Proponents of a high-speed train to link California’s major
cities and compete with airlines for customers have set their
sights on South County.
Proponents of a high-speed train to link California’s major cities and compete with airlines for customers have set their sights on South County.
The proposed bullet train would need approval from the California legislature, plus voter approval for the state to issue $9 billion in bonds to help pay for it. It is also heavily dependent on a possible federal bond measure that the U.S. House’s Transportation Committee recently approved. That bond still needs approval by the full U.S. Congress and a presidential signature.
The California High Speed Rail Authority has listed two possible South County routes for the still-on-the-drawing-board bullet train: south along Monterey Highway through Morgan Hill and then east into Henry W. Coe State Park, or it could instead continue to Gilroy and then head east to climb Pacheco Pass. South County would serve to link the Bay Area and the Central Valley.
The idea to send the 200-mph, $25-billion bullet train speeding through the state’s second-largest park has environmentalists, understandably, up in arms.
“… To have a 200 miles per hour train coming through a protected state park is irresponsible and ridiculous,” Dennis Pinion, director of Advocates for Coe Park, told reporter Zeb Carabello. “… You can’t estimate what you would lose in the park because it can’t be replaced.”
He’s right.
The Pacheco Pass alternative would likely cost more to accomplish, due largely to the multiple land owners with whom the railroad authority would have to negotiate, but when compared to the priceless, pristine wilderness a bullet train would threaten in Coe Park, it’s a no-brainer.
Unlike Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer, who has already pooh-poohed the bullet train idea (he’d prefer to spend the $25 billion on more freeways), we’re not ready to just dismiss the entire concept of a high-speed railway connecting San Diego, Los Angeles, the Central Valley, the Bay Area and Sacramento.
But, if the funding and voter gods smile on the bullet train, allowing it to become a reality, it shouldn’t make tracks through Coe Park.
