High speed rail may be coming to the California. Voters will decide whether to fund $9.95 billion worth of bonds for construction of the high speed rail network between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with eventual service to San Diego and Sacramento.

The California High Speed Rail Authority says the trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles will take about two and a half hours and will cost about $55. That sounds really good, right?

I’m all for high speed rail linking major centers in the state, as long as the system will actually garner enough ridership to be worthwhile and will be designed well. I realize public transit systems never make money, but I think we need to be sure not to build a system that will have few riders and will up losing massive amounts of money just to operate regular service.

I haven’t pored over the plans or predictions yet, so I’ll be interested to see what kind of ridership is projected and whether it’s conceivable that people are going to give up an hour and a half flight for a two and a half hour train trip. I know I would (I mean, if I had to go to SoCal), since the time spent at the airport getting through security and waiting for the plane generally adds a couple hours to a trip anyway. Plus trains have views and you can walk around and socialize. And purchase microwaved veggie-dogs (right?).

Here in San Francisco we’re saddled with a massively expensive and poorly conceived regional transit system, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). When it was designed in the 70s, all the technology was new and untested, and everything was custom designed and built — it’s all proprietary, meaning BART can’t use any off-the-shelf rail gear, making everything they do significantly more expensive than it should be. And then there’s the issue of how effective (ineffective) the BART routes are at actually attracting riders. It’s just a mess and now that it’s here there’s no way to get rid of it.

So yes, high speed rail sounds like a great plan in the abstract. But the devil is in the details, and if we get a system of unproven proprietary rail technology, we could end up with a “BART blunder” on a massive scale. At 9.95 billion, this will be the largest public works project in California history.

Love the idea, nervous about the details…