Kevin de Leon Quotes

High-speed rail would revolutionise interstate travel and would also be an economic game-changer for dozens of regional communities along its path.

I believe that States should be credited for their non-Federal investment in revenue-generating transportation facilities to address their regional transportation needs.

The Dallas model, prominent in the South and Southwest, sees a growing population as a sign of urban health. Cities liberally permit housing construction to accommodate new residents. The Los Angeles model, common on the West Coast and in the Northeast Corridor, discourages growth by limiting new housing.

If we could do high-speed rail in California just half a notch above what they've done on the Shanghai line in China, and if we had a straight path from L.A. to San Francisco, as well as the milk run, at least that would be progress.

The passage of time is likely to make high-speed rail more and more desirable, making it critical that politicians of today think ahead to tomorrow.

There's no way we could take cars off the planet and not have our society fall apart. So they're a necessary evil, in that sense.

In the same way we have a long-term plan for building roads, we have to have a long term plan to build transit.

Hyperloop is a decades-long effort. You're moving steel and reshaping physical things, so you need government to help you build.

Between a quarter and a third of Los Angeless land area is now monopolized by the automobile and its needs-by freeways, highways, garages, gas stations, car lots, parking lots. And all of it is blanketed with anonymity and foul air.

The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.

We are the only major developed nation that isn't investing meaningfully in high-speed rail, and I believe we're making a mistake. Transportation systems that are fast and efficient and environmentally clean are going to enable the formation of these new mega-regions, the heart of the spatial fix. We need to be able to accelerate the movement of people, goods, and services - the very movement of ideas, knowledge, and creativity - between our major population centers. We have to build these links.

You have got to connect your land use decisions with transportation decisions.

We never really wanted to play in California.

California is always in my mind.

America is ready for livable communities. America is ready for high-speed rail.

Beyond highways and roads, we need more money for mass transit, intercity passenger rail and freight rail. We have a long way to go to bridge the funding gaps.

UC Merced is the University of California's newest campus and lies among farm fields in the San Joaquin Valley, 2 1/2 hours east of San Francisco and not far from where I spent most of my childhood. It's a part of California that has suffered deeply from the recession with high unemployment and a skyrocketing home foreclosure rate.

After World War II the federal government figured out that Detroit could make 6 million cars a year and there were not enough roads to put them on.

In many parts of our country, geography and population density can make it difficult to attract private investment. These communities depend on federal investments to maintain and upgrade their transportation systems and stay competitive. And we know that it's an investment worth making. Because when rural America succeeds, we all do.

In general, I would say I'm probably a little more conscious of looking after my skin since I moved to L.A.

The federal government shouldn't be drawing lines on a map in terms of what transit infrastructure are needed; we should be there to be a partner with the cities, with the provinces, that need that.

Our decisions about transportation determine much more than where roads or bridges or tunnels or rail lines will be built. They determine the connections and barriers that people will encounter in their daily lives - and thus how hard or easy it will be for people to get where they need and want to go.

Cities like New York have already followed San Francisco and have started similar organizations like sfCiti; New York has TECH NYC.

We need a first-class transportation system.

We want transportation as reliable as running water.