The California High Speed Rail (CAHSR) announced in its October update that it would add a 33-mile long corridor between Anaheim and Los Angeles. While these corridors would create transportation, HSRs’ negative implications among urban and suburban areas are disregarded, neglecting inevitable disadvantages that come with such developments.
Instead of reducing pollution, easing highway traffic congestion, and boosting California’s economy as the rails were first initiated to accomplish, the immediate harms of the construction process, including severe emissions and gentrification, heavily outweigh these benefits.
While the use of HSRs would cut emissions from cars and buses, a UC Berkeley study quantifies that the process of constructing the rails would emit 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year: significantly more than the long-term usage of HSRs could negate. The study also finds that electricity to power the rails would come from coal fired power plants, creating excess pollution. The installment of these rails would only exacerbate pollution, contrary to its purpose.
Ridership would also affect the rails’ impact in easing highway traffic congestion; the project’s aim to minimize the number of vehicles on the road is dependent on a mass switch to regularly utilize HSRs once they are built, which research finds to be nearly impossible. Several statistics provided by the Publications Office of the European Union showcase high percentages in private ridership despite the implementation of HSRs in their respective regions. Since the benefits of HSRs only materialize with high ridership, the current circumstances prove the project would not fulfill its unrealistic traffic goals.
While HSRs in Orange County are argued to boost its economy, building them requires a lengthy construction period and vast space, which takes tolls on local OC businesses and drives homes, and properties out of the land. In Santa Ana, The New York Times reported that construction of a light rail in 2018 brought local business revenue down by 30-70%. A 2021 study of HSRs’ impact on the land market found that urban district land prices increase significantly with HSR access, and that the Central section of the California HSR Project cut the Central Valley’s largest homeless shelter in half. This is a grim sign for OC HSRs Project — seeing that 10% of OC residents are currently below the poverty line and live on the verge of homelessness. There are approximately 6,000 homeless in Orange County presently, many of whose homes would be at risk of destruction by the HSR construction.
While urban developments’ communal benefits are undeniable, it equally creates unjust disadvantages among the community. For HSRs, developers must be mindful of all those who are going to be most heavily impacted. It is crucial for potential harms and ramifications on community quality of life that building HSRs may have on the OC community to be taken into account during early stages of development, and that the California HSR Project redirects accordingly.
