As a reminder, I’ll be speaking tonight at 7pm at the Zocalo forum in downtown Los Angeles.  The free event will feature me and Tom Zoellner, author of Train.  We’ll touch on the history of Los Angeles as a railtown, the development of Metro Rail and Metrolink, and the future of rail transit with high speed rail.  Registration and more information can be found here.

Meanwhile, you can read some interesting advance commentary on the subject from some local transportation experts.  Zocalo compiled their responses here.  While I basically agree with everything that was written, I particularly liked Juan Matute’s sign-off:

I write this from a bus that travels from Santa Monica to Downtown Los Angeles in 35 minutes, quicker even than the future Expo Line. This serves as a reminder that getting our existing buses out of traffic is the quickest, most cost-effective means to bring high-quality transit to the greatest number of Angelenos.

Hope to see you tonight!