미국 캘리포니아 고속철도 진통 끝에 대망의 착공 Groundbreaking at Fresno for California high-speed rail(VIDEO)
내일 기공식
향후 진로 `험로' 예고,
재정·기술·정치적 리스크
2028년 말까지 공사완료
2029년 개통
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미국 캘리포니아 주 로스앤젤레스(LA)에서 샌프란시스코까지 총 800마일(1천287㎞)에 이르는 구간을 2시간40분 만에 주파하는 고속철도 건설 프로젝트에 본격적으로 시동이 걸렸다.
이 프로젝트는 6일(현지시간) 캘리포니아 중부 프레즈노에서 기공식을 시작으로 2028년 말까지 공사에 들어가며 오는 2029년 운행을 목표로 하고 있다고 현지 언론들이 5일 보도했다.
우선 사업구간으로 캘리포니아 중부 센트럴 밸리를 관통하는 프레즈노∼베이커스필드 간 130마일(209.2㎞) 구간을 2017년까지 완공할 계획이다.
이 고속철도 건설 프로젝트에 소요되는 사업비는 무려 680억 달러(약 75조5천억 원)에 달한다. 연방 정부와 주 정부가 건설재원을 각각 분담하는 매칭펀드 방식으로 추진된다.
2008년 고속철도 공채 발의안이 통과됨에 따라 90억 달러의 공채 발행이 승인된 데 이어 2012년 7월 고속철도 1차 사업비 80억 달러 지원금 책정안이 주 상원에서 승인됐다.
여기에다 이 구간 건설에 지원될 32억 달러(3조5천억 원)의 연방 정부 자금도 확보했다.
하지만, 이 고속철도 건설 프로젝트의 향후 진로에는 아직도 첩첩산중의 험로가 기다리고 있다. 재정적·기술적·정치적 리스크가 곳곳에 도사리고 있다는 것이다.
이번 기공식이 정치적·법적 반대 속에서 당초 예정보다 2년이나 지연된 것처럼 향후 전망도 불투명하다고 언론들은 전했다.
실제로 캘리포니아 고속철도공사는 강력한 반대에 부딪히자 비용 절감을 택하면서 새로운 철로를 놓은 게 아닌 기존 대중교통 및 운송 철로를 업그레이드하는 쪽으로 가닥을 잡았다.
이에 따라 이동시간이 다소 늘어날 것으로 예상되지만, 고속철도공사 측은 시속 220마일(354㎞)로 달려 2시간40분 만에 주파하는 데는 차질이 없을 것이라고 주장하고 있다.
구간도 당초 1단계 공사의 경우 베이커스필드∼마데라/센트럴 밸리를 연결하는 구간이었으나 샌퍼낸도 밸리∼머세드로 소폭 조정됐다.
무엇보다도 가장 큰 문제는 재원확보다. 공채 발행과 연방 정부의 지원금을 확보했다고는 하지만, 현재까지 축적된 자금은 260억 달러(28조8천억 원)에 불과하다. 이는 총 공사비 680억 달러의 절반에도 미치지 못하는 액수다.
더욱이 사유지 수용도 예상보다 늦어지고 있다. 고속철도 건설에 반대하는 주민들이 자신들의 사유지를 내놓지 않고 있기 때문이다.
특히, 주 의회에서 민주당과 공화당 간 정치적 알력은 적지 않은 변수가 될 수 있다는 분석도 나온다.
민주당 출신으로 네 번째 임기를 시작한 제리 브라운 주지사는 고속철도 건설 프로젝트를 자신의 정치 유산으로 남기려고 서두르고 있다.
반면에 다수당인 공화당은 이 프로젝트를 위해 `밑 빠진 독에 물 붓기' 식 재정지출은 불가하다고 강하게 맞서고 있다. 심지어 일각에서 공사 진행 상황에 따라 총 공사비 680억 달러를 웃돌 수 있다는 의견도 나오고 있다. (로스앤젤레스=연합뉴스) 김종우 특파원 jongwoo@yna.co.kr |
SOURCE sacbee.com
By David Siders dsiders@sacbee.com
FRESNO More than six years after Californians approved $9 billion in high-speed rail bonds and three decades after the state first pursued development of a bullet train, Gov. Jerry Brown offered a measure of progress Tuesday with a ceremonial groundbreaking.
Held at the site of a planned station in downtown Fresno, the event marked th
The system is proposed to connect the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas through the Central Valley by 2028, with passenger service beginning on that route the following year.
“Everything big runs into opposition,” Brown said, calling the project’s critics – some of them protesting at the fence line – “weak of spirit.”
“We’ve been talking about this 35 years, and they tell me we’ve still got 15 to go,” Brown said. “Well, I’m going to try to cut a few corners here and get it going.”
Asked to expand on his remark about cutting corners, Brown’s office said the Democratic governor was speaking figuratively.
