(The following article by Sean Holstege was posted on the San Mateo County Times website on March 10.)
SAN MATEO, Calif. — Plans for a 700-mile high-speed rail network in California may be pulling into the siding or derailed entirely, if some state lawmakers have their way.
Four competing bills are now floating around the Legislature. Three would postpone November’s statewide vote for a $10 billion construction bond and one would kill the project outright. Capitol veterans say the number of bills on the same subject shows the so-called bullet train proposal is a hot legislative topic.
It’s been that way since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed in his budget repealing the law that asked voters to approve the massive rail bond. His administration hinted again Tuesday that the objection is mostly fiscal because it has proposed some money to keep the preliminary work alive. A Schwarzenegger spokes-man would not indicate a position on any of the bills.
Whichever emerges to remove the bullet train from November’s ballot would need two-thirds approval in both houses of the Legislature. That makes postponement more likely, several Sacramento sources from both parties said.
Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, has introduced a bill that would push November’s vote back two years. Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Kevin Murray, D-Los Angeles, has a nearly identical bill.
Assemblyman Russ Bogh, R-Moreno Valley, proposed pushing the statewide vote to November 2010, a long enough delay to make environmental work stale and, some say, snuff out the plans.
Meanwhile an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in last fall’s recall race, Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, has introduced a bill that repeals the bullet train law entirely.
“It’s a bad idea and it’s not going to get better,” McClintock said. “This is the most outrageously expensive boondoggle ever proposed.”
The California High Speed Rail Authority, in releasing its voluminous environmental report in January, said the 700-mile network to link the Bay Area and Los Angeles in 21/2 hours with a European-style train would cost $37 billion.
For that money, McClintock says, California could build new lanes on 665 miles of its most congested freeways. I introduced the bill because I believe we need to continue the debate before we waste the resources that could end congestion for a generation, he said.
But McClintock is considered a maverick in Sacramento, where he concedes that lawmakers are more likely to postpone the vote before the bullet-train proposal dies of its own numbers.
Those numbers are coming under increased scrutiny, as are claims by the Rail Authority justifying why it didn’t analyze trains through the Altamont Pass in its $20 million environmental report.
The report concluded that 68 million passengers would use the system in 2020. In a 2000 report, the agency predicted ridership at 42 million. Just two years earlier, the project was estimated to cost $24 billion.
Cost was one of many reasons the Altamont route was dropped, according to the rail authority’s executive director Mehdi Morshed. The environmental study places the cost of a rail bridge alongside the Dumbarton Bridge at as much as $1.4 billion. Morhsed cited wetlands protection, right-of-way purchases and construction costs in a recent interview.
But a detailed report by the San Mateo County Transportation Authority released last month shows that a similar rail bridge, plus 21 miles of track and three new stations would cost $278 million.
Meanwhile Democrats are hoping a two-year delay can tighten the proposal, work out the inevitable legal kinks and resolve the building controversy about the Bay Area alignment.
We all have concern about the amount of debt the state has. The prudent thing is to postpone the bond, said Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough.
She also said two years will improve the political outlook for the proposal, something that she and Perata think can be further enhanced by more study of the Altamont Route. Bullet-train planners dropped it four years ago, preferring a proposed tunnel through the Diablo Mountains or a track over the Pacheco Pass.
Speier, who questioned that logic at a recent hearing, said without that study she would question the environmental analysis for a project she says has merits for improving transportation and creating jobs.