Virgin California?

The Times is reporting Richard Branson wants a piece of California HSR:

Virgin Trains, which operates the West Coast Main Line in Britain, is bidding for a slice of President Obama's multibillion-dollar upgrade of the American rail network, The Times has learnt.

Virgin is understood to be the only British company involved in the President's plan to build high-speed rail links between key cities on the East and West coasts of the United States. Virgin has been asked to submit a proposal for developing this infrastructure and has held meetings with the new Administration in Washington.

They may be overstating this case dramatically - Obama doesn't really have a "plan" to build HSR, at least not in any great detail. It would be interesting to know what they mean by "has held meetings with the new Administration" - it could be a basic "get to know you" fact-finding meeting or something more. But our own LA-SF route features in whatever it is Virgin is planning:

Virgin and other high-speed operators, such as SNCF, of France, are expected to work with the US Department of Transportation to develop its rail plans and then bid to operate individual services.

Virgin is keen on the Los Angeles to San Francisco route and also the East Coast line linking Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington. There are 30 return airline flights a day between Los Angeles and San Francisco and a high-speed train service could replace many of those, cutting carbon emissions. The journey would take less than three hours and voters in California have already agreed to raise $10 billion to start work on a line that would run from Sacramento, the state capital, to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

I've always figured that SNCF and Virgin would be among the companies showing interest in operating our HSR line, so this is an expected development. That being said, I'm not sure that private operators are either necessary or desirable and have expressed my skepticism on this point ever since the first few posts on this blog. Public operators in France and Spain have done a good job running the system, as has Amtrak here in the US, and I'd prefer that any "profits" be given to expansion of the system and not to Richard Branson's wallet.

HSR Rolls On Around the World

A few items for a lazy Sunday afternoon from around the world:

• RENFE to open new HSR link between Málaga and Barcelona - a bypass of central Madrid that shortens the journey between the two cities to 5 hours 40 minutes. Further evidence of how Spain, which compares well to California in terms of population density, landscape, and travel distances, has built one of the world's great HSR successes in the AVE system.



• Italy's new HSR line to Bologna gets notice in the NY Times



• British HSR plans continue to evolve, with Labour proposing an HSR hub at Heathrow as part of a third runway project. Labour's support for a third runway has aroused opposition from nearby residents, environmentalists, and even the Conservative Party, whose stronger support for HSR has pushed Labour into its own HSR proposals. Labour is trying to link HSR to the third runway plan in a bit of greenwashing. It may or may not work, but the upshot is that Britain is now warming to HSR in a big way, a shift from 30 years of refusing to seriously endorse the concept.

British Conservatives Embrace an HSR Future

Britain's Conservative Party used to be rather strongly anti-rail. Margaret Thatcher never traveled on a train while Prime Minister. John Major helped privatize British Rail, which had devastatingly negative consequences. While European nations were busy building a high speed infrastructure, Britain lagged. Its only HSR route connects London to the Chunnel, and even that line was only completed last year.

But in what some are calling a "stunning turn of events" the Tories are now embracing high speed rail - specifically as a replacement to a third runway at Heathrow. The plan is to run trains at 180 mph from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. David Cameron, who looks set to be the next Prime Minister, claims it will cut 66,000 flights from Heathrow.

Labour has opened itself up to this move by stupidly rejecting HSR. Now Cameron and the Tories are poised to burnish their green credentials even further by embracing a form of transportation that has been quite successful on the Continent.

Credit shouldn't go to the Tories alone. HSR advocates blasted Labour earlier this year, and Greengauge 21 has been persistent in putting the subject before British voters, emphasizing many of the same economic, environmental, energy and transportation benefits as we have here in California.

It's worth noting that Britain too is facing the same financial and economic problems as the US - but they also recognize the need for long-term infrastructure planning, that green infrastructure is the best tonic for an economic downturn. If British conservatives can get past their old hostility to rail, let's hope California conservatives can do the same.