While California’s project has been a long-standing source of controversy in Washington and Sacramento, nowhere more than in the Central Valley has its impact been so immediate – with years of quarreling over track routes and land acquisition on the farms and in small cities dotting the landscape. The rail authority began clearing parcels and demolishing buildings in the Valley last year.
While protesters jeered, Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, one of few prominent Republicans to support the project, congratulated the train’s proponents and said, “Now let’s get it done.”
High-speed rail, Swearengin said, will make Fresno “the essential connecting point for northern and southern California.”
Rail officials viewed the groundbreaking, which closed streets in downtown Fresno and drew hundreds of invited guests, as an opportunity to suggest the inevitability of a project whose completion remains uncertain.
Just hours before the groundbreaking, Fresno’s KMJ News Talk Radio asked listeners, “Do you think the bullet train will ever actually be built?,” while local officials who opposed the project complained they were not invited to the groundbreaking and lined up to criticize it.
Among them was Fresno County Supervisor Andreas Borgeas, who said he worried about the cost of the project and impact on dislocated businesses.
Referring to the electorate’s 2008 vote to authorize rail bonds, he said on the radio station, “Are we getting what we signed up for?”
The event was significant for Brown, coming one day after he was sworn in for an unprecedented fourth term. Brown advocated for a form of high-speed rail when he was first governor, from 1975 to 1983.
“I truly do not understand what has taken so long,” Adriana Gianturco, California’s transportation director when Brown was governor before, said by telephone.
Even now, she said, “They still have a ways to go. It’s not as though this is all worked out.”
Brown, who has made the project a priority since returning to the Capitol in 2011,
acknowledged that when he returned to office he “had some doubts about this project.” He said he was convinced to pursue it by his wife, Anne Gust Brown, a former Republican.
“The fact that she was a Republican gave me a lot of confidence, because I wasn’t quite sure where the hell we were going to get the rest of the money,” Brown said.
Then, he added, “But, don’t worry about it. We’re going to get it.”
Soon after taking office, Brown revised the estimated cost of the project upward, to nearly $100 billion – a measure of credibility, his administration said at the time – then backed off amid heavy opposition. Rail officials altered the design of the project, which is planned to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco through the Central Valley, to lower the cost to $68 billion, and lawmakers in 2012 authorized $5.8 billion to start construction, including $3.2 billion in federal aid.
Last year, Brown and the Legislature pledged 25 percent of future revenue from California’s carbon-reduction program to underwrite the project in future years, and after a series of legal setbacks, the project began prevailing in court. In recent months, the California Supreme Court declined to review a lawsuit challenging the issuance of bonds for construction of the rail line, and the U.S. Surface Transportation Board ruled several environmental challenges to the project were barred by federal law.
Yet the money California has so far allocated to construction is a fraction of what’s needed to finish the project, and the Republican-controlled Congress is all but certain not to offer any more.
The California project comes decades after countries in Europe and Asia began developing their own high-speed rail systems. And passenger traffic is still years off: The rail authority does not plan to run trains on its first operational segment, from Merced to Burbank, until 2022.
“It’s been on the plate for a very long time, but the history, at least here in this country, is such that we’ve never developed it,” said Andrew Goetz, a professor at the Intermodal Transportation Institute at University of Denver. “It is kind of a perplexing thing, because usually when it comes to transportation, the United States is pretty good about it – pretty good about developing the infrastructure quickly.”
Brown said he “didn’t know it was going to take this long” when he proposed a bullet train decades ago. Now 76, he added, “And it’s still going to take long. I mean, it’s kind of touch and go, am I going to make it?”
Rail officials labored to emphasize that work already is underway, taking dozens of reporters to the site of an old Del Monte plant demolished for the project. Dignitaries entered a lot across the street, where the groundbreaking ceremonies were held, passing under the outstretched arm of an excavator.
“What you’re going to start seeing is a lot more construction,” said Diana Gomez, the rail authority’s Central Valley regional director.
Joseph Szabo, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, said “California will now set the example for the nation with America’s first high-speed train.”
A smattering of protesters held up signs outside the event, and their heckling – “We don’t want your train,” they yelled, “Show us the money!” – could be heard throughout the ceremony.
“It’s not money well spent,” said Michele Moore, a conservative activist from Tulare. “We need money for our schools, we need money for our roads, we need money for our veterans – before this train.”
She added, “It’s a mismanagement of funds.”
On the other side of a fence separating protesters from the dignitaries, U.S. Rep. Jim Costa, the Fresno Democrat and former state senator who lobbied hard for the project, likened high-speed rail to construction of the transcontinental railroad and other major infrastructure efforts.
Despite controversies, he said, “We persevered, and we completed them.”
Of the rail project, Costa said, “We do it because history tells us the only way to improve our quality of life and to inspire future generations and to remain on the forefront of innovation and technology is fight for things that make a profound and lasting difference.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article5519280.html
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