Ray LaHood - HSR Denier?

Some troubling news out of Chicago where a relatively unknown Republican Congressman from Illinois, Ray LaHood, is slated to become Barack Obama's Secretary of Transportation.

LaHood doesn't appear to have much of a record as a transportation expert - at least when Bush crossed the aisle for Norman Y. Mineta he got someone who knew the issues well. But the troubling thing is that what LaHood has said about HSR isn't encouraging. From 2004:

LaHood dismisses Illinois Amtrak high-speed service

U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood (R) said on July 15 he does not favor high-speed rail for Illinois.

"I think it’s a bad idea, mainly because we don’t have the money to fund the routes that currently serve Illinois," LaHood said at the Statehouse.

Amtrak President David Gunn said earlier this week in Chicago that upgrading the Chicago-St. Louis corridor for faster passenger trains is a top priority for Amtrak. Planners want trains to be able to go 110 mph in the corridor, while the current top speed is 79 mph – but it would take nearly $200 million for the next phase of track and equipment upgrades.

LaHood said he considers Amtrak "the lifeblood transportation for small communities," and he knows many college students from Chicago’s suburbs use trains to travel to school, Copley News Service reported via The Lincoln Courier.

"On the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak is fabulous," LaHood added, "and after 9-11, it became the transportation of choice for a lot of people because they felt it was safer than flying.

"I think if we’re going to have a pot of money where we subsidize airlines and we subsidize the funding of highways, that we certainly ought to continue to subsidize Amtrak," LaHood said.

He said, "I don’t think we can afford at this point, with the kind of deficits we’re running," to be talking about high-speed rail.

While funding is his main concern, he said, "People in rural Illinois are not for high-speed rail... They do not want a train traveling 120, 125, 150 miles per hour through the rural areas, and I support them on that."

Obviously 2008 is different from 2004, and the "HSR vs. Amtrak local" dichotomy that LaHood set up in these 2004 comments may no longer apply (if it ever did). But this doesn't exactly inspire confidence in our new Secretary of Transportation, who ought to be someone who understands the ins and outs of transportation policy, particularly high speed rail.

Some may argue that Obama-Biden's strong support for HSR will force LaHood to change his views. But that's quite a risk to be taking with such an important position. Many transit advocates are either wary or skeptical of the choice with one commenter at Streetsblog writing:

Not to sound like a reactionary here, but given the pool of great candidates like Janette Sadik-Khan and Earl Blumenauer, you have got to be freaking kidding me.

Blumenauer had taken his name out of the running and endorsed Mortimer Downey. The Bay Area's own Steve Heminger was high on the list too, with support from Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Other names like Jim Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, had also been floated.

There are rumors that Rahm Emanuel had a big role to play in suggesting LaHood, who may be a purely political appointment to satisfy Obama's desire to have some Republicans in the Administration. If so this was a particularly bad place to put one, especially if LaHood doesn't have the expertise to fill this vital role effectively.

We need the DOT's help big time to get HSR off the ground - from FRA exemptions to disbursements of money; the Kerry HSR bill sets up an Office of High Speed Rail within the DOT. We need someone heading that department who knows what they're doing and who fully supports high speed rail. I am concerned Ray LaHood is not that person.

Something for the confirmation hearings, I guess...

Will Obama Repeat Clinton's Failure?

A Democratic president elected after a President Bush led America into a war with Iraq and national recession, a young candidate offering change, promising in particular to change our transportation policy to something more transit friendly, including an explicit promise to build a high speed rail network.

As Yonah at The Transport Politic points out in a must-read post, that wasn't just Barack Obama in 2008 - it was also Bill Clinton in 1992. Unfortunately for America, Clinton's promises never quite came to fruition, pushing back real action on HSR for nearly 20 years:

Before he was elected, Mr. Clinton had laid out a major economic plan, one of whose major elements was the high-speed rail system. Unlike Mr. Obama in his recent statement, Mr. Clinton was willing to put “rail systems” (presumably transit) and “high-speed rail” in the same sentence as “roads and bridges.” Mr. Clinton clearly didn’t find the issue to be so controversial that he wasn’t willing to talk about it. And Mr. Clinton was running on the right of the Democratic Party.

