Bills to Expand Illinois Railway Program Announced Illinois has always been at the heart of America’s rail network, and it is uniquely poised to lead the country towards great trains. Because of its political heft and Chicago’s role as the nation’s rail hub, a growing...
Summary
As wildfires burn in the Los Angeles area, California's new State Rail Plan offers hope for addressing the climate crisis.
California leads the way
While literal and political firestorms rage over Southern California, new hope for a better future has emerged. On January 7, California released its new State Rail Plan. Years in the making, the Plan aims to connect California with fast, frequent trains and transit by 2050, using a statewide fleet of vehicles that produce zero emissions.
Why is this so important, especially now?
California has proposed giving its residents and visitors world-class train and transit service, by making these options more convenient and more appealing than driving or flying. That finally provides a real alternative to the transportation choices that help drive climate-change disasters.
What’s fanning these flames?
Almost nowhere has been more synonymous with American car culture than California. Sadly, the state is now one of many places paying the price for overreliance on highways. The unprecedented scale of the fires in the Los Angeles area show dramatically and tragically the kind of trouble a hotter, more volatile climate can inflict—anywhere.
In line with a dangerous trend, 2024 was another hottest year on record. In tandem with that, the United States last year saw a record-breaking 28 weather-related disasters that caused at least a billion dollars in damage. It’s happening all over the country. In California specifically, the LA wildfires started after perfect conditions came together: drought, low humidity, high temperatures, and sustained high winds. This is the first time anywhere in the United States that this has happened in January, instead of during the traditional summer and fall fire season.
Experts all over—including at NASA, UCLA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the scientific journal Nature, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and even the Council on Foreign Relations—know the score. Hotter and drier conditions created by climate change make wildfires more likely to start. They then become faster-moving, more dangerous, and more deadly as they spread. The current fires have displaced more than a hundred thousand people, made air difficult and dangerous to breathe, destroyed thousands of buildings, and claimed an unknown but climbing number of lives. The fires are already forecast to be the most expensive in American history. Some claim climate change isn’t to blame, but guess what? Insurance companies think it is.
Burning fossil fuels is the driving force behind all this. It releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and transportation releases the most. According to the EPA in 2022, the transportation sector produced more greenhouse gas emissions in the United States than any other. Cars and trucks accounted for 80 percent of it. Flights produced nine percent of the total, while rail produced just two.
Trains are cool
Trains can shoulder much more of this transportation load. They can carry many more passengers and much more freight, but with less carbon pollution. Steel wheels on steel rails minimize friction, making trains the most energy-efficient form of transportation that is readily available today.
The efficiency advantages of trains get even better with electrification. Not needing to haul the weight of their own fuel—or heavy batteries, as with electric cars—is part of what makes trains the most powerful electric vehicles.
Unlike highways and airports, networks of trains also promote the development of walkable downtowns and other centers of community, and they integrate easily with biking and public transit.
California’s visionary State Rail Plan recognizes all of these advantages and aims to bring their benefits to everyone who lives in the state or visits.
California now plans to make trains the best option for regional and long-distance trips, which currently make up about three-quarters of California’s travel mileage today. “All regions of California will have well-designed connections into a world-class system,” says the Plan’s Overview. “It will connect Californians to opportunity, and will make the cost of car-ownership an option rather than a nearly-universal requirement for full inclusion in the state’s economy.”
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California aims to electrify these corridors by 2050.
Benefits sooner rather than later
The Plan will provide clear benefits to travelers—with some in the relatively near future.
Over the next five years, for example, regional and intercity service in Southern California will turn current peak service into all-day service, making the system more convenient to use, for more people. Other new services will begin, such as connecting the San Joaquin Valley to Sacramento, and more trains will be electrified, for faster trip times and greater frequency. California already has a good track record on this. Last year, for instance, the state completed electrification of the 50-mile Caltrain corridor between San Francisco and San Jose, delivering major improvements.
Over the next decade, the new 200-mph high-speed service that is currently under construction will start running in California’s Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield. The high-speed line will have integrated connections to better intercity rail, regional rail, and buses throughout the state, while regional and intercity services in Southern California will increase to at least hourly all-day service.
By 2050, the Plan aims for full build-out of high-speed service all the way from San Francisco to Anaheim, with more for Sacramento, San Diego, and the Inland Empire region in southeastern California. It will also connect Northern California to Las Vegas via a High Desert connection to the high-speed line that Brightline West started building in 2024 between California and Nevada. The Plan calls for a new tunnel under San Francisco Bay for through-running trains. Regional rail and intercity service throughout the state will provide high-frequency connections to high-speed service throughout the day. Fare systems will be integrated with buses and local transit, and Caltrans is charged with leading work to standardize level boarding, for greater accessibility and convenience.
A vision we need
The new plan is ambitious and expensive. Over a quarter century, California aims to invest $307 billion in all aspects of it. With the cost of the current fires already heading north of $150 billion, investments like this are smart. They might even end up being cheap at the price. The Plan also estimates that the ramped up train and transit network will deliver $537 billion in economic returns by the time the Plan is fully built-out in 2050, and create up to 900,000 jobs.
Especially in a time of crisis, we need inspiring vision. California’s new plan provides it. For the first time in the USA, a state is planning for the level of fast, frequent train service—well integrated with other forms of transit—that people in other countries all over the world already enjoy.
We can have great trains and transit here too—and the climate we depend on will be better off as soon as we do.
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