Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin’s Great Pro-HSR Speech
On Tuesday I wrote about a pro-HSR op-ed written by five big-city California mayors. One of the authors, Fresno’s Ashley Swearengin, also had some really good comments on HSR in her State of the City speech last week:
Also on the Downtown Agenda in this next year, the City will begin the next phase of planning for the future High Speed Rail station and its surrounding area. Speaking of high speed rail, let’s talk about that for a minute. I get asked about this all the time – is it really going to happen? I love HSR! I hate HSR! Don’t take my property. Please take my property – I want to move anyway! This is my take on what’s going on. I absolutely believe in the importance of high speed rail to our city and to our state and am a genuine supporter. Turns out, there are some critics of HSR. Some of the criticism is legitimate. These issues must be worked out, and we need the best minds at the table resolving questions about alignment, financing and operating models.
But, some of the criticism is simply political in nature, and I’ve got a problem with that. I represent a City that stands to benefit tremendously from high speed rail, and I don’t want political motivations masquerading as genuine concern about the project. Bring legitimate issues and concerns to the table and let’s see whether there’s a way to deal with them, and let’s expect to resolve those issues and to see high speed rail birthed in the United States in Fresno, California first. Because, state and Federal governments are going to spend billions…billions and billions…on maintaining and operating our existing roads and highways every year in this state anyway. Guess what? Those systems are failing. Even if we had the money to give every single Californian their own personal highway – it’s still going to take us 3 hours to get to San Francisco and only an hour on a fast train. The High Speed Car just isn’t going to do that for me. High speed rail has transformative potential, and because of that, it’s worth it to try to find a way to make it work. Cut the politics. Help solve the problem.
Alright, that’s enough ranting about high speed rail. No State of the City speech is complete without at least one mayoral rant.
No, it isn’t. Mayor Swearengin, you are awesome. (She’s a Republican, by the way. See, commenters, I can say nice things about Republicans too!)
Nice. Glad to see a politician finally say shut up and cut the crap.
So “nowhere” has a Mayor? A Republican mayor? How inconvenient for the rabid right that the “train to nowhere” initial leg actually serves two communities Fresno (55th MSA in 2010 US census) and Bakersfield – the 62nd. Who knew that people lived in the Central Valley!
wu ming Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 12:24 am
especially ironic given that the right often praises the central valley as a way to denounce coastal urban california, but the moment there’s an oil-indepdent infrastructure project going through that area, it’s suddenly “nowhere.”
to be fair, the “nowhere” line of attack comes a bit too easily to coastal dems inclined to support the NIMBY talking points because of that old stupid regional culture war BS. the valley gets dismissed by both sides at times.
We have to fight for everything in Fresno just to survive, I’m proud to say I voted for her.
Swearengen gets it. Policy wonks who are passionate and articulate are always a plus!
So the five mayors who signed the editorial supporting building HSR represent what percentage of California residents? In addition it is a bi-partisan, demographic and topographic cross-section of the state. Keep it up. In the previous post, the Kings County farmers really need to sit on the doorstep of Hanford City Hall. This is the source of your agitation. Don’t let the city off the hook on their refusal to allow HSR through the city.
wu ming Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 12:41 am
just taking the mayors’ city populations and not the greater metro areas, about a fifth of the state’s population.
this is sort of oblique to the post, but i’ll bet that with the new districts and the too-two primary, that swearengen might have a future in state or congressional politics ahead of her. pushing for HSR and delivering key infrastructure for the hometown is the sort of thing that allows politicians to win votes from members of the other party.
wu ming Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 12:41 am
toP-two, that is.
OT: Let the panic begin!
http://www.760kfmb.com/story/14885922/will-high-speed-rail-project-derail-san-diego-homes
I’ve checked out the engineering drawings, if they plan on following Interstate ROWs, then the nosie will be neagted by vehicles. The dBa of vehicles on the road are louder than an HSR train at 125-150 mph.
Alon Levy Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
“I’ve checked out the engineering drawings, if they plan on following Interstate ROWs, then the nosie will be neagted by vehicles. The dBa of vehicles on the road are louder than an HSR train at 125-150 mph.”
Reference? Please? (Don’t tell me to just look it up myself – the information on the CAHSR website is irretrievable.)
How could anyone living in Fresno not be in favor of having a high-speed rail station in his or her city?
So many of these cities were built around rail originally but were marginalized as automobiles and airplanes became dominant. Oftentimes, these places almost lost their reasons for existing when the United States stopped investing in its rail system and failed to keep pace with the rest of the world.
Japan has had high-speed rail for longer than many of us have been alive. So, the dithering that is still occurring among some people in this country boggles the mind. We should have built this system decades ago. Imagine how much better our lives would be now if our parents and grandparents had invested in this infrastructure back then. Currently, we’re fighting two or three wars and kowtowing to the Saudis ultimately just so we can delay the price of a gasoline from reaching $5 a gallon within the next couple of months. It’s all insane.
Our economy depends on air travel, which, itself, depends on petroleum. And, we don’t have an easy alternative as the prices go higher. Airlines are eliminating flights and entire routes right now. What’s going to happen in the next five years?
