High Speed Rail: The View from Monterey

This week's Monterey County Weekly has an excellent cover story on the high speed rail project.

It's written from the point of view of we who live in Monterey County, which is valuable because the line will never actually reach us at all. Yet there is a lot of enthusiasm surrounding the project, because we still like to visit family and friends in and take business trips to Southern California. The thought of taking a fairly short bus or train ride to Gilroy to reach the HSR station and then a 2 hour trip to LA is really enticing for us - currently we either have to take a 6 hour drive to get to LA, or drive an hour and a half to San José and fly down - at least a 4-5 hour trip when you include security and delays. This article, and support for HSR here in Monterey, shows how high speed rail will benefit the entire state, not just those specific towns along the line.

The article is a good introduction to the project and the politics surrounding it, and mentions the looming environmental fight over the Pacheco Pass alignment, and funding questions. I'll have much more to say about the Sierra Club's stance on the Pacheco alignment in a future post, but for now, go read the article, e-mail it to friends, etc.