A statewide bullet train that could stop in Morgan Hill, Gilroy
or bypass both and tunnel under Henry Coe State Park could derail
in the planning stages unless the California High-Speed Rail
Authority gets more money soon.
A statewide bullet train that could stop in Morgan Hill, Gilroy or bypass both and tunnel under Henry Coe State Park could derail in the planning stages unless the California High-Speed Rail Authority gets more money soon.
California’s high-speed train project is running short of cash and staff may not have the resources to keep its office manned or complete an environmental study, its executive director said.
“We are just this much short of basically closing the door,” Mehdi Morshed told board members of the California High-Speed Rail Authority meeting in Sacramento.
The electrically powered bullet trains would cost an estimated $30 billion to establish and could get riders from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two-and-a-half hours, reaching speeds of 220 mph.
Meanwhile, a state Senate committee voted to postpone putting the measure on the ballot for nearly $10 billion in bonds that would help pay for the first leg of the rail project. Environmental groups had urged the board to include the Interstate 580 corridor – instead of the south Santa Clara Valley – as a possible route for the speedy trains.
The bullet train has the potential to remake the South Valley. Part of the project’s intention is to cluster development along its corridor instead of sprawling into open space.
Neither the Gilroy or Morgan Hill governments have taken an official position on the bullet train.
But, Gilroy Mayor Al Pinheiro expressed disappointment that the bullet train might not happen.
“It would be nice to be open to the future and see if that could be a possibility,” he said.
City Administrator Jay Baksa said Gilroy’s council discussed the matter briefly at a recent retreat but have not done so in a full session since Tom Springer stepped down as mayor last year. Springer himself opposed the rail plan, but the City Council never took a position.
Morgan Hill Community Development Director David Bischoff said his city’s staff wants to respond to the EIR, but he did not know what view they would take.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage supports the high-speed train, which might stop in his hometown of Gilroy, but he has not submitted a comment on the draft EIR. Gage chairs the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.
“I have discussed it with some of the legislators because I would like to see it come though the Pacheco Pass route,” Gage said.
A Pacheco train would give another option to commuters who drive the pass every day from relatively cheap homes in Los Banos to jobs in San Jose, Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
Nevertheless, Gage and his staff aren’t optimistic that voters would approve a $10 billion bullet-train bond.
“Realistically, it’s a long shot,” said Edwin Chan, Gage’s transportation aide.
The EIR claims that high-speed rail will be the cheapest, cleanest, most energy efficient, safest and most reliable way for Californians to move between cities by the year 2020, when the population is expected to rise by 31 percent. By then, the report predicts, current roads and airways will be too crowded to accommodate transportation.
Expanding highways and airports to meet these demands would increase sprawl and air pollution and would ultimately be two to three times more expensive than the proposed 710-mile rail network, the report claims.
Morshed said work on a draft environmental impact report on the 700-mile project cost about $750,000 more than anticipated and that the Department of Finance denied the authority’s request for a budget augmentation.
He also said budget cuts will leave the authority with only two full-time staffers, forcing it to close its Sacramento office at times and leaving it strapped to oversee consultants and respond to requests from the public for information.
The Schwarzenegger administration has proposed $1.1 million to fund the authority in the fiscal year that starts July 1, but Morshed said he couldn’t guarantee the authority would be able to complete the environmental review on time.
Lawmakers are facing an overall budget gap of $17 billion as they struggle with how to finance state programs in the 2004-05 fiscal year.
Morshed said has asked the projects’ consultants to slow down and “perhaps stop some of their work so we can save some money in case we need it for finishing the environmental document.”
As he spoke, the Senate Transportation Committee voted 7-0 to approve a bill by its chairman, Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Culver City, that would delay by a year a vote on a $9.95 billion bond measure.
Most of the money would be used to help pay for the first leg of the high-speed rail project, from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
Murray said he supported the project, but that voters’ approval of more than $27 billion in bonds at the March 2 election made it doubtful they would turn around and also approve the sale of the rail bonds this November.
The vote sent the measure to the Appropriations Committee, the last stop before the Senate floor.
Earlier, Assembly members Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Wilma Chan, D-Alameda, and several environmental groups urged the rail authority to consider the I-580 corridor through the Altamont Pass as a possible route for the trains between the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Valley.
Steinberg said the Altamont route would cut the travel time between Sacramento and the Bay Area, serve a bigger population, possibly have less of an environmental impact than the routes to the south and could save as much as $2 billion under consideration by the authority.
But Morshed said the authority had dropped the Altamont route because it would mean less service for San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland than if the trains came from the south through the Pacheco Pass or one of two other alternatives: through Coe Park or just north of it.
