Legislature approves high-speed rail spending - SFGate

Legislature approves high-speed rail spending - SFGate

 "A divided state Senate approved billions of dollars in funding to start construction on California's ambitious high speed rail line Friday, handing the controversial project $7.9 billion in state and federal money for the first 130-miles of track and a series of local transit upgrades. "

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/06/all-aboard-for-bakersfield-california-pours-7-9-billion-into-bullet-train-bottomless-pit/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

I won't dwell on the nitty-bitty details but i do want to comment on the first phase of construction- building a 130-mile hi-speed rail line from Bakersfield to Madera. This basically follows the old Highway route 99, which i have traveled numerous times from Bakersfield to as far as Fresno. The route goes thru largely empty central valley farming country with occasional tiny farming communities like Pixley, MacFarland, Earlimont, Goshen, Kingsburg, Tipton, Malaga: some of these agri-map dots consist of just a few agricultural outbuildings, single rest/gas stop, and farm equipment/warehouse/tractor lots. The only communities of considerable size along route 99 are Bakersfield, Delano, Tulare, Visalia and Fresno(combined population approximately 2.5 million). Entire population of the San Joaquin Valley, which this railroad would serve, is approximately four million. The road vehicle traffic along the 99 route is primarily farm trucks, construction trades pickups, straw/hog/chicken haulers, gov utility trucks, with occasional 18-wheelers( Most big-rigs use the faster, more kept-up interstate 5 further west).

In 20-30 trips along the 99 I have never seen much passenger movement. Even in height of summer travel season(June thru August) the weekday passenger volume is fairly light. I have seen some traffic jams out of Bakersfield for a brief couple hrs but otherwise this route 99 is fairly open and lightly traveled, at least on weekdays in summer, when i have observed it. From this observation i can deduce that bullet train travel along the entire route will be extremely under-utilized on weekdays for entire year, and may only see a bit of ridership increase for only three summer holidays.

There is virtually no passenger metro buses plying this route, at least from my observing travel volume along route 99 as i traversed the wide open, empty, baking-hot farmland spaces of the South Central Valley nearly every summer for 30 years on my way to Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park. If U have ever been to Fresno or Bakersfield it is easy to see why. There is not much worth seeing in either city-neither is what one would call a tourist magnet. Sorry if i am offending Fresno and Bakersfield but i am well-traveled all over CA and am equally harsh on my home region of LA and not much enamored of the Inland Empire.

The 99 route traffic volume is a fair indication of the ridership volume expected when this bullet train is completed. It will be a flat-out failure as far as passenger volume unless CA is planning to sell property and land for pennies and thereby cause a massive Oklahoma-type land rush to fill up all those empty agri-field spaces. Yeah, folks will be grabbing at the bit to move en mass into the frypan-hot, dusty agricultural Central Valley, which features 1930's-era depression-level agri-communities racked by 20-30% level UE.


Very foolish for CA to do initial rail construction along this route. Entire population of the Southern Central Valley( or San Joaquin Valley) is around four million. The two main cities being connected, Bakersfield and Fresno, have combined populations in their MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Areas)of around two million. For comparison the Los Angeles/Orange County/Inland Empire combined MSA has nearly 20 million and the San Diego MSA is 3 million. Or the Las Vegas MSA is over 2 million. Of course it is far easier to bulldoze a High-speed rail route thru flat mostly open agricultural fields with little environmental opposition than putting up an LA to San Diego coastal route, whch would be the most expensive colossel construction project in US history, and would be tied up in infinity by those pesky CA environmentalists