Will Dianne Feinstein Vote for High Speed Rail?

Today's San Jose Mercury News includes a fantastic op-ed by State Senator Dean Florez (Fresno) and Erin Steva of CALPIRG, calling on US Senator Dianne Feinstein to support the $4 billion for high speed rail currently pending in the Senate:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has established herself as a high-speed rail champion. She has another great opportunity to stand up for high-speed rail, since she serves on the House-Senate conference committee that will finalize the bill. Its eventual choice will send an important signal to the country about Congress' commitment to high-speed rail as an innovative solution to our nation's transportation challenges.

Sen. Florez and Steva lay out the case for federal HSR spending:

A $4 billion federal investment would buy new, high-performance locomotives and passenger cars built in the U.S., better signals, track and grade-crossing upgrades and removal of rail bottlenecks — all resulting in faster and more convenient travel. In California, it will create hundreds of thousands of quality jobs in fields that have experienced losses over the last decade, including the technology, construction and engineering sectors....

Americans are turning to passenger rail in record numbers. Rail travel ridership increased each of the last six years, while vehicle miles traveled for cars and trucks has fallen over the last two years for the first time since the oil crisis of the 1970s.

It's a strong argument for HSR spending, especially since putting $4 billion in this year's bill will set a precedent to maintain that level of funding in future budget cycles. Whereas a $1.2 billion amount, as the Senate seems to prefer, would make it more difficult to expand HSR funding, especially in future years when there is likely to be increased pressure to slash federal spending.

It's not the usual way of operating for Democrats, but they would be wise to push as many good things through now, and set a precedent that will be more difficult to undo should they lose control of Congress or the White House in the next decade. Let's hope Senator Feinstein comes through with $4 billion for HSR.

FourBillion.com

USPIRG, along with several state-based HSR organizations, have launched an online organizing effort to get the US Senate to preserve the $4 billion in HSR spending that the US House approved earlier this year. From the petition language:

Right now, Congress is finalizing next year's transportation appropriations bill, which could include an historic investment in high-speed passenger rail.

Last month, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that included $4 billion for high-speed rail. The Senate cut the allocation down to $1.2 billion in their version, which passed last week. The two bills will now move to a conference committee, where they will decide the final amount of investment.

The conference committee will be meeting soon in hopes of finalizing the bill by the end of the month. We'd like to send them a roster of support by the end of the week, so we need sign-ons quickly.

Please help us achieve our goal! Get started by entering your zip code below.

Thank you for your support.

If you want to contact Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein directly, here you go:

Senator Boxer:

DC: (202) 224-3553
Fresno: (559) 497-5109
LA: (213) 894-5000
SD: (619) 239-3884
SF: (415) 403-0100

Senator Feinstein:

DC: (202) 224-3841
Fresno: (559) 485-7430
LA: (310) 914-7300
SD: (619) 231-9712
SF: (415) 393-0707

To send an email:

Sen. Barbara Boxer

Sen. Dianne Feinstein

US Senate HSR Vote To Come Today?

Back in July the US House of Representatives approved $4 billion for HSR for FY 2010 - that's in addition to the $8 billion in the February stimulus. And as I reported a few days later, a Senate panel cut that number to just $1.2 billion.

The Midwest HSR Association, which has been impressively upping its activist game this year, believes that a final, full Senate vote could come as soon as today. They have put together an action page allowing you to email your Senators to support matching the full $4 billion appropriated in the House.

This would be a perfect opportunity for Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to step up and show leadership for California high speed rail by ensuring there's as much federal money available as possible.

And it's especially important that we get this money this year, as it looks a transportation bill may not happen this year. That bill is where a true commitment to long-term funding for HSR can emerge. Already the right-wingers are launching a broad campaign to try and gut HSR funding. Our activism is important to ensure they don't succeed.

US Senate Committee Proposes Fewer HSR Funds

Living up to its reputation as the place where good ideas go to die, a US Senate transportation panel proposed only $1.2 billion for HSR in the coming year:

The Senate's transportation bill, shepherded by senior appropriator Patty Murray (D-WA), provides $1.2 billion for the Obama administration's high-speed rail initiative -- $200 million more than the White House's budget request, but significantly less than the $4 billion that the House set aside for that purpose.

Highways, by contrast, got $41.1 billion from the House but $1.4 billion extra from the Senate, for a total of $43.5 billion in spending. Transit would get $480 million more than the White House requested, along with a $150 million infusion for the cash-strapped D.C. Metro system.

Recall that the US House approved $4 billion last week for HSR. So obviously there's going to be a conference committee fight over this, assuming the $1.2 billion for HSR makes it to the full Senate floor (and I expect it will).

This fight isn't going to happen anytime soon - the final bill likely won't be voted on until the fall, and the conference committee report may not come until September or October. The fight over health care reform may well push that timeline back somewhat.

No word yet from either Senators Dianne Feinstein or Barbara Boxer about their position on this. Would be nice to see California's senators help bring home some money for our HSR project. After all, isn't that one of the reasons we keep sending them to DC?

Why Is Obama Scared Of The Transportation Bill?

by Robert Cruickshank

During the debate over the stimulus, it became clear that the Obama Administration planned to use the transportation bill reauthorization to offer the long-term changes in funding and modal priorities they had been promising. Unfortunately, the administration is getting cold feet on pushing the transportation bill this year, setting up a battle with two of the House's leading mass transit advocates, James Oberstar of Wisconsin and Peter DeFazio of Oregon (both are Democrats), as Streetsblog SF reports:

It's no secret that key leaders of the House transportation panel and the White House economic team don't get along -- from quips about shovel skills to a stimulus "shouting match," committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and his top lieutenant, Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR), have become two of their party's leading Obama administration skeptics.

