Curtailing the reckless California bullet train plan

In an encouraging development, the Assembly Transportation Committee returned from lockdown exile and immediately advanced two bills to curtail a reckless plan by the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

This editorial board has urged lawmakers to heed the warning from the Legislative Analyst’s Office to move quickly if it wants to make changes to the rail authority’s current plans, which call for signing 30 contracts this year to commit the project to costly and inflexible electrification plans.

On Monday, the committee voted in favor of Assembly Bill 3213 by Luz Rivas, D-Arleta, which would require the rail authority to prioritize projects that provide the “most overall benefits to the state.” The criteria for determining those benefits include “increasing passenger rail ridership” and “replacing automobile trips with passenger rail trips.”

The effect of the law would be to foil the plans of the rail authority to proceed with contracts for electrification on the Central Valley segment and route several billion dollars to making improvements in highly populated areas such as Los Angeles.

Written comments from the committee noted “an alternative option to operate clean diesel trains over the new track with almost as much speed,” however, “HSRA appears unwilling to consider any alternative that does not result in an electrified train.”

The rail authority currently estimates that a fully electrified high-speed rail segment between Bakersfield and Merced will cost over $20 billion. Passengers who wish to travel to or from the Bay Area or the L.A. region would have to transfer at either end to take bus service or a conventional train. The time involved in these transfers, the committee wrote, raises “serious doubts about whether the electrification is going to increase ridership at all.”

The second bill advanced by the Transportation Committee is Assembly Bill 3278, authored by Jim Patterson, R-Fresno. The bill would clarify the intent of the language in Proposition 1A, the 2008 ballot measure that authorized nearly $10 billion in bonds to build the bullet train.

Prop. 1A stated that high-speed rail could not be operated with a public subsidy. However, the latest business plan from the rail authority outlines its plan to complete the Central Valley segment by leasing out its infrastructure to another entity such as the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission. The SJRRC currently operates the publicly subsidized San Joaquin intercity rail line through the Central Valley.

The rail authority argues that as long as it doesn’t receive the public subsidy itself, it meets the requirements of Prop. 1A.

Patterson’s bill would end that fiction. “The Authority has spent bond funds to build an initial operating system that cannot operate without a subsidy,” he said, according to the analysis of the bill prepared for the Legislature. “AB3278 declares the Legislature’s intent to uphold the no-subsidy requirement of Prop. 1A, and declares that the Authority’s current business plan is in violation of this requirement.”

The bullet train as envisioned today looks nothing like the project that voters authorized in 2008, when the cost for the entire project was estimated to be $45 billion. Today it’s projected to cost $80 billion for a “blended” system that relies on conventional rail and bus service.

Rivas and Patterson are on the right track. The Legislature should pass both of these bills and send them to the governor’s desk as soon as possible.