Thoughts from the Menlo Park Town Hall

First off, it was a pleasure to meet so many of you in person last night at the Menlo Park town hall event. For those of you who were there and who I didn't get to talk to, my apologies, I'm sure we'll reconnect at the Palo Alto HSR "teach-in" on September 12. I even got to say hello to Morris Brown and Martin Engel, and they were cordial and friendly to me as I was to them. It's not about personal attacks to me - I think they're wrong on pretty much everything to do with HSR, but that doesn't make them bad people.

I also don't know how I would have gotten through the whole meeting without being able to let off steam by making snarky comments about stupid questions to Bianca, especially since my iPhone died with about 20 minutes left in the evening (if you were following the twitter feed and noticed that the tweets didn't go to 9pm, that's why. Don't worry, you didn't miss anything important).

Overall Anna Eshoo deserves credit for hosting this event, and for bringing together folks from Caltrain and the CHSRA to talk about the high speed rail plans. Eshoo ran a good event - folks submitted questions or comments on cards, and Eshoo worked her way through an impressive amount of the hundreds of cards submitted. She promises that either her staff, Caltrain or the CHSRA will respond to each and every card that didn't get answered in person.

Eshoo also did a good job of pushing the panelists to answer the questions that were asked as directly as possible. That was necessary to help build some trust between the audience and the panel, although as I'll explain, that was an uphill battle from the start, as many in the audience had already made up their minds about the CHSRA.

Unfortunately, Eshoo's skills as a moderator did not outweigh her overall lack of familiarity with the project. Eshoo is a Menlo Park homeowner who lives very close to the tracks - "few people live closer to the tracks than I do," she explained several times during the evening. At times her perspective seemed to be that of a typical local - she said "I want less noise, I don't want a 40 foot wall, I don't want to lose my home." Of course, she should have known that there would be less noise, that a 40-foot wall was highly unlikely, and that she wouldn't lose her home. Caltrain and CHSRA officials made those points repeatedly during the night, but I am not quite sure Eshoo understood those points.

I get the sense Eshoo called this meeting in response to numerous constituent complaints about the project, because Eshoo did not show she really understood the HSR project in any detail. One of the evening's most stunning moments came when she realized that the CHSRA already made the decision about the route for the trains before Prop 1A was approved. Eshoo seemed to have it in her head that the whole route itself was still up for grabs, and not just the details of its implementation.

Further, she seemed to be dismayed that Prop 1A included a detailed routing based on the Final statewide EIR. Which is equally stunning to me. Did she expect people to vote for vaporware? To give $9 billion to a project that had no details nailed down?

Eshoo's apparent surprise that a route had been selected before Prop 1A went to voters, and her claims that she didn't know about it, really do not make her look very good. As a sitting Congresswoman she should have known these things. The route debate got widespread media coverage last year, including on the Peninsula. For her to miss that rather key detail suggests she wasn't really paying close attention to what goes on in her district.

And as it turns out, Eshoo did know of these key details - at least she did as of August 2007, when she signed the following letter to the CHSRA, alongside other Bay Area Congressional representatives including Zoe Lofgren, Tom Lantos, Mike Honda and my own rep, Sam Farr:

Title: Letter to Mehdi Morshed, Executive Director, California High Speed Rail Authority
Date: 08/24/2007
Location: Washington, DC
Letter to Mehdi Morshed, Executive Director, California High Speed Rail Authority

Five California Members Sign Letter Calling for Pacheco Pass Route

Washington, D.C. - Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), joined with Representatives Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), Sam Farr (D-Monterey), Mike Honda (D-Campbell), and Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo) in signing a letter strongly endorsing the Pacheco Pass route for California's High Speed Rail Project.

The complete text of the letter is below:

Mehdi Morshed
Executive Director
California High Speed Rail Authority
925 L St., Ste. 1425
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Mr. Morshed,

We are writing to express our strong support of California's High Speed Rail Project. We believe that the project will transform the state's transportation network into a much safer system that will serve our growing population for this century and the next in a way that can boost our economy while protecting our environment.