Yonah quotes from Bill Clinton's statement in the second debate from October 1992:

“My plan would dedicate $20 billion a year in each of the next four years for investment and new transportation, communications, environmental clean-up, and new technologies for the 21st century and we would target it especially in areas that have been either depressed or which have lost a lot of defense-related jobs. There are 200,000 people in California, for example, who’ve lost their defense-related jobs. They ought to be engaged in making high-speed rail; they ought to be engaged in breaking ground in other technologies, doing waste recycling, clean water technology, and things of that kind.“

For those of us who may have forgotten (or for those of you who weren't alive then), California was facing a severe economic recession with the end of the Cold War and the scaling back of the defense industry that, in Southern California especially, fueled the 1980s boom. Clinton explicitly said that a California HSR project would be a good way to provide jobs for a state that desperately needed them.

So what happened to Clinton the HSR builder? According to Yonah, despite enthusiasm from environmentalists and rail advocates - including then-Amtrak president W. Graham Claytor - Clinton's initial post-election plans did not come through on HSR and a 1993 HSR bill died in the House:

And yet we all know what comes next. Mr. Clinton entered office and the 1993 High-Speed Rail Development Act, considered in the House, did not move. Though the Federal Railroad Administration has designated corridors for high-speed rail, little has come of the effort. Though Mr. Clinton’s campaign persona seemed like it would produce a very pro-rail president, the result was far less than that. Mr. Clinton did little to promote the issue. He never designated more than a few million dollars to any corridor. The Northeast Corridor’s improvement was half-hearted and resulted in not-so-fast “high-speed” rail.

We can provide more detail. Early 1993 saw a pitched battle between the new administration and moderate and conservative Democrats in the Congress who did not agree with Clinton's new priorities, such as Clinton's plans for a BTU tax - an early '90s version of a carbon tax - and for an increased gas tax to pay for these projects. Conservative Dems in particular objected to new federal spending, forcing the Clinton Administration to climb down from its more ambitious goals in order to save the stimulus - which was already facing a filibuster from Senate Republicans.

Clinton never did get another opportunity to follow up on his HSR promises. After Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 election, Clinton had to acquiesce to many Republican budget cutting demands, especially on Amtrak. Clinton was able to get the Acela built, but because of Republican penny pinching they had to use the existing tracks and corridor, leaving the Acela short of being a true high speed rail system (in spite of that it is still a very successful service). The FRA did produce the HSR corridor plan but again with Republicans controlling the Congressional purse strings this never got beyond the conceptual stage. Meanwhile George W. Bush was killing the Texas HSR project and his brother was planning to do the same in Florida.

The lesson here is that political opportunities for high speed rail do not come along very often. 2008 was a wonderful year for us both in California and in Washington DC. Obama and Biden are both talking a good game but we have yet to see a detailed plan. Kerry's HSR bill is also a good start, but it must not die as did its 1993 predecessor.

It is entirely possible given the ugly economic situation and the precariousness of the Democratic majority in Congress that 2010 could see Republican victories as in 1994. Clinton rode a booming economy to victory in 1996; Obama will not likely have such beneficial circumstances in 2012. That means 2009 is the time to get some real federal support for HSR. As Yonah concludes:

The lesson we should take from the Clinton campaign is to take our own interpretations of Mr. Obama’s statements with a grain of salt. Though it’s nice to imagine the candidate is going to go all-out for high-speed rail, his positions so far have been less forthright than those of Mr. Clinton. Clearly, the President-elect is going to have to do a lot to convince us of his true positions - and that means prioritizing, in the budget.

