All opinion today, no humor.
The high speed rail proposal is quite controversial here in California. We live in a community, San Mateo, through which the high speed trains would pass. All the communities down the center of the San Francisco peninsula would get high speed rail passing through: Daly City, San Bruno, Millbrae, Burlingame, etc. all the way to San Jose. Access to the system would be available in San Francisco, the airport, Redwood City, and San Jose. The accusation is that the wealthy communities on the peninsula are anti poor and crying not in my back yard!
So, let's look at some facts. Would high speed rail be disruptive to the communities on the peninsula? You bet. Downtown San Mateo sits along the Caltrain track. Several major streets cross the railroad track and access to 101 is on the Eastern side of the track. Long term construction of a new rail would cause traffic delays and noise in downtown. San Mateo's downtown is about a four block square so you have to wonder how much impact a high speed rail will have on such a tiny town. The same is true of Burlingame/ Hillsborough. Some peninsula communities, like Belmont and San Carlos, are farther from the Caltrain tracks and the tracks have underpasses for automobile traffic so they would be less affected by an addition or expansion to existent tracks.
Palo Alto has had a high profile in opposing the high speed rail. We are looking to move to Palo Alto. One home we are considering sits six doors from the existing rail track. The noise seems minimal from Caltrain but a high speed track might be elevated, placing the resulting noise above the buffer of trees and other, even closer, homes. The construction would of course take a long time and cause a lot of noise as well. The end result may be a reduced property value after putting up with the construction noise for years. All a big if. The end result may be aesthetically pleasing, who knows.
Is opposing high speed rail synonymous with denying the poor access to a community? Absolutely not.
I assume Caltrain is cheaper than high speed rail will be and Caltrain makes many more stops, including San Mateo, where high speed rail will not stop. High speed rail passes through, it mostly doesn't stop. So these supposedly nefarious poor people aren't getting off in my current or future community unless they jump.
Would the train at least benefit the peninsula towns and California overall? I doubt it. High speed rail will get you from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about two hours and forty minutes, longer than most flights. When you factor in how many people might use high speed rail and the cost of building the high speed rail system, you have to wonder if the impact on the affected communities, where a wide variety of people live, mostly middle class and working class people along the rail lines, is worth the cost. How about we put some shoulder and money into repairing roads, bridges, tunnels, all the existing broken infrastructure that so needs attention and would benefit all citizens, rather than putting our money into this section of high speed rail?
For what it's worth.