We recently reviewed the Northern Mountain Crossing Corridor Study you released concerning different possible routes from the Bay Area to the Central Valley. We all agree that the High Speed Train network should serve all three major cities: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. However, upon reviewing the document it is clear that the Pacheco Pass alternative provides a better level of service with a greater number of trains stopping in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose on a daily basis. The Pacheco Pass route is also the least damaging to our region's natural resources.

In order to connect the Bay Area to the Central Valley using an alternative option, the Altamont Pass, would require building a new high level bridge over the San Francisco Bay. The Altamont Pass option would also require construction through the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge with additional impacts on the San Francisco Bay and Palo Alto shore of the Bay. This alone is a good enough reason in our opinion to reject the Altamont Pass outright. The impact the Altamont Pass would have on the environment could well make us rethink our support of any federal funding for the project.

We believe there is sufficient and compelling data to determine that the Pacheco Pass is the best option for the High Speed Train to serve the Bay Area. We thank you for your consideration and will continue to follow the issue closely.

Sincerely,

Zoe Lofgren
Michael Honda
Anna Eshoo
Sam Farr
Tom Lantos

So I don't know what Eshoo is talking about when she expressed surprise about the routing choices. True, Eshoo did not come off last night as a pro-Altamont person. Instead she came off as someone who really didn't understand some of the key project details. I hope she had some private meetings with Caltrain and CHSRA staff before the town hall, and that the town hall wasn't her first encounter with some of these issues.

Eshoo did have some other very good points, including the need for the CHSRA to improve its outreach. But if I'm a Peninsula resident, I'd be somewhat annoyed and troubled that my Congressional rep gave off an impression that she hadn't been paying attention to the details 10-year long development of a project that would bring significant change (for the better) to my region.

Two of the panelists were Caltrain staff - executive director Mike Scanlon and project advisor Bob Doty. Both of them were very, very impressive. Scanlon showed he clearly understands the need for the project as well as the locals' concerns. He emphasized that this is about survival for Caltrain, and that without electrification, Caltrain may not be able to continue operations. Caltrain needs partners to do the electrification, which will dramatically cut their costs. The state of California is no longer able to be that partner. So Caltrain needs CHSRA and its federal funding.

I don't quite think the Peninsula NIMBYs understood this point (and they would probably refuse to accept it even if they did). Their vehement opposition to the HSR project could well destroy Caltrain. These towns are already choked with traffic as it is, including Menlo Park. They desperately need Caltrain to not only stay, but to improve.

Bob Doty was another very impressive speaker. He has project management experience on HSR projects around the world, from the Channel Tunnel to Korea. Like Scanlon he was able to give quick and direct answers to questions, connecting with the audience even when the audience didn't want to hear what he had to say. Doty reminded the audience that tunneling is an extremely complex and difficult undertaking, that the decision to do it is not nearly as simply as the NIMBYs have made it out to be.

I would love for Doty to wind up with a major position at the CHSRA. He has the expertise and the credibility to help provide the kind of leadership that the project needs. UPDATE: According to Clem, Doty is already working for the CHSRA:

Bob Doty is already working for the CHSRA. He reports 50% to Mike Scanlon (Caltrain) and 50% to Mehdi Morshed (HSR), in a dual-reporting arrangement initiated by the MOU between the two agencies.

Wonderful news. Back to the original post...

Mehdi Morshed and Dominic Spaethling represented the CHSRA. Spaethling didn't get many occasions to add comments, though he did a good job of explaining the upcoming public interaction process.

Morshed was on the hot seat most of the night. His performance was mixed. It's worth keeping in mind that Morshed is not a public speaker by training - he's a project engineer. Morshed acknowledged that he's been getting some help on public outreach, and he did his best to answer questions directly. Most of the time he did this well, even if his more determined opponents in the audience refused to accept his answers.

One example is a question a self-described Palo Alto NIMBY asked about the business plan. This question was highly misleading and was a clear attempt to sow disinformation. She asked whether the CHSRA was hiring a PR consultant to write the new business plan. Her implication was that the business plan would be a dishonest product full of spin and devoid of fact.

