On the Fast Track

(Page 5 of 5)

On top of the twin crises of increasing congestion and decaying infrastructure, there is the enormous challenge of climate change. Transportation accounts for one-third of the country's total CO2 emissions; as a producer of greenhouse gases it is second only to the electric-power industry, and its emissions are growing faster than those of any other sector.

Even if transportation emissions were cut in half in the next decade, it wouldn't be enough, says Daniel Kammen, director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He says we will need every tool at our disposal. That includes millions of plug-in hybrid cars, a federal low-carbon fuel standard, a tax on vehicles with low fuel efficiency, denser urban development, and, not least, high-speed rail. "High-speed rail looks like an essential feature of a viable twenty-first-century transportation system," Kammen says.

Admittedly, high-speed rail is not a panacea. Earlier attempts to build high-speed rail systems in California, Florida, and Texas foundered, in part because of opposition from environmentalists concerned about disturbing sensitive ecosystems and promoting sprawl. Choosing routes and station locations is of paramount importance in determining how a high-speed rail system will affect patterns of land use.

The recently approved California project provides a case in point. Amanda Eaken, a land-use policy analyst in the San Francisco office of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), recalls that "there was a lot of concern about a proposed station south of San Jose, around Pacheco Pass. It could have had devastating sprawl implications in an area where there's a lot of important grasslands habitat." NRDC originally supported a different routing between the Central Valley and the Bay Area, but this would have required building a new bridge or tunnel across San Francisco Bay. The organization ended up fully backing Proposition 1A after the CHSRA decided not to locate a station in the undeveloped grasslands of Pacheco Pass.

"If you locate stations only in areas where there's already a high population density," Eaken says, "then high-speed rail can reverse the trend toward sprawl by encouraging even denser, mixed-use development around transit stations." Creating pedestrian-friendly urban communities where cars are not a necessity eliminates even more vehicle miles traveled -- and the accompanying CO2 emissions -- than high-speed trains do by themselves. People who live in "walkable" urban neighborhoods close to a variety of transportation options reap a number of green benefits: they drive 20 percent to 40 percent less and emit 20 percent to 30 percent less CO2 than those who live in "drivable" suburban areas.

Locating stations in midsize cities that have experienced economic decline -- Eaken cites Merced, Fresno, and Modesto in California -- can help reverse the downward trend by encouraging what urban planners call transit-oriented development. Denser development around high-speed rail stations will stimulate (and, by increasing the tax base, help pay for) improvements in local transit systems, and this will benefit people of all income levels, whether they ride a high-speed train or not.

Arguments in favor of bringing true high-speed rail to the United States fell on deaf ears during George W. Bush's presidency. But the old prejudices against rail are losing ground. "There's a growing awareness that something has to happen other than building more and bigger roads and airports," says Scott Witt, rail office director for the Washington State Department of Transportation. "Passenger rail will be an increasingly important part of the mix."

There has never been a more propitious moment for a radical reshaping of U.S. transportation policy. As of press time, President Barack Obama is committed to jump-starting the economy with massive investments in public infrastructure. In his economic stimulus package, the initial round of infrastructure spending is focused on projects that can be tackled immediately -- which means, in large measure, road and bridge projects that have already made their way through state engineering and approval pipelines. Green transportation initiatives such as mass-transit and high-speed rail projects were notably lacking in early drafts of the stimulus plan, but leaders of several environmental organizations, including NRDC president Frances Beinecke, have vowed to work with Congress and the Obama administration to remedy that omission.

The stimulus package isn't the only big opportunity to push transportation policy in a greener direction. At the end of September, the $286.4 billion transportation bill that became law in 2005 is set to expire. The act, grandly titled the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, is widely referred to by its acronym, SAFETEA-LU (pronounced "safety-loo"). The debate over a new bill will shift into high gear this summer. The old law was a colossal bouquet of earmarked projects (including Alaska's infamous "bridge to nowhere") that, despite its impressive price tag, failed to set out a coherent national transportation policy.

This year's reauthorization of the transportation bill offers a chance to do much better: to set out a clear blueprint for a transportation network that meets ambitious goals regarding mobility, energy, climate change, and economic prosperity. "Re-auth," in wonk vernacular, is the opportunity of the decade to carve out a permanent place on the national agenda for high-speed rail.

For starters, rail advocates say, the Obama administration and Congress should make sure that California's high-speed rail system gets the $12 billion to $16 billion in federal financing that it needs to move ahead. In the current economic climate, this could prove challenging. But high-speed rail has some powerful friends on Capitol Hill. Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, introduced a bill in November -- the High-Speed Rail for America Act -- which would help finance the California project, make improvements to the Northeast Corridor, and encourage rail infrastructure projects elsewhere. The Kerry-Specter bill is now cued up to frame a bipartisan debate at this watershed moment for rail transportation.

Even if the California High-Speed Rail Authority cleared its remaining financing hurdles tomorrow, a decade will pass before the first of its trains shoots through the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, then up the Central Valley, veering west to Gilroy (Garlic Capital of the World) and up the peninsula flanking the bay to downtown San Francisco. I can imagine the journey: the TGV transplanted to a uniquely American landscape. Instead of medieval hill towns, the scenery flashing by at unnatural speed will be sagebrush, wind farms, tomato and artichoke fields, Silicon Valley office parks, and the Pacific Ocean. The CHSRA logo reads "Fly California. Without ever leaving the ground." That's how it feels to ride the rails at 200 mph. You're flying, but at an altitude of less than 10 feet. Once a large number of Americans have experienced this way of getting around, the collective lightbulb will flash on. In millions of minds, the words will take shape: "Why didn't we have this before, all over the country?"

Good question.