What is California High-Speed Rail?

Those of us who do not live or work in the Golden State have, for a long time, heard reports of the construction of a high-speed railroad totally within the state. Visions of Japan’s network and 200-mph trains immediately come to mind, followed by amazement that California would attempt such an ambitious project while Amtrak continues to struggle and beg for funding from a Congress that hasn’t been very pro-railroad no matter which party is in control. My next thought is usually a question: Just how much of the cost of this project is going to be paid by non-California taxpayers, in other words, the federal government?

Before answering that question, let’s first decide what California High-Speed Rail is and is not.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority was created in 1996 by the state legislature to determine the feasibility of such a railroad connecting California’s major coastal cities with the state capitol in Sacramento. The Authority boasts that the state’s voters created the first ever funding mechanism for high-speed rail by approving a bond issue four years later. In fact, major funding didn’t hit the pavement in California until it snagged $3.3 billion in ARRA (recovery act) funds during the Obama administration. (There’s a partial answer to the question right there.)

The enacting legislation called for the Authority to submit a business plan every two years. The first plan published was for 2000. Given California’s notoriously environment-conscious reputation, the plan was noteworthy in its shameless promotion of a project that would eventually tear up lots and lots of California real estate. One got the impression that, as long as it took gas-engine cars off the freeways, no sacrifice needed to be spared.

The 2000 plan showed two route maps. One was deemed by the Authority to be the routing that would produce the highest return on investment. North to south it connected Sacramento to Los Angeles via the Central Valley (Fresno and Bakersfield), then Los Angeles to San Diego via Riverside and Temecula. This plan included a spur to San Francisco from Merced (on the main stem) via Gilroy, San Jose, and Redwood City.

The second plan included alternate routes worthy of environmental study. These included a loop away from the main stem from Bakersfield to Santa Clarita via Palmdale, and a more direct route LA to San Diego via the coastal route. A spur was added from Los Angeles Union Station to LAX, and another spur on the San Francisco spur up the Oakland side of the bay.

Neither of these plans appears to give any consideration to further connections north or east of the proposed lines.

Moving on to 17 years later, the latest Business Plan was adopted in 2016. The routing has changed little from the environmental study routes, going via Palmdale, for the San Francisco/Sacramento to Los Angeles segments, but uses the inland LA to San Diego route. As to how much of this has been built? Essentially none of it. No functional railroad, in any case.

The current plan is to complete HSR between “Silicon Valley and the Central Valley” first, and get it running by 2025. Referencing the Authority’s website, I note that most of the completed construction consists of a disconnected series of bridges and viaducts, highway re-locations, and accommodations for traffic disruptions in the Fresno and Merced areas. And it’s unclear what percentage of land acquisitions have been completed as of mid-2017. As of the 2016 report, it was less than clear how much acquisitions will have taken place by today's date.

And the project continues to get public resistance. As with almost all public works or works-like projects these days, there is a strong contingent of naysayers that mount opposition at every step. This is not without good reason, as the high-speed project seems to have become a funnel for funds to other transportation projects that appear, at least on the surface, to have nothing to do with high-speed rail.

For instance: Last week, California Department of Finance okayed expenditure of $600 million in public bond money, spurring the Authority to begin the total electrification of Caltrain between San Francisco and San Jose. This money will more immediately benefit Caltrain, and high-speed rail detractors righteously filed a lawsuit alleging that the spending of high-speed rail bonds on Caltrain is in violation of the state constitution. The Authority’s excuse is that this will be the northernmost portion of the HSR line…eventually. On the other hand, it looks like the proposed “first open” segment was changed in the latest Business Plan just to get this financial boondoggle completed.

Will California High-Speed Rail ever get built? I think it will. But, like Illinois, California has discovered that it’s not that easy to just create hundreds of miles of high-speed line, whether out of existing rights of way (as in Illinois) or of thin air (make that thin California eminent-domain real estate.) In my opinion, California and Illinois are just two examples of why we need a federal plan and standard for high-speed rail that has the goal of a country-wide network serving all areas, not just those states with the moxie to push ambitious plans even though functionally bankrupt.

So, in conclusion, California HSR is a partially financed, fluidly planned series of currently disconnected segments of transportation corridor that may or may not result in a true high-speed railroad between the stated endpoint goals before 2050. California HSR is not a sure thing or a done deal, and it certainly is not a part of any national goal of establishing HSR between California and any other cities. And the answer to my initial question? Lots.

©2017 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)