UCLA Anderson’s Jerry Nickelsburg, adjunct full professor of
economics, wants to build a railroad. Well, he wants California to build a
railroad, a high-speed rail project to carry us—literally and figuratively—into
the future. He just worries that the troubled current California High-Speed
Rail plan won’t get us there, and we’ll be stuck on a platform waiting.
His paper, “Switching to the Future Track: An Essay on
California High-Speed Rail,” outlines his idea to make the plan bolder, thereby
ensuring its success. “The problem is not that CHSR is too big and too
ambitious. Rather the problems with CHSR as currently constituted are large and
the solutions proposed thus far are too small and not ambitious enough,” he
writes. “Specifically, we ought to be looking at transportation infrastructure
synergies as they apply to the 21st Century and if we do, CHSR can snatch
victory from the jaws of defeat.”
His plan includes links to a proposed world-class international airport in Palmdale and to California’s Mojave Spaceport. These not-at-all small or unambitious ideas, he says, can help generate the capital-friendly climate that will bring private investors into the fold and make up the currently projected approximately $55 billion-budget shortfall. Bringing in that private investment is the key to his plan, which, he says, will also cement California’s place as “gateway to the Pacific Rim” before newer, high-tech airports in places such as Denver can steal passengers away.
Nickelsburg’s paper is especially timely given CHSR’s recent legal woes. In mid-August, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael P. Kenny ruled that the state neglected requirements on funding and environmental review included in 2008’s $9-billion ballot measure.
Check out Professor Nickelsburg’s paper here and more about him here.
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