ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : How Big a Gamble Is This Train?

A privately operated high-speed train between Anaheim and Las Vegas might quicken the pulses of high-rollers. But if it’s done right, such a train could also raise hopes for getting some commuters off freeways.

Images of the fleeting French and German countrysides are still fresh in the minds of a delegation of officials and business executives from the county who have just returned from examining France’s Train a Grande Vitesse and West Germany’s magnetically levitated train. The California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission hopes to select one of them, by October, as the model for the $4-billion train that would run along the proposed route.

Exciting? Yes. But will the public be asked to kick in? As it stands, public funding pays only for administrative costs related to a bistate commission’s work toward setting up the project. And the law would have to be changed in both states to get public money for this project. But what happens if either bidder decides it needs public help acquiring land for rights of way? The history of private railroads is filled with examples of the taxpayers bailing out entrepreneurs who could not make it.

So the Legislature should think long and hard before committing funds to any such project, especially with all the rest that needs to be done to improve transportation in Orange County. That’s especially so because there are no answers yet to the second big question: the number of stops between Las Vegas and Anaheim, and where they would be located. That’s crucial if there is to be any hope of using the train for commuters. It’s possible, and sensible, for the bidders to propose something that would provide express runs to Las Vegas, but also double tracks near some stations to allow commuter trains to stop.

Of course, it’s possible that the train will be an entirely private undertaking. But that won’t be clear until the bids, due in July, are in. But if either the German or French proposals are to have any broad significance for Orange County, they must offer a system to serve a larger ridership than those headed to and from the gambling tables of Nevada.