Time to Knock Heads and Board the Train

Commuters stuck in traffic may not believe it, but California, and especially Southern California, could become a center for the most advanced rail transportation systems in the world.

One possibility is a high-speed rail system with trains capable of 200 mph speeds that would link the state’s major cities and regions, from Sacramento to San Jose to the Central Valley to Los Angeles and Santa Ana to San Diego.

The California High Speed Rail Authority will hold one of 12 monthly meetings to work out details of that proposed system at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott Hotel today.

Another possibility is for trains powered by magnetic levitation that would run on freeway rights-of-way to link Los Angeles International Airport, Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, Arcadia and Ontario Airport in the Inland Empire.

The Southern California Assn. of Governments is pushing this mag-lev commuter system, which ultimately would include lines from Riverside to the El Toro area of Orange County and from Los Angeles to Palmdale.

The skeptical commuter might think that such proposals are science fiction. And, to be sure, both rail plans face bickering between their respective supporters and other obstacles.

But the rail systems need not be science fiction. Real groundwork has been laid for each of the proposals. Planning for the state high-speed rail system began in 1996 under then-Gov. Pete Wilson. Plans now call for a 676-mile system linking 90% of the state’s population.

The Rail Authority’s executive director, Mehdi Morshed, estimates that operations and maintenance of the high-speed train system could be financed by ridership and that construction costs of $20 billion could be financed by a 10-year sales tax of a quarter to half of 1%.

The regional mag-lev system could be financed privately, says Mark Pisano, executive director of SCAG. The initial line, LAX to Ontario, would cost $3.2 billion, with completion expected by 2007.

“We could issue revenue bonds and the daily ridership could pay off the bonds plus operations and maintenance,” Pisano says. Ultimately, the system could carry 600,000 passengers a day, he says.

The idea could get a big boost this week if Gov. Gray Davis signs an application for SCAG to compete for $1 billion in federal development funds. Other regions of the country, including New York City-Albany, Atlanta-Chattanooga and the Las Vegas area, are competing for the federal money. But Southern California may have an edge because of its population density, great need for nonpolluting transportation and the work it already has done over the decades on air pollution problems.

“There’s a broader constituency trying to help Southern California on the national level than is commonly recognized,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a member of the House Transportation Committee, told Metro Investment Report, a Los Angeles-based newsletter.

So what’s the problem? California, facing enormous population increases in the next 10 to 20 years, can use all the transportation it can get. An intercity train system could dovetail nicely with a sorely needed regional commuter system.

But as usual in this state, there is bickering over turf and vision and plans.

The state’s Rail Authority foresees its project using conventional tracks for a high-speed train on the model of the French Train Grand Vitesse or TGV system.

The SCAG commuter proposal has opted for still-experimental magnetic levitation technology, developed in Germany but not in general use anywhere. But industrial groups from the United States (Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Bechtel) and Germany (Thyssen, Krupp and DaimlerChrysler) are eager to compete for the right to build the LAX-Ontario system if Southern California wins federal development money.

Instead of thinking of ways to work together, each group criticizes the other for choosing unproven technology or for planning on state sales tax funding.

The truth is, Gov. Davis or somebody should knock heads together and get the two groups to cooperate. There is no inherent conflict between a statewide intercity system and an intra-regional commuter system. They could connect at terminals on the outskirts of major metropolitan areas.

Each proposed rail system has a different role to play in the total transportation system. Intercity high-speed rail would relieve congestion at major airports. More than 30% of the traffic into LAX and San Francisco airports now is commuter planes, delivering passengers from Orange County or the Bay Area for national and international flights. But commuter flights take up as much runway and gate space as larger planes. If rail travel could deliver those passengers, it would relieve not only congested airports but the congested roadways that serve them.

“The shape of California’s future development could depend on putting high-speed rail into use,” says Michael Tennenbaum, Los Angeles financier who is serving as unpaid chairman of the Rail Authority.

The commuter lines, meanwhile, could relieve congested freeways. The reason for choosing mag-lev trains to run on freeways, Pisano explains, is that existing railroads are loaded with freight and “there’s no room for a major passenger operation.”

There is a historic aspect to train systems being considered at this time. Trains could ease travel and knit up the West in the same ways that benefited the eastern states a century ago. That is happening now between Portland, Ore., and Seattle.

And that makes sense. The East grew dense in population and developed its necessary transportation systems over the last 200 years. California and the West, by contrast, have developed dense populations only in the last 50 to 100 years.

But now the problem of density is here, and so is opportunity. With advanced rail systems and intelligent cooperation, California can enter on a new century of development.

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James Flanigan can be reached by e-mail at jim.flanigan@latimes.com.