The Biggest Obstacle to HSR in California

For most people looking at California's high speed rail project, the biggest obstacle to its completion would seem to be financial. Prop 1A has put $9 billion on the table to get the project started. We can expect $3 to $4 billion from the federal HSR stimulus. The cost of the first route, SF to LA and Anaheim, is likely to be around $30 billion, leaving about $17 billion left to secure. Most of that is expected to come from ongoing federal contributions, some from local governments, and some from private investors.

And yet, as Robert Goodspeed points out, that may not actually be the main problem facing HSR in California. Instead, he argues, it is a land use planning process that is unable to deliver these kinds of projects quickly and affordably:

Ironically, the California system is demonstrating the biggest problems for high speed rail in the U.S. may not be our lack of technical knowledge but our troubled infrastructure planning and delivery system. Disputes about alignments in California have already spawned lawsuits. Maybe beyond ogling their trains, we should study how our foreign counterparts resolve conflicts about system design. In one case study I read about planning a TGV line in France, the government convened a "debate" bringing together the stakeholders before choosing an alignment or other technical details. In the U.S. on the other hand, government agencies act both as project designers and boosters, relegating other stakeholders to reactionary roles as outsiders who rely on lawsuits to pursue their interests. In addition, our government agencies are also lacking in competent planners and administrators who specialize in rail. In the end, dysfunctional planning processes and weak planning capacity may result in avoidable cost overruns. Overcoming these obstacles may prove even more challenging than finding the historically elusive political will.

Goodspeed's analysis of how other stakeholders wind up being placed in "reactionary roles as outsiders" is quite insightful. Then again, that is precisely how planning in California is intended to be. CEQA is set up on the theory that government construction projects are bad, are threatening, and that stakeholders are already in a reactionary, even adversarial position. CEQA was written with a 1970s logic, reacting to a 1960s California Department of Highways that really did behave as a giant bulldozer not giving a crap about what anyone else in the state thought of its route choices, neighborhood impacts, or environmental consequences.

CEQA wasn't designed to promote smart, sustainable growth. It was written to enable people like Gary Patton to have legal recourse to stop projects they don't like, no matter the reason. The mentality is one that assumes the status quo is just fine, that the cost of doing nothing is actually zero - if a project isn't built, no problem, we didn't really need it anyway.

California's planning process should not be a tool for NIMBYs to stop projects they dislike. It should be a vehicle for public involvement in a project development, and to ensure that a project does not cause damage to the environment. CEQA currently fails to meet these objectives.

I'm not the only one making this point. SPUR, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, came to the same conclusion. In a 2006 report titled Fixing the California Environmental Quality Act they argued that CEQA has failed to meet its objectives, has actually made environmental problems worse, and that it should be replaced in urban and suburban settings with a statewide planning process along the successful path blazed by states like Oregon and Washington:

In the absence of strong statewide planning and in the presence of weak local planning, stopping projects is what California does best. CEQA has become the tool of choice for stopping bad ones and good ones. SPUR has reviewed CEQA from the standpoint of sound planning and environmental quality. We contend that after the law’s 30-plus years of operation, the type and pattern of developments, viewed at citywide, regional, and state scales, are environmentally worse than before. Not all of this can be blamed on CEQA; it has improved individual project design in some cases. Yet viewed broadly, CEQA has contributed to sprawl and worsened the housing shortage by inhibiting dense infill development far more than local planning and zoning would have done alone. To re-form California, we must first reform CEQA....

Our neighbors to the north provide a dramatic model for change. At almost the same moment that California turned to environmental impact reports to protect its environment, Oregon turned to a strengthened planning program, requiring effective local plans and zoning by all jurisdictions. Oregon has protected and greatly improved its natural environment without review of individual projects, but with sound intergovernmental planning. The recent property-rights crusade that passed compensatory zoning at the Oregon ballot box does not lessen the fact that the Oregon environment remains one of the most pristine in the country.

High speed rail should be assessed and planned in a statewide context. Instead, it is assessed in a town-by-town setting, totally divorced from statewide concerns, and even from local urban plans. As a result, sprawl has accelerated over the 40 years since CEQA's adoption, and it has become progressively more difficult to build sustainable infill projects, whether it is housing or mass transit, as the CEQA process empowers people to stop something they dislike, even when doing so causes significant environmental damage.