We shall see in the next few months whether Mr. Obama truly cares about high-speed rail. But let’s not forget to keep up our own activism, rather than let our assumptions about his get in the way.

Absolutely right. We must hold Obama's feet to the fire, and be prepared to do battle with his administration and the Congress if necessary to ensure that HSR funding becomes reality in 2009. We wasted a perfect opportunity in 1993 - we cannot do that in 2009.

To help ensure that Washington DC produces real action and real funding for passenger rail, including HSR, Transportation For America is conducting a write-your-Congressman campaign. Click the link, fill it out, it only takes a few minutes.

We will be launching an HSR-specific version in January here at the blog. The first weeks and months of 2009 will be crucial to the success of California High Speed Rail - and HSR around the country.

Detailing the Kerry HSR Bill

Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic offered an in-depth look at John Kerry's HSR bill yesterday and it's a must-read. (Especially since I haven't had the time to go through it myself).

Some of the key parts of the bill:

If passed, the bill would create an “Office of High-Speed Passenger Rail” (we’ll call it OHSR here) which would operate within the Federal Railroad Administration. This would dramatically alter the priorities of the FRA, whose principal focus in recent years has been on improving the freight rail system in the United States. One wonders if FRA’s “safety” precautions, which require passenger rail trains in the United States to be far heavier than similar vehicles in the rest of the world, will be slowly phased out as the FRA’s mission is repositioned towards high-speed rail. Such a change, which would mean great monetary savings for rail operators around the nation in equipment purchases, might be necessary if a true HSR program is to be implemented.

That seems like a good move, giving HSR its own institutional position within the FRA (and the DOT itself) and as Yonah notes, this could also help finally change the FRA's outdated train weight rules.

This is the fundamental point: OHSR would not be the implementing agency, buiding the high-speed rail system. Rather, OHSR would simply distribute funds to other unnamed organizations (presumably mostly state governments, though Amtrak, which owns most of the Northeast Corridor, could also apply for funding). This means that Kerry’s bill, unlike the interstate highway system, does not establish a set group of priority corridors to finance. Rather, the bill necessitates that state and private actors work together to make HSR projects happen.

What this means is that under Kerry's vision there isn't going to be a national HSR plan, but that it will be left largely to the states to produce an HSR network with some federal support. That's a recognition of the status quo and likely of political reality - this approach lets more members of Congress believe that their states could get some of this money, whereas a top-down priority list might exclude more states at the outset.

In terms of money:

In a five-year period, the bill would authorize the following:

* $8 billion in tax-exempt bonds to qualified high-speed rail programs
* $10 billion in tax-credit bonds to “super high-speed” rail programs (we’ll get to this in a minute)
* $5.4 billion in tax-credit bonds to other high-speed rail prgrams

This would mean that the bill would produce a total of around $5 billion a year to be spent on high-speed rail infrastructure improvement. Most of that money would go to California in the initial years, which will need a lot of federal help to make its HSR program a reality.

As Yonah notes this would provide enough funding for our own project - IF the bill is renewed in 2014. That's a big if, given that we don't know what the political landscape will look like five or six years from now. Of course we'll likely be well into the construction phase by that point, and it's harder to kill a spending program once it's in place than to kill it at the proposal stage. States that have used the OHSR funds to start HSR projects will not look kindly on Congress or the White House refusing to renew their funding.

Still, I do wish that Kerry had been more ambitious with his numbers. Better to provide more money at the outset and then if you have to scale back the numbers in 2014 to please Republicans then you could still wind up authorizing exactly the same amount of money over 10 years that you've planned all along by having front-loaded it.

Overall this looks like it would meet our needs in California, though infrastructure stimulus would also be helpful. Kerry's bill would for the first time create funds for high speed rail and provide the kickstart that this country needs. We are going to need to ensure that we get a significant chunk of this money, especially since most of Kerry's cosponsors are from Northeast Corridor states.

