The California High Speed Rail Authority will convene tomorrow in Sacramento and could decide on the system’s Bay Area track alignment, but Chairman Quentin Kopp tells the Guardian that they probably won’t be able to make that crucial decision yet. That’s because powerful advocates for the Pacheco Pass alignment and those who favor Altamount Pass are each firmly entrenched in their respective positions and threatening to derail the already difficult project if they don’t get their way.
“People will either come to their senses or there won’t be any high speed rail in California until the next century,” said Kopp, who created the project as a legislator back in the mid-’90s. “If people want to be destructive instead of constructive, people can try to sink this project.”
High speed rail, which would take passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours at far lower financial and environmental costs than traveling by car or air, already faced problems with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has repeatedly delayed a $10 billion bond measure now set for fall of 2008. And now, even its supporters are threatening to jump ship over the Bay Area alignment.