High-Speed Rail Line Would Clean Our Air, Create Jobs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Zan Dubin Scott, O: (310) 392-1130, C: (310) 383-0956
OCTOBER 24, 2008—Plug In America, which leads the nation’s plug-in vehicle movement, endorses California’s Proposition 1a, the high-speed rail line initiative that would offer state residents another clean, green transportation choice. This commendable measure won’t raise taxes but it will reduce global-warming gases and our state’s dependence on foreign oil while creating more than half a million jobs.
"Plug In America strongly supports any effort to replace dirty, carbon-based fuels with clean, renewable, domestic electricity,” says Plug In America co-founder Paul Scott. “With a bullet train, 70 million passengers a year will get to where they need to go on electricity instead of in highly polluting airplanes.”
Described by The Los Angeles Times as a “visionary leap” bound to be “wildly successful,” Proposition 1a would authorize $9.95 billion in bonds for a high-speed rail connecting Northern and Southern California. A low risk for Californians, it would require that matching private and federal funds be identified before any state-bond funds were spent.
Electric high-speed trains would remove some 12 billion pounds of CO2 and greenhouse gases from the air annually, an amount equal to the pollution of nearly one million gas-powered cars, according to Californians for High Speed Trains. The group predicts that the bullet train would create nearly 160,000 construction-related jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs in related industries like tourism and move passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 2-and-a-half hours for about $50 a person.
“As plug-in vehicles begin to proliferate two to three years from now, a fast, efficient electric bullet train will speed California into a future free from the dread of climate change that plagues every parent today,” Scott says.
Plug In America joins The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and both those cities’ Chambers of Commerce in endorsing Proposition 1a. Other proponents include the NRDC, the California League of Conservation Voters and Sierra Club California.
Plug In America is leading the nation’s plug-in vehicle movement. The nonprofit organization works to accelerate the shift to plug-in vehicles powered by clean, affordable, domestic electricity to reduce our nation's dependence on petroleum and improve the global environment. For more information: http://www.pluginamerica.org.