California’s Rail Pokes Along as Others Race Ahead

If you are not driving, 186 mph isn’t a spectacular land speed. The horizon creeps along, subjectively, no quicker than it does at 65 mph. Absent the jerky, erratic motion often associated with rail travel, the train seems almost not to be moving at all.

It’s only when you focus on fences that you realize you are traveling at triple the freeway speed limit. That fence line is an invisible blur. Cows and cars are moving past so fast you can barely see their color. You are on the Eurostar, the flashy, 18-coach ultratrain that connects downtown London with central Paris in just under three hours.

The DC-3 used to cruise at 186 mph. Jetliners can now go 600 mph, but a typical downtown-to-downtown air trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco can easily take (with airport waits and ground travel, not counting adverse weather and air-traffic conditions) three hours. A Eurostar-level, state-of-the-art passenger train would make the same trip in two hours, whatever the weather.

But the train you board today to Oakland takes nearly 12 hours to arrive, a bit faster than a vintage ocean liner would take. It’s no wonder that Amtrak advertises its Coast Starlight as a cruise-like adventure. What’s not mentioned is that the Starlight is perhaps the slowest 400-mile rail connection between two major cities in the developed world.

This should not be. California faces the millennium with its transportation stuck in the freeway-mad, jet-age 1960s. The state that pioneered the instantaneous connections of e-commerce and e-mail stands on the verge of a broadband revolution that promises to pipe feature movies into homes in seconds. But residents still pack themselves into automobiles that travel at Eisenhower-era speeds for most intercity journeys. Or into shuttle jets that spend more time waiting for takeoff and circling their destinations than en route. In the next decade or two, California could replace New Jersey as the state with both the most cars per capita and the most congested roads.

Not to mention crowded skies. Between 1985 and 1995, California air-passenger traffic jumped from 100 million to 150 million people a year. By 2020, according to the Southern California Assn. of Governments, L.A. expects as much annual air traffic--about 160 million arrivals and departures--as the entire state has now.

A 200-mph intercity train in California is overdue. The state lags far behind other U.S. regions when it comes to transforming passenger rail networks (the main exception being the Los Angeles-San Diego run) into something more than a leisure pastime for senior vacationers.

Next year, Amtrak has vowed to introduce its 100-mph Acela trains on its Washington-New York-Boston corridor. According to Anne Chettle of High Speed Ground Transportation Assn., more than 50% of the corridor’s travelers already choose rail. On the West Coast, with the enthusiastic backing of local governments, Amtrak has introduced a high-speed Cascades line running between Eugene, Ore., Seattle and Vancouver. It’s still operating shy of its expected top speed of 120 mph, but Chettle terms the line “highly successful.”

When it comes to making the most of current rail technology, however, the United States has its toe in the waters while the rest of the world is swimming laps. High-speed trains in Japan, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain and England have carried 6 billion passengers since Japan and France first introduced them in the 1950s. Eurostar is already fourth-generation high-speed rail; Amtrak is barely moving into the second generation. Some transportation experts even predict the introduction of maglev trains: sci-fi creations that hover like Luke Skywalker’s “Star Wars” speedster. But after nearly 20 years of trials, maglev has yet to prove itself commercially viable.

November was Eurostar’s fifth anniversary. There are now 28 trains running each day. Each can carry 784 people--roughly four times as many as a stuffed Boeing 737--between London, Paris, Lille and Brussels. This is the equivalent of 112 daily commuter flights, a maximum of more than 21,000 daily passengers.

A similar intercity rail system isn’t likely to be built in California any time soon. But it must be built, and there is an opportunity early next year to get started: The Legislature will vote on a proposal to fund the initial payment on the $400-million environmental impact report on the California High Speed Rail Authority’s tentative high-speed, state-long route.

It’s uncertain whether the line would extend to Oakland or San Francisco or both, or what cities it would connect in the Central Valley. Crucial for regional Los Angeles is whether the route would follow the I-5 north through the Grapevine or take a more easterly route that would provide a connection between Union Station and Palmdale’s regional airport.

But there will be no answers without start-up funding. Over the 20 years it may take to complete a state high-speed rail network, the cost might reach $20 billion. The alternative, however, is watching the Golden State’s internal transportation network slow to the pace of New Jersey Route 46. *