But as Morshed explained, that's not actually the case. The Authority is hiring a PR firm to design the final publication of the business plan - the typesetting, the pictures, the printing. NONE of the content will be produced by the PR team - that comes from the financial and project contractors who rightly have the skills and knowledge to produce that information.

It's not at all unusual for that arrangement to exist, whether it's a private or a public sector business plan in question. You want someone who knows PR to ensure that the plan is readable. The only reason anyone would make an issue out of this is if you wanted to undermine the public's confidence in the CHSRA.

Morshed did less well when asked about the tunnel. He tried to reassure people that it would be given a fair hearing, but he may have gone too far in that by saying that tunnel costs "would be the last thing considered" when looking at a tunnel. Obviously it needs to be as much a factor in the choice as anything else - the CHSRA needs to ensure that it is going to build a cost-effective system. I understand Morshed's dilemma here, but the CHSRA needs to make it clear to Peninsula residents that unless they are planning to pay for the tunnel themselves, it is not appropriate for the CHSRA to be reckless with public funds.

Overall, I don't think the town hall changed any minds. These things rarely do. Especially when there is a loud group of people who have already decided to believe that numerous myths are actually facts - and that if you point out that they aren't facts, the person who believed it will become indignant at the person doing the debunking.

In that way the HSR debate resembles the health care debate in many ways. Just as "death panels" and "socialized medicine" started to dominate the conversation around health care despite there not being any evidence to support those claims, we now have arguments about a "Berlin Wall" and people convinced that numerous houses will be lost even though a cursory glance at the ROW shows that takings will be very, very, very few in number (especially in the Atherton-Menlo Park-Palo Alto area).

What the town hall also showed is how difficult it has become to focus on the big picture. To their credit, Eshoo and Scanlon both pointed to the need for sustainable mass transportation, and Scanlon in particular understood that the 20th century model of transportation, relying on freeways, was no longer viable. The Peninsula was built on the railroad. It's time to give that railroad an upgrade.

The Peninsula needs political leadership that is determined to build HSR, and determined to build it right. My question of the night was oriented toward that very matter. I wanted to hear that those in attendance, Eshoo in particular, would see to it that critics of the HSR project would not be allowed to overturn the will of the voters, that HSR would be built in a way that was cost effective. Eshoo took issue with my claims about "HSR critics" and said that everyone in the room wanted HSR built, the question was instead about whether or not it should happen.

I don't think that is accurate. Judging from the questions Eshoo herself read, there were a lot of people who still questioned the basic premise of HSR. A clear statement that "this WILL be built and it will be built the right way" would have gone a long way toward pushing everyone toward constructive solutions. Instead I'll have to be content with Eshoo's claim that there are no HSR opponents. I'm going to hold her and the Peninsula to that claim. You too, Morris!

Ray LaHood: HSR To Be "Obama's Legacy"

NBC News interviewed Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently, and he gave a very good set of statements about high speed rail and the reasons to invest in the system:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Of course his statements also suggest we here in California are well positioned to get some of the $8 billion in HSR stimulus. Later this week President Obama will announce his plans for HSR including criteria by which the USDOT will allocate the $8 billion in HSR stimulus. As the Sacramento Bee reported over the weekend Mehdi Morshed of the CHSRA believes that California can get as much as $4 billion of that money, although the Bee did not list any specifics.

Instead of providing details on what the $4 billion would buy, the Bee decided to give space to one of the main HSR deniers, Joseph Vranich, to spout his usual nonsense:

Critics also contend that California's proposed system is riddled with greatly inflated ridership estimates and greatly understated cost projections.

"The California authority has ignored the lessons of Florida and Texas, and has repeated all the mistakes," said Joseph Vranich, a former Amtrak official and former president of the High Speed Rail Association. "It hasn't produced a single number or report or prediction that is true."

For example, Vranich argues, California should be disqualified from receiving federal rail aid because its environmental impact statements are outdated and inaccurate.

Morshed, who denied the state's project lacks accurate EIS documents, said a bigger fear is that federal transportation officials will adhere to political expediency and disburse the money in widespread, but tiny, amounts.

