It isn’t the romance of being in a smooth, high-speed train traveling between northern and Southern California. It is about saving the environment and using electric trains.

I love trains. I love to ride old trains and new trains. I own model trains and run them whenever I can set them up and play.

I’ve been in the cab of a steam engine on the Felton and Big Trees Railroad. I’ve also been on the high-speed trains of Spain. I well remember the train trip from Los Angeles to Kansas City, Mo., in 1967 on the Santa Fe Super Chief.

Yes, I love trains – but not enough to support the crazy idea of high-speed rail in California. It isn’t something we need.

Do I think it would be a good ride on that train? Yes. But what will the ticket prices be? Can they get me there in the same amount of time it takes to go from Burbank to San Francisco by plane? We won’t have a station here in the SCV, so it is off to the Valley or up to Palmdale.

Will it ever make the three hours’ time that was advertised? Will it be able to operate without subsidies? The “on time” record of the high-speed trains in Europe and even in Japan is not that good. In Spain, the high-speed system is mainly for tourists and the rich. Most folks just take the slower and a lot less expensive, normal rail system. Seville to Madrid is only 2 hours longer on the old trains and maybe a tenth the cost.

Can the ticket prices on the California High Speed Railway be kept at a level folks can afford? Or will it be like Europe and require a huge infusion of cash from the state every year?

We don’t even know for sure where it is going to run. The route is still mostly unknown. We sure don’t want it through our valley. Does the state really care? I don’t think so.

There is a lot of discussion about the routes, and the “sales force” is out pounding the pavement, trying to sell this pig to the citizens all over again. How much is that costing?

I do know that Acton, Ague Dulce and Sand Canyon could be affected in a negative way – and it isn’t just disturbing some horses and other livestock.

Homes will be bought and people will have to move. The entire distance of the line will disrupt many thousands of people, and when complete, the ridership will be in the hundreds because only the rich will be able to afford a ticket.

If a vote were held today, would we vote once again to have a high-speed rail system? I doubt it.

Of all the comments I got for yesterday’s commentary, there were a couple I almost laughed at. The first was that the new rail system will provide much needed jobs. Cut the state taxes and huge piles of regulations, and jobs will return to our state. Of course, I still laugh that the railway is going to provide a million jobs. As I wrote before, the first transcontinental railroad may have had a total of 20,000 workers over all the years it was building.

The second funniest comment had to do with ridership. To get the levels of ridership necessary to keep the system paying for itself, every citizen of the state would have to ride it twice a year, round trip, to pay for it. I don’t know if that is true, but I’ll bet it is pretty close to accurate.

Like I said, I love trains. I’d really like a more reliable water supply system for our state. Water supply systems are a function of government. Massive railroad systems are not. It is that simple. Let the real railroads build a high-speed system. Of course, if it were a financially viable option, those private companies would already have built them.

We expect the State of Confusion, no, California, to run a railroad at a profit? That must take a special kind of stupid to believe that.

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com and his commentaries are archived at DManzer.com. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].