Yonah offers some more commentary on the details of the bill, including how it defines "high speed" and "super high speed" rail, but I wanted to cut to the chase and discuss his conclusions about the bill:

The most important question, however, doesn’t relate to the amount of funding. Rather, we question whether the decentralized mode of planning represented by this bill makes sense. HSR is by definition an intercity service, and that would usually mean crossing state lines in the United States. If the planning is done on the state level, however, how can we ensure a cohesiveness to the system? How can we ensure similar levels of quality and network coverage? Unless the OHSR plays a significant role in planning, and in pushing state authorities in the national, united direction it wants, this will become an increasingly large problem as the rail system develops.

These are very good questions. Does it suit our national needs to have basically multiple HSR systems around the nation, with different standards and different technologies? Kerry seems to acknowledge that it's going to be some time before we have a truly national HSR system, and for our purposes in California perhaps that's OK, given our geographic isolation from the rest of the country. But it does suggest that Kerry is thinking modestly here, and not looking to offer the kind of broader rail revolution many have rightly called for in this country. Given the total lack of federal support for HSR in the past, even Kerry's proposal is welcome. Still, we shouldn't stop here and should continue to advocate for a much bigger and broader commitment on the federal level to passenger rail.

Will It Be A Sustainable Stimulus?

Barack Obama released another entry in his 21st century version of the fireside chat yesterday, a YouTube video on economic stimulus. The key section:

"Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money."

The "roads and bridges" comment has generated criticism from across the transit blogs, including this excellent article from Trains for America. The Transport Politic believes that the signs remain good that "much of this money will in fact go to non-automobile-based transportation," citing Joe Biden's comments on Tuesday.

I'm not sure I agree, actually. What seems to be unfolding is a dual-track approach to infrastructure spending in DC: an economic stimulus that emphasizes immediate projects, many of which will be obsolete 20th century transportation like roads; and a long-term infrastructure investment package that will give a bigger boost to sustainable transportation like HSR. Biden said some good things at the National Governors Association meeting but that is being overshadowed by persistent reports that Obama wants to use the stimulus to fund projects that are ready to go within 180 days. His YouTube speech gives a lot of credence to that view.

A dual-track infrastructure approach strikes me as a fundamentally flawed way to handle the current crisis, especially if the first and more immediate track directs billions towards roads. That's exactly what we should NOT be doing with our stimulus money. Roads don't build long-term economic growth, unless we're planning to follow Robert Toll's insane advice and reinflate the housing bubble. The nation's bridges do need repair and that's fine, but we need new road capacity like we need a hole in the head.

Economic stimulus should meet two needs at once: produce immediate jobs and spending, and fuel long-term growth. FDR's New Deal projects did exactly that - the nation's nascent highway network needed a LOT of investment and improvement in 1933, from roads to bridges. The New Deal helped seed the economic boom of the 1950s in that way. They didn't sit around building canal towpaths.

Obama's stimulus must provide the basis for 21st century prosperity - and that means sustainable infrastructure projects need to be accelerated and funded so that they can get built. Electric rail meets the twin needs of any economic stimulus very well. It should be included, or even made the centerpiece, of an early 2009 stimulus plan.

I'm not concerned that Obama is backtracking on support for HSR. He is likely to embrace the Kerry HSR plan. But that plan isn't large enough to meet the nation's HSR needs.

More importantly, economic stimulus is a sure political winner. If HSR funds are enfolded within a stimulus package it becomes very difficult for Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats (Southern conservatives who generally do not support sustainable transportation) to block it.

For a candidate who campaigned on a theme of change, Obama is showing himself to be a maddeningly cautious politician who prefers to fall back on the old ways rather than embrace something new but sensible. Perhaps the criticisms of his perceived inexperience stung more than we thought. Even from a political perspective it makes sense to include HSR in an immediate stimulus bill - it not only demonstrates support for sustainable infrastructure, but it will provide greater political returns as the economic benefits roll in. Obama needs to not be thinking about his political position in summer 2009 but in summer 2012. The medium-term view would suggest that a nation at work on sustainable infrastructure is a political winner for Obama, and when the projects are completed and provide the foundation for 21st century prosperity the way the New Deal infrastructure projects did in the 20th century, Obama's party would reap the lasting benefits.

