Rolling Out a High-Speed Rail Plan

Michael Tennenbaum has a $23-billion dream.

Tennenbaum envisions a day when he can jump aboard a high-speed train in Los Angeles, plug in his laptop computer and spend the next two hours working as the train hurtles at 200 mph toward San Francisco.

Tennenbaum is chairman of a little-known state rail agency that is stepping up its campaign to persuade the state Legislature to place the scheme on the statewide ballot in November 2000.

If all goes according to plan, voters will be asked to approve a sales tax increase or some other financing device to underwrite billions of dollars in construction costs for the advanced rail network, including the expense of blasting tunnels through the Tehachapi Mountains.

“You just can’t think about today, you have to think 20 years ahead,” said Tennenbaum, who runs a Century City investment firm. He fears that without the train service, California won’t be able to meet the transit needs of millions of new residents, especially in the San Joaquin Valley.

But Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) typifies the opposition. He characterizes the rail project as a money-eating “rat hole” and suggests that the state would be better off building more freeways. “It’s a joke and a very expensive one,” said McClintock, a member of the Assembly Transportation Committee.

The two outlooks represent the central question facing lawmakers: Is the costly high-tech train a boondoggle or a panacea?

In recent weeks, the rail panel has begun to press its case to a wary Legislature, seeking approval from lawmakers to place the issue on the ballot even though the panel needn’t do so because it has direct access to the ballot.

As a result, if the idea is going to roll out of the station, it is the Legislature that will need to give the green light.

The system is conceived as a bold public works project similar to the creation of the state freeway system or the massive state water project.

Planners envision 670 miles of electrified track between San Diego and Northern California, with trains whizzing up and down the state at speeds exceeding 200 mph and making the trip between the Bay Area and Southern California in less than three hours. Construction is estimated to cost between $23 billion and $30 billion, depending on the type of trains that run on the line.

Promoters insist this new form of transportation would ease congestion on the state’s clogged highways, save crowded airports from having to undergo expensive expansion and help meet the travel needs of a mushrooming population. “If there is one single message . . . it is that the time for high-speed train service in California is now,” Edward Graveline, vice chairman of the California HighSpeed Rail Authority, told lawmakers last week.

The nine-member authority, appointed by the Legislature and the governor, was established by the Legislature in 1996 and has an annual budget of $3 million. If the high-speed rail blueprint is placed on the ballot and rejected by voters, the commission will go out of business.

For now, the authority is focused on promoting its case to lawmakers, who last week held the first of a series of informational hearings on very high-speed trains.

Lawmakers are besieged with an array of competing and costly proposals to meet the mind-boggling transportation demands that will confront California in the 21st century.

Just a day after the hearing on high-speed rail, state Senate leader John Burton, supported by a powerful coalition of business and labor, unveiled a plan to issue $16 billion in bonds, the largest sum in state history. The money would be earmarked to fix California’s crumbling transportation system.

Asked at a press conference whether lawmakers might simultaneously advance both his and the rail proposal to the ballot, the San Francisco Democrat said: “I would not be [averse] to having both on the ballot. I think by and large there’s a broader constituency for this proposal than there is for high-speed rail, although I personally think the high-speed rail would be great.”

Lawmakers seem to be split into three distinct camps on whether the state has a role in building a high-speed rail network.

There are those, like McClintock, who want nothing to do with a state-sponsored bullet train; others who take a middle course proposing to spend several billion dollars for a modest upgrade of existing track on the California coast and between Bakersfield and Sacramento; and still others, especially Central Valley legislators, who wholeheartedly embrace the notion of high-speed trains that would be a bonanza for their communities.

State Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City), who advocates the middle course, argues that a costly bullet train is too big a gamble and that California should opt for a more conservative, incremental approach to its rail needs. Rather than spend $23 billion-plus for a bullet train, he suggests $4 or $5 billion to upgrade existing tracks, enabling Amtrak to increase speeds for passenger liners to 100 or 125 mph.

Murray, who believes ridership projections for the bullet train are suspect, says increasing speeds for conventional trains would show whether the higher speeds would actually attract more passengers.

But even then, he said, it is doubtful that the improvements in train ridership would do much to alleviate highway congestion. “High-speed rail is not going to get people off highways,” he said. “At best you’re taking them off airplanes.”

Indeed, opposition from the airline industry, particularly the Texas-based commuter giant Southwest Airlines, helped torpedo a proposal in 1994 for an $8.4-billion high-speed rail link between Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.

But the airline industry is only one of many barriers to high-speed rail. The high cost both in dollars and potential environmental damage has killed other attempts to launch a bullet train. As recently as mid-January, Florida’s new governor, Jeb Bush, announced that he would withhold funding for a $6.3-billion high-speed rail train that would zip between Tampa, Orlando and Miami.

Twice before in the past two decades, proposals for high-speed rail service in Southern California have been scrapped.

In the early 1980s, a plan for an ambitious high-speed line between San Diego and Los Angeles sped quietly through the Legislature. But when it surfaced publicly, it generated controversy about environmental effects, costs and projected ridership. In 1984, a plan to raise $50 million in private capital for engineering and other studies collapsed.

Three years later, the city of Las Vegas tried to promote a 230-mile, $2.5-billion system to connect the gambling mecca with Southern California.

But opposition in San Bernardino County proved insurmountable.

The main reason for the opposition in the San Bernardino area was the widespread perception that the train would serve primarily as a means of conveying Southern Californians’ money to Las Vegas gaming tables and that the economic benefits in California would be negligible.

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High-Speed Rail Proposal

A bullet train that would whiz between San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento at more than 200 mph is being presented to the state Legislature as one solution to California’s future transportation needs.