speed train line will at least give the Central Valley a leg up. It offers these residents a timely trip to Southern or Northern California, and over time, the train will diminish the geographic penalty of the Central Valley and shift some priced-out economic activities from the coastal areas to the Central Valley.

This also solves the employment and housing problems affecting all Californians, by using HSR to leverage the basic economic concept of comparative advantage.

That’s how many more Californians would be better off.

Donk Reply:
February 2nd, 2011 at 10:07 pm

Yeah. I sort of switched to the LA Transportation Headlines/Blog instead since it got too hard to keep track of the actual news on the Transit Coalition board. Problem is that most of the articles on LA Transportation Blog are pointless. Then theres also the Metro blog, but that isn’t really the right mix either.

It would be great if someone could do a site like this CASHR Blog for SoCal transit stuff – one that only covers the stories that are actually meaningful so you don’t have to sift thru the articles about the Metro bus rodeo or the ones that are pure speculation. Robert does a great job here because he is great at filtering the important news and providing an in-depth perspective about these stories. Then you just read the comments if you have time to kill.