CNU-What We're Talking About is a Vision for High Speed Rail in America

This session was devoted to discussing the exciting initiative of President Obama to include high-speed rail in the stimulus and in the federal transportation reauthorization bill. Chris Leinberger, President of LOCUS Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors, and Howard Learner, Executive Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, were the most interesting speakers.

The session began by watching President Obama announce his high-speed rail initiative. Watch it yourself.

Howard Learner, Executive Director of Environmental Law and Policy Center, then spoke:
$8 b for high-speed in stimulus
$1.3 for Amtrak in stimulus
$5 b for next 5 years
The Obama administration is opening up the transportation reauthorization bill to include significant investment in high-speed rail.

Midwest High-Speed Rail Network
Planned for last ten years
Downtown-to-downtown: pulling jobs and people into center cities
Powerful counteraction to sprawl
Very good for pollution reduction

But to work:

Have to modernize train stations
Can and should be community centers.
Can and should be commercial centers.
Cannot be just nice places to transfer
The stations should be magnets to change land use patterns.
They must become destinations in and of themselves.

The trains must be not just fast, but nice, comfortable, and convenient.
Current trains equivalent to a third world country.
Amtrak has been starved for funds.
The trains must be time competitive and less hassle than alternatives.
The experience must be one that people say to themselves they like.

The equation to get people on trains is pricing, convenience, speed, nice and pleasant with stations that are centers and destinations.

The Midwest Rail Network will link midsized cities, not just the major cities. High speed rail “hard wires” mid sized cities into the region.

Next up was Chris Leinberger -The economics and functionality of high-speed rail.

Premise-high speed rail is the most important infrastructure investment in this century. If do not make it now, the US is destined to be the new Russia.

Four points:
1. Differentiate high-speed rail from air system. We are a metropolitan nation that we’ve linked with air. At $100 per barrel of oil, airlines do not work under 500 miles. Two long distance systems are needed: air travel for 500-3000 miles; high-speed rail for distances of 50-500 miles.


2. Must avoid airport problems-the LULU’s. Most of the growth in a region goes to the “favored quarter.” Airports for most part are in the non-favored quarter of a region because the affluent and rich do not want airports over their head. In spite of massive public investment in airports, they have resulted in very little economic development around them-a few warehouses, but little else. Airports are places where airlines park their planes and you park your car. Must learn from mistakes of airports and not make the same ones with rail stations.

3. Number one reason is to move bodies; a close second is to catalyze place development. A key issue of which is connectivity. May have to build new stations and we must avoid the isolation of the stations away from the city centers. Berlin’s Bahnhoffe is an example of a new train station no one -can walk to. You can see it, but can’t get to it. A station must be integrated into the urban fabric. As we become more a more knowledge-based economy with knowledge-based workers, the residual industrial era symbolized by trains is very valued. Like most rivers to which cities turned their backs to in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but then "discovered, trains and train tracks are an actual amenity. If you go to Lodo in Denver, the most expensive condos in Denver are up against the tracks where 40 coal trains per day each 2 ½ miles long run. Being in proximity to residual industrial fabric an attraction. There will be more than one station in a region.

4. Placemaking-need to designate between 100-300 acres around the stations as walkable urban places. Need a special overlay to create the density to allow them. Management of these places created is critical. Must be 24/7 year after year. There should be something equivalent to a Business Improvement District (BID) to manage them. The asset must be managed. The BID team should be involved in the design of the stations.