By Zander Sherry
As a part of California’s initiative to change climate policies and infrastructure that adds to global warming, we have seen steps taken towards reducing transportation greenhouse emissions. Many of the state’s goals have manifested into billions of dollars in funding for public transit services across the state.
The Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP), for example, was created to modernize many of California’s intercity, commuter and urban rail systems in order to reduce greenhouse emissions and to increase ridership in the state. The TIRCP received $6.6 billion in funding to complete its objectives across nearly 100 transportation projects, and is supported by the Cap-and-Trade program.
The last decade has seen a push towards large scale transportation projects in the form of ambitious state-wide plans as well as extensions to existing and successful transit systems.
Below are some of the biggest projects in the works, with information on their cost, services and a sense of where they are in their construction process.
Coachella Valley – San Gorgonio Pass Rail
The Coachella Valley rail is a proposed passenger train that would travel a distance of 144 miles from Los Angeles Union Station to the Coachella Valley area. It would pass through Orange County with stations at Fullerton, Riverside and Palm Springs, on an already existing rail corridor.
Planned and revitalized by the Riverside County Transportation Committee (RCTC), the project recently passed its hurdle of developing a service plan and outlining the locations, hours and possible stations of the rail. According to RCTC, the rail would provide access to jobs and education and would exist as a significant economic opportunity for the city centers across the corridor.
In the west, people could use the rail to access some of Orange County’s attractions and concert venues or make their way to Los Angeles for a day trip, as the proposed service includes two round trips daily. The east end of the rail includes access to growing cities and renowned music festivals around the cities of Indio and Coachella, including the annual Coachella music festival.
The project is still in the planning process, and the estimated cost is $1 billion, a price expected to take years to reach. According to Cheryl Donahue, public affairs manager for RCTC, the project would take at least 10 years to complete, with the necessity of completing its environmental analysis.
The Environmental Process of the Coachella Valley rail includes an Environmental Impact Statement and Report, and was recently opened to public comment, to which agencies, organizations and individuals asked for clarification on the project’s funding, the technology that would be used, the environmental implications and more. Currently, the RCTC is reaching its $60 million goal to fund in-depth studies of the environment concerning the rail, a necessary step expected to take years to complete.
BART Silicon Valley rail extension
The Santa Clara County transportation authority, located in Silicon Valley, is extending the services of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) to Silicon Valley in order to promote mobility and economic development for the area. The extension would help to create jobs and give access to the employment-heavy Silicon Valley.
As a regional transportation service, BART has been a major part of the San Francisco Bay Area’s leading public transit system, and Santa Clara County intends to lead the existing BART services into downtown San José and then to Santa Clara.
Plans for this project included Phase I, completed and in service in June of 2020, and Phase II, which has already completed the environmental examination. With a total of six miles and four stations in the Phase II proposal, as of now, the project stands at $6.9 billion and is currently in the design and engineering phase.
The BART service has one of the earliest histories of available and efficient public transportation and is over 50 years old. Santa Clara’s ambitions to extend access to this service have been around for decades, and the authority took initiative to build it. The final service is expected to be open in 2030.
California High Speed Rail
The costliest of California’s public transportation projects is the California High Speed Rail, planned and designed by the California High Speed Rail Authority. With a growing price of $105 billion, the rail was proposed in the 90s as one of the five high speed rail projects in the nation.
With its price, the electric rail is one of the more controversial transportation projects in the country, and receives criticisms for the decades it will take to complete. The price is the biggest point of concern, however, as its price tag puts it as the most expensive public infrastructure project in the nation.
The leading argument for it is the environmental impact it could have on statewide travel. The Authority also leans on the rail’s possibility of connecting the major regions of California and creating jobs.
Running from San Francisco to Los Angeles, the proposed corridor, if successful, would extend to Sacramento in the north and San Diego in the south.
In a summer 2022 construction update, the Authority revealed that there are currently more than 30 active construction sites, spanning 119 miles in the center of the state. In addition, the Authority is already set to prepare construction into Merced (north) and Bakersfield (south).
The High Speed Rail plans to take passengers at speeds greater than 200 mph, and the Authority is working to make its services available as soon as possible, meaning the electric train would be operational while going through construction, expanding into the north and south.
The Authority plans to test trains in 2025, certify their safety by 2027 and put them in service before the end of the decade.
As for the future of all public transportation systems in California, the state is always planning new innovations in public transportation in the many population clusters that already utilize advanced networks of trains and buses.
With the sale of new gas cars to be banned by 2035, public transportation could grow to be an integral part of inter-city travel, getting citizens to use trains to travel across the deserts and lower population areas by using infrastructure both new and old.
