exhaustedSenator Simitian said he'd stay all night if necessary to listen to everyone, but did limit people to two minutes. (Most people managed to stay within limits. A couple didn't understand what a time limit was.) The other legislators departed at various times. My compliments to Mr. Simitian for his willingness to put up with all of us, and also at how he ably tamped down the outbursts both pro and con that, if unmoderated, would have reduced the meeting to a shouting match.
The Mountain View Center for the Arts, which was pretty full at the start of the hearing at 7 PM, had relatively few people left in it by the time my name came up at 11:30 PM. (For a while, I was speculating that I wouldn't have to worry about getting to the office on Wednesday morning from Fremont as I'd still be in Mountain View!)
Here, transcribed from my notes, is approximately what I said in my formal statement.
My name is Kevin Standlee, former member of the Caltrain Citizens' Advisory Committee, and soon to be a resident of San Jose again.
The only real problem with High Speed Rail is that we didn't build it in the 1970s when we had the chance!
I have ridden real high speed rail in Japan and in France — a country about the size and population density of California, incidentally — and I've seen how well it works. I feel confident that it is the right choice for a transportation system joining the two halves of our state.
I've lived my entire forty-six year life here in California. My grandfather, who raised me, was one of the people who literally built much of this state's infrastructure as a member of the Operating Engineers, building freeways, dams, and other critical projects. There were people who said, "We can't afford it!" back then, but we built it anyway, even in the Central Valley. Surely, few people seriously think we shouldn't have built Interstate 5 just because relatively few people live between Sacramento and Los Angeles.
The demographic bulge that followed my grandparents' generation seems to have been content to "live off of their annuities" and now seems unwilling to invest in this crucial piece of infrastructure, possibly because they don't expect to live to see it, use it, or ride it themselves.
Senators, I urge you to not lose your nerve here. We didn't know where all of the funds for the highway and water systems would come from when we started building them, but we did it anyway. Keep this project moving forward. Please don't let your legacy be that you presided over a going-out-of-business sale for the baby boom!
I wish I could have stayed until the bitter end, but by then I was serious low on blood sugar and shaky all the way home to Fremont, where I finally got to bed after 1:30 AM only to have to be up again at 4:50 AM in order to be in my office before 7 AM for a meeting. I do not know how much longer the hearing ran, but I assume they were going to eventually run out of people.
There was a mix of people speaking, both pro and con. I sort of wish they'd asked us filling out speaker cards to mark "pro" or "con" so that possibly Mr. Simitian could have alternated speakers on each side, which might have helped eliminate some of the duplication of speeches. Some of the speakers were what I characterize as "Tea Party" types (like the guy sitting behind me mumbling all night long wearing an anti-Obama t-shirt). Others are only involved because they live near the Caltrain right of way and want the entire 50 miles in a tunnel (and not the slightest bit of disturbance to their homes). Others have legitimate concerns on what is the biggest infrastructure project the state has undertaken since the building of the state highway network. Others are enthusiastically in favor. I reckon that both supporters and opponents had speakers up their who managed to discredit their sides' arguments by the screwball way in which they spoke, like the guy who introduced himself as "God."
(Incidentally, while I favor the project overall and voted for Prop 1A that authorized the bonds, I'm not 100% pleased with the project. I think the route is not ideal — I'd prefer the Dumbarton Bridge - Altamont Pass routing — but I'm trying to be a realist and say, "Let's get something built. It's 40 years overdue already!")
One theme that kept coming back up was the people who said, "Put it up for a vote again! Revote! Revote! Revote! It's a democracy! If you don't let us vote again, it's a dictatorship!" Well excuse me, people, but if you're going to keep shouting that, then why should we even have a legislature at all? Why bother having elected officials whose job it is to govern the state? Just put everything up to a vote, right? (And if you say, "Yeah, that would be great!" I don't think you and I have much common ground.) The reason the original HSR plan had to be voted on was because the state constitution requires that general-obligation bonds be approved by the voters. What the constitution doesn't require is that the side that loses should get to keep re-running the election over and over again until they get the result they want. The elected officials, who are the ones who will have to vote to release the bond money, are asking tough questions of the CA HSR Commission, and in fact are doing their jobs properly. If you're just opposed to all government spending of any sort, for any reason whatsoever (which a fair number I heard last night appeared to be), then that's a completely different question, and you should be working on overthrowing the government instead of just derailing a single project.