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By Steve Levy
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved ...
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved downtown in 2006 and enjoy being able to walk to activities. I do not drive and being downtown where I work and close to the CalTrain station and downtown amenities makes my life more independent. I have worked all my life as an economist focusing on the California economy. My work centers around two main activities. The first is helping regional planning agencies such as ABAG understand their long-term growth outlook. I do this for several regional planning agencies in northern, southern and central coast California. My other main activity is studying workforce trends and policy implications both as a professional and as a volunteer member of the NOVA (Silicon Valley) and state workforce boards. The title of the blog is Invest and Innovate and that is what I believe is the imperative for our local area, region, state and nation. That includes investing in people, in infrastructure and in making our communities great places to live and work. I served on the recent Palo Alto Infrastructure Commission. I also believe that our local and state economy benefits from being a welcoming community, which mostly we are a leader in, for people of all religions, sexual preferences and places of birth.
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The HSR Decision
Uploaded: Feb 13, 2019
I was a consultant on the first HSR study in 1998. And I voted against thew bond.
BUT times have changed and i think the Governor's decision got a couple of things right and made a huge mistake. This blog is about the mistake I think was made.
The system has several pieces as originally envisioned.
--Within the San Joaquin Valley
--From the Valley to San Jose
--From San Jose to San Francisco
--From Bakersfield into Southern California
--From the Valley up to Sacramento.
I agree with dropping the SJ to SF routes thought we still must deal with grade separation for CalTrain.
I can leave the Valley to SoCal and Sacramento to later. I think Valley to Valley ridership will be low but I suggest a new ridership study peer reviewed.
The mistake is dropping the Fresno/Maders to San Jose route.
It is the Valley/SJ connection that most helps people seeking low cost housing and non car commuting options to Bay Area jobs.
And that same connection is the best shot for improving the economy in places like Fresno.
The Valley to SJ route is one piece of addressing the Bay Area worker shortage driven in part by high housing prices and soon by surging retirements.
Much as I want more housing at all income levels to be built in the region, I respect the right of people to seek loss expensive single family housing adjacent to the region, especially if they can at the same time avoid the car commute.
Democracy.
What is it worth to you?
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