Student Action and Rail Advocacy: The Next Generation

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