This is some rather poor reporting from the SacBee. They set up Vranich, whose hatred of passenger rail projects has been the subject of several exposés on this blog, as some kind of expert. I guess all you have to do is have a title that makes you sound like a rail expert to dupe credulous journalists into repeating your claims without question - and in fact using those claims to put Mehdi Morshed on the defensive when the charge, that the EIS documents are inaccurate, is complete nonsense and lacks a factual basis.

The ABC News article linked above on Obama's forthcoming announcement falls into a similar trap - except this time it's the other big HSR denier, the Cato Institute, that gets the ink:

"You might as well have the government invest in nuclear-powered bicycles," [Daniel] Mitchell added. "That's probably the only thing I could imagine that would be more of a waste of money than inter-city rail."

Riiiiight. Because god forbid we try to get America off oil, reduce carbon emissions, provide jobs and economic growth. Oh wait, Cato Institute doesn't believe it's government's role to provide any of those things. Sorry that our national priorities and the public will conflict with your nutty ideology.

It's a shame that the media sees its job as providing "he said, she said" stenography and passing it off as objective journalism, instead of actually drilling down to the truth of the matter. Still, with President Obama's extremely strong support for HSR, we have some powerful allies to help push back against this nonsense. Obama spoke highly of HSR on his recent swing through Europe:

"I am always jealous about European trains," Obama said April 3 in Strasbourg, France. "And I said to myself, 'why can't we have high-speed rail?' And so, we're investing in that as well."

I look forward to hearing the details of that investment later this week.

CHSRA Gets Its $29.1 Million

As we discussed last month, the legislature's ongoing budget standoff put the California High Speed Rail Authority on the verge of shutting down its operations as it had run out of money to pay contractors and staff. This was an especially worrisome problem for two reasons: 1) the need to continue operations to position California to get HSR stimulus funds, and 2) the need to provide up-to-date information to concerned residents along the proposed route.

Last week the state had a successful sale of bonds, and yesterday the pooled money investment board gave CHSRA the $29.1 million it needed to keep working through the end of June:

California's financially strapped high-speed rail project has received an infusion of $29 million to get it back on track through the middle of the year...

That led most of the private consultants who were performing engineering and environmental reviews to stop working because they weren't being paid, said Mehdi Morshed, the rail board's executive director.

He said the treasurer's decision to issue commercial paper to provide the $29 million was "excellent news."

"We're finally back to work again," he said.

We're probably going to have to have this fight again in June, when the state tackles an $8 billion shortfall (which could be larger if the initiatives on the May 19 ballot fail). Let's hope that we see some true political leadership this time from Sacramento in support of this project.

How Is the CHSRA Supposed To Work Without Money?

One of the more common complaints on the Peninsula has been "omg nobody told us about this!!" Such claims are not credible, as there was widespread discussion especially in the news about the HSR project and that it would involve the Caltrain ROW - enough discussion to lead the city of Palo Alto to unanimously endorse Prop 1A and begin discussing how to implement it within their town.

Of course, you can never have too much engagement with the public, and during the recent fight, some artist renderings of what possible structures might look like along the Peninsula route would have been incredibly useful in helping to dispel the "Berlin Wall" lie that has been dishonestly spread around the region.

Unfortunately it has been difficult for the CHSRA to provide that level of information because the state budget crisis has left the CHSRA unable to pay its bills. The agency has been struggling with a lack of financial support from the state of California since at least 2007, when Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed an almost total elimination of CHSRA funding. Last October Quentin Kopp reported that the CHSRA's executive director, Mehdi Morshed, had not been paid for months because of the Legislature's inability to pass a budget.

The situation has now grown quite serious, as reported by the AP:

California may have to halt work on its high-speed rail project if it does not get an infusion of cash from the state's infrastructure fund.

Aides told the state's high-speed rail board today that the project is out of money and unable to pay its bills. The problem is an outgrowth of the state's larger budget crisis.

Some of the rail project's engineering and environmental review contractors have said they will not continue working without being paid.

The rail board has asked the state's Pooled Money Investment Board for a $29.1 million loan to fund its operations through the end of June. But the state's budget problems forced the board to freeze funding for infrastructure projects.

That has not changed even though the Legislature passed a two-year budget plan last month.

