Time to electrify the Antelope Valley Line...

Fred Wrote:
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> Rail projects elsewhere could derail the bullet
> train
>
> A decade ago, shortly after California voters
> narrowly approved a $9.95 billion bond issue to
> finance a statewide bullet train system, an
> official involved in early planning for the
> project confided a dirty little secret.
>
> While a 200-mile-per hour bullet train was the
> sizzle sold to voters, he told me, the unspoken
> motive was getting more money to expand commuter
> transit services in the San Francisco Bay Area and
> Southern California without having to directly ask
> voters.
>
> The bond issue set aside $950 million for such
> auxiliary transit systems on the theory that they
> would feed passengers into a bullet train system.
>
> By and by, as construction of the initial bullet
> train segment in the San Joaquin Valley stalled
> due to mismanagement, cost overruns and stiff
> local opposition, advocates of the regional urban
> transit projects began to chip off pieces of the
> other $9 billion in bonds that voters had
> approved.
>
> The most aggressive raids were led by sponsors of
> upgrading the Caltrain service between San
> Francisco and San Jose from diesel-powered trains
> to electrification — especially after bullet train
> officials stopped trying to build a separate line
> down the San Francisco Peninsula due to adamant
> local opposition and agreed to “blend” with
> Caltrain.
>
> An amendment to the 2012 state budget allowed bond
> money to be used for “bookend” projects, meaning
> Caltrain and Southern California’s Metrolink
> service, and a 2016 bill, patched together in the
> final days of that year’s legislative session,
> legitimized the raid on bullet train funds even
> further.
>
> Now, as the bullet train project gasps for air,
> more diversions of voter-approved bullet train
> bonds may be in the offing.
>
> Gov. Gavin Newsom says he wants to concentrate on
> finishing the San Joaquin Valley segment, with
> extensions to Bakersfield and Merced, which would
> cost about $20 billion, and then connect it to the
> Bay Area via conventional rail service. A train
> that now runs between San Jose and Stockton, known
> as the Altamont Express, would be extended to
> Merced.
>
> However, the Los Angeles Times reported last week,
> “Key California lawmakers have devised a plan to
> shift billions of dollars from the Central Valley
> bullet train to rail projects in Southern
> California and the Bay Area, a strategy that could
> crush the dreams of high-speed rail purists.
>
> “Assembly Democrats see greater public value in
> improving passenger rail from Burbank to Anaheim,
> relieving congestion on the busy Interstate 5
> corridor before the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los
> Angeles and putting additional money into San
> Francisco commuter rail.” Improving transit in the
> state’s most congested urban areas, advocates of
> the new scheme contend, is more important than the
> patched-together system that Newsom has proposed.
>
> “I like the concept,” Assembly Speaker Anthony
> Rendon told the Times. “Any project that doesn’t
> have a significant amount of service to the
> largest areas in the state doesn’t make much
> sense.”
>
> It’s difficult to argue with that logic,
> especially since the bullet train project has
> utterly failed to attract the many tens of
> billions of dollars needed to become a reality.
>
> Were the new legislative proposal to prevail, one
> presumes that the current construction, running
> from Chowchilla to an orchard near Shafter, would
> be completed and used for regular- speed Amtrak
> service. But it would leave Fresno and other San
> Joaquin Valley cities without the high-speed
> service they had once been promised.
>
> The plan now gaining traction in the Legislature
> would acknowledge reality and could hasten an end
> for the ill-conceived, mismanaged bullet train,
> even Newsom’s much-abbreviated version.
>
> It’s about time. CALmatters is a public interest
> journalism venture committed to explaining how
> California’s state Capitol works and why it
> matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to
> calmatters.org/commentary