HSR = A future for rural America?
Monday, 29 March 2010
With the urbanization of both America and the World at large, a lot of attention has been given to the health and development of cities. Urban renewal, neighborhood revitalization, and economic development all have become the paramount topics of land use and transportation.
But what about rural America? If we are a more urban, is it at the expense of the small town? The slow retraction of the industrial Midwest has spread to the small agriculture economy, and the family run farm or ranch is in danger of failure, and small towns are more likely to be known for their meth problems and their population drains.
There might, however, be hope for small town America through improved transit and rail transportation. In California, the nation’s first true High Speed Rail project is getting underway, and Blueprint America followed Visalia mayor Jesus Gamboa as he attempted to convince the California High Speed Rail Authority to place a stop in his town. “We want access to the rest of California, and I think that High Speed Rail will give us that access.”
Gamboa stresses this notion of access as critical to the future of rural communities such as his own. “This is what rural America is all about, and this is what often times is left out of the policy making process by the decision makers…. It’s all about access. Rural America needs access to the urban centers just as much as anybody else does.”
We have been here before, with almost every major new transportation system. When the railroad was new to the American West, cities often lived or died based on whether they got rail service. Now, in the first decades of the 21st Century, we may be back in the same situation. The future of rural communities may lay in their connections to healthy urban megaregions, and the services and markets they control.
As for Visalia? Gamboa’s efforts, as the video shows, were not successful. The CAHSRA chose to place a stop at Hanford, 15 miles away. Gamboa has not given up, however, and is now busy planning a bus system to connect Visalia to the rail system.
