Laying down the tracks for high-speed rail

In 2008, Californians approved a $10 billion bond measure to fund a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The passage of Prop 1A put the Golden State on the fast track to a high-speed future – at least in comparison to the rest of the nation. Still, the development of the rail line is hitting a lot of roadblocks.

KALW's Holly Kernan sat down with transportation reporter Casey Miner to get up to speed on where we are with high-speed rail.

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HOLLY KERNAN: So Casey, let’s get up to date on the most recent developments. Where exactly will this first stretch of rail be built?

CASEY MINER Well, the High-Speed Rail Authority won’t officially select a route until December 2. But the CEO has proposed a route that would start in Madera, which is north of Fresno. It’ll end in Corcoran, which is south of Fresno. So they’re planning to lay about 65 miles of track.

KERNAN: And why put it there instead of in the Bay Area, or down near L.A.?

MINER: Well, there are a few reasons, but the big one is that the federal goverment told California that all of the money it’s given to the project so far has to be spent in the Central Valley. Now, that has its advantages, like letting the train reach its top speed of 220 miles per hour. It’s just harder to do that up here, because there are a lot more people. And, as I mentioned in the story, there’s plenty of political opposition on the Peninsula.

KERNAN: What are they worried about?

MINER: There’s just a lot of uncertainty about what this thing is going to look like, how big it’s going to be, how loud it’s going to be. These are big, fast trains ... much bigger and faster than Caltrain, which is what goes through there now. I talked to one guy in Palo Alto who described the sound the trains make as sort of a screech. We can play some audio of what he’s talking about. This is what a high-speed train in England sounds like.

[Audio of high-speed rail in England]

KERNAN: Okay, so how does that noise compare to what these trains are actuallygoing to sound like?

MINER: Well, we don’t really know. The engineers on the California project told me that there are all kinds of ways to mitigate sound impacts – you can put sound-absorbent pads on the tracks, or put up low sound barriers, things like that. But those kinds of design decisions aren’t going to be made for a while, especially because they’re going to start construction in the Central Valley where sound pollution is less of an issue.

KERNAN: So is it just political opposition that sent the project to the Central Valley?

MINER: No. There’s also a cost consideration. This first segment will be about a quarter of the total track, but it’s only going to cost around $4 billion, which is just a tenth of the projected total cost. There’s also going to be a little bit of money left over to connect the new tracks to freight rail that already exists. So if for some reason the statewide system never actually gets built, this one section will still be usable.

KERNAN: Is there a chance that the whole thing actually won’t get built?

MINER: Probably not, but it is a little bit up in the air right now. California’s funding is pretty secure, but Republicans have signaled that they might try and take it back. There’s actually a group of House Republicans who have said they want to revoke all the unspent stimulus money. They’re actually led by a representative from Redlands, California named Jerry Lewis. Now, obviously, any proposal to reverse the funding would have to make it through the House andthe Senate andpast President Obama, which seems unlikely. But as far as getting new money for the project, well we’re going to have to see how the politics shake out. Since the elections, the new Republican governors from two states have said they don’t want the high-speed rail money, they’re basically trying to kill the projects in their states. They’ve been very forceful about it – here’s some tape from Ohio’s governor-elect John Kasichat his first press conference a few weeks ago:

JOHN KASICH: That train is dead. We are not gonna have it.

So, Kasich and Scott Walker, who just got elected in Wisconsin, both wrote to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood saying they wanted to use the money for roads and bridges. LaHood said no, and that if they don’t want the money for rail, they can’t have it at all. Politicans in California heard that and Governor Schwarzenegger and Senators Feinstein and Boxer all wrote to the transportation secretary saying, “Hey, if those other states don’t want that rail money, we’ll take it.”

KERNAN: So what kind of timeline are we looking at here? The Central Valley section has been targeted as the first leg. When are people actually going to be able to ride this thing?

MINER: Right now it looks like construction on that first segment can probably start next year. But they’re not going to run any trains until they have enough track to make it worth people’s while. Right now they’re planning to get the San Francisco-Los Angeles segment up and running by 2020.

Want to know more? Listen to Casey’s story on the current status and potential future of high-speed rail here.