On the Beat
PRICEY TICKET: High-speed rail in California: Boon or boondoggle?
If you voted romance of the rails in 2008, thinking you could zip from Santa Barbara to San Francisco for a three-martini lunch then zip back home for dinner, forget it.
On the Beat
Ain’t gonna happen. What the $45 billion (critics say $80 billion) plan will buy is a ride from a city no one in his or her right mind wants to live in (L.A.) to towns no one wants to visit (Bakersfield, Fresno), then on to what’s left of Silicon Valley and the prize: The City by the Bay. Estimated trip time: two hours and 40 minutes from Anaheim starting point. Estimated completion (all estimates are wrong): 2020.
Nope, no coastal route. We already have one, thanks to Amtrak, and talk about a slow boat to China. You could read War and Peace between State Street and Market Street. The trip takes more than seven hours and includes a honey of a bus trip or two.
Even wild-eyed optimists can’t seem to make a good case for where the $45 billion is coming from, even with President Obama’s $2.25 billion in economic stimulus funds announced last week and up to $10 billion in bonds we the people voted for in 2008. Perhaps the present plan will eventually be built, but probably no one older than 40 should make advance lunch reservations at the Mark Hopkins in anticipation of its advent. It won’t be passing through here in any case. Meanwhile, we’ll be helping pay off the San Joaquin Valley route bonds.
Not that I’m against high-speed rail. I’ve had the pleasure of riding France’s TGV network. Japan’s speedy route from the Osaka airport to splendid Kyoto was a joy: neat, clean, with musical alerts for each station and neon readouts in Japanese and English. What we need is fast rail to California’s capital, which by some weird accident of history is located halfway off the map up there in Sacramento, which no one would ever want to visit except to lobby the Legislature. Sacto and San Diego aren’t expected to be linked to the system until a hopeful 2026.
It doesn’t take rose-colored glasses to envision California with a fast, efficient rail system. We need it — whether or not it allows Montecitans to lunch at the Mark while the rest of us down a couple of Irish coffees at the Buena Vista Café, within sound of the foghorns. With other states now getting federal funds or otherwise contemplating high speed rail, I can see — ever the cockeyed optimist — the whole dadblamed U.S. of A. linked in one racetrack network of bullet trains or at least speedy ones.
My esteemed comrade in print, Summerland journalist Lou Cannon, points out to me that “We lag way behind Europe, Japan, even China on high-speed rail travel, and we’re projected to have nearly a 50-million population in California by 2030. So I don’t see a better alternative, certainly not the automobile.” (California’s present population is about 40 million.) Cannon also notes that another thing driving the project is the recession.
By that 2030 date, according to predictions by the California High Speed Rail Authority, which is in charge of the project, the 800 miles of track will be carrying 88 to 117 million passengers a year. It also estimates the creation of 160,000 jobs associated with planning, designing and building the system. So far, the loudest drum-beating is being heard from dusty San Joaquin Valley towns, which see it as an economic boon, as well as an easy way to get from one dusty town to another. Up in the Bay Area, some cities are arguing about the route, which they don’t want to split their communities.
The biggest question I’ve heard, aside from where’s the money coming from, is where are the passengers are coming from? Exactly who’s going to be taking these trains every day, and will they be willing to pay the freight? “High-speed rail is an expensive project that will cost all taxpayers a lot of money and serve only a small elite,” one critic says.
Some advocate spending the money to improve rapid transit between commuter hot spots, such as Ventura-Santa Barbara, instead of a massive, expensive 220-mph zoom up the San Joaquin Valley.
By the way, is this supposed to be a commuter train, draining polluting cars from freeways? Let’s see: If someone caught an Amtrak Surfliner to L.A. and jumped on the Dustbowl Liner to San Jose, a high-speed ride might yield a high-tech job. (If you left Santa Barbara early enough, like 2am.)
Or, once in LA., you could ditch work and swing on to the proposed California-Nevada “Super Speed” train to Vegas, thanks in part to a promised $7 billion loan from the Chinese. Wisely, Obama declined to shovel over $8 billion for that project. Maybe the casinos will chip in.
