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While Sonoma County voters will be mulling over SMART, there's a statewide railroad measure on the Nov. 4 ballot - which would fund a high-speed rail line between Southern California and the San Francisco and Sacramento areas.

Proposition 1A is seeking $9.95 billion in bonds to plan and partially fund the high-speed passenger rail line. According to the ballot summary, the high-speed train would offer Californians a safe, convenient, affordable and reliable alternative to driving and high gas prices. It would provide good-paying jobs and improve the state's economy while reducing air pollution, global warming greenhouse gases and dependence on foreign oil.

It would link Southern California to the San Francisco Bay Area and to Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley. The cost to the state is an estimated $194 billion assuming a 30-year payback, and payments would average $647 million a year.

When constructed, maintenance and operations costs are estimated at about $1 billion a year.

The measure needs a two-thirds majority to pass. The proponents for the bond, Californians For High Speed Trains - Yes on Proposition 1A, claim that the state's transportation system is broken with skyrocketing gas prices, gridlocked freeways and airports.

High-speed trains are the new transportation option that reduces greenhouse gases and dependence on foreign oil. High-speed trains are cheaper than building new highways and airports  to meet population growth and require no new taxes.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is against the measure.

The Jarvis group claims that Proposition 1A is a huge boondoggle and that taxpayers will have to pay $640 million a year in costs for a government-run railroad. And they said there's no guarantee it would ever be built.

The Jarvis group suggests expanding existing transportation systems instead to cut commutes and save fuel.

According to the analysis by the legislative analyst, the state doesn't have a high-speed intercity passenger train system that provides service at sustained speeds of 200 miles an hour or more. In 1996, the state created the California High-Speed Rail Authority to develop a system to operate at speeds in excess of 200 miles an hour connecting major metropolitan areas of the state and providing service between Northern and Southern California.

The first phase of the project would be to build a corridor from the San Francisco Transbay Terminal to Los Angeles Union Station. And after that, bonds could be used on other corridors including Sacramento to Stockton to Fresno; San Francisco to San Jose to Fresno; Oakland to San Jose; Fresno to Bakersfield to Palmdale to Los Angeles; Los Angeles to Riverside to San Diego; Los Angeles to Anaheim to Irvine; and Merced to Stockton to Oakland and San Francisco via the Altamont Corridor.

In 2006, the authority estimated the entire cost to be about $45 billion and plans to fund it with a combination of federal, private, state and local monies, although no funding has yet been provided.

 

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