Panel to Consider High-Speed Train Plan With Anaheim as a Terminus

An ambitious long-term plan to develop high-speed train routes linking major Southwest cities--including Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix and Las Vegas--will be considered by a special two-state commission next week.

“We envision an eventual network of trains operating up to 300 (miles per hour) among the major centers of the Pacific Southwest region,” California Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) told a U.S. Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

Katz, chairman of the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, said the agency was created by the legislatures of the two states “to oversee the privately financed introduction of modern inter-city ground transportation.”

Its efforts reflect increasing interest across the country to build such systems after two decades in which the West Germans, French and Japanese have moved ahead in a technology that was introduced by two American scientists in 1971.

Katz appeared before the surface transportation subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The panel was soliciting testimony on the role the federal government should play to encourage construction of high-speed trains through research and development, tax incentives and enforcement of safety standards.

Advocates, including Gilbert E. Carmichael, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, touted the potential of advanced rail technologies to ease overcrowded freeways and airports, reduce pollution and transport riders between congested urban centers.

A study prepared for the California-Nevada commission by a consulting team concluded last week that Anaheim is the preferred termination point for an initial high-speed train route between Las Vegas and Southern California.

The study said that an Anaheim terminus would generate higher use of the rail link for inter-city travel by home-to-work commuters through the region than Palmdale or the San Fernando Valley.

Los Angeles officials, however, have threatened to block selection of Anaheim by taking the issue to the state Legislature in Sacramento, arguing that a high-speed rail link to Palmdale is needed because of the planned development of a new international airport there that would relieve the heavily congested Los Angeles International Airport.

Orange County Supervisor Don R. Roth, who has led the fight to secure a high-speed train terminal for Anaheim, has countered that George Air Force Base near Victorville in San Bernardino County--soon to be closed by the Pentagon--could serve as a new regional airport and is already near the existing Interstate 15 route for such a train.

Meanwhile, besides the proposed California-Nevada system, other high-speed rail projects are in progress in Florida, Ohio and Texas.

Private investors could begin construction in Florida next year of a $600-million, 17-mile West German magnetic levitation rail link between Orlando Airport and Walt Disney World, Carmichael told the subcommittee.

The Nevada-California connector appears to be the next farthest along, officials said. Construction is expected to begin in 1993 and to be completed in 1998.

The $4-billion “gambler’s special” would connect Las Vegas to a Southern California terminus--either Anaheim in Orange County or Sylmar or Mission Hills in the northeast San Fernando Valley. The Valley route would include Palmdale Air Terminal in the Antelope Valley; the Anaheim route also could include separate commuter service through San Bernardino County.

The 16-member commission is expected to announce its decision on a route Oct. 27.

At the same session, the commission will be presented with the non-binding proposal to develop additional high-speed lines linking 10 population centers throughout California with Las Vegas, Reno and Phoenix.

The system plan, as well as each leg of the proposed rail lines, would have to be approved by the state legislatures.

“It’s a concept that the bistate commission is considering adopting as its long-range goal,” said commission executive director Paul Taylor, who drew up the proposal. “It always helps to know where you’re headed when you start something.”

The commission decided to take the step even though its mandate is limited to attracting a private entity to develop a high-speed train between the Las Vegas area and Southern California, Taylor said.

The commission will be dissolved at the end of 1991 unless the two state legislatures extend it. The long-range plan could take as many as 50 years to implement, Taylor said.

The commission’s adoption of the broader plan might be intended to blunt the dismay of municipalities excluded from the first leg. The long-term plan includes stations in Los Angeles and the Antelope Valley as well as Orange County and the Inland Empire.

The cities of Anaheim, Los Angeles and Palmdale have tried to persuade the commission to locate the terminal in their back yards. Legislative approval of the decision is required because the train would be built on Interstate 15 right of way most of the way to Las Vegas.

Amtrak, which is government subsidized, now operates all U.S. intercity rail passenger trains. Most of its trains average 79 m.p.h., although its Metroliners can reach 125 m.p.h. France’s TGV has a top cruising speed of 187 m.p.h.; West Germany’s experimental magnetic levitation train can go 256 m.p.h.