Faster train needed

Gov. Gray Davis recently signed a bill that will greatly help California's future mobility needs. Assembly Bill 1703 extends the life of the California High Speed Rail Authority for another three years.

The Rail Authority is in charge of drafting a plan to implement a "bullet train" system connecting the state's metropolitan areas. The process is long and complex, and the authority must draft environmental impact reports, select routes, create an operation plan and build public support for a high-speed rail system.

Imagine traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco in four and half-hours with service similar to France's, Germany's and Japan's rail systems. The trains would also serve the Sacramento Delta, the Bay Area, the Central Valley and San Diego. The Rail Authority imagines the cost of a ticket to be more than the cost of driving but cheaper than flying.

The cost to Californians for high-speed rail: at least $20 billion. Since so much money is riding on the plan, the Rail Authority needs all the time it could get to develop a fiscally and politically sound blueprint for service.

California should get high-speed train service. As the state's population will grow to 40 million and up in the next few decades, infrastructure expansion is necessary. California should take a progressive step and offer people high-speed rail as a viable travel alternative.

Conventional high-speed rail technology is nothing new. The French, German and Japanese systems have been around for years, carrying millions of passengers safely. While California cannot directly import the locomotives and passenger cars from abroad, the trains' manufacturers would set up business in America, providing work for engineers, builders and maintenance crews.

This is just one small benefit to the economy. Increased tourism, private investment and commercial development in cities served by rail will be the most visible impacts.

An additional three years is a reasonable amount of time to accomplish what the authority could not do in the past few years, mainly because high-speed rail merely seemed a fantasy.