The alternative to CEQA reform is that more and more projects will simply be exempted by the state legislature from CEQA review. In fact, back in 1982, once and future governor Jerry Brown signed into a law a high speed train bill exempting the project from CEQA review. (The project eventually fell apart in 1983 for various reasons.) More recently, the landmark state planning law SB 375 signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger last year provides CEQA exemptions for certain kinds of infill urban housing projects that meet the AB 32 global warming guidelines.

Using the legislature to provide the occasional CEQA exemption isn't good planning. But it's what happens when the CEQA process is no longer functional. Rather than exempting HSR from CEQA - which, to be very clear, I am not advocating at this time, we should adopt the successful urban planning models used in states like Washington and Oregon that provide for regional and statewide planning processes that still give the public a chance to weigh in, still protect the environment, but don't come at the cost of prolonging a reckless dependence on sprawl and oil. Already the CHSRA is exploring a statewide planning effort, although it is not intended to supplant CEQA.

Of course, even if we did this, not everyone would buy into it. Those who still adhere to the 1970s "government is bad! there's no downside to killing projects!" attitudes will try and undermine a more sensible planning process in service of their own parochial ends. In fact, they're already doing it, as shown by this John Horgan column:

Belatedly, some citizens are raising alarms. It may be too late. The High-Speed Rail Authority has its own agenda, its own priorities, its own budgetary issues — and a great deal of power.

Input from county residents is being collected at countless public gatherings by the vast public relations armada on the authority's payroll. The panel's latest tactic is something called "context sensitive solutions."

Unsurprisingly, this actually reveals the depth of Horgan's ignorance. CSS wasn't something the CHSRA decided all on its own to use. It was pushed onto CHSRA by the very citizens Horgan claims to be speaking for, who demanded CSS be used on the Peninsula.

I'm still not convinced that the broken planning process is the "biggest obstacle" to HSR in California. I still believe the biggest obstacle is actually the unwillingness of the remaining beneficiaries of the 20th century model of economic prosperity and land use to accept any change in that model, regardless of the consequences. The opposition to properly funding HSR, and the breaking of the CEQA process, are both symptoms of that deeper problem.

CHSRA Initiates Statewide Land Use Planning Effort

San Francisco Chronicle architecture columnist John King writes today of an ambitious state planning project known as Vision California. The project is intended to provide a holistic, statewide model of growth scenarios, with an emphasis on how high speed rail will change the state's growth and land use patterns. It is co-funded by the California High Speed Rail Authority. As King explains:

The official action is modest, a $2.5 million contract to devise a set of detailed growth scenarios for California, from classic suburban sprawl to compact development focused on older cities. The goal is to produce a single "preferred scenario" - one that conceivably could be used to prod local governments to accept or reject new construction.

This sort of top-down planning would alter politics in California, where cities and counties for decades have deflected any initiatives that might crimp their autonomy. The difference now: legislative efforts to reduce the state's carbon emission levels, and voter support of a high-speed rail system that could put now-distant portions of the Central Valley within commuting distance of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Proponents say there's no way to make wise long-term decisions without data to gauge the impact of different patterns of growth when it comes to matters such as energy or water use.

This is a long-overdue and much-needed effort. High speed rail in particular is going to reshape California's urban geography, and will produce significant shifts in population movement and growth sites. It makes perfect sense to evaluate this on a statewide basis - how would high speed trains produce growth in Fresno? What kind of growth might happen? And how would that affect land use in the older coastal metropolitan areas? How would that impact water and energy usage?

It is very good to hear that this effort is being undertake and that the CHSRA is playing a role. Given California's numerous and converging crises, from water to environment to economy to energy usage, we need to start considering statewide planning to solve those crises without one region's solutions undermining those of another region.

As King explains, this isn't the first time such an effort has been tried. Governor Jerry Brown initiated such a study in the late 1970s, around the time he promoted a high speed train for California:

For instance: If townhouses and bungalows are built instead of large single-family homes, how much agricultural land will be saved? If new housing is placed near existing jobs and shopping, rather than in distant subdivisions, what will be the effect on a household's transportation expenses?

"By showing people the results of different futures, you create a different political climate," Peter Calthorpe said. A founder of the influential Congress for the New Urbanism, Calthorpe was working for the Office of Planning and Research in 1978 when then-Gov. Jerry Brown released "Urban Strategies for California," the last serious statewide planning push...

Despite Calthorpe's optimism that things will be different this time, there's another scenario: Things stay pretty much the same.

After all, the sense of looming crisis is nothing new; "Urban Strategies" decried how sprawl chews up "air, water and other natural resources," but the proposals never translated into a formal plan.