There is very little to be gained, and a great deal to be lost, by returning to a failed 20th century model. As Logan Nash at Trains For America wrote:

But in talking to people in both Tennessee and Minnesota, I’ve come to believe that people are fundamentally interested in passenger rail. They’d like to be able to get out of their cars every once in a while, but they just don’t think it’s convenient as it stands now. They’re also concerned about the massive monetary investment rail requires. But of course, we’re already spending $700 billion, why not put some of that towards a system that can improve quality of life, spur commercial development, and help our environment?

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are exactly the people who could raise these points, who can make a case for investing in HSR, Amtrak, and transit. And they seem to want to. You can feel it bubbling under their well-practiced political veneer. Maybe that’s enough. A more well-rounded Secretary of Transportation and even a neutral administration would be a vast improvement. And if some of that “infrastructure” money is tagged for rail improvements, that’s good news even if it’s kept quiet. But much more progress could be made if our newly elected leaders would be bold enough to bring this topic to the foreground.

That progress will only be made if we organize to make it happen. It's time for transit activists online and offline to start getting involved and helping Americans demand that our political leaders provide sustainable, sensible stimulus.

"All Of A Sudden We're Popular"

Last week the Fresno Bee had a good overview of the funding issues our high speed rail project still faces. The article includes some good details that we haven't discussed before:

Three days after the election, the authority published an update of its 8-year-old business plan. It estimated construction costs at $23.5 billion in 2008 dollars, plus $3.2 billion to $4 billion for trains and about $6.1 billion for design work, rights of way and other expenses.

Besides the $9 billion authorized by Proposition 1A and the hoped-for $12 billion to $16 billion in federal funds, the authority also is counting on $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion from pension funds and other investors, plus $2 billion to $3 billion from local governments along the route.

If it all comes together, the plan says, the authority will be ready for final design and construction in 2012, a little more than three years from now. But that's a big if.

This is the first mention of pension funds, but they are an intriguing and I would argue sensible source of money for the project. The stock market crash has hurt some of the larger public funds, like Cal-PERS, and it makes sense that they'd want a more stable long-term investment. It's worth keeping in mind that it's not anticipated that pension funds would make up even half of the $7 billion or so from private investors, and that the California High Speed Rail Authority has letters of interest from over 40 large investors.

As the US looks to recover from what is already the longest recession in over 25 years sustainable infrastructure projects will be a major part of future growth. It makes sense to use HSR as a 21st century version of the Depression-era projects that did so much to put California back to work. Private investors will find security in our project that has been lacking elsewhere in the economic landscape.

And of course economic stimulus is a major reason why we can expect to see some considerable coin coming out of Congress for HSR in the next year. As the Fresno Bee points out, though, we're not the only ones in line:

An Amtrak reauthorization bill that President George W. Bush signed in October puts the state in competition with 10 other potential high-speed rail corridors for a pool of money currently limited to a modest $1.5 billion. The Washington-to-Boston corridor -- home to Amtrak's Acela, a sort-of-high-speed train that tops out at 150 mph -- is at the front of the line.

California is fighting for second place with nine others, including virtually all of the nation's population centers from Florida to the Pacific Northwest.

That $1.5 billion is the first drips from the faucet - John Kerry is proposing a much larger package for the 2009 session. Still, the Northeast Corridor has powerful allies. There are at least sixteen Senators representing the eight NEC states from Massachusetts to Maryland (damn seventeenth century borders!) as compared to just two from California.

