High-Speed Trains May Leave O.C. Eating Dust

The state’s High-Speed Rail Authority on Wednesday indicated it may bypass Orange County with a proposed bullet train that would snake up California and link San Diego and Sacramento.

The rail authority voted in favor of routing the 680-mile rail system from downtown Los Angeles through Riverside County to San Diego, but did not completely dismiss an alternative route through Norwalk, Anaheim and Irvine.

Orange County transportation officials were disappointed with the vote, saying the rail system could be a major asset to the county’s economy and feed the burgeoning tourism industry.

“It would preclude serving one of the state’s most populous counties, which seems to hurt the prospects of the entire system before it’s even built,” said John Standiford, spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority. “It would also probably be less expensive to build through Orange County, since it’s a shorter route.”

The 680-mile rail system that is envisioned for moving passengers up and down the state at 200 mph is still in its early planning phase. Even if it passes the environmental and political hurdles that could stand in the way of such a vast project, it is not expected to begin operating before 2015.

Still, cities and counties throughout the state are lobbying hard to ensure that if the train does go into operation, their communities will be on its main line. The outpouring of concern left an impression on the rail panel during hearings on the route Tuesday and Wednesday in San Francisco.

The rail authority’s staff had recommended a main route along Interstate 5 that would send the train from Sacramento through Stockton, Modesto, Merced, Fresno, Visalia, Bakersfield, Santa Clarita and Burbank, then into Los Angeles’ Union Station, with a spur to Los Angeles International Airport, before heading south through Norwalk, Fullerton, Anaheim, Irvine, Oceanside, University Town Center and into San Diego.

The rail authority modified the recommendation and ordered a study of a main line route from Los Angeles to San Diego inland through Riverside, Temecula, Escondido and Mira Mesa instead of along the coast. The study will look at ridership and cost estimates.

But the authority ordered environmental reviews for both routes, offering some hope that an Orange County route is still possible.

“It’s not off the table,” said John Barna, the authority’s executive deputy director.

The rail authority also authorized the staff to begin environmental studies and cost estimates on the proposed route from Sacramento to Bakersfield. It then told the staff to study both its own Bakersfield-to-Santa Clarita route and the Bakersfield-to-Palmdale route.

Bowing to pressure from the city and county of Los Angeles, the rail authority voted to consider routing through Palmdale.

“We are not going to get the votes that we need . . . because there is not something there for everybody,” panel member Jerry Epstein, from Los Angeles, warned as he urged his colleagues to consider the Palmdale option. “The reality of the state is that the votes are in Southern California.”

Epstein’s remarks came after Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter bluntly told the panel that there would be little support in Southern California for the project unless the train, which is expected to cost more than $23 billion and be financed by an increase in the state sales tax, links Palmdale Airport with Los Angeles International Airport.

“You can’t build this thing without really serious political support up and down the state,” Galanter told the nine-member California High-Speed Rail Authority.

Development of Palmdale Airport is essential, Galanter said after the hearing, to meet California’s transportation needs in the 21st century.

“This state has the seventh-largest economy in the world, but it is 1,000 miles long, divided by mountain ranges,” she said. “There are only two places where you can get significant international air service [Los Angeles and San Francisco], and they are 400 miles apart. That’s nuts.”

The city of Los Angeles owns almost 18,000 acres in Palmdale that already is zoned to be an airport, and a high-speed rail line through the desert community would make it practical to build a third international airport there, Galanter said.

Mehdi Morshed, executive director of the rail authority, said the staff had considered laying the main line through Palmdale, but ruled it out because it would cost $600 million to $800 million more to include Palmdale instead of dropping down along the Grapevine, near Interstate 5. Palmdale’s airport and the population there that would use the train are too small to warrant such an expense, he said.

“We are saying that there is a way to serve Palmdale by having a line going from Palmdale to Los Angeles and that you don’t need to take the rest of the state through Palmdale to accomplish that,” Morshed told reporters Tuesday.

After the hearing, Galanter said she was pleased that the authority decided to examine the Palmdale option. But the political fights, she said, are yet to come.

“What they did today was to postpone the inevitable tough political choices,” Galanter said, by merely adding more routes to their studies.

The authority, a state-appointed body representing communities across California, hopes to submit cost estimates and financing plans to the Legislature and the governor early next year. If the project is approved by the Legislature, it will be placed before voters, possibly with a request for a half-cent sales tax increase, in November 2000.

As planned, the bullet train would have a Northern California spur that would travel west from just below Merced, through Los Banos and Gilroy, before swinging north to the Bay Area, through San Jose, Redwood City, San Francisco International Airport and into downtown San Francisco.

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown unsuccessfully appealed for the main line to go through Oakland, in the East Bay. The authority authorized study of a spur from San Jose to Oakland.

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Studying Rail Routes

California’s High-Speed Rail Authority decided on routes to study for a 680-mile rail system that would link Sacramento and San Diego. The panel told its staff to study two alternatives between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, and two between Los Angeles and San Diego.