Bid to appease bullet train critics may violate law
A series of concessions over the last year to quiet opposition to the California bullet train has created a potentially lethal problem: the revised blueprint for the system may violate requirements locked into state law when voters approved funding for the project in 2008.
The Legislature packed the law with an unusual number of conditions intended to reassure voters, protect the project from later political compromises and ensure that it would not end up a bankrupted white elephant.
But many of those requirements may be at odds with the plan to integrate bullet trains with existing commuter rail lines in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They may also conflict with the Obama administration’s insistence to start construction in the Central Valley without any near-term prospect that high-speed trains would operate there.
-- Ralph Vartabedian and Dan Weikel, Los Angeles Times