California votes for Massive High Speed Rail Project

Californians have done it! They voted to advance to the next stage of its high speed rail project that will link San Francisco and Sacramento with San Diego and LA, cutting travel times, road congestion and greenhouse gases.

With a project as big as this there's still a long way to go - completion date would be 2020 at earliest - but it's the first step in a North American intercity HST and very exciting.

As far as Vancouver is concerned the main corridor that has been identified as being a potential HST route is Eugene, Oregon to Vancouver, BC. However, as the fiasco over starting a second Amtrak train to Eugene has shown - Canadian customs are effectively blocking it by demanding exorbitant administrative fees for the second train - it'll take some serious political commitment to get the wheels rolling on HST up in the Pacific North West.

I'll be posting an article I wrote for the Vancouver Courier on train travel in a couple of weeks. My contract with Courier newspaper owners, CanWest, stipulates that I don't republish the article immediately.