Friday, July 6, 2012

On track! California Senate approves high-speed rail

Central Valley Business Times

SACRAMENTO 
July 6, 2012 3:57pm
•  Votes in favor of releasing building funds
•  ‘Let us do what is right’

The California state Senate Friday afternoon approved the releasing of state bond money to begin construction of the nation’s first high-speed passenger train system.
The vote was 21-16. Approval required 21 votes.
The state Assembly had approved releasing the $2.7 billion earlier this week.
The state money will be combined with a $3.3 billion federal grant to begin building a 130-mile segment of the system, from near Madera to near Bakersfield, in the Central Valley later this year.
Fresno Democrat Michael Rubio, through whose district the first segment would be built, voted in favor of releasing the money even though he said he was aware of the opposition of farmers and ranchers. “We cannot jeopardize the industry that feeds this state and the world,” he said in comments on the floor leading up to the vote. But he said he had been assured that the eventual route of the tracks would be such as any taking of farmland would be mitigated.
Mr. Rubio cited the action of Abraham Lincoln, who pushed for a transcontinental railroad at a time when the nation was near bankruptcy and ripped by civil war.
“Let us do what is right,” he urged.
“Four years after the passage of a voter approved initiative, the people expect us to get going,” said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, the Senate’s president pro tem.
“What happened to our bipartisan commitment to putting men and women in hard hats back to work?” he said, referring to Friday’s report that the nation added just 80,000 jobs in June.
“What is difficult in the present often becomes the symbol of pride” to future generations, he said.
But critics targeted the location of the first construction contending that it would be a segment of track with little value until it was connected south to Los Angeles and north of San Francisco. Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, who said he supports high-speed rail, h e cannot support the current plan, which he termed as building “a stranded asset” in the Central Valley.
“Ridership kept slipping. The date kept being pushed back. The ticket prices kept increasing. The private sector would not join in to fund the plan,” said Sen. Jean Fuller, R-Bakersfield, who joined with all other Republicans in voting against the release of the money.
“It is a giant jigsaw puzzle with pieces strewn over the table,” she said.
California voters in 2008 narrowly approved a total of $9 billion in bonds to begin construction of the system. The initial route would link San Francisco and Los Angeles. Eventual expansion would take the system to Sacramento in the north and San Diego in the south.
The trains would hurtle through the Central Valley at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.

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