Believe in the bullet train Even though it's a…

                        Believe in the bullet train
Even though it's a gamble, high-speed rail would help California cope with its transportation problems.

May 2, 2007

IT'S TEMPTING to write off California's bullet-train enthusiasts as overgrown kids begging Mom and Dad for cash
to build the world's coolest train set; only in this case, Mom and Dad are the taxpayers, and the set would cost at
least $40 billion. And yet what looks today like an overpriced toy might someday become one of the state's best
weapons for fighting gridlock and pollution.

Rail boosters and transit realists have been butting heads for more than a decade over plans for a bullet train from
Sacramento to San Diego, a 200-mph electric-powered rocket that could go from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 2
1/2 hours. Plans to put the train project before voters have been put off twice, and if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
gets his way, a ballot measure planned for November 2008 might once again be deferred. The governor also wants
to slash funding to $1 million for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which says it needs $103 million next
fiscal year to keep the project on track.

The project would represent a huge gamble for state taxpayers. Even assuming that planners are right about the total
price tag -- a big assumption given variables such as the price of land -- there are no guarantees that all the money
can be raised or that rosy projections about the line's ridership and revenue would be met.

The rail authority wants to ask voters to approve $9.95 billion in bonds next year. Backers say the rest of the money
would come from private investors, the federal government and other local sources. But it's possible that investors
would shun such a risky project or that the federal money wouldn't materialize. California could conceivably be
stuck with a partly built train to nowhere for years or decades. And there are serious questions about whether a high-
speed train is such a high priority at a time when the state is already groaning under a perilous debt load and still has
many infrastructure needs unfunded.

Yet critics who reject the train as a boondoggle base their arguments on the past, not the future. It's true that long-
distance rail systems in this country attract anemic ridership and usually require bottomless taxpayer subsidies. But
the unattractive economics of train travel won't necessarily remain that way forever.

By 2020, the projected completion date for the bullet train, gas will likely be a lot more expensive. State and federal
governments by that time should be well underway in cutting back sharply on greenhouse gas emissions, probably
translated into increased costs for flying or driving. (The bullet train would be emissions-free.) Train service,
particularly the kind that could compete with airline travel on convenience, could be far more economically
competitive than it is now.

The rail authority is in the midst of preliminary engineering and environmental work that may need to be started
over from scratch if funding is pulled next year. It may not need all of the requested $103 million, but that doesn't
justify cutting the project off at the ankles. Voters should get the chance to decide once and for all whether they
want their tax dollars tied to the tracks.