Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is associate dean of academic affairs and a professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and a research affiliate at the Mineta Transportation Institute in San Jose.
Posted on 02/16/2015 5:02:12 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Most of the debate over the building of the nation's first bullet train, in California, has focused on the economics of such a monumental undertaking and its projected $68-billion first-phase price tag. Largely ignored amid the excitement over the railway's recent official groundbreaking is the physical impact and design challenges that cities will need to grapple with as they prepare for high-speed rail.
California should look to rail systems across Europe to fully understand the challenge of building a transportation hub that connects to the community.
To make the most of California's once-in-a-lifetime chance at building a thriving transportation network, cities need to focus not only on the design of stations and their immediate surroundings but on the area extending half a mile around the station, the municipality at large and the broader region.
We may have to wait until 2029 to ride a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but high-speed rail in California is no longer a “what if.” Neither is the need for well-designed railway stations with the potential to become city landmarks — and to connect Californians for generations to come.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is associate dean of academic affairs and a professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and a research affiliate at the Mineta Transportation Institute in San Jose.
U.S. can look to Europe’s example — but it will be a waste of time.
Oh, and, “guilty”
2029?
So Brown (and future socialista governors) are going to rape taxpayers for 14 years before they say we can’t do it?
I hate California Communists.
$68 billion? I wonder how high something like this would be on a muzzie terrorist target list.
You know liberals don’t consider such things but rational people should.
Europe has population density. Most US cities outside the NrE Corridor do not. Fail.
European cities are built much differently than American cities and have a much better system of buses. California’s bullet train is a huge boondoggle and waste of money to make greenies and demonrats feel good at taxpayer expense. Moonbeam screwed transportation spending on freeways in his first term and now he wasting money that should be used to repair and build roads on a useless memorial to himself.
Did her mom spill an institutional sized can of alphabet soup when she named this chick?
It’ll cost half a trillion by completion, travel 50 mph, but be the only way to do so because California will have banned private vehicles by then.
If anything we need to slow down. High speed living is killing us.
She should go to Ancestry.com to see how closely she’s related to Rosie O’Donnell. Somewhere down the line, they have to be related.
Will never happen.
She thinks money grows on trees.
The demand for high speed rail isn’t even there and our late Willie Green would be the first to tell her that’s a fact.
All the wishful thinking in the world cannot undo economic reality.
Guilty with malice!
Really? She looks like Bruce Jenner to me.
Where’s Willie?
L
She thinks people will be riding high speed rail in California by 2025. I say the median per capita income in California, adjusted for inflation, will be 25% less than today, and California will be part of Mexico. Let’s see who is right.
The 68 billion (probably more like 100 billion) could be better spent on desalinization plants.
Looks like Andrew Duggan
What a moron.
By the time this “sucking sound” train system is fully built, it will cost more than 250 billion.
Even that 68 billion figure is a ‘wink wink’ number. I’ve already seen estimates it will climb to over 100 billion.
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