Berkley: High-speed trains a ticket to more tourism dollars

By Kyle B. Hansen

Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009 | 1:59 a.m.

Rep. Shelley Berkley came to admire to high-speed trains while in Taiwan with her husband.

While there, she was impressed with the speed and efficiency of the system and decided that a similar system was needed at home.

“This is fabulous, we need to do this in the United States of America,” she said.

“How is it that Taiwan and so many other countries around the planet can figure out mass transit and a way of transporting people in a much more comfortable, much cleaner, much safer way than the United States of America?”

Berkley, D-Nev., joined representatives from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in a press conference Wednesday morning to promote public transportation and road maintenance.

“We have a crumbling and ageing infrastructure,” Berkley said. “If we are going to continue our status as a superpower and an important nation in this world, we’re going to have to start moving in a direction that’s going to repair our crumbling infrastructure. It was great for the 20th century, it’s obsolete for the 21st.”

U.S. PIRG representatives have been in the Las Vegas area this week gathering signatures and support for their suggestions to Congress.

“We do need a 21st century transportation plan, one that will enhance our economy, our national security, public health, the environment and quality of life,” field organizer Jacob Shirk said. “We need a transportation system that will prioritize fixing our crumbling roads and not just building new highways.”

The advocacy group claims that 80 percent of federal transportation funds go toward building new highways and cited the deadly collapse of a bridge in Minnesota two years ago as evidence of the need for more money to maintain existing roadways.

“Americans waste millions of hours each year just sitting on roads, most of which are poorly maintained,” Shirk said. “At the same time, we spend billions of taxpayers’ dollars on wasted projects when that money could be going into basic maintenance, into modernization and investing in public transportation.”

A report released by the group says public transportation saves the country 3.4 billion gallons of oil each year, prevents 541 million hours of traffic delay and reduces carbon emissions by 26 million tons.

Berkley said she agrees with the group on the need for new transit solutions.

“We can’t continue to rely on our crumbling infrastructure. It will sink us in the end if we don’t get ahead of this situation, this problem, and move forward,” she said.

But the congresswoman also said she thinks Las Vegas is doing a good job building mass-transit alternatives, citing the Regional Transportation Commission’s Deuce buses and new ACE express buses as examples.

“You can’t talk about getting people out of their cars unless you offer them an alternative,” she said. “I believe the Las Vegas Valley is in the process of offering and building a remarkable alternative to being in your car all by yourself, spending a fortune on gas, spending hours in your car and polluting the air.”

Berkley said the hardest part will be getting people to believe in and use the new transit systems.

“It’s changing a mindset, and that’s a very difficult thing to do. The only way you do that is, over time, demonstrating to people that there’s a better way. Right now, they haven’t seen a better way,” she said.

Part of that, Berkley said, will be building a national system of high-speed trains.

“I believe our transportation department should be developing a bicoastal system (so) that people know that they can get on that high-speed train and get from one end of the country to another,” she said. “You have to instill confidence, it has to work, it has to be inexpensive -- certainly more cost-effective than getting in your car -- it has to get you to where you’re going, it has to be safe.”

Las Vegas can especially benefit from the trains, she said, because of the high number of tourists who come to the area from Southern California.

“Las Vegas depends on tourism dollars. In order to get tourism dollars, you need tourists that come with their dollars,” she said. “Let’s get them here by high-speed train. We’ll get them here faster, cleaner and less expensively, and then they have all those dollars to spend here in Las Vegas. We like that.”