Even before the United States fell victim to a nationwide recession, battered state and federal budgets, and the trauma of terrorism, America’s transportation infrastructure was in trouble. A modern economy is a mobile economy, but our mobility has been declining for years, because we did not invest in the right transportation infrastructure to prevent a deterioration of our mobility. We must do a better job of planning to accommodate our growth for the future.

So where do we turn? Where can we find the transportation alternative California, and indeed all America, is looking for?

To plan for a better future, imagine what California will look like in 2020, based on the best official forecast available:

• California’s population will be between 45 million to 50 million, and that means a population increase equal to the entire population of Florida or Texas.

• The major part of that growth will be in California’s Central Valley.

• Intercity trips such as Los Angeles-San Francisco or San Francisco-Fresno will more than double.

• In order for the state to retain its vibrant economy and lifestyle, it must improve mobility.

• Intercity trips today must utilize automobiles on our congested highways or airplanes from our congested airports.

• Short-haul regional trips currently utilize over one-third of San Francisco or Los Angeles airport capacity to serve less than 5 percent of the passengers.

These factors clearly demonstrate that for the state to retain its economic, cultural and social viability, it must find an economically efficient and environmentally friendly transportation network to accommodate the expected growth in intercity travel. The glaring contemporary need in California’s transportation system is a fast, reliable, cost-effective way to move people between California’s major cities in a business day. The solution is the construction of a state-of-the-art, high-speed train system that can compete with air and auto, a train going over 200 miles per hour and cutting the San Francisco-Los Angeles travel time to 2 ½ hours.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority is developing the framework not only for a pioneering transportation system in America but also for a whole new form of travel. The high-speed trains it is planning certainly will have as much of an impact on California, its economy and its culture as the decisions a generation ago to build the state's freeway system or the state water project.

High-speed train service will whisk passengers from the Sacramento to Southern California in 2 hours and 10 minutes at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour along a 700-mile route.

The big question facing policy-makers is whether they will take high-speed train service seriously and whether they will continue to provide the financing necessary to plan the system. SB1856, authored by Senator Jim Costa, is a bold and timely commitment to a new vision that must be approved if we are to break the jam-up in California’s transportation system.

Over the next 20 years, California will remain the largest state in the union.  We will have more people, cars, highways, airports and airplanes. We also will have more crowding, congestion, noise and other side effects of our current system. We will be able to relieve congestion in some areas, mitigate it in others, powerless to prevent it in others.

During the next two decades, based on current plans and taxes, California will spend more than $200 billion in public funds on transportation, including freeways, airports and mass transit in an effort to deal with the population growth and resulting congestion. The private sector will spend many times that amount on planes, trains and automobiles. The $6 billion bond proposal by Senator Costa is a small fraction of our total public outlay for transportation.

But freeway and airport expansion cannot be expected to adequately absorb over 12 million new residents if Californians wish to reduce air pollution, minimize sprawl and maintain a high quality of life for the next generation.

Consider that by 2020, the population boom will raise the number of long-distance trips within California to 215 million annually. Without high-speed trains, over 30 million of those would be handled by airlines and about 185 million by cars. Not only is it easy to envision more pollution and road congestion, but it is also likely that the airlines and airports will not have the capacity to manage such a sizeable market increase – even if proposed airport expansions succeed.

However, by offering downtown-to-downtown service, unparalleled comfort and reliability, and virtually no smog emissions, high-speed trains would move an estimated 42 million passengers per year, reducing the projected amount of airplane and auto long-distance intrastate trips in 2020.

With such dramatic impacts on the horizon, the California High-Speed Rail Authority believes that after reviewing the impacts on the state's economy, transportation system, and way of life, Californians will agree that the authority's proposed high-speed train system is a cost-competitive alternative to more-of-the-same gridlock. We encourage the public to join our efforts so the authority can formulate the best high-speed train system possible for California.