Local leaders must start pushing to win HSR test track
Local leaders ought to be jumping on this train, and quickly: the California High Speed Rail Authority must soon decide on the placement of a test track, and a Bakersfield stop is among the options being considered. The area that is selected to host the track, the first phase of a statewide system of 220-mph trains that proponents expect to annually carry 117 million passengers by 2030, would see significant and longterm benefits.
We don't know if Bakersfield or Kern County officials are working behind the scenes to convince high speed rail administrators that the southernmost portion of the valley is the right place to begin, but with construction expected to start by 2012, private industry -- including the Kern Economic Development Corp. and building trade organizations -- ought to be out in front on this, lobbying hard.
The 100-mile test track, which will be integrated into the main rail system, will be located near a maintenance facility that will store, repair and maintain the trains. That will mean thousands of jobs, many of them long-term and permanent.
HSR officials were originally looking at four possible corridors for the test track: San Francisco to San Jose (roughly 57 miles, at an estimated cost of $1.28 billion), Los Angeles to Anaheim (26 miles, $2 billion), Merced to Fresno (55 miles, $466 million) and Fresno to Bakersfield (110 miles, $819 million). They have since eliminated the San Francisco and Los Angeles options, and wisely so.
If the deciding factors include simplicity of design, speed of construction and comparative expense, there's no doubt which corridor represents the best deal. Property values in the Bakersfield area are the lowest of the options, suggesting that right-of-way issues will be comparatively minimal, and the route is the straightest and most flat, minimizing at least a few of the engineering challenges. And at $7.5 million per mile, the Bakersfield-to-Fresno leg is the least expensive -- $1 million per mile cheaper than Fresno-to-Merced, the next most affordable route.
The Fresno-to-Bakersfield and Merced-to-Fresno "design/build" corridors would not immediately include full electrification or the GPS-enhanced positive train control feature, but their high level of extended visibility through the valley would have a positive public relations value and less of the hassle factor that might have been an issue in more urbanized areas.
Completing the Fresno-to-Bakersfield leg along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe corridor would be an easily achievable success story sure to inspire widespread buy-in -- not something advocates should dismiss, given the project's daunting dimensions.
Winning this project would also take a small but meaningful bite out of a longstanding problem in the southern valley: brain drain. For years, Kern County has watched its best and brightest go away to college and never come back, due to our chronic lack of advanced-degree jobs. HSR would bring new, non-petroleum engineering job opportunities to Bakersfield.
Federal money to design and build the project is immediately available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Some have suggested that only one of the project's corridors should be submitted to the Federal Rail Administration for funding. Whether or not that the way it's handled, the first corridor ought to link Bakersfield and Fresno. Let's sell the idea.
