Rail Commission Trains Sights on Europe : Transportation: Bistate panel begins 10-day tour of German and French competitors for high-speed Anaheim-to-Las Vegas train. Tourism is also on the group’s agenda.

One train, using magnetic levitation, seems to float on air. The other resembles a sleek, supersonic jet without wings, but rides on steel wheels and rails.

Nevada and California transportation officials hope that one of these two high-speed rail technologies will be used to whisk passengers at 300 m.p.h. between Anaheim and Las Vegas in a few years.

But which one? How much will it cost? And with President Bush proposing that less federal and more local money be used to fund transportation projects, who will pay?

Members of the California-Nevada High Speed Train Commission, seeking a supplier to build and operate such a rail system with private funding, depart today for West Germany and France in a bid to resolve such issues.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner, who this week unveiled the Bush Administration’s blueprint for modernizing the nation’s transportation system, may join the bistate commission sometime during its “technology tour,” Skinner’s staff said Friday.

Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Don R. Roth, the bistate commission’s No. 2 official, is bringing 25 supporters and business executives along for the 10-day European tour that includes side trips to cathedrals, wineries and historic battlefields, as well as rides on the Transrapid, mag-lev train in Emsland, West Germany, and the Train a Grande Vittesse, or TGV, in Paris, France.

“The trip is important so that I and other commissioners can have a firsthand experience with the two competing technologies,” said Roth, who hopes the southern leg of the Anaheim-Las Vegas route will carry thousands of people who now commute to jobs in Orange County on crammed freeways from Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“We have the responsibility for selecting the franchisee and the technology,” said Roth, also a board member on the Orange County Transit District, which oversees the county’s public bus and ride-sharing programs. “We could not do that very well without being able to see and feel the product.”

Roth said the sightseeing added to his entourage’s schedule was aimed at enticing others to come along so that they too would see firsthand “how poorly we managed our own public transit assets.”

But Roth added that extra days were added to allow time to rest and see major city transit systems, such as those in Hamburg and Paris.

All of the commissioners’ air fares and lodging will be paid by the California-Nevada panel, at a total cost of about $20,000, said Paul Taylor, the commission’s executive director. More than two dozen others accompanying the commission, including some members’ wives, are each paying their own way, he said.

“The purpose of this trip is to inspect the technology of the interested suppliers, which we need to do before being able to decide this October which one should be accepted,” said Taylor, the former executive director of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. “This will allow the commission members to better understand the technologies that they will be sitting in judgment on.”

Nine of the 16 commission members will take part in the trip, although Roth is the only one on the extended 10-day tour.

At stake for the Germans and the French is a contract potentially worth billions of dollars--and national honor. The commercially operating French train that runs on steel rails set a new world speed record of 300 m.p.h. in December; the German mag-lev train has been tested successfully on a 20-mile track but is not yet in public use.

Among those traveling with Roth are Orange County businessmen such as Buck Johns, who has invested his own money in land along the proposed Anaheim-Las Vegas train route in the belief that the rail line will spur development near George Air Force Base.

Johns, among others, is advocating development of the air base as an international airport because the military plans to close the facility in the next four years.

Johns, whose Newport Beach-based company, the Inland Group, is heavily involved in development projects in Moreno Valley and Hesperia, rapidly growing areas east of Orange County and not far from the air base.

“We’ll see things that are on the leading edge of problems that exist in any growth-oriented society, and I’m not so sure that tax-and-spend policies are the way to solve those problems, he said.”

Johns, a member of the Lincoln Club, an influential Republican fund-raising and volunteer organization, acknowledged he is traveling with Roth, in part, to protect his land investments.

“The trip is educational and selfish, whatever you want to call it,” he said.

It was Johns and officials of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. who persuaded Skinner, the transportation secretary, to visit the German test track after they found out that he intended to ride the French TGV later this month.

A subsidiary of Bechtel is in partnership with the German Transrapid mag-lev company to bid on the Anaheim-Las Vegas project.

Skinner mentioned high-speed trains and mag-lev technology in his major transportation speech this week, saying that they can serve as alternatives to high-cost development of some new airports.

Meanwhile, Ted Lee, a Las Vegas-based developer, is also accompanying the commissioners. He could not be reached for comment, but commission officials said Lee’s firm, Urban Land Co., also owns property along the proposed route of the high-speed train.

In addition, Costa Mesa Mayor Peter F. Buffa, who rents an office from Johns and serves as a board member for the county tollway agencies, will go along, arranging video coverage to promote the project.

“No. 1 on my agenda is to learn more and experience firsthand the difference between the two technologies,” Buffa said. “A lot of public officials are going to be faced with making a lot of decisions, and I’m going to be one of them.”

Buffa and Johns are organizing a “clearinghouse” of high-speed train and monorail information with the stated aim of coordinating projects so they do not interfere with one another.

Also on the tour is Aram Keith, president of Costa Mesa-based Keith Engineering Inc., which hopes to be an engineering subcontractor on developing the right of way to be used by the Anaheim-Las Vegas train. Others include James Erickson, a San Juan Capistrano attorney whose firm hopes to handle legal work involved in the project, and San Juan Capistrano Mayor Gary L. Hausdorfer, a county tollway official and rail advocate whose wife works for Keith.

The Japanese, who also have high-speed trains, have shown little interest in the Las Vegas-Anaheim route. Unlike the French and the Germans, the Japanese aren’t interested in using what they believe is a money-loser to entice future sales, according to officials of the Japanese HSST Corp.

Indeed, there’s no guarantee that any of the bids received by the California-Nevada commission in July will be found acceptable, said Taylor, the panel’s executive director.