SACRAMENTO — For more than a decade, policymakers have debated, studied and scoped out a high-speed rail line that would whisk travelers between downtown Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2 1/2 hours.
But, this year, the $40-billion dream of building a Japanese- or European-style bullet train through the Central Valley may find itself stopped in its tracks.
Even as state lawmakers visited France earlier this month for a glimpse of a passenger train as it set a world rail speed record of 357 mph, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was applying the brakes to California's plan for a high-speed system.
The governor wants "to quietly kill this -- and not go out and tell the people that high-speed rail isn't in the future," said state Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter). The lawmaker from the southern San Joaquin Valley is counting on the trains to help bring jobs to his district.
Schwarzenegger asked the Legislature in his 2007 budget to slash money for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The governor also wants lawmakers to postpone indefinitely a $9.95-billion rail bond issue that is slated to appear on the November 2008 ballot.
Adam Mendelsohn, a spokesman for the governor, said Schwarzenegger still wanted to build a bullet train -- just not any time soon: "Right now, the voters are crying for relief from congested freeways. That's the immediate priority."
The governor's moves come as the rail authority, which already has cleared its first environmental hurdles, is about to begin some crucial steps, including engineering, right-of-way acquisition and financial planning.
At stake is a 700-mile rail corridor with no potentially dangerous vehicle crossings. It would follow several routes from Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area south through Bakersfield to Los Angeles and San Diego.
Rolling along at up to 220 mph, the electricity-powered train would zip passengers between Los Angeles' Union Station and downtown San Francisco as fast as the fastest plane trip, planners say -- factoring in the time to get to the airport and go through security.
And commuters could speed from Anaheim to downtown L.A. in 20 minutes, instead of today's 45-minute Metrolink journey.
Critics see the high-speed train as a potential boondoggle that would be a drain on the state treasury and a loser that would never pay for itself. Consider, they say, the poor performance of most long-distance U.S. passenger rail service.
