[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog

I've been meaning to get to this article for a few days now, and though our friends at Trains for America and The Overhead Wire have mentioned it, I hope you won't mind if I bring up the rear, so to speak. Air France is looking into entering the HSR business when the EU deregulates it in 2010:

“With the high price of fuel raising the cost of flying, Air France is looking into replacing some of its short-haul European flights with high-speed rail service in partnership with a French train operator, a move that analysts said could lead to significant savings.”

HSR would provide Air France with better service by bringing passengers to Charles de Gaulle from around the region for their long-haul flights; and would help their profit margin by lowering costs:

“The main advantage for the airlines would be improved profitability, Van den Brul said....

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank

As my recent articles have shown there is a shortage of firefighters to meet the unprecedented amount of fires burning across our state. As I began digging into this yesterday I came across the same report highlighted in today's Monterey Herald - that US Forest Service firefighting efforts have been cut to the bone and left the nation vulnerable to massive fires. Deliberate staffing shortages have left the USFS unable to do vital off-season brush clearance, and left them without the staffing to get a quick jump on fires in their crucial initial stages.

“The federal firefighting system is "imploding" in California, due to poor spending decisions and high job vacancy rates, as the region struggles to keep pace with what looks to be a historic fire season, a firefighters' advocacy group charges.

“As a result, the firefighters say, small fires have exploded into extended, multimillion-dollar conflagrations because the U.S. Forest Service has been unable to contain them during the early "initial attack" stage...

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank

As David Dayen noted yesterday, fires continue to burn across California, with the massive blazes in Goleta and Big Sur getting the focus of the state's attention. And as he and other outlets have mentioned, California's firefighting capacities have been strained beyond their limits.

More and more residents, especially in Big Sur, have noticed just how many fewer firefighters there seem to be for this blaze, as compared to previous fires in the area. As conservative demands for low taxes and budget cuts have helped slash available fire protection, residents in Big Sur increasingly feel they are on their own, though they appreciate the fire protection they have received. The legacy of Hurricane Katrina - when nobody came to help New Orleans - has led some residents to refuse to evacuate out of a belief that if they don't protect their homes, nobody will.

It's a frustrating and sometimes chaotic situation that is the direct product of conservative attacks on basic government services - they want people to fend for themselves, and often that is extremely difficult to do.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog

The California Chronicle has two short articles about the State Senate's approach to high speed rail, focusing on Democrat Leland Yee of San Francisco and Republican Roy Ashburn, whose district sprawls across eastern California but is based in Bakersfield. The articles help explain the politics surrounding HSR in our state capital, and may give us a preview of what we can expect to unfold Monday morning at 10 at the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on AB 3034.

The Yee article focuses on his work to restore the "spine" of the HSR corridor, from SF to LA and Anaheim, which as you all know was threatened by AB 3034's provision for building smaller, potentially disconnected HSR corridors instead. The article quotes my comments from Tuesday in support of Yee's position, and includes this portion from a Yee press release:

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog

The Senate Transportation Committee yesterday approved AB 3034 by an 8-4 vote. But as Erik Nelson at the Contra Costa Times reports it included some great amendments, including Sen. Leland Yee's plan to restore the primacy of LA-SF:

“The committee, at the urging of Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, restored language that restricted use of the $9.95 billion in bond proceeds to the "spine" of the 800-mile system, which is now slated to run from Anaheim to Los Angeles to San Jose and San Francisco through the Antelope and San Joaquin valleys.”

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank

As we're all painfully aware, during the '00s the US media have become ardent defenders of the status quo, generally unwilling to discuss harsh realities that might threaten that status quo unless absolutely forced to do so - Hurricane Katrina, for example, or the reaction to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps the most significant issue not being discussed in the media is peak oil - which, in its simplistic form, explains why the high fuel prices we are seeing today are going to be a permanent feature of life.

Gas prices are NEVER coming back down - rising demand is meeting a shrinking supply and the result is the end of the cheap oil that modern America was built upon.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog http://cahsr.blogspot.com/

The California Air Resources Board has released its draft scoping plan for implementation of the AB 32 greenhouse gas reduction law. This is the law that was passed in 2006 that requires California to reduce carbon emissions by 25%, to 1990 levels. It is rightly seen as a landmark national, even global law.

And as CARB recognized, its goals cannot be accomplished without high speed rail.

The cornerstone of the CARB plan to implement AB 32 is to use a cap-and-trade system. I prefer an outright carbon tax, but cap-and-trade is what we're likely to see initially here in California. This is where the overall amount of carbon emissions is capped, and credits are created to allow pollution up to that cap limit. Those credits can be traded - so if, say, a factory wants to pollute, it must purchase more credits, causing those who sell them to reduce their emissions. Over time the number of available credits is steadily reduced to achieve lower emissions.