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Student Action and Rail Advocacy: The Next Generation
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
This week, college students organized through California Student PIRG are traversing the state on a High Speed Rail Spring Break to heighten awareness and build support for California’s HSR plans. A $9 billion ballot initiative to fund initial construction is expected to be on the General Election ballot in November. These students are answering a higher sense of purpose through their efforts:
“I’m spending my spring break on a road trip, but not to Cabo,” said Jenn Engstrom, a second-year student at University of California at Berkeley.
Gambit Ramos, an organizer staff member from University of California, Irvine, came with his red bicycle, bearing a sticker reading, “I’d rather be riding high-speed rail.”
“This is a truly grassroots effort that will bring California into the 21st Century,” said city Supervisor Aaron Peskin.
But young people don’t have to wait until college to make a difference, as the students of Crawfordsville High School in Indiana demonstrated.
For any teenager who is interested in becoming a more informed and empowered advocate for trains and transit in general, here’s a wonderful opportunity that doesn’t come every day: The American Public Transportation Association is hosting Teening Up for a Greener World: A Youth Summit to Advance Public Transportation. The three-day summit will take place June 22-24 at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and will include seminars, tours, and a day on Capitol Hill. APTA will underwrite 100% of the travel, program, and living expenses for program participants. There are 50 spots available for high school juniors and seniors 18 years old and younger. We strongly encourage all interested teenagers to apply! Applications can be printed from the web site and are due by April 25.
Rail advocacy has been a personal journey for me. It started at the age of 9, when I wrote a letter to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan asking him what he would do under public ownership of the abandoned Southern Pacific Burbank Branch (which is now the Metro Orange Line). To the mayor’s credit, he responded and personally signed the letter! My awareness of the importance of transportation issues grew, and at the age of 14 I joined NARP and a state organization.
If your interest in promoting trains started at a young age, how did you first get involved? Do you have any thoughts on how to build a rail advocacy movement that the next generation of the traveling public can sustain?
--Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: apta, california high-speed rail, crawfordsville, grassroots advocacy, student advocacy,Students Continue Push for California HSR
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Following up on my last post, momentum is building for California’s High Speed Rail plans, and students from the High Speed Rail Spring Break have proudly led the charge.
NARP At-Large Director Dennis Lytton caught up with them on the south steps of Los Angeles City Hall on March 27th where they were rallying with Los Angeles City Councilmember Tom LaBonge, the L.A. City Council’s leading supporter of passenger rail.
According to University of California, Davis freshman Jessica Lam, “A lot of people were skeptical about us spending our spring break this way,” she continued, “It’s been so much fun . . . we’re biking and carpooling. And we believe in High Speed Rail.”
Meanwhile in the past week, a poll demonstrated strong majority support—58%—for the November bond measure (passage requires a simple majority). Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) also softened his position on the measure as the State Assembly considers placing a measure on the ballot that would require aggressively seeking private financing. Perhaps he is beginning to realize that he could best realize his legacy as a “Green governor” by supporting the one project that would do more to radically shape California’s environmental future in a positive way than any other.
As for the students, here are photos from their tour (click here to see their album):
Here’s a short video from the first two days of the tour:
For background, here’s a promotional video commissioned by the HSR Authority:
Here’s a story from Quest on PBS affiliate KQED:
Finally, for a neat Google Map of the proposed route and stations, see this VentureBeat post.
For the latest developments, be sure to follow Robert Cruickshank’s California High Speed Rail Blog.
--Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: california high-speed rail, student advocacy,Four Ways to Consider Intercity Passenger Train Expansion
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
(1) Provide service to the largest metro areas currently without it. The eight largest, in descending order of population are:
- *Las Vegas, NV
- *Columbus, OH
- *Nashville, TN
- *Louisville, KY
- Tulsa, OK
- Allentown-Bethlehem, PA
- Baton Rouge, LA
- McAllen-Edinberg, TX
* Indicates Amtrak formerly provided service. Las Vegas service lasted through May 10, 1997; Columbus, Nashville and Louisville lost service at the end of October, 1979, although Louisville briefly regained service with a painfully slow train to Chicago. That train ran Chicago-Jeffersonville, IN starting December 17, 1999, was extended across the river to Louisville December 4, 2001, and discontinued July 8, 2003.
(2) Route study requests in S. 294 (which passed the Senate in October):
- restore Amtrak’s Pioneer that linked Seattle-Portland with eastern Oregon, Boise and Salt Lake City. (Towards the end, its financial viability was compromised by running as a separate train all the way across Wyoming to Denver, rather than serving SLC and connecting there with the California Zephyr.)
