City of San Fernando Raises Hell Over Bullet Train Route

Above, a Japanese bullet train at Tokyo Station. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

California's "bullet train to nowhere" gained more opposition as leaders from the City of San Fernando strongly voiced their opposition to the state's boondoggle project.

The People's Republic of California blog posted an article from the Los Angeles Times which read (in part):

(Los Angeles Times)  -  Finding a route into the Los Angeles Basin for the California bullet train is proving far more difficult than it seemed a year ago, as opposition is surging in wealthy and working-class communities alike. 

The depth of opposition became more apparent Thursday evening when protesters in the city of San Fernando took over an open house meeting held by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. They demanded that state officials answer questions about the project's impact on their community. 

But unlike typical protests, this one was led by elected officials. Seventy people, headed by the city's mayor pro tem and other current and former city officials, marched into a city auditorium and set up their own public address system.

This reminds me of the long battle the City of Hawthorne waged against the Century Freeway (now called the Glenn Anderson Freeway) back in the 1960s and 1970s. Hawthorne objected to the original route of the freeway as it bisected the city into two. Eventually, the dispute was settled as the freeway planners came up with a bell-shaped route that took the freeway around Hawthorne.

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