The California High-Speed Rail Authority is the state body responsible for planning and building high-speed rail in California. Its legislative origins, the promises made to voters in Proposition 1A, and the political conflicts that reshaped its first phase were recounted by Judge Quentin Kopp, the Authority’s principal sponsor, in two appearances on The Bob Zadek Show.
Legislative origins (1992–1996)
Kopp traced the Authority’s beginnings to 1992, when, as a member of the California State Senate, he introduced legislation to create the California High-Speed Rail Commission. He said he had first experienced high-speed rail in France, traveling from Lyon to Paris in 1984 or 1985, and was impressed by a system that had begun in Japan in 1964 in preparation for the Tokyo Olympic Games. That bill passed both the Senate and the Assembly but was vetoed by Governor Pete Wilson on the theory that California had enough governmental agencies Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018).
In 1994, Kopp introduced a bill to establish a committee to evaluate the desirability and feasibility of high-speed rail in California. That bill was signed because the governor appointed all the committee’s members. The committee reported to the legislature and governor about a year and a half later, concluding that high-speed rail was both desirable and feasible. In 1996, Kopp introduced a bill establishing the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which passed both houses and was signed by the governor. The legislation allowed the governor to appoint five of the nine members, with the State Senate appointing two and the Assembly two.
Kopp described the committee’s work as a bona fide study of intellectual integrity, not political cover. He became a Superior Court judge in San Mateo County on January 1, 1999, and was not a participant in the study itself, but said that when it was completed, nobody criticized it from an intellectual standpoint or from the genuineness and honesty of its conclusions.
Proposition 1A and its promises
After the commission was renamed an authority, it appointed an executive director and operated with a small staff of about five people. It recommended initial financing and an approximate estimated cost for a system in two segments: first San Francisco to Los Angeles, then to Anaheim in Orange County, about 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles; and a second section extending from Los Angeles to San Diego on the south and from Merced in the Central Valley to Sacramento in the north.
A state senator initiated a general obligation bond issue. In California, a general obligation bond must be approved by voters, and a bond is the borrowing of money. The bond totaled $9 billion 950 million and was originally supposed to appear on the November 2004 ballot. A state bond requires only majority approval, while local bonds require two-thirds approval. It was postponed to 2006 because the 2004 ballot included a recall of the incumbent governor and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2006, Schwarzenegger asked the legislature to postpone it to 2008 because he had a general obligation bond on a different subject he wanted to present to voters. It appeared on the November 2008 ballot and was approved 52% to 48%, providing seed money for the Authority to begin implementing the first part of the plan, San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Kopp said the ballot proposition differed from any other bond measure he could recall because it contained many specific provisions designed to protect taxpayers and implement the promised system. It included mandatory speeds, such as San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes and Fresno to San Jose in 65 minutes. It also prevented commencement of construction of any segment unless all the money needed to complete it was guaranteed.
Kopp identified two essential principles of high-speed rail. First, it is an electrified system, not diesel; operationally, speeds reach up to 220 miles per hour in Japan, Germany, France, Spain, South Korea, and China. Second, it must have track dedicated only to high-speed rail, not shared with commuter or freight rail. He said the ballot measure also prohibited using taxpayer money or subsidies for operating costs, a serious promise to voters given that almost every transit system in California—rail, bus, or ferry—requires taxpayer subsidy. The exceptions he named were the rail system from San Diego to San Ysidro on the Mexican border and the BART system to San Francisco International Airport.
Route selection and political interference
Kopp described the route of the first phase as chosen to go south from San Francisco to San Jose, then over the San Luis Pass to Merced in the Central Valley, then down Merced following Highway 99 as closely as possible into Fresno, from Fresno to Bakersfield, and from Bakersfield to the Los Angeles Basin through Palmdale, the site of Los Angeles County’s second airport after LAX, then to downtown Los Angeles with a stop at Burbank Airport, also known as Bob Hope Airport. He said this route was destined to produce enough money from riders to cover expenses. Asked why the route did not follow Interstate 5, he said there are no cities on Interstate 5, whereas Fresno had a population of over 500,000 and ridership could accumulate from Merced to Fresno to Bakersfield, an active area in Kern County.
Kopp said the plan went wrong because of expensive communities on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County and Santa Clara County, among them Atherton, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park. He said residents of these communities did not want to be disturbed and got their politicians to prevent the taking of any more right-of-way to create a separate right-of-way for high-speed rail. He noted that a commuter system called Caltrain, operated by Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San Francisco counties, runs from San Francisco to San Jose and has been increasing in ridership, though it remains subsidized to about 50% of its cost by taxpayers.
Kopp named three officials he said sponsored legislation and took every action they could to ensure the Authority had no legal ability to buy land for its own right-of-way: a member of Congress, Anna Eshoo, from Atherton, though Kopp said he thought she now lives in Palo Alto; Joe Simitian, a then-state senator who Kopp said was now on the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors; and Richard Gordon, a then-assemblyman from Redwood City in San Mateo County. Kopp said about 50 feet is needed for a right-of-way and remarked, “And God forbid that you interfere with some rich people’s houses in Menlo Park.”
Private investment and government risk
Bob Zadek asked why the private sector did not undertake the project without the bond measure, given that it was expected to make money and was found feasible. Kopp said that based on his three years as a member of the Authority governing board, the custom and practice in the roughly 12 systems worldwide—even to an extent in China—is that private investors will not commit money until a system is at least 50% built, and sometimes not until 60% or 75% is built. The financing plan contemplated the $9 billion bond issue as the foundation, with federal funds, regional funds, and finally private investment of perhaps 25% or a little more or less.
Kopp said that in the Congress in the 1980s, legislation had been passed by both houses—authored by Lynn Schenk of San Diego, who he said was still a member of the California High-Speed Rail Authority Board of Directors—laying out seven different high-speed rail routes in the United States, including California, Texas, Florida, Illinois (Chicago to St. Louis), and the East Coast Amtrak line from Washington, D.C. to Boston. He said this indicated Congress would appropriate money for high-speed rail, and eventually it did in 2009 as part of the stimulus bill after Obama became president.
Zadek characterized Kopp’s explanation as showing that private enterprise wanted government to make the riskiest initial expenditure, since risk declines as the project gets built. Kopp agreed, saying most of the risk had been shouldered by taxpayers who are borrowing money to do it.
Across episodes
The topic appears in two episodes. In the 2018 episode, Kopp, introduced as a former member of the California State Senate and a Superior Court judge, gave a detailed legislative history of the Authority and Proposition 1A and described the political interference that altered the first phase’s route. In the 2020 episode, host Bob Zadek reintroduced Kopp as the principal sponsor of the California High-Speed Rail Authority and said the two had previously discussed the project not as a proponent but as what had happened to it; the 2020 excerpt breaks off before Kopp answers Zadek’s request to revisit the vision and what happened. The excerpts show no development between the two treatments beyond Zadek’s framing of the earlier discussion.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the Authority’s current legal status, its present board composition, or any budget figures beyond the $9.95 billion bond and the estimated private share. They do not describe the outcome of any litigation over right-of-way or the specific text of any bill beyond what Kopp recounts. The 2020 excerpt ends mid-exchange, before Kopp responds to Zadek’s question about the original vision. No source in the excerpts states the current status of construction or the project’s total cost.