I’m curious to see if these mayors fit my generational pattern:
Ed Lee (San Francisco), born 1952
Antonio Villaraigosa (Los Angeles), born 1953
Chuck Reed (San Jose), born 1948
Kevin Johnson (Sacramento), born 1966
Couldn’t find a birth date for Ashley Swearingen (typical of females–they never want to admit their age!), but she does not look what I would call ancient, and she apparently has a couple of children still at home, so she is on the young side (which for this, is under 60).
I would put the score as two who fit the pattern, two who are on the border and could have gone the other way, and one who does not quite fit–and we should be glad he doesn’t!
D. P. Lubic Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 6:46 am
In regard to party affiliation, Swearengin is Republican, while Johnson, Reed, Villaraigosa and Lee are Democrats (not surprising considering the stories about the weakness of the Republican party in California).
D. P. Lubic Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 6:50 am
Couldn’t find anything quickly on the makeup of the leadership of Hanford, which apparently is something of a sticking point (doesn’t want the train in town). Can anyone supply some info?
GoGregorio Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 8:48 am
Chuck Reed doesn’t support high speed rail because it’s rail, he supports it because the construction is a large amount of money dumped into his city. And because he and his friends think it will make San Jose better than San Francisco somehow.
Miles Bader Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 9:24 am
The weird thing about San Jose is that despite it’s apparent size, I never really thought of it as being a “real city,” just “oh yeah that other place down in sprawlville.” SF gets all the respect…
HSR stopping at San Jose does seem sort of symbolic, acknowledging its importance and making it “one of the chosen” — not that it’s going to zoom past SF in the public consciousness, but maybe it sort of puts it on the map in way it wasn’t before….
[Yeah, this is all mind games, and obviously he doesn't care what I think, but ... I kinda suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way...]
Peter Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 9:27 am
Speaking of San Jose, has anyone been able to go to the CWG meetings on the aerial alignment? There are some interesting illustrations on how it might end up looking on the CHSRA website. I found the following two to be very interesting: Bird Ave and 280, and Bridge Designs
I still think they need to go with the “baseline” simple aerial, without any iconic features, as it’s the least intrusive. The City should pay for any “iconic bridge”.
Donk Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 9:51 am
And speaking of meetings, anyone know how that CAHSR-Spain thing went last week?
datacruncher Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 11:01 am
Ashley Swearengin supposedly was born in 1972 which puts her under 40 and is the youngest of that group of mayors. A bio I found says her family moved to Fresno in 1987 while she was in high school. She graduated from Fresno State with her BS in Business in 1994 and then completed her MBA at the same school in 1997.
She is part of a generational leadership change that seems to be happening in Fresno. She replaced Alan Autry as mayor, he was a Baby Boomer born in 1952.
I just did some checking of bios and it looks like 2/3s of Fresno’s City Council was born after 1970. It will be interesting to see how that younger leadership changes Fresno.
In other news, Amtrak sets ridership records (again–man, this is getting monotonous, but I like it anyway); there have been ridership increases in 18 of the the last 19 months, info courtesy of NARP’s “Hotline News.”
http://www.narprail.org/cms/index.php/hotline/more/hotline_710/
Also in “Hotline,” the California mayors’ letter, Democrats and Republicans in dispute about new service in Iowa, and Florida Governor Rick Scott’s approaching July 1 deadline to decide on establishing a commuter rail service (TEA party types against it, others are for it, including a Republican speaker of the house in the state legislature).
To be picky, the increases for 18 out of 19 months are for Amtrak long distance (LD) trains. Which had some hits in ridership numbers this spring for some LD trains – the City of New Orleans, the Empire Builder, and more recently the California Zephyr – because of cancellations and truncated routes because of the terrible weather in the mid-West and the plains.
Amtrak overall to quote their press release: “May marked 19 consecutive months of year-over-year ridership growth for Amtrak, was the best May ever with more than 2.6 million passengers and keeps America’s Railroad on track to set another annual ridership record.” The Acela and Northeast Regionals on the NEC had just under 1 million riders in May (997,545). Since June to August tend to be Amtrak’s peak months for the year, Amtrak could surpass 1 million NEC riders a month this year. For those in CA not familiar with the NEC details, these numbers are not the total number of Amtrak riders on the NEC itself because it does not include the Keystone service, Carolinian, Pennsylvanian, and the LD trains that run on the NEC.
The Amtrak press release with a breakdown of ridership numbers across the system for May can be found at Amtrak’s website on the, tada, News Releases page.
Peter Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
But no one rides trains…
John Burrows Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 10:03 pm
And of those 2.6 million passengers over 96,000 rode the San Joaquins either to or from “nowhere”.
wu ming Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
some of them from “nowhere” to “nowhere”!
“She’s a Republican, by the way. See, commenters, I can say nice things about Republicans too”
Perhaps following political news has made me too much of a cynic, but I can ONLY see the following scenario if she runs for higher office:
1) She will do a 180 and denounce HSR, because the party calls for it (aka, everything romney has ever said)
2) She won’t be allowed to run as a republican
On the city level, party affiliation doesn’t matter, so they can say what they want. It’s as soon as they attempt to step up a level that the party henchmen strike.
(I like the imagine the party henchmen as the “bluetooth gang” from 24)
wu ming Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 10:14 pm
with the top 2 primaries, there isn’t much the party can do to say who is and is not a republican or a democrat. people just choose their own labels when they file for the jungle primary.
JJJ Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 1:06 am
Thats a good point, and may be a welcome benefit of the new system.