A recent letter in this paper raised some questions and negative comments about California’s high-speed rail project.
Like many large construction projects, HSR is being built in segments. The current segment is under construction from Bakersfield to Merced and is moving along as planned.
When completed, trains will connect with the existing BNSF and Union Pacific tracks used by the San Joaquin trains, and the bus connection to LA from Bakersfield.
As this segment is being constructed, the CAHSR is completing environmental studies on new lines connecting the completed segment to San Francisco, Los Angeles and other destinations.
Travel between Bakersfield and Merced on the new line will be much faster than the existing San Joaquin trains that use BNSF and Union Pacific tracks, which also carry those lines freight trains and highway grade crossings, holding San Joaquin trains to a 79 mph speed limit.
The route under construction will be used exclusively by HSR trains and will have no grade crossings, which will allow for faster and safer travel.
The letter writer said that travel between LA and SFO by air is much faster, which is obvious.
But there are a lot of folks living between those two metropolises who want to travel to cities and communities in between, which they will be able to do once the system begins operation.
There’s another problem with flying. Railroad stations are in the middle of cities, not way out in the boondocks. Which is why my brother Mike and I often took the Washington-Boston HSR trains from DC to New York on business trips when we lived in the east rather than flying.
On more than one occasion we were able to walk to a mid-town Manhattan meeting from train stations rather than take a slow bus ride from New York’s airports to mid-town.
During the four years I served on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, I usually traveled to Sacramento by driving to Bakersfield’s downtown train station from Mojave, parked my car and rode the San Joaquin. The travel time was similar to driving, but I could sit back and sleep, read and eat or go to the bathroom without having to pull off the highway.
Air service was available but not really practical since the meetings began of 9 a.m. and didn’t meet airline schedules.
I usually traveled to the state capitol the night before the meetings and stayed in a hotel, which I walked to from the train station and, the next morning walked another block to the FPPC offices.
Building a system like HSR takes time, as did building Interstate 5 and the California Aqueduct, both of which were criticized like HSR when they were proposed and being built.
The HSR system is being built for the next generation, not for ours, something that critics do not seem to understand. Be patient.
Throughout my 86 years, every time I have learned about new technology, I have also heard complaints that it will put people out of work,
We’re in a weird situation these days when people are not working to protect us from a very real health situation which some folks continue to ignore to their peril and to those of us who place our health over our politics.
One of the biggest ironies is that many employers are having trouble finding people who want to work. Yes, I know that the government made it easier for a while to folks to not work, but those programs are disappearing.
I have always been able to find work and steadily moved up from chopping cotton and moving irrigation pipe at the Goforth Ranch in what is now California City to owning a couple of businesses and being employed in the big leagues of government in Washington, as did my brother.
Technology creates new jobs to replace those it eliminates.
A friend’s email mentioning that she had watched the movie “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” reminded me of the days when prostitution was a viable business in eastern Kern.
When we moved here in 1948, we soon learned that there were two businesses offering these services in the region.
One was “The Castle,” a big mansion on the north side of Highway 6 (now 14) several miles north of Mojave.
The two-story structure had been built by a man with a lot of money many years ago.
When he passed, it was pressed into a sort of service in the grand tradition of this area, which has been welcoming businesses local residents and visitors since 1876.
The other business is still around, a much less imposing place in Red Mountain that features some “cabins” behind the main building and operates legally to titillate its customers who supply their own, uh, partners.
Cabins were what might be called cottages these days.
When my wife Billye and I owned the Mojave Desert News back in the late ’70s, we visited Red Mountain to do a story about this vestige of the Old West.
We met the woman who owned it, a lady who understood marketing and dressed the part she was playing, of an Old West madam in a long gown.
Her primary customers were married couples who would stay the night in one of the cabins apparently to enjoy a fantasy.
In their prime, both operations did a lot of business with the GIs at Mojave, Muroc (now Edwards) and China Lake in addition to civilians.
Gloss