But the committee is now fighting a two-front battle, against an administration determined to put off a new six-year transport bill and a Senate that yesterday approved a "clean" 18-month extension of existing law.

Undaunted, Oberstar and DeFazio today pressed U.S. DOT undersecretary Roy Kienitz to clear one thing up: If the administration wants policy changes added to the 18-month stopgap, and if Kienitz agrees that the House bill's "goals are very similar" to the White House's, should the Senate be allowed to press on with its "clean" bill?

Kienitz answered carefully: "I don't think it's my place to try to make policy on that." A nonplussed DeFazio then wondered who would make policy on the transportation extension, if not senior DOT officials.

"I'm coming to learn that's a bit complicated," Kienitz said.

The problem is that the administration is skittish about the tax increases that would be necessary to fund the $500 billion bill Oberstar has worked out. Senator Barbara Boxer has offered support for indexing the gas tax to inflation, and DeFazio has proposed a 0.01 percent tax on oil speculators, but both are unpalatable to an administration looking at a major battle over taxes to fund the health care reform plan currently dominating the Congressional agenda.

Instead, Obama wants to extend the existing transportation bill for 18 months - kicking it into 2011, past the November 2010 elections. It's not exactly an act of leadership, but then this administration is making a mark for itself as being fundamentally reactive on virtually every major policy issue it is confronted with. Setting the agenda and systematically building support for it and selling it to lawmakers and the public - in other words, doing the stuff that every president has done since at least FDR - does not come naturally to the Obama Administration.

Oberstar is livid about the delay, but anger crosses party lines, with Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich calling for at most a 12-month extension but would like Obama to get serious about the transportation bill itself. As Streetsblog's Elana Schor noted that the US Chamber of Commerce wants a new transportation bill and is willing to lobby to get it.

Another factor in the complicated fight is the fact that the highway trust fund is quickly becoming insolvent. This is not a new situation - it has been in trouble for nearly a decade owing to anti-tax sentiment - but it is another reason why an extension of the existing bill isn't itself a simple solution.

Ultimately the Obama Administration is going to have to resolve its budding identity crisis. Is it really an agent of change, as the inclusion of $8 billion for HSR in the stimulus indicated? Or is it dedicated to preserving the status quo, just without the insane misanthropy of the Bush-Cheney years? The transportation bill is one area where the administration is going to have to choose, and soon.

Congress Likely To Delay Transportation Bill To 2011

The US Congress is getting a reputation as the place where good ideas go to die. Although currently held by the Democratic Party, the real power lies with center-right Democrats who are generally skittish about significant change, and certainly wary of either spending money, finding new revenues for programs, or both.

We can see this in the health care and the climate change bill - but we can also see it in the discussion of the reauthorization of the Transportation Bill, due in 2009. In the House, Jim Oberstar has been pushing to produce a bill that would better fund public transit and shift the government's priorities away from roads and sprawl. Transportation for America has an analysis of his efforts here - it's a mixed bag so far.

But the most contentious aspect of all is the matter of how to fund the federal government's transportation obligations. The US highway trust fund has been on the verge of insolvency for a while now, dating back to the early Bush Administration. When then-Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta proposed a gas tax increase to fix the problem, President George W. Bush said no, as Mineta recounted earlier this month:

In 2001, knowing the next highway reauthorization was set for 2003, we developed a six-year funding mechanism that called for a 2-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase in the first year, a 2-cent-a-gallon increase in the third year, and another 2-cent-a-gallon increase in the fifth year. As I recall, that would have been a $330 billion proposal and left us with a $7 billion unobligated trust fund balance after six years. We went to the Oval Office, and after we went through the entire presentation, President Bush takes a marker, circles the gas tax increases, and says, "Norm, I don't want any of those tax increases. Get those out."

So we went back and put a CPI inflator on the gas tax in the fifth year. Keep in mind that the gas tax had not been raised since 1993. We returned to the Oval Office, went through the presentation, and afterward President Bush said, "Norm, that's a tax increase. Get that out."

Bush may be gone, but his attitude now dominates a Democratic Congress. As Yonah Freemark noted over at The Transport Politic, there is no consensus on how to fund transportation, and Barbara Boxer suggests the most likely outcome is an 18-month extension of the existing transportation bill, which would push the issue out to beyond the 2010 midterm elections. To Freemark, the problem is that Congress isn't willing to face up to the revenue problem:

More importantly, no one in Congress is being frank about raising revenues to support transportation. Mr. Oberstar’s bill left the funding sections blank, and Mr. LaHood has been openly lobbying against any increase in the gas tax. Ms. Boxer’s comments today reaffirmed her opposition to the same and expressed her unwillingness to support a VMT system, which she called “too intrusive.” No one on the invited panel at the hearing provided serious alternatives to those two funding sources, nor did any senator, though everyone seems convinced that a major program expansion is necessary. Funds from the climate change bill, which might incorporate a carbon cap-and-trade system, may come into play, but those dollars are far off and uncommitted for now.

Mr. Oberstar has been adamant in his desire to push forward the next transportation bill now, but this hearing made clear that the Senate is not going to play along. Ms. Boxer is chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, and her position will effectively block Mr. Oberstar’s bill even if that legislation passes in the House. Without the support of the White House, Mr. Oberstar is loosing ground. His inability to pinpoint a stable funding source is similarly problematic.

What hasn’t been suggested, but that which I will continue to bring up, is a simple abandonment of the idea that transportation must be sponsored by its “users.” We are all beneficiaries of a strong transportation network, and filling the Trust Fund mostly with general fund sources is a viable and long-term solution that would require none of the shenanigans that currently deteriorate efforts to raise the gas tax or impose a VMT. Whether now or in 18 months, we’re going to need something better than today’s non-proposals from Ms. Boxer.

I wholly agree with these statements, and it is certