I took the time this Sunday morning to read a piece from the New York Times magazine on the tremendous complexities, the technological sophistication, the dazzling possibilities, and the tantalizing pragmatism of what would apparently be the most expensive single public infrastructure project ever built, California’s new high speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The $10 billion bond measure that passed this election season will be the first of a expected $33 billion for planning, renovation of existing stations, construction of new ones, expropriation of farmland, procurement of trains, electricity infrastructure (and so on) that planners expect could eventually do the same thing to California that it did to France: extinguish regional plane flight in favor of a cheaper, cleaner, faster transportation system that would revitalize large public works in this country.
The piece is filled with delicious details, like: the control systems on new bullet trains shut the train down if the conductor’s feet lose contact with the floor and does not override the process, (or when it gets too close to another train or senses an earthquake or sabotage); “At peak times, double-decker trains carrying more than 1,000 people leave Paris every 30 minutes for Lyon. “Those trains are full, full, full,” Mellier told me. Generally speaking, Mellier added, Alstom’s high-speed trains suffer two or three “faults” — delays of more than five minutes — for every one million kilometers, or about every 621,000 miles, they travel.” Here is my favorite: “Up above, the trains are delicate: the pantograph that touches an overhead electrical wire (the catenary) is far more sensitive than its equivalent on regular trains in order to maintain electrical contact at extreme speeds.”
The best part about the California plan is that it relies entirely on technology that has been proven safe, popular, and profitable in France and Japan (and now in Spain). The drastic expansion of California’s population means that the high speed rail system should actually be cheaper than a project to expand highways and airports, which would be necessary soon anyway. Put these together and you have a system that is absolutely pragmatic.
High speed rail is another one of those issues for which conservatism and foot-dragging is totally incomprehensible given the benefits. This demonstrates another point I think is absolutely crucial: rather than develop a middling system that meets transportation requirements adequately, high speed rail should be initially expensive, innovative, progressive, inspiring. Because initial ridership numbers will be an important test case, America’s high speed rail system should be advanced, shining, and obviously valuable. Building one train for $33 million that helps out California only goes so far—but building something that helps revitalize how we move around this country, and sets an example for the rest of the world, should be far more valuable.
The concept of leapfrogging is usually used to show that developing countries should be able to follow a different trajectory and develop more cleanly than America did using advanced technologies. The United States is so far behind in high speed rail, we should be able to leapfrog other established countries and put in place an advanced, expandable infrastructure from the start. Strangely enough, one of California’s arcane legal requirements actually facilitates just that: the California train is required to cover the distance between San Francisco and L.A. in two hours and forty minutes; the simulations show that meeting this requirement will demand a cutting-edge train like Alstom’s AGV. This is good, because nothing would be worse for this country’s transportation system in the long-run than a creaking, half-full, perpetually delayed, perennially ignored California system.
Filed under: Domestic, Who We Are, sustainability , california, high speed rail, leapfrogging, transportation