Barney Brantingham can be reached at barney@independent.com or 805-965-5205. He writes online columns throughout the week and a print column on Thursdays.
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Once you've got a few facts straightened out, you might want to reconsider your withering criticisms.
Santa Barbara will not be left out of the state rail network. The high speed rail bonds (which includes funding to improve connecting rail routes), the stimulus bill, and and future improvements to the Pacific Surfliner are expected to improve service along the coast as well.
Between double-tracking sections that are now single track and generally improving existing tracks, trains running up to 110MPH should zip along the coast, including trains running all the way along the coast from LA to San Francisco, and express lines that will only stop at major stations. That may not make it feasible to commute from Santa Barbara to San Francisco (which is a fairly ridiculous proposition no matter how you consider it), but it will certainly bring the rest of the state a lot closer.
Throwing out cost and time estimates from "the critics" - which mainly include a) those upset that their own pet project didn't get funded, b) those who would rather listen to 120DB train horns than a 90DB woosh, and c) those who think the state should just give up and shut down altogether - is pretty disingenuous. High speed rail is developed technology in the rest of the world, and although it's new here, everything planned is essentially off the shelf.
The next transportation appropriations bill will have two major changes: a) Funding for high speed rail, and b) putting rail improvements on an even footing with highway improvements, supplying a 4:1 match of federal funds. That will provide most of the rest of the funds needed to build out the system.
Companies are literally salivating at the opportunity to buy in to the system for a portion of revenue - and every high speed rail system ever built is revenue positive. It's just a very cost-effective transportation mode, once capital costs are paid off.
The current schedule begins "revenue service" - i.e. paying passengers - to Sacramento by 2020, and San Diego in 2021.
mfedder (anonymous profile)
February 4, 2010 at 8:46 a.m. (Suggest removal)
One way the train from LA to Silicon Valley and San Francisco will help Santa Barbara is by reducing the number of cars making that trip on the 101 and reducing the pressure to widen it even more. Also, the cost of building the train is supposedly less than that of more pavement and airports.
DougL (anonymous profile)
February 4, 2010 at 2:19 p.m. (Suggest removal)
“High-speed rail is an expensive project that will cost all taxpayers a lot of money and serve only a small elite,” one critic says.
Really? Commuter air travel is also "an expensive project that will cost all taxpayers a lot of money and serve only a small elite" That one critic needs to examine his/her assumptions.
SezMe (anonymous profile)
February 5, 2010 at 1:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)
the effing idiot that wrote this article must work for firestone or one of the other corporations that have worked so hard to shut down the public transportation in california. the need for high speed rail in the US is inarguable, anyone telling you that it wont work is trying to sell you gasoline for your car. it works in every other first world country to the point where these arguments are embarrassing. i hope the writer of this article is embarrassed to state his point of view against high speed rail.
rcobban (anonymous profile)
February 5, 2010 at 1:12 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Can't believe Barney does not get this one. The great benefit to SB and other coastal towns is all those cars that won't be passing through there. Anything that isolates SB from the rest of the madness would be a huge blessing. I've always said we should blow up the bridges on 101 from north and south in order to save the place from the masses.
micaelm (anonymous profile)
February 5, 2010 at 12:04 p.m. (Suggest removal)
FORGET high speed passenger rail.
Spend the money instead on railroad freight transport. Get rail into the Long Beach and Oakland ports, so all the cargo containers full of Chinese microwave ovens and such go by rail instead of by truck. Both Long Beach and Oakland ports are air pollution hotspots because of all the idling trucks waiting to pick up their loads.
And, Barney, the 9 hours of Amtrak from Santa Maria to Sacramento isn't all that bad when you compare it to the 6 hours of 101 to 46 to I5 when you drive. I5? I'd rather be waterboarded than drive I5. And getting trucks off I5 might cure that.
CharlesB (anonymous profile)
February 5, 2010 at 8:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)