Rail of two cities

IF MAYOR Antonio Villaraigosa wants to relieve traffic congestion and reduce transportation energy use, he should join his Bay Area counterpart in pushing for high-speed rail in California. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently spent a day in Sacramento to make the case for high-speed rail and to support AB 713, which would put the state's moribund rail bond issue on the 2008 ballot.

The California High Speed Rail Authority has developed a plan for a rail network to link our major metropolitan areas with 200-mph passenger trains. If implemented, it would mean that L.A.-to-San Francisco travel would take just three hours. Supported by past governors of both parties, the system would not only link the two cities, it would connect them with Sacramento, San Jose, the Central Valley, Riverside and San Diego.

A bond issue to fund initial high-speed rail work has been long delayed by politics. This is where City Hall comes in. The two mayors have the vision and the mandates to not only significantly improve public transportation networks in their cities but to reshape the state's crowded north-south air and ground transportation corridor.

These public-transit-minded mayors are faced with the critical challenge of maintaining and upgrading reliable, affordable public transportation systems that would help all Californians beat the high costs of gasoline and would provide transportation to move people during emergencies. Side benefits would be fuel conservation and less strain on our aging highways. To do all this, the mayors will have to look beyond their city limits to understand the role that intercity high-speed rail can play.

Traffic between our cities (there are thousands of daily car trips between them) also means more traffic within our cities. So the more car trips that can be shifted to rail -- and the quicker that high-speed public transit connections to rail stations can be developed -- the less congested all our cities will be.

San Francisco and L.A. have long struggled with costly airport expansion plans that have been fought tooth and nail by the communities most affected by them. The estimated tab for expanding these airports runs into the billions of dollars, and in both cities, the debate over expansion seems destined to go on for years.