The ‘Woosh’ train may be all we can wish for

The good news: California will have a high-speedrail line someday.

The bad news: it may resemble “Whoosh.” Whoosh is Indonesia’s new high-speed rail line, the first in Southeast Asia. Similarly, California’s train could be the fastest high-speed service in North America.

I rode Whoosh during a visit to Java in February. It was disappointing, in ways that preview how Californians may feel about the high-speed rail we eventually get.

Whoosh and California high-speed rail originated with grand ambitions. In Indonesia, the idea was highspeed rail across 600-mile-long Java — from Jakarta in the west to Surabaya in the east. California’s official high-speed rail plans are similar, extending 600 miles from San Francisco to San Diego. Both systems would have the same top speed — 220 miles-per-hour.

But rail realities are falling short of ambitions in both places. Whoosh’s first segment extends just 88 miles, the distance from L.A. to Santa Barbara. Similarly, California voters in 2008 were told they’d be zipping from L.A. to the Bay in three hours by 2020. Currently, only a first segment — 171 miles from Merced to Bakersfield — is under construction, and won’t be operational until 2030.

I boarded Whoosh on a weekday morning. The red train was shiny and new on the outside. Inside, seating was spacious, comfortable, and empty. Even with subsidized fares (my ticket cost $18), there were few passengers. Whoosh is already losing money, as highspeed rail systems worldwide do.

Why isn’t Whoosh more popular? One answer: in Indonesia, as in California, the first segment doesn’t take you to big city centers.

In Jakarta, you don’t board the train in the city center but at Halim Station, on the city’s southeast side. My taxi ride there from Central Jakarta took 45 minutes. The train ride itself, from Jakarta to Bandung, was fast, lasting only 45 minutes — much better than the three hours the trip would take by car. However, on the other end of Whoosh, connections were fraught. The train doesn’t stop in central Bandung, instead dropping you at Tegalluar, a station surrounded by open land and a soccer stadium. To get to meetings in central Bandung, I would spend another 45 minutes in a taxi.

On my return to Jakarta, I tried an alternative, boarding a special feeder train from central Bandung to a different Whoosh station. That took 22 minutes. After Whoosh delivered me back to Halim station in southeast Jakarta, I boarded the Metro to return to my lodging in Central Jakarta. That ride consumed 70 minutes.

California’s approach to high-speed rail suffers from a similar failure to connect. The first segment remains entirely within the Central Valley, not penetrating even the outer edges of the Bay Area and of Southern California. The segment’s endpoints are the smaller cities of Merced and Bakersfield.

In California and as in Indonesia, the obstacle to creating a robust high-speed system is the same: lack of funding.

So, both projects are dependent on money from outside the state.

Whoosh’s funding came from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the highly touted but faltering infrastructure program. (Chinese entities own a share of Whoosh as a result). Meanwhile, California, despite state bond funds, needs Washington D.C. to make high-speed rail happen. And the feds are unstable supporters The Biden administration recently sent $3 billion, after the Trump administration took money away.

Worse still, both Indonesia and California have seen cost overruns and delays, discouraging further investment. Whoosh was more than $1 billion over budget, and four years late,. California’s first segment is many years behind schedule and expected to cost $33 billion. The whole system’s price tage has ballooned to $128 billion.

In Java, I saw that, in high-speed rail as in other things, you get what you pay for. If your government won’t commit the resources necessary for great highspeed rail, then you won’t get much.