High-speed rail's rocky road

Now that the state's High-Speed Rail Authority has settled on a route to bring the trains into the Bay Area — it chose Pacheco Pass over Altamont Pass -- the real crunch time begins. Steve Weigand writes about the issue in today's Sacramento Bee.

The danger is that the governor and the Legislature will pull the November bond measure that would fund the first phase of construction of the 100-mile system. And further, there is a danger that choosing the Pacheco Pass route — opposed by most of the northern San Joaquin Valley and some in the Bay Area, will diminish support for the bond.

There's also speculation that San Diego area voters, who would not be part of the first phase, will be cool to the project.

But if the bond measure is pulled again — it has already been postponed twice — the project would die altogether. “If it is postponed, it is finished.” That's from authority chairman Quentin Kopp, the respected former legislator who helped start the high-speed project more than 20 years ago.

One of the problems faced by backers of high-speed rail is the fact that too many people regard it as an answer to commuter congestion. It's not. High-speed rail commuting is an oxymoron. High-speed trains are designed to move large numbers of people over great distances, not stop and start at every town and village in their path. Rail systems are a good answer for commuters — but not high-speed rail lines.

So we wait and see whether California has the vision and the will to catch up to the rest of the developed world, or whether we're content to slog along with 1950s technology, building and ever-vaster system of increasingly congested and polluting freeways.