I was kinda, sorta thinkin’ about seeing more of our great State of California, but any trip I was planning lacked focus. I’m retired, so vacation is an everyday thing. Funny thing is, I also was reading a few of my commentaries from the recent past, and I came up with two reasons to take this trip.

First reason: Follow trash trucks leaving the Chiquita Canyon Landfill and see how many miles they are from home. The problem with this idea is that there are hundreds of trucks, some from a couple of hundred miles away. Which one do I follow?

Second reason: Trace the proposed route or routes of the California high-speed rail system and look at each and every proposed location of the stations, tunnels and grade crossings. Also ascertain what cities, towns and communities will be most affected along the proposed route.

I think I can give the second choice a good look. Only my problem is, I might not be able to find the intended route or routes. I’m not the only one who doesn’t know where the train is running. The folks planning it are just as much in the dark.

So it looks like I’m in for a long and maybe exasperating journey. First I’ve got to guess the same way the folks planning the thing are guessing. I’ll do my best to think like them. I’ll just shut down half my brain.

If the builders of the great railroads, bridges and ships had planned like the folks working on the California high-speed rail system, we would still be using sailing ships and moving in covered wagons. I guess I could look on the bright side and be happy there wouldn’t be a 405 Freeway.

In the years since the public swallowed the high-speed rail pills and voted to fund it, there has been only one group of folks who have done anything to build the system. Those folks are the lawyers. All of them are making a profit from it. They might be the only folks who will ever see a profit from high-speed rail in California.

I got a lot of comments about how well the various high-speed trains work in Japan and France and many other places. Most of the places named also have an income tax rate far above what we have. In the U.K., there is the dreaded value added tax or VAT. It pays for all kinds of extra goodies. With a VAT, gasoline is $8 a gallon. No wonder folks there take the train. Maybe they wouldn’t have a VAT on gasoline if they drove on the same side of the road as other civilized countries do.

So I’ll fire up the RV and have the Jeep hitched to the back. I’ll not start in L.A., since we all know the route is near where the Golden State Freeway runs. (The I-5 for you new folks.) Since we know what it will do to Sand Canyon, Acton and Agua Dulce, I’ll go on over Vincent Hill and on to Palmdale.

I’ll continue up the 14 all the way to the 58 and look to see the proposed alignment to the Central Valley. How are they going to avoid the need for a loop in the tracks like the slow-speed trains use at Tehachapi? That is a historic engineering marvel right here in California.

Signage in Agua Dulce.

Unlike the proposed railway, I won’t be able to bypass Bakersfield, Modesto, Stockton or Sacramento at a high rate of speed. That is one of the best selling points of the system, in that you can speed by those places quickly. I don’t feel bad about that.

Now I know we voted to fund a train that would take us from Los Angeles to San Francisco in three hours. It might be able to do that, but since those here in the SCV who want to ride the darned thing will have to go to Palmdale, or I think Burbank, to get aboard, you can add another hour or more to the timetable at each end.

What is the price of the ticket? I know what the sales job said. “Less than and airplane ticket” and “Less expensive than driving a car.” Will it be? We’re hearing nothing about that price now.

I said so in my first article about this governmental boondoggle. It still remains true. Here it is again: Every single high-speed train system in the world is subsidized in some manner. Every one.

Without private money, it will be subsidized by us, the taxpayers, from the first time a rail is laid on the ties until the last train makes the last stop in the future.

That’s a fact.

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].