Amtrak to Unveil High-Speed Rail Plan in California

Hoping to capitalize on dissatisfaction with the congestion that plagues California’s highways and airports, Amtrak will unveil a $10.1-billion high-speed rail plan today that would allow travelers to get from Los Angeles to San Diego in less than two hours.

The statewide plan also envisions a rail corridor that would link downtown Los Angeles with downtown San Francisco by trains capable of reaching speeds of 125 mph. Passengers from Los Angeles must now transfer to a bus or train in San Jose or Oakland.

Throughout the state, the plan calls for curves in track alignments to be straightened, signals modernized, new sidings added, and tunnels drilled beneath Del Mar and Miramar in San Diego County.

All that would be done to boost speed, with top speeds jumping from the current 79 mph in most places to 90 mph, 110 mph and 125 mph. Travel time between San Diego and Los Angeles would be shaved by about 45 minutes with the same number of station stops.

“We want to dramatically reduce trip times,” said Gilbert Mallery, president of Amtrak West. “The winners will be the public. The public is tired of sitting in congestion, be it in a train, on a runway or on a freeway.”

Amtrak is not the first agency to propose a high-speed rail network for the sprawling state. But where another long-touted effort is built around new technology and carries a whopping $50-billion price tag, the Amtrak proposal is more modest and enjoys significantly broader political support.

On Monday, Amtrak officials said they are buoyed by current ridership numbers that show California with one of the healthiest growth trends in the nation.

The Los Angeles to San Diego run is Amtrak’s second-busiest rail corridor, trailing only the northeast corridor between Boston and Washington. The 172-mile Capitol Corridor between Sacramento, Oakland and San Jose is the fastest-growing intercity rail line in the nation, according to Amtrak.

“The demand is there,” Mallery said. “If we can continue to provide quality service and add trains, we will continue to grow.”

Statewide, Amtrak hopes to increase ridership in its four main corridors from 3 million passengers a year to 12 million by 2020.

Under the plan, the busiest line would be the Pacific Surfliner, which runs from San Luis Obispo, through Los Angeles to San Diego. The Pacific Surfliner would grow from 1.6 million riders a year now to almost 6 million by 2020.

Confronted with long-standing political reservations about the feasibility of high-speed rail, the plan’s authors say they have drafted a mix of technical detail and political balance that recognizes California’s maze of competing rail lines and the always intense geographic jealousies between Northern and Southern California.

Among the partners with Amtrak are Caltrans, Metrolink, Caltrain in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.

David R. Solow, chief executive officer of Metrolink, said he agreed to work with Amtrak only after assurances that his Southern California commuter rail line would not face competition from the national giant. Both rail lines have service out of Union Station in Los Angeles to south Orange County.

“We made very clear what we believe our business is and what their business is,” Solow said. “The only reason they got our name on there is we basically agreed to be complementary and not competitive.”

The proposed 20-year plan, which will be unveiled in Sacramento today, would be paid for with a variety of federal, state, local and regional financing agencies.

The proposed financing depends heavily on Congress passing a high-speed rail investment bill that would raise $12 billion for rail projects throughout the United States through the sale of Amtrak bonds. The legislation failed last year, but federal officials are optimistic.

Bond dollars coming into the state, should the federal legislation pass, would be leveraged against state and local matching money.

Amtrak hopes to ride what many see as a wave of popular support for high-speed rail projects. Amtrak introduced a nonstop, high-speed train between Washington and New York on Monday.

Former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, a member of the Amtrak board of directors, was in California last week to build support for both the federal legislation and Amtrak’s California plan.

“We think the plan for California is realistic and affordable,” Dukakis said.