Residents chime in on high-speed rail potential

Why give Corona a boost when it's San Bernardino that needs the help? That's what Rancho Cucamonga resident Richard Ortiz wanted to know after attending a Monday afternoon meeting aimed at getting Inland Empire residents' views on a proposed high-speed rail line that will link San Diego and Los Angeles.

[Matt]

The sentiment in this article is absolutely correct. Developing the inland areas is essential to maintaining and enhancing livability and economic competitiveness for the state as a whole. And, the most development potential lies along the Riverside-San Bernardino route that runs through and stops at both county seats.

The Southern California Association of Government's "Compass Blueprint" analysis identified strategic-opportunity areas that are mostly concentrated along the 215 corridor, and the City of San Bernardino has performed its own carrying-capacity analysis for the land surrounding the multimodal station that is currently in design and that will be breaking ground soon. The development potential there is staggering, and the EDAW-AECOM master plan that was crafted for the city center, including the new T.O.D. village that Cooper Carry is designing, is equally impressive. Moreover, the City of San Bernardino's Economic Development Agency owns huge tracts of vacant and/or underutilized land immediately South of the proposed station.

All of these facts bode well for San Bernardino's strategy to re-establish itself as the third urban core in southern California and to reposition the municipality to compete in the category of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and other first-tier cities across the country and around the world. If we, as Californians, don't fix this problem and flip the map so that all the traffic isn't flowing towards the coast in the mornings and toward the mountains in the evenings, the Inland Empire, and much of the rest of southern California, will continue being transformed into a mess of smoggy slums with traffic congestion at all hours of the day.

[Matt]

Let me just say, since this is election day, that credit for this strategy lies with San Bernardino's Mayor Patrick Morris and the people he's recruited, including Emil Marzullo, the director of the Economic Development Agency.

As someone whose background is in strategic planning and marketing, I find the EDAW-AECOM Vision & Action Plan, in particular, utterly ingenious. It identifies and capitalizes on San Bernardino's inherent assets and competitive advantages while avoiding competition other parts of the city, as well as with other municipalities in the Inland Empire.

Cars on freeways created San Bernardino's problems (as well as southern California's), so it's only fitting that these new transportation solutions, like high-speed rail, are the key to undoing the damage and to remaking San Bernardino's long-schizophrenic economy.

[Dave in Crafton Hills]

You're crazy if you think a train will make any noticiable difference in the volume of freeway traffic.

Trains already run from Riverside to L.A./ Orange County, yet still the 91 is always jammed. Another train won't improve anything.

Besides, if the train has to stop for several minutes in each town with a successful lobbyist, it'll take forever to get from San Diego to L.A.

So much for the "high speed" promise.

[Riley]

High speed trains in CA? Hahahaha! When could these trains even hit their top speeds? Out in the central valley?

The State of CA is BROKE!

[whats up]

I would just be happy with a slow speed train that travels the San Bernardino to Oceanside route on week days, as it stands now, you can go from Berdoo to Oside at 4:52 AM, then Oside to Berdoo at 4:45 PM. but no train in the AM from Oceanside or PM to San Bernardino.

[nomore]

Corona is already accessible. That access is known as parking lot 91.

I am not disagreeing on the optimal location of a new line.

[the process]

Its should be fairly empirical where the line should go. Where the ridership would be at its maximum. Not, for economic development purposes. They rarely work. Pick the spots that will get the most people out of their cars or gets more people to where they need to go. Admittedly, cities that are situated along public transit will be best suited to deal with the decreasing supply of oil, not that we're increasing, we are becoming a smaller percentage of the overall oil demander's. China is getting a lot of oil contracts in the middle east, as is India. Public transit will become more important in the next 20 years. Heck build it all!

[Matt]

San Bernardino has three B.R.T. corridors and one light-rail line that will join the two Metrolink stations, one Amtrak station, and new international airport there. This intermodal connectivity is essential to transit-oriented development.

By the way, economic development is the essential point of public subsidization of transportation infrastructure. Abraham Lincoln wouldn't have built the transcontinental railroad otherwise, and neither would Dwight D. Eisenhower have built the interstate highway system.

Economic development and smart-growth land-use policies are the reason high-speed rail is so important, and San Bernardino becoming an urban core like L.A. and San Diego while Riverside and Ontario become urban centers like Pasadena and Irvine is precisely that, which southern California and the Inland Empire need

[Matt]

Dave in Crafton Hills wrote:

You're crazy if you think a train will make any noticiable difference in the volume of freeway traffic.
Trains already run from Riverside to L.A./ Orange County, yet still the 91 is always jammed. Another train won't improve anything.
Besides, if the train has to stop for several minutes in each town with a successful lobbyist, it'll take forever to get from San Diego to L.A.
So much for the "high speed" promise.

Trains are quite versatile. Some will provide express and limited service while others will make local stops. San Bernardino is in the unique position of even offering the potential for an "off-line station" that would provide all the advantages of connectivity while adding nothing to the travel time.

Four million people are already living in the Inland Empire, and another million are anticipated in the San Bernardino Valley alone in the next couple of decades. So, high-speed rail in this region is a no-brainer. This mode is essential to diversifying our transportation and energy options, and it will dramatically change our way of life in the same way countries throughout Europe and Asia have been improved.