What Dreams May Come

It is no secret to many of us in the great state of California that the proposed high speed rail system could very well be called a colossal ‘Browndoggle’ without getting too many fingers wagged in one’s face. Alas, it is neither my job nor inclination to editorialize the pros and cons of such matters in the brief 700 words I have been allowed in my favorite small town paper. Let’s just say, for the sake of brevity, that California’s high speed rail system becomes a reality, what will this brave new world look like? There are already several very modern and extremely futuristic plans in the works for several of our major city terminals.

Celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, Union Station in Los Angeles is the natural Southern California terminus of the new system. With a grand history of arriving and departing great name passenger trains among the likes of the Super Chief and Daylight, plans are already underway to bring this icon of Tinseltown into the 21st century and beyond. A new master plan for the station was announced this week that will greatly expand Union Station into a much larger and more easily accessible transportation center with enhanced subway, bike, pedestrian, Metrolink and Amtrak connections as well as a state of the art high speed rail terminal. The plans have already been designed and will include an onsite hotel, office towers and park land while not sacrificing the original Mission Style flavor that is synonymous to Union Station. All that and the birthplace of Los Angeles, Olvera Street, will still be within walking distance. Not bad when you consider what a pain it is to fly these days.

Several major cities in California are banking their future on the high speed rail system being a resounding success. In what is reminiscent of the imagination and genius of Walt Disney, Anaheim has already made a serious commitment to the future of rail and other forms of ground transportation in the form of ready to go infrastructure. The Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC) is already under construction and will be completed later this year or in early 2015. This will give Orange County a truly world class transportation center for rail and bus connections. It is also being built to be completely ready for high speed rail service so nothing will have to be altered down the road. Its close proximity to the land that Mickey built doesn’t hurt either. Anaheim could beat out Los Angeles in the Southern California high speed rail terminal competition and make LA just another stop on the trip north.

Any train, whether it is high speed or slow, leaving southern California and heading north needs to have a place to go. San Francisco, with their BART system, Muni and Caltrain commuter trains is currently modernizing and completely revamping the former hub, the Transbay Terminal. The new and futuristic Transbay Transit Center will bring together all of the Bay Area’s transportation authorities under one roof with new connections to Amtrak and high speed rail when needed. This new station will be both above and below ground and will be capped with a five acre park on the roof. At a cost exceeding 4 billion dollars, this new station is scheduled for opening in 2017.

With the long term success of Japan’s high speed rail system and the numerous European systems, it is easy to hope that ours too will be a success. The long waits at airports, ridiculous search and screening practices by the NSA and air travel just plain becoming less convenient gives high speed rail and most other forms of travel by train a much more optimistic future. Major transportation hub cities are stepping up to provide the necessary infrastructure to help make this a realistic look into a bright future for rail travel.

Unfortunately, Tehachapi will not be a stop on any high speed rail service in the future. Of the routes that I have seen, at least one does have the tracks passing through here just north of Monolith. We can always wave as it goes by.