However, California is in a VERY strong political position with San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer wielding significant power in the US Senate. Jim Costa, a member of the House of Representatives from Fresno and the author of the 1998 bill creating the High Speed Rail Authority while a state legislator, is confident that we'll get federal money:

Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, a current San Joaquin Valley congressman and longtime high-speed rail advocate, predicts that any federal help will come in several chunks.

Besides the Amtrak bill, Costa said, funds could come from other legislation on surface transportation and climate change as well as an economic stimulus bill intended to relieve the recent credit crunch and recession.

Lynn Schenk, a CHSRA board member, was also quoted as saying that our possession of state matching funds will put us in a very good position when lobbying Congress - outside the NEC no other state has matching funds for an HSR project (though some states, like Washington, have funds to upgrade existing tracks to reach higher speeds).

The upshot is that California has an opportunity to get HSR funded in 2009. I would prefer that the federal funds come all at once, but Costa is probably right that chunks are more likely. I just hope that doesn't mean we get hung out to dry if control of the federal government shifts in 2012 or later. My own view is that a maximalist strategy is best - we should lobby Congress to contribute the entire federal match at once, and be willing to accept a smaller amount if necessary.

The article also discussed where the first section of HSR track will go:

At some future date, [the Authority] will begin construction on the first section of track, extending about 160 miles from Merced to Bakersfield.

The longest, flattest stretch of the proposed route, that segment is intended for use in testing trains at their maximum speed so that their use can be approved by federal regulators.

Along with expected upgrades to the urban Bay Area and SoCal portions of the route, this suggests that the final pieces are also going to be the most difficult - Pacheco Pass and the Tehachapis. The tunneling work alone will take years, but once completed it should mean that the entire first phase will be open. 2018 is still the ballpark date for SF-LA-Anaheim, and as Kopp pointed out in the article, the sooner we get moving the better.

We won the battle in California for high speed rail this year. Now we must prepare to do battle in the Congress. Our high speed rail project is exactly what this country needs in a recession like this. Let's make sure California gets the federal support we deserve.

John Kerry Introduces HSR Bill

I don't have a whole lot of time to go over this today, as I'm going to be on the Coast Starlight headed back to Monterey from a quick SoCal trip. But it's important to discuss the new High Speed Rail funding proposal that Senator John Kerry and Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter are proposing in the US Senate. It's known as the High Speed Rail for America Act of 2008 and is numbered S.3700 (full text not yet available from THOMAS) (UPDATE: see an extensive summary of the bill's provisions here (h/t to Peter in the comments) and has a number of co-sponsors, including Senate heavyweights Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, and Charles Schumer. According to Kerry's office:

Specifically, the High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008 provides $8 billion over a six-year period for tax-exempt bonds which finance high-speed rail projects which reach a speed of at least 110 miles per hour It creates a new category of tax-credit bonds – qualified rail bonds. There are two types of qualified rail bonds: super high-speed intercity rail facility bond and rail infrastructure bond. Super high-speed rail intercity facility bonds will encourage the development of true high-speed rail. The legislation provides $10 billion for these bonds over a ten-year period. This would help finance the California proposed corridor and make needed improvements to the Northeast corridor. The legislation provides $5.4 billion over a six-year period for rail infrastructure bonds.

The obvious question this raises is will this be enough? The entire bill looks to be around $23.4 billion, which would be enough to help finish the first phase from SF-LA-Anaheim. Obviously we're not getting all of that, and being a Congressional bill other states and other Senators are going to want a piece of the pie - note that most of the co-sponsors come from the Northeast Corridor. But our project IS the farthest along, and is the best positioned to make use of this funding. Other states have a lot more ground to cover to be able to make use of these bonds.

In fact, my only criticism of this proposal - pending the actual bill details - is that the amount is not ambitious enough. $50 billion seems like a better funding level - instead of setting states and Senators against each other, $50 billion would help substantially seed a number of HSR projects around the country and build a true national system. This recession is deepening and significant stimulus is necessary to pull us out of it. Now's the time to be ambitious, Senator Kerry. Think big, think bold. This bill is an excellent start, but let's use the opportunity to build a truly national high speed rail project.

