Dan Walters: Does California really need a bullet train?

Zipping through California on a 220-mph bullet train – in just 2 1/2 hours from Los Angeles to San Francisco, it's being said – is certainly a romantic concept.

They do it in Europe and in Japan, bullet train devotees say, so why not do it in California and relieve highway and airport congestion?

California voters may get a chance to answer the question in November. An often-postponed $10 billion bond issue to provide initial financing for the system that would link the state's northern and southern regions through the San Joaquin Valley is finally likely to make the ballot.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has praised the bullet train idea but balked at some financial details, appears ready to offer voters a revised version that would include public-private partnership financing, The Bee reported recently.

The notion is that the state bonds, which would have to be repaid from a general fund already seeing multibillion-dollar deficits, would trigger a like amount of federal funds, but that $20 billion or so would still be less than half of the current price tag of $42 billion.

Financing the remainder – through private funds, a special sales tax or some combination thereof – has been one of the hang-ups.

It's unlikely, however, that a complete plan, including the additional financing, will be available before voters are asked to pass judgment in November. And that's troublesome, because even the most ardent advocates have yet to present a persuasive, fact-grounded rationale for spending so much borrowed money on an entirely new transportation system.

The most romantic bullet train vision is the lightning-fast trip from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco. But how many people really want to make that trip each day, and would it represent a marked improvement over the very frequent air travel now available?

The High-Speed Rail Commission's environmental impact reports contain some underlying air travel projections that are very difficult to swallow. It would have us believe that air travel demand between Northern and Southern California would nearly double between 2000 and 2010.

That flies in the face of actual airport traffic figures and seems to conflict with another commission projection that in the absence of building the bullet train, air travel times would increase only fractionally between 2000 and 2020.

The projections are important because assumptions about bullet train passenger business are based, in part, on the notion that airlines can't handle the demand. And those airlines, Southwest particularly, would almost certainly oppose publicly subsidized competition.

How about auto travel? The commission projects that driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco, seven hours in 1999, would take eight hours by 2020. But as anyone who makes long-distance drives through the state knows, Interstate 5 is very lightly used now, at least outside urban areas.

California's traffic congestion is an urban condition, and the most likely patrons of high-speed rail wouldn't be long-distance travelers but commuters – a poor use of expensive, sophisticated technology.

That explains why the most ardent support for bullet train service is to be found in the Central Valley, which is poorly served by airlines and whose main artery, Highway 99, is highly congested with auto and truck traffic.

Bullet trains would make commuting to and from places like Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield easier. But wouldn't that merely encourage the sort of sprawl that we are supposed to be discouraging?

California certainly needs to upgrade its long-neglected, deteriorating highway system and probably expand commuter transit service. But bullet trains may be a romantic solution in search of a problem.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.