- restore Amtrak’s North Coast Hiawatha in southern Montana and southern North Dakota – well used train until its demise in 1979.
(3) Maps in the National Surface Transportation Policy & Revenue Study Commission report, at chapter four:
The 2015 vision is at page 4-22 and notably includes
- Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati
- a long-discussed Meridian-Jackson-Dallas link among existing Amtrak routes, and
- closing the Bakersfield-Los Angeles gap.
The 2030 vision is on the next page and adds several routes including
- Atlanta-Florida,
- Dallas-Houston,
- Oklahoma City to both Newton/Kansas City and Tulsa/St. Louis,
- Cheyenne-Denver-Trinidad-Albuquerque-El Paso
- the above-referenced Pioneer, and
- service to Las Vegas from both east and west.
The 2050 vision is on page 4-24 and adds many more routes including Chicago-Atlanta.
The Commission recommends annual capital expenditure of $9 billion, much of which would support “genuine” high speed rail projects such that planned in California.
(4) NARP’s 40-year vision, which is more aggressive than the Commission’s although North Carolina DOT’s vision is more aggressive than ours! Read more about our Grow Trains Campaign and Vision Plan including regional “zoom-in” maps.
--Ross Capon
Posted by NARP
Tags: amtrak, california high-speed rail, narp vision, north coast hiawatha, pioneer, service expansion,Beautiful Visual Tour of California HSR
Friday, May 30, 2008
This rendering summarizes in two-and-a-half minutes the experience of traversing California by high-speed rail, both inside the train and out the window. Notably, it also shows dense, guided development around the stations, which will be positively transformative to the state’s landscape once the system is built.
--Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: california high-speed rail, transit-oriented development,NARP Endorses CAHSR, Guestblogs the CAHSR Blog
Friday, July 18, 2008
NARP Board Member Dennis Lytton and I will be guestblogging on the CAHSR Blog over the next couple weeks as its primary author is out of town. The timing is auspicious; last week, NARP’s Executive Committee approved a resolution endorsing California’s High Speed Rail project and Proposition 1, the ballot measure that will provide $9 billion in initial construction funding and $950 million to improve existing intercity and commuter train service. I will be working with citizen activists in California to help promote Prop 1 in the coming months.
You can read my first post here.
--Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: california high-speed rail, california proposition 1, grassroots advocacy,NARP Pushes CAHSR and Prop 1A, and So Can You
Monday, September 29, 2008
NARP is working actively to promote California Proposition 1A, the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century, which will appear on the November 4 ballot to provide $9 billion in bonds to start construction of the CAHSR project, and $995 million to bolster existing conventional passenger train services. I will be in the state next month to work with our Directors and allies on the ground to educate voters about the ballot measure. We will distribute two-sided informational cards (pictured below), brilliantly designed with the volunteer labor of NARP member Alfred Twu of Berkeley. (Thank you, Alfred!) It is co-branded with the web site for the grassroots Students for CAHSR.
If you’re in California and would like to assist, please consider downloading the high-resolution .pdf of the card design (1.1 MB) and professionally printing it to distribute in your community. NARP is only able to sponsor a limited print run, and we would greatly appreciate your contribution. You may also click on the image below to download.
For more information about the CAHSR project and Prop 1A, please see the following resources:
- NARP’s Resolution
- Californians for High Speed Trains (Official Campaign)
- CAHSR Authority
- CAHSR Blog
- Students for CAHSR
- Facebook Group: Support California High Speed Rail
- HSR for California
- Association for California High-Speed Trains
- Are You Hot For High Speed Rail?
- Golden State Rail
- CalPIRG HSR Campaign
- Ballotpedia: Prop 1A
As you can see, there is a tremendous groundswell of online support for Prop 1A. The Facebook group mentioned above has nearly 39,000 members! We need to work hard in the coming weeks to translate this enthusiasm into votes, and push back hard against baseless attacks from opponents (as Robert Cruickshank does so well every day on the CAHSR Blog).
What will you do to support CAHSR and Prop 1A? Let us know in the comments.
--Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: california high-speed rail, california proposition 1, california proposition 1a, grassroots advocacy,Lytton Op-Ed: CAHSR “Would Save Lives and Fuel”
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Kudos to NARP Board Member Dennis Lytton, whose op-ed piece, “High-speed rail would save lives and fuel,” the Daily Breeze (Southern California) published yesterday. Dennis does a fantastic job bringing into focus the long-term safety and environmental benefits the California High-Speed Rail project would bring. For more analysis, see the CAHSR Blog.
--Matthew Melzer
Posted by NARP
Tags: california high-speed rail, california proposition 1, california proposition 1a, dennis lytton, oil, safety,©2006 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website
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