It must be made quite clear - because HSR deniers on the Peninsula will spread misinformation about this - that this is not the result of any wrongdoing or mismanagement on the part of the CHSRA. They are at the mercy of the state government as a whole and cannot create money out of thin air. They have asked contractors and their own employees to work without pay for months. Clearly that is an untenable situation.

The PMIB will likely restore funding for infrastructure projects, including the CHSRA, but that will take some time. And the state budget mess is far from over - if the initiatives on the May 19 special election ballot fail, California will face a $6 billion gap, on top of whatever gap the state will face as a result of the worsening economic crisis.

Again, there will be some critics who will take this to mean that the state cannot build HSR at all. That would be an extremely reckless answer to this problem, abandoning economic recovery because "gee it's too hard to fix the current crisis." California must demonstrate a commitment to high speed rail and fund the operations of the CHSRA - funding that will help provide accurate information to the residents of the state and counter the lies being spread by HSR opponents.

All of this is further evidence that California politicians must make a clearer and stronger commitment to high speed rail. It is all to easy to let this necessary project fall prey to the same failed politics that have produced the dire crisis the state finds itself in today. To borrow an overused phrase, high speed rail is too important to let fail.

Republican Budget Stalemate Hurts HSR Project

At yesterday's CHSRA board meeting the effect of the state's budget crisis on HSR became clear - unless Republicans stop obstructing a budget solution, the Authority may have to suspend planning and design work, and terminate contracts with consultants and engineers whose accumulated expertise on our HSR project has become vital.

The California High Speed Rail Authority's budget for the current fiscal year, which ends in June, included $29 million from the sales of high-speed rail bonds authorized by voters in November. But because of the state budget crisis, the credit crisis and the poor market for bonds, the state treasurer has not sold any of the rail bonds.

That's left the rail authority without cash at a time when Californians are eager to see the 800-mile fast train system built. At an authority meeting Thursday, officials said they had halted payments on engineering and design contracts in progress and are holding off on awarding new contracts.

"Unfortunately, I have quite a backlog of bills that need to be paid, but no money to pay them," said Carrie Pourvahidi, deputy director for the authority.

The article is a bit misleading on this. The credit crisis and the poor market for bonds are part of the issue. But the state budget crisis is THE central issue. The crisis has led Treasurer Bill Lockyer to refuse to try and sell authorized bonds, and led the Pooled Money Investment Board to stop all infrastructure spending. To the extent that the market for California bonds isn't good because of the budget crisis, it's because the bond markets are concerned that the state may default on its debts.

And why is that a possibility? Because Republican politicians - from legislators to Arnold Schwarzenegger - continue to block a budget solution. I usually try to keep my more partisan comments to Calitics but we cannot escape the fact that it is Republican obstruction alone blocking a solution. Democrats have compromised far more than the media reports - agreeing to nearly $8 billion in spending cuts that have their labor allies VERY angry with them. Speaker Karen Bass agreed to most, but not all of Arnold's demands on cutting environmental and labor protections. But Arnold vetoed the Democrats' solution, and Republicans refuse to budge.

That won't stop HSR deniers from using this manufactured budget crisis to blame HSR. They've done it before - when the CHSRA wasn't funded as a result of the summer budget delay, pushing back the release of the 2008 Business Plan, HSR deniers said it was a sign the CHSRA was a flawed agency unfit to manage the project. It is likely we will see the HSR deniers use thus cash crunch story for the same purposes.

Arnold has proposed giving the CHSRA the funding they need:

On the other hand, the governor's early state budget proposal for the 2009-10 fiscal year includes $123.8 million for high-speed rail, just a half million dollars short of the agency's request.

But if he keeps blocking budget deals, this doesn't really matter. If consultants and engineers are let go, they may decide to take their expertise elsewhere in the country or in the world, and we will not easily replace them.

The big picture involves conservative anti-government ideologies. One reason the HSR deniers oppose the project is they refuse to accept that government can plan and implement this kind of project effectively, even though HSR has been successfully built by governments around the world. By starving government of revenue they are able to "prove" their case with a self-fulfilling prophecy. They opposed Prop 1A and HSR, so they starve the Authority of funds and then say "oh wow they can't manage money!"

