This last endorsement was surprising, because the airline industry views high-speed rail as a competitor and has traditionally lobbied hard against such rapid ground transit systems. Southern California Association of Governments, an organization comprised of elected representatives throughout the region, also endorsed a high-speed rail alignment through the Valley. Facts and figures blurred, as authority members grappled with a vote they'd already delayed twice. It was during that meeting the staff first endorsed a route paralleling I-5, passing over the Grapevine, over an alignment through the Valley. After officials from Palmdale and Lancaster, and Galanter, urged authority members to consider their views, the vote was delayed for a month to allow more public comment.
More public comment is what they got.
Other speakers urged alignments through their areas. Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who was California's governor until 1982, questioned the staff's reasoning for leaving his city out of a statewide high-speed rail plan. Finally, it was time to take a vote on whether to adopt the staff's recommendation, or go through the arduous process of redrawing the map. Authority member Jerry Epstein, formerly a member of the Los Angeles World Airports and an outspoken supporter of the development of Palmdale Airport, motioned to have Palmdale included in the alignment options. This point was quickly agreed upon by authority chair Michael Tennenbaum and Mehdi Morshed, the authority's executive director and head of authority staff.