We must applaud those California voters who chose to invest in the future of the state by throwing their support behind Proposition 1A – the high speed rail bond – on Nov. 4’s ballot.

Fifty-two percent of voters said yes to 1A, giving the proposed rail system that final long-awaited boost it needed towards building the footprint of an ambitious (and do-able) rapid transit network that the state so urgently needs.It is with great promise and nervous anticipation that we await the first spike to be driven into the ground. The rail system yields a significant investment into the state’s ailing transportation infrastructure and prepares California to accommodate the millions of new residents as this state population continues to rise.

We are apprehensive not because of the cost or magnitude of this project – the cost of the consequences of not doing anything about the state’s needs are far more dire – but about how this project will move forward: specifically, the steps needed to ensure that this rail system thrives.

With the passage of Prop. 1A, we’re only a quarter of the way there towards fully funding the high speed rail system. It’s incumbent upon the public and our elected officials to ask Washington D.C., and the new Obama Administration to provide a portion of the remaining monies needed to build this much needed $40 billion project.

This can only happen if the same voters who said yes to Prop. 1A ask their Congressional representatives to act now and act swiftly to obtain the necessary federal transportation funds to move this rail system to its full promise of providing efficient rapid transit for all Californians.

And believe it or not, as far as the project has progressed, it is very much still in its infancy stages: the location of some stations still needs to be determined, routing of the rail system needs to be mapped out, and the California High Speed Rail Authority – the governing body of the project – should be doing everything possible to ensure that the promised routes of linking Downtown San Francisco to Downtown Los Angeles within 2.5 hours time is dutifully carried out.

It’s what the voters asked for when they approved the bond money.

Our greatest fear is that the train line, once built, will be less than what was originally etched out in the blueprints – truncated routes stopping short of intended destinations, stations that might be scratched in key communities, and last minute reroutes that would slow trains and turn a swift ride into a crawl.

The authority must pay attention to these hypotheticals and ensure that they deliver on what’s been detailed in the early schematics. We not only need high speed rail in California, but we need a system that is designed well and built with the passengers in mind.