SacBee Columnist Dan Walters wonders if coastal cities have used high-speed rail to sucker voters.
“Last week’s bill,” he writes, “spends heavily on such things as electrifying commuter rail service on the San Francisco Peninsula, a subway in San Francisco, new cars for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and upgrades for Southern California’s Metrolink rail service.
“Those inclusions were aimed, of course, at garnering urban senators’ votes, but they also fuel conjecture among those close to the project that one goal of the bullet train bond issue was to lure voters from throughout the state into spending their money on urban transit services that they would be otherwise unwilling to finance.
“The net result, therefore, may be easier commutes for residents of those areas and almost nothing else.”
I doubt that was the design, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that were the outcome. It would flow logically from that venerable premise of state politics, putting the Valley last.