The US Senate Ready to Step Up on HSR

Although this blog is primarily focused on Proposition 1A through November 4, we do need to pay attention to the federal government when necessary. We've had strong indications of support from leading national politicians on high speed rail over the course of the year. Once Prop 1A passes our focus will shift toward ensuring those strong indications become firm realities. In that light it's worth spending a moment to consider a John Kerry/Johnny Isakson funding concept that the two Senators are kicking around. Kerry is of course a Massachusetts Democrat, Isakson a Georgia Republican, but together they are sounding like strong HSR supporters, as demonstrated in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution interview of Isakson on HSR:

Kerry’s office wouldn’t answer questions about the measure, dubbed the High Speed Rail for America Act, but a letter he sent to colleagues talks big: “$200 million per year in grants, $8 billion in tax-exempt bonds, $10 billion in tax-credit bonds for high-speed intercity rail facilities, and $5.4 billion in tax-credit bonds for rail infrastructure.”

Kerry and Isakson are focusing on Birmingham, Alabama to Washington, DC but this concept can apply to our own HSR project, which after November will be the closest by far to reality. Senator Isakson shows a very astute understanding of the need not just for HSR but for government involvement in getting it off the ground:

Q: Why should government be involved in this at all? If it’s really worth doing, won’t market forces lead private enterprise to make it happen?

A: Sometimes you have to make the investment in the hub if you will, like aviation, or in the spine, like in the line from Boston to New York, to then make the rest of the system viable. And, again, I don’t think general taxpayer subsidies make sense in transportation … it’s a user investment in the system they are using in turn to make an income.

This formulation may be key in bringing Senate Republicans on board - government needs to "prime the pump" and build basic infrastructure to spur private enterprise. Isakson is talking in systemic terms here, understanding the value that an HSR spine - like SF to LA - provides for the entire passenger rail system.

Now I strongly disagree with his claim that taxpayer subsidies don't make sense in transportation - they most certainly do, for without them we wouldn't have a transportation system at all. Airports and freeways require continuous subsidies to maintain operations. But let's game this out for a moment. If Isakson is willing to support federal government funding for tracks...that's pretty much all we need them for anyway. HSR generates an operating surplus "above the rail" - meaning that subsidies are either not going to be necessary for ongoing operations or they'll be costs California can handle. If Isakson doesn't want the federal government to pay for ongoing CA HSR operations, but is willing to help pay for construction costs - which is how I read his statement - then that's a deal I might be willing to take.

Isakson also understands the economic value of HSR - especially during hard economic times like these:

Q: The U.S. economy hasn’t been in such bad shape for years. Is it a little strange to be talking such an ambitious project that would cost so much at this moment?

A: The economy’s struggling now in part because of the high cost of fuel, because of the high cost of commodities, and that rolls right back into the whole transportation issue. I mean if you can reduce your dependence on oil, then the demand goes down so the price goes down.

From your lips to other Republicans' ears, Johnny. He clearly understands the connection between HSR and economic recovery. Namely, the first leads to the second.

Logan Nash at Trains for America is reserving his judgment for now:

A high-speed rail initiative in this county would be great if executed well, but we don’t want any nascent project to siphon funds and support away from our already functioning Amtrak system....The way Isakson talks seems to point to a European-style system where a public entity owns the infrastructure, which private-ish operators then rent.

In other words, the role of private enterprise in HSR is going to be a key battleground for us after November 4. I'm on record as favoring a limited role for private enterprise and am strongly opposed to giving them a place in system operations. But if Isakson is willing to agree to federal assistance for track construction and then letting the states determine the role of private enterprise, well, that would be workable.

And of course all this demonstrates that federal support for HSR is quite strong - despite what the HSR deniers would have you believe.