Thanks to the alert reader who forwarded this on:
Straub Hall (behind the Erb Memorial Student Union), Room 146 – Session III, Saturday, November 7th, 3:00pm to 4:15pm
The transportation network in the United States consists of a 20th Century system in a 21st century world. The costs of congestion hamper our economic development, our health and our environment. “High-Speed Rail: Moving towards a 21st Century Transportation Network” will discuss the merits of high-speed rail in the Pacific Northwest and strategies to promote efficient, cost-effective passenger rail service in the region. The U.S. has a “third world” reputation when it comes to rail, even as bourgeoning economies such as Russia and China have invested in brand new high-speed rail networks. In our increasingly global and mobile world, it is crucial that our transportation network reflect the realities of peak oil and climate change. The federally designated “high-speed rail corridor,” from Eugene to Vancouver B.C., coupled with the $8 billion dollars for high-speed rail development in the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (the stimulus bill) has created the watershed moment for rail in the United States. Come to this panel to learn how to deliver high-speed rail and other transportation options that better reflect the needs of America’s future.
To view the event program for PowerShift West, you can click on the link here: http://west.powershift09.org/sites/default/files/psw09-program-final.pdf
The panelists will include:
Price Armstrong
Price Armstrong is a graudate student in public administration at the University of Oregon, an avid cyclist, and a transportation activist. At U of O, Price heads LiveMove, the OTREC sponsored UO group dedicated to transportation and livability education and engagement.
Price also serves as the Vice President of Greater Eugene Area Riders, (GEARs) whose mission is to promote bicycle riding for transportation and recreation.
Sarah Dobjensky
A UCLA Junior and State Board Chair of CALPIRG Students, Sarah got
her start mobilizing young voters in 2006, spearheading a 1,500-student peer-to-peer voter registration drive in the 2006 mid-term elections. Sarah went on to lead a campus effort to educate fellow students about student debt issues and the need to reduce college costs at the UCLA campus and ultimately helped win the passage of the federal College Cost Reduction and Access Act of September, 2007. In addition, Sarah led a student-run field campaign to pass Prop 1A – which provides $9 billion for California’s High Speed Rail, the first in the United States.
Gabriel Elsner
Gabriel Elsner is currently the Global Warming Solutions coordinator for the Student PIRGs, a network of state-wide, student-run and student-funded organizations working in 25 states on over 200 campuses. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2009 with High Honors after writing a Political Science thesis entitled “Energy Security Policy in Brazil and the United States: Lessons from Success and Failure.”
He also travelled to Bali, Indonesia with SustainUS in December 2007 to represent young people of the United States at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. When he’s not advocating for clean energy or fighting global warming, Gabriel enjoys camping, music, soccer, and politics.
Lloyd Flem
Lloyd Flem has been Executive director of All Aboard Washington, the state’s leader rail advocacy organization, for 24 years. His role in fostering the development of the Amtrak
Cascades intercity passenger trains earned him the National Association of Railroad Passengers’ national award for the year 2007. Lloyd has degrees in economic geography from the University of Washington and UC-Berkeley and for seven years taught at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He and his wife Darleen live in Olympia and have grown children and four grandchildren.
Fred Nussbaum
Fred Nussbaum has been working for better passenger rail service in Oregon for over three decades. Present in the early years of state-operated trains in the 1970s, Nussbaum served as Legislative Liaison for the Association of Oregon Rail and Transit Advocates (AORTA) from 1989 to 2009. Over that time, the Amtrak Cascades service has opened and expanded, but Nussbaum remains active in pushing Oregon to greater investments in greener transportation.
Moderator: Rob Zako, former Transportation Advocate for 1000 Friends of Oregon
The agenda/questions of the panel are attached. The names in parenthesis are the panelists to whom the questions will be addressed.