What is the final word for California High Speed Rail? January 6th, 2008
By Noel T. Braymer
George Skelton of the Capital Journal from Sacramento wrote some rather discouraging things about what is being proposed for the California High Speed Rail Project. This is what he wrote as published in the December 24 issue of the Los Angeles Times.”Turns out, as a Sacramentan, I wouldn’t be allowed to use the train for a very long time. Neither would people in San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Modesto or Stockton. We’d only get to watch from a distance as the bullet became the plaything of people in San Francisco, San Jose, Fresno, Bakersfield, Palmdale, Los Angeles and Anaheim… This happened when the authority approved a Pacheco Pass route from the San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area- a path through rural Los Banos roughly 60 miles south of an alternative Altamont Pass line near fast-growing Tracy. If the bullet line had been extended north to Tracy, it could also have served Modesto and Stockton. And then it might have been feasible to lay another 40 miles of track to the state capital. But the Pacheco Pass route was more direct to San Francisco, less expensive and a detour around enviromental slow-downs.”
