As students, it’s our generation and the generations after us that will suffer the most from global warming, traffic, peak oil and the rest of California’s growing transportation-related problems. That’s why, with three other UCLA students and nearly 50 other students from UC schools across California, I decided to do something a little different for my spring break last week.
We went on a road trip, but not to Puerto Vallarta. Instead we traveled the route of the proposed high-speed rail line, from San Francisco on down to San Diego, and met with local leaders and reporters along the way to share our story about why we students believe high-speed rail is essential to the future of California. At our Los Angeles stop, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and City Councilmember Tom LaBonge joined us in calling for the high-speed rail project to be built as quickly as possible.
As a result of global warming, rising sea levels threaten our coastline and decreasing snowpack in the Sierras reduces our water supply. We also know that the single largest source of global warming pollution is our use of oil for transportation. We need cleaner, more efficient cars, but we also need to drive a lot less to reduce our pollution levels 80 percent by 2050, as scientists say we must in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
Building high-speed rail is not just about reducing global-warming pollution. More than 37 million people live in California right now, and our population is expected to grow to 50 million residents by 2030. Traffic congestion in Los Angeles is already ranked worst in the country; in fact, the average commuter in Los Angeles spends an additional 70 hours per year behind the driver’s wheel stuck in traffic. Skyrocketing oil prices serve as a reminder that the era of cheap oil is already over.
If we don’t build high-speed rail, we will by default be choosing more roads and highways instead, not to mention expensive airport expansions. Those alternatives don’t just increase our reliance on cars; they are actually more expensive than building high-speed rail.
Traveling along the route was fun and exciting ““ I got to see parts of the state I had never seen before and hoped that some day I would be able to make the trip by high-speed train, rather than by car and bike.
But more importantly, I know that we need people like me speaking out in support of the high-speed rail, which for too long has been delayed by politicians who want to spend money on roads instead.
So that’s why I decided to do something a little different for my spring break. Because I want to be able to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than two and a half hours by train. Because we need to reduce our pollution. Because traffic will only get worse without alternatives like high-speed rail. Because California has a choice to make about our transportation future, and high-speed rail is a much better choice than more highways and airport runways.
Dobjensky is a second-year political science student. She is chair of the UCLA chapter of CALPIRG.