Panel to Consider Ambitious Plan for Network of High-Speed Trains

WASHINGTON —  An ambitious, long-term plan to develop high-speed train routes linking major Southwest cities--including Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix and Las Vegas--will be considered by a special two-state commission next week.

“We envision an eventual network of trains operating up to 300 (m.p.h.) among the major centers of the Pacific Southwest region,” California Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) told a U.S. Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

Katz, chairman of the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, said the agency was created by the legislatures of the two states “to oversee the privately financed introduction of modern intercity ground transportation.”

Its efforts reflect increasing interest across the country to build such systems after two decades in which the West Germans, French and Japanese have moved ahead in a technology that was introduced by two American scientists in 1971.

Katz appeared before the surface transportation subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The panel was soliciting testimony on the role the federal government should play to encourage construction of high-speed trains through research and development, tax incentives and enforcement of safety standards.

Advocates, including Gilbert E. Carmichael, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, touted the potential of advanced rail technologies to ease overcrowded freeways and airports, reduce pollution and transport riders between congested urban centers.

Besides the proposed California-Nevada system, other high-speed rail projects are in progress in Florida, Ohio and Texas.

Private investors could begin construction in Florida next year of a $600-million, 17-mile West German magnetic levitation rail link between Orlando Airport and Walt Disney World, Carmichael told the subcommittee.

Katz predicted that construction on the California-to-Las Vegas line will begin in 1993 and be completed in 1998.

The $4-billion “gambler’s special” will connect Las Vegas to a Southern California terminus--either Anaheim in Orange County or Sylmar or Mission Hills in the northeast San Fernando Valley. The Valley route would include Palmdale Air Terminal in the Antelope Valley; the Anaheim route could also include separate commuter service through San Bernardino County.

The 16-member commission is expected to announce its decision on a route on Oct. 27. A consultant’s report released last week gave Anaheim a strong advantage based on projected ridership.

At the same session, the commission will be presented with the non-binding proposal to develop additional high-speed lines linking 10 population centers throughout California with Las Vegas, Reno and Phoenix.

The system plan, as well as each leg of the proposed rail lines, would have to be approved by the state legislatures.

“It’s a concept that the bistate commission is considering adopting as its long-range goal,” said commission Executive Director Paul Taylor, who drew up the proposal. “It always helps to know where you’re headed when you start something.”

The commission decided to take the step even though its mandate is limited to attracting a private entity to develop a high-speed train between the Las Vegas area and Southern California, Taylor said.

The commission will be dissolved at the end of 1991 unless the two state legislatures extend it. The long-range plan could take as long as 50 years to implement, Taylor said.

The commission’s adoption of the broader plan might be intended to blunt the dismay of municipalities excluded from the first leg. The long-term plan includes stations in Los Angeles and the Antelope Valley as well as Orange County and the Inland Empire.

The cities of Anaheim, Los Angeles and Palmdale have tried to persuade the commission to locate the terminal in their back yards. The California and Nevada legislatures will have to approve the decision because the train line will be built on the Interstate 15 right-of-way most of the way to Las Vegas.

Taylor said the long-range plan was not an attempt to enhance the credibility of the original train route, which was the brainchild of Las Vegas gambling interests seeking to bring in larger numbers of patrons.

“I doubt that’s what the commission had in mind,” Taylor said. “Actually, the forecast for increased earnings in the two economies is greater for California than for Nevada.”