Students dig high-speed rail bond

This video from the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) caught my eye: It's both clever and includes some eyebrow-raising statements in support of Prop 1A, the $9.95-billion bond on the state ballot to start construction of a high-speed rail system in California.

Among the sweeping promises: the trains would take 92 million drivers off the road annually. My calculator tells me that's 252,000 drivers a day. The subway in Los Angeles carries about 150,000 passengers a day in a heavily urbanized area and for $1.25 a trip for those paying full fare. Maybe that could happen if the full high-speed rail system is built, at a cost that will be much more than $9.95 billion.

There's also the statement that building high-speed rail will create 450,000 new green jobs, a statement that sounds great and is incredibly vague. This comes from a study commissioned and paid for by the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

In other Prop 1A news, some big donations to the campaign for the bond measure have been reported to the California secretary of state and can be viewed on the state's online database (the name of the campaign committee is Californians for High Speed Trains). The big money is coming from unions. Among them are $300,000 from the California Alliance for Jobs Rebuild California Committee, $250,000 from the International Union of Operating Engineers and $100,000 from the California State Council of Laborers Political Action Committee.

I've posted on a couple of occasions about the number of engineering firms that have kicked in donations to the campaign (here's a link to the first post and a link to the second post). Joining them on the latest list of contributors is Aecom, a firm that specializes in transportation engineering, among other skills. The firm donated $50,000, according to campaign reports filed with the state.

--Steve Hymon

Comments

[Justin Walker]

CalPIRG stands for California Public Interest Research Group. It has staff and student chapters at most California universities.

See Streetsblog for the latest on the CalPIRG statewide "Six Degrees of Separation" campaign.

http://la.streetsblog.org/2008/10/29/calpirg-videos-prop-1a-andkevin-bacon/#more-1319