It's worth noting that Governor Brown's late '70s efforts didn't just die. They were killed. As I've argued before, the 1978 tax revolt was driven in part by a desire to preserve 20th century suburban sprawl from a perceived attack by Governor Brown. Although Brown recognized the need for a denser California, he ran into a massive amount of opposition from the beneficiaries of the 1950s and 1960s model of land use, opposition that in 1978 wrote itself into the state constitution. Ever since, what I have described as a homeowner aristocracy - a specific group of people who were able to buy homes in the last few decades of the 20th century and who seek to preserve their property values and obsolete concepts of the urban landscape at the expense of everyone else - have fought every effort to produce a smarter, more sustainable strategy for economic growth and land use. Their successful determination to preserve the late 20th century model has left California economically weak, dependent on overuse of water, and vulnerable to soaring oil prices. Their refusal to embrace new solutions, which won't actually cause them much if any personal or economic harm, is a major impediment to proper planning for California's future.

Vision California is not just a useful exercise to help build a more prosperous and sustainable 21st century state. It's a way to ensure that high speed rail does not get used to promote sprawl. Many anti-HSR conspiracy theorists claim, against the evidence, that the CHSRA is nothing more than a vehicle for developers to pave over the Central Valley. They should then be the biggest champions of the Vision California project:

The project has three phases and will continue for about 18 months.

The first phase includes the formation of a working group to set parameters and decide how far into the future the projections should go. Data would be compiled and measurement standards defined.

Phase two would develop a base-case scenario that extends past trends forward - and alternative scenarios that give greater emphasis to mass transit and higher-density development patterns. The scenarios would be tested on "targeted groups of key stakeholders."

The final phase would follow the release of the alternative scenarios with a "preferred vision" - coupled with an outreach campaign to show how the chosen path "can most effectively impact the development of state, regional, and local policies aimed at meeting state climate change and other key goals."

In other words, limiting sprawl and promoting urban density, transit-oriented development, and mass transit connectivity are explicit goals of this planning process, something CHSRA is signaling it is willing to abide by once it is in place.

This is a welcome development, and I wish the Vision California project well. Let's hope it is matched with further statewide legislation in the vein of AB 32 and SB 375 to complement local efforts to change the longstanding local government preference for sprawl. HSR is a major tool in the effort to limit sprawl, but as we've always said, that has to be matched with regulatory changes in land use policy. Vision California is a necessary step in that direction.

Deputy AG Letter Supports CHSRA's Transbay Position

Yesterday the California Attorney General's office responded to an August 21 letter from the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. The TJPA letter argued that it is "legally improper" for the CHSRA to study any alternatives to the Transbay Terminal as the San Francisco terminus. Deputy AG Christine Sproul, writing on behalf of AG Jerry Brown, explained the AG office's position that CHSRA is entirely correct to study other alternatives. The letter is reproduced below:

Deputy AG Transbay Letter to CHSRA ED 91709

I have to run and catch a train here in Sacramento, but I wanted to get this up there for everyone on the blog to read and react to. Obviously this means the dispute between CHSRA and TJPA is not going away anytime soon. I continue to believe that political leadership, particularly from San Francisco's powerful federal representatives, is desperately needed to bring CHSRA and TJPA to the table to develop a workable solution.

Gavin Newsom on HSR

by Robert Cruickshank

In a meeting with bloggers yesterday at the California Democratic Convention here in Sacramento, Gavin Newsom answered questions on a wide range of topics, including one from Becks who writes at Living in the O on restoring transit funding.


(I'm the one sitting next to Gavin)

Newsom's answer was that California is a wealthy state, and that we should be able to find the means to support transit. He pointed out the absurdity of the federal stimulus supporting spending on infrastructure and rolling stock but not on operating expenses - "we can buy buses but can't pay people to drive them." Newsom specifically mentioned high speed rail in his answer - that when he was younger he took a trip to Europe and rode their high speed trains, but when he came back "all we had was Caltrain." Newsom was a strong supporter of last fall's Proposition 1A, and has been one of the leading forces behind getting the Transbay Terminal done. Newsom wants to build HSR as governor of California - if he won two terms he might be able to preside over the opening of the LA-SF route in 2018.

Of course, his leading rival for the Democratic nomination for governor, Jerry Brown, is also a longtime supporter of HSR, having created the state's first HSR project back in the early 1980s when he was governor. Both men, if they became governor, would presumably be strong supporters of HSR.

I'm headed back to Monterey on the Capitol Corridor this afternoon - use this as an open thread.