High-speed rail may bring prosperity to San Joaquin Valley

The San Joaquin Valley may have more at stake than the rest of California when voters decide Nov. 4 whether to build a statewide high-speed rail system.

Major Valley cities from Modesto to Bakersfield were bypassed a generation ago when the state built its main north-south highway, Interstate 5. But the rail system would have stations in most of those cities.

Construction on the system also would begin in the Valley with a segment of about 160 miles from Merced to Bakersfield. It would be used for testing the 220 mph trains and getting them certified for their first use in the United States.

An Oct. 1 consultant's report for the California High Speed Rail Authority predicted that the trains could help lift the Valley from its long economic malaise and produce billions of dollars worth of new business. A July poll suggested that voters are ready to endorse high-speed rail by a margin comfortably larger than the required majority.

But Proposition 1A provides only $9 billion for a system estimated to cost $33 billion for the first phase alone, which will run from San Francisco to Southern California. It also includes $950 million for local transit connections to the high-speed tracks.

The rest, the authority says, is expected to come from the federal government and private investors such as pension funds. None of that money is nailed down yet.

A small but vocal group of critics, led by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, is skeptical that the additional money ever will be found. The opponents also claim that the project is certain to suffer from cost overruns, is unlikely to carry as many riders as the authority projects, and may not even collect enough fares to cover its operating expenses.

Only one political committee has filed campaign finance reports to date on Prop. 1A, and it supports passage. On Monday, Californians for High Speed Trains reported having raised $549,234 -- a small sum for a statewide campaign. Of that, $200,000 came from the California Alliance for Jobs, a coalition of heavy construction contractors and unions. Much of the rest was from engineering and high-tech companies.

Current plans call for the high-speed system -- modeled after those already operating in Europe, Japan and China -- to start carrying passengers a decade from now.

Its first line would run from Anaheim and Los Angeles to San Francisco via Palmdale, Bakersfield, Fresno, Merced and San Jose. That puts the Valley at the heart of the system. And unlike Interstate 5, the high-speed tracks would run directly through the region's cities, instead of dozens of miles west of them.

(E-mail Russell Clemings at rclemings(at)fresnobee.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)