California Republicans need to recall their Constitutional obligations to this state and provide it with a balanced budget that protects Constitutionally-guaranteed services - and respects the will of the millions of Californians who voted their endorsement of HSR by approving Prop 1A on November 4.

The New Hoovers Are Still Trying to Kill HSR

As we repeatedly explained at this blog during the campaign, the New Hoovers have it in for high speed rail. HSR is a necessary part of California's economic recovery, but Republican politicans - from Arnold Schwarzenegger to GOP legislators - are bent on using this economic crisis to achieve the dismantling of government that they could never get during normal times. They have used the 2/3rds rule and the governor's veto power to prevent a balanced budget from being enacted. As a result California has had to borrow money to pay for basic operations, but the strain of that borrowing has nearly exhausted our short-term borrowing capacity.

As a result of Arnold's most recent budget-blocking action the Pooled Money Investment Board had to cut off all funding for infrastructure projects - throwing a whopping 200,000 people out of work. As an AP article explains that action jeopardizes HSR planning efforts:

The state treasurer says the high-speed rail board won't be able to tap any of that money until lawmakers pass a balanced budget.

Without an agreement to close the budget gap, the treasurer won't be able to sell any bonds and won't allow the board to get a loan to tide it over until the bonds are sold. The state's loan fund, the Pooled Money Investment Account, is needed for other state operations, said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Treasurer Bill Lockyer....

Carrie Pourvahidi, one of the rail board's deputy directors, said the board is counting on getting $29.1 million from the Pooled Money Investment Account to pay for its operations in the first half of 2009.

Without that money it would have to shut down in late January or early February, she said.

[Mehdi] Morshed said he doubts any federal money could be allocated quickly enough to fill that void.

"If we can't pay our bills, we would just have to stop spending, which means we would have to tell our contractors to stop work. Then, hopefully, later on, when we have the money, we can pick it up," he said.

As you may remember we just went through this mess - during the summer Republicans blocked passage of a budget for three months, delaying the delivery of the updated Business Plan until just after the November election. When the state is out of money the CHSRA cannot continue its planning operations. This current delay - again caused by Republican intransigence - could cause consultants to leave the HSR project:

But if the state does not resolve its own fiscal problems in time to keep the board operating, even a short-term shutdown could prompt some of the engineers, planners and environmental consultants who have been working on the project to abandon it for more reliable clients, he said. That could cause delays.

"The federal government's going to pump billions into infrastructure nationwide," Morshed said.

"Then everybody's going to scramble for the people who are going to deliver those projects. Whoever has their hands on somebody, they are in better shape than the other person. If we lose some (consultants), we may lose them for good or a very long period of time."

Arnold Schwarzenegger needs to get his head out of his ass and sign the Democrats' budget plan. Otherwise California is going to suffer for quite a long time - the infrastructure projects Arnold championed in his Newsweek op-ed will be severely weakened and compromised by this ongoing crisis. Not to mention the effect of California being thrown into an outright economic depression which HSR is supposed to help alleviate.

Federal aid will still be necessary to complete the project and while that looks more promising, New Hoovers in Congress are beginning to stir in their own opposition to infrastructure stimulus spending:

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said he has "grave reservations about taking $1 trillion from struggling taxpayers and spending it on government programs." He suggested tax cuts as a better alternative to kick-start the economy.

As far as I can tell Republican politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. are, instead of trying to help resolve one of the worst economic crises we've faced in 75 years and help build for our future, are using the crisis to settle old scores and trying to reverse what remains of the New Deal.

Canadian author Naomi Klein described this phenomenon as the shock doctrine. And it's now threatening to cripple the HSR project California voters approved last month. Things were bad in the 1930s, but at least our government wasn't being held hostage by a clique of ideologues determined to score points even at the expense of the economic security of millions of Californians, of the state's future prosperity.

"The Whole Definition of Commuter is Changing"

The Christian Science Monitor published an article on the HSR plan, and it has this interesting quote from CHSRA Executive Director Mehdi Morshed:

"The whole definition of 'commuter' is changing," says Mehdi Morshed, executive director of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. "The old model is people going to factory jobs from 8 to 5 … now people are driving 150 miles from one place to another two to three times a week for work, recreation, travel, once-a-week meetings – this generation is changing, and so will the next."

