America Speaks, Obama Acts

Note: Rafael wrote much of this post, and I've made some edits and additions. -Robert

There's an interesting article in the Politico today on President Barack Obama's central role in getting the $8 billion in HSR funds into the stimulus.

The article portrays the $8 billion for HSR in the stimulus bill as part of some dastardly backroom plot to force high speed rail down the throat of an unsuspecting and unwilling public. David Rogers also mentions the $1.5 billion already allocated in HR 2095 in the fall, but portrays it as a modest George W. Bush policy in comparison with Obama's alleged spending spree. In truth, Bush's hands were de facto tied by the fact that it was tacked onto an omnibus rail safety bill coming on the heels of the Chatsworth disaster, just before an election that put a lot of GOP seats in the House and Senate in play. HSR was something that was forced down his throat by a veto-proof bipartisan majority in both houses.

While it's true that there was little discussion of HSR as a new direction in transportation/energy/environmental policy in the national media both during and after the election campaign, the same is not true of California and possibly other parts of the country. Perhaps Rogers should look beyond the beltway from time to time.

Especially considering that the public strongly supports high speed rail. The Politico article makes it sound like Obama and Rahm Emanuel cut some kind of backroom deal for the HSR funding, that it was done merely to give Obama some sort of "signature project". But in fact, Obama was actually doing what the people asked him to do.

Back in January the Obama transition team put together the Citizens Briefing Book on Change.gov, allowing the public to vote for the policy proposals they liked best. High speed rail funding was one of the top vote-getters, and one of the very few to actually elicit a video response, in which Obama promised to fund HSR. Which he has now done. Our new president opened up his administration to the people, they told him what he wanted, and they did it. Imagine that!

Obama wasn't sneaking anything in at the last minute here - he was just following orders. Our orders.

The piece goes on to say the Obama will ask for an additional $1 billion (egads!) per year for HSR in the general budgets for the next five years. First off, he's got another election to contest in 2012 and so far, he's not spoken about any specific plans related to a possible second term. Second, Rogers may be confusing Amtrak grants with HSR capital projects. The sum he is in a tizzy about wouldn't be large enough to deliver HSR infrastructure in the 11 already designated corridors. For that, Congress would have to appropriate at least ten times as much annually for the next 20 years.

The $1b/year number appears at odds with Rogers' claim that the President has suddenly embraced HSR as a new signature issues because the new electricity grid and renewable electricity generation have supposedly failed to capture the public's imagination. Again, the beltway bubble appears to be a reality distortion field.

Rogers also incorrectly states that the HSR money came from narrowing the focus of a business tax break. In fact, it came from re-allocations and narrowing the focus of funding in the transportation section of the bill: the original House bill contained $30b for highways, $2b for fixed guideways and $1b at the discretion of the Secr. of Transportation, subject to a competitive bidding process. The Nadler amendment increased that latter number to $2.5b. The Senate's version allocated the $2b to a specific type of fixed guideway, namely HSR. It also moved $3b out of the highway budget and into the discretionary pot, increasing it to $5.5b. At the President's request, this potential slush fund was also allocated to a specific type of transportation spending, namely HSR. The remaining $500 million came from shifting funding for brand-new local transit services to HSR and Amtrak. If you add it all together, aggregate transportation spending was actually reduced to help make room for the AMT patch that the three GOP senators demanded. Math is hard.

More credibly, Rogers states that spending the money will take time and be complicated by freight rail operators that own most of the nation's existing railroad tracks. He seems blissfully unaware of the single biggest HSR project out there, the one in California, which actually involves laying hundreds of miles of brand-new, dedicated and electrified tracks. CHSRA made a shrewd political move in deciding to run the system on renewable electricity alone, because that makes the California system an even better fit for the President's policy objectives.

Note that railroad ROWs could even be critical to building the new, smart electricity grid (presumably based on HVDC trunk lines) and, that the railroads themselves could be (partially) electrified in the process. The technical hurdle is the minimum safe distance between high voltage (hundreds of kV) DC transmission lines (exposed or shielded and buried) and 25kV AC overhead catenaries, especially if both systems depend on electrical ground for the return path. Lightning arcs between the tow systems are another risk that would have to be reliably avoided.

That said, there are indeed serious ROW issues with legacy freight operators even in the California project, especially the sections of the preferred route that depend on UPRR's co-operation: SJ-Gilroy, Stockton-Fresno, Bakersfield-Palmdale (except Tehachapi Pass) and, Redondo Junction-Colton. The Fremont-Stockton section of the HSR overlay through Altamont Pass would also involve a UPRR ROW.

In the Central Valley, it's possible that CHSRA will be able to cut a deal with BNSF for Stockton-Fresno to overcome opposition by UPRR. The route section Fresno-Bakersfield, Palmdale-LA-Anaheim-Irvine (except for the run-through tracks at LA US) and Miramar-San Diego all depend on BNSF sharing its ROW anyhow, but that company is more willing to negotiate than UPRR.

In any case, Obama's HSR move shows that he really is going to put his money where his mouth is - and that when the public demands sustainable transportation, our president will listen.