Bullet Train

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law. The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included -- the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

Re "The non-races for supervisor," Editorial, May 13 Thank you for the editorial noting that "there is something very wrong with the relationship between the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the voters who elect them. " The larger issue, stated but not elaborated on in the editorial, is the lack of checks and balances in the country. The basic structure of county government is that the Board of Supervisors is both the legislature and the executive. These two responsibilities must be separated.

The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight. At a state Senate hearing, Chairman Dan Richard also said the agency plans to spend the entire $6 billion of initial construction money within a 2017 deadline set by the federal government.

Re "Mitt Romney: The early years," Opinion, May 13 Michael Kinsley asks if Mitt Romney's reported high school antic almost 50 years ago of forcibly cutting off another student's hair should affect our assessment of him as a potential president. If Romney had told us that yes, he did it, that he should not have done it and that he was sorry, the case would have been closed. But Romney told us that he doesn't remember the incident. The things I did in high school still come vividly to mind after more than 60 years.

California's bullet train will cost an estimated $98.5 billion to build over the next 22 years, a price nearly double any previous projection and one likely to trigger political sticker shock, according to a business plan scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday. In a key change, the state has decided to stretch out the construction schedule by 13 years, completing the Southern California-to-Bay Area high speed rail in 2033 rather than 2020. The delay allows inflation to drive up the price over the additional years of construction.

So, the California High-Speed Rail Authority was wrong. The bullet trains from Anaheim and Los Angeles to San Francisco will not cost $34 billion as originally estimated, or $43 billion as the authority insisted just two years ago, but closer to $100 billion. Critics say the agency's new $98.5-billion estimate is low, and the authority admits it might go as high as $117.6 billion, but for sake of argument call the cost $100 billion. The authority is offering us less for more.

In a surprising and controversial move, California bullet train planners on Thursday revived a long-discarded route option following Interstate 5 over the Grapevine that could save billions of dollars and eliminate a sweeping dogleg through Los Angeles County's high desert towns. The sudden reversal comes after years of planning focused on a circuitous path south of Bakersfield crossing the Tehachapi Mountains to serve Palmdale and Lancaster. Reopening what had been a settled issue highlights a critical tension in one of the nation's costliest transportation projects: As officials rush to start building, they still have not resolved an array of political, financing and engineering challenges.

The bullet trains that would someday streak through California at 220 mph are, in the vision of their most ardent supporters, more than just a transportation system. They are also a means to alter the state's social, residential and economic fabric. But those broader ambitions are triggering an increasingly strident ideological backlash to the massive project. The fast trains connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco would create new communities of high-density apartments and small homes around stations, reducing the suburbanization of California, rail advocates say. That new lifestyle would mean fewer cars and less gasoline consumption, lowering California's contribution to global warming.

The "cash for clunkers" program is over, so if you weren't in the market for a car during its summer run, tough luck. But for Californians, all is not lost. Thanks to the foresight of voters, we're poised to receive a big portion of federal transportation dollars being doled out under another stimulus program, this one for bullet trains. Last November, voters passed a bond measure(2008) approving $9.95 billion to fund a high-speed train line from San Diego to Sacramento. They couldn't have known it then, but the timing was fortuitous.

It's easy to see why many Californians are losing patience with the bullet train. Voters who were asked in 2008 to approve $9.95 billion in bonds to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco were told the project would cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020, yet a more realistic business plan released Tuesday by the rail authority placed the price tag at — whoops — $98 billion and the completion date at 2033....

Re "Rail requires high-speed spending," May 14 Your article on the feasibility of mounting a construction effort that could put $3.5 million of work in place each day was unduly negative. I worked on the Alameda Corridor and on the Utah I-15 programs, which showed the feasibility of delivering large civil works projects on an aggressive schedule. While they did not reach the peak volume planned for California's rail project, we have seen this volume in L.A. during the peak years of rail construction in the early 1990s.

Re "Setbacks seen for autistic young adults," May 14 As the parent of a young man withAsperger's syndrome, the statistics on post-secondary employment for autistic students are not surprising. My son has a genius IQ and recently earned his bachelor's degree. He has submitted hundreds of resumes but can't land a menial job. Perhaps he is not assertive enough in an interview or has difficulty with eye contact, but this doesn't reflect his ability to troubleshoot a computer or his social networking skills.

Re "Panel OKs Coliseum lease deal," May 15 L.A. City Councilman Bernard C. Parks complains that the public has spent money on Coliseum upkeep since 1923, implying that turning it over to USC gets these government agencies no return. UCLA shared the Coliseum's occupancy for much of those 89 years. In 1982, the commission essentially contracted away all important management and scheduling issues to the brand-new Los Angeles Raiders. We had played with pro teams before, but the commission gave the Raiders the last word on all important issues.

The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight. At a state Senate hearing, Chairman Dan Richard also said the agency plans to spend the entire $6 billion of initial construction money within a 2017 deadline set by the federal government.

Eight years ago, Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda explored childhood and family in the acclaimed drama "Nobody Knows," about a 12-year-old boy who must take care of his siblings when their mother runs off with a new boyfriend. Kore-eda returns to a similar theme but in a lighter, whimsical vein in "I Wish," which opened Friday. The leisurely paced comedy stars real-life brothers Koki and Ohshiro Maeda as siblings who live hundreds of miles apart from each other on the island of Kyushu after their parents break up. The elder brother, Koichi (13-year-old Koki)

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law. The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included -- the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

Gov. Jerry Brown was right on track when he told reporters at his budget unveiling that "We've got to bite the bullet. " It was the perfect choice of a word. But, of course, Brown didn't mean "bullet" the way I wanted him to. Brown was talking about sucking it up and again butchering programs for welfare families and the aged, blind and disabled. And if voters refuse to pass his tax increases in November, he'll try to whack education from kindergarten through graduate school while crippling courts and even eliminating lifeguards at beaches.

California's proposed bullet train took another shot this week when an independent review panel issued a report concluding that the project wasn't financially viable. This followed negative reviews from the state auditor, the inspector general, the legislative analyst and the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies. It's hard to argue with such a distinguished group of experts, whose logic is unassailable. No source of funding has been identified for the project beyond the initial segment in Central California, they pointed out. Moreover, the location of that segment poses grave risks; if it were built near Los Angeles or San Francisco, it would still have major public benefits even if no more money could be found to extend it, but a spur from Fresno to Bakersfield alone would be a costly train to nowhere.

The Obama administration threatened California on Thursday with rescinding $3.3 billion in federal grants to start construction of a bullet train if the Legislature does not act by June to appropriate the state's share of funding. In a series of meetings with key lawmakers in Sacramento, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that the recent proposal by state Senate leaders to delay a $2.7-billion decision on the high-speed rail project until August is not acceptable. "We need the Legislature to make the strongest commitment possible," LaHood said in an interview.

State bullet train officials Thursday approved the environmental impact studies for an initial section of high-speed track to be built from Merced to Fresno, a decision that sets the stage for possible legal challenges from powerful Central Valley farming interests. Certification of the final state and federal environmental reports is a critical step before the California High-Speed Rail Authority can begin to secure government permits and award construction contracts for the first phase of the $68-billion project that would link Los Angeles and San Francisco with 200 mph trains.