Now, it seems to me that this change took place about 30 years ago. But Morshed's point is that our state's transportation systems haven't caught up, and that HSR is needed to match it. It's an interesting angle - BART has become an all-day, multidirectional transit system and Metrolink is moving in that direction. HSR would supplement that with much faster speeds along some of those routes.

Will this be enough to convince voters? It always seemed to me that HSR as intercity travel was the strongest pull, but perhaps I'm wrong. What do you think? Is HSR as commuter travel - in the Mehdi Morshed sense - going to be what gets us a bond measure win this November?

Will High Speed Rail be Built in Pieces?

Ever since the California High Speed Rail plan was published in 2002, the proposed bond funding plan has always insisted that the first section to be opened would be the link between LA and SF. Although the full buildout would include lines to Sacramento and San Diego, LA-SF was rightly seen as the backbone of the system, providing a sustainable, reliable, and rapid transportation option linking the state's two main centers. As with European HSR lines, a successful first line generates political support, public enthusiasm, and financial resources to expand the network.

With that in mind I am a bit hesitant to embrace a proposal from Fiona Ma and Cathleen Galgani that would, according to an AP report:

allow the bonds to be used for all segments of the proposed 700-mile rail system. The bond's current language dedicates the money only for the proposed segment between the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas.

I think this is a bad idea, but first, some background.

Significantly, the bill not only has Arnold's backing, but was drafted by the administration's advisers and the California High Speed Rail Authority board of directors. Quentin Kopp, chair of the board, "said he had been told by Schwarzenegger's chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, that the Republican governor supports the bond proposal." Which is certainly welcome news after years of delayed votes (the plan was originally to have been voted on in 2004, and then in 2006).

Ma and CHSRA director Mehdi Morshed explained the new bill this way:

Ma and Mehdi Morshed, the rail board's executive director, said the bill could broaden public support for the bonds by allowing all areas served by the project to compete for money.

The bill would require the board to give top priority for bond funding to segments of the project that could attract the most federal, local government or private financing and that also could be used by other passenger trains.

What is happening here is the resolution to a months-old conflict between the rail board and the governor's office. Arnold had been trying to undermine the project by, as I explained at Calitics in June 2007, insisting that federal and private funding be secured first, *before* going to the ballot - even though that is ass-backward, as a state funding commitment is necessary for the feds and investors to commit. The Ma-Galgani proposal seems to satisfy Arnold's insistence on leveraged funding by privileging those portions of the route that can find it.

Further, it may satisfy a political need. Back in May 2007 I wrote about concerns that the LA-SF priority was going to lose votes in other parts of the state. I didn't buy that thinking then, or now, but it does appear to have combined with the desire to buy Arnold's support at whatever cost to produce this proposal.

And it's not a good proposal. The core selling point - the "killer app" if you will - of the high speed rail plan is that it offers an alternative to flying and driving between the Bay Area and Southern California. Instead of a hassle-filled, expensive, environmentally ruinous flight, or a long, expensive, unsustainable drive, Californians could hop a train in downtown SF and be in downtown LA in 2 1/2 hours.

As we enter the age of peak oil and global warming, perhaps our greatest transportation need as a state will be long-distance intercity service. We will not be able to fly and drive between the two great metropoles of our state for much longer.

But with this plan, it is precisely that portion - LA-SF - that is *least* likely to get bond funding. There are no other local services that can be leveraged, and federal funding is still uncertain (especially if noted train-hater John McCain wins the White House). What this proposal will produce is HSR along the Caltrain line from SF to San Jose, HSR along the Metrolink line from Santa Clarita to LA and Anaheim, and leave an enormous gap in between. A missing link that will hurt ridership and limit political support for the project, while the costs of filling the link continue to soar.

The Ma-Galgani plan is well-intentioned - but wrong. We need to instead make the case to Californians that our state cannot survive without HSR. Emphasize the environmental and sustainability benefits, as well as the convenience. A winning coalition is built not through gimmicks, but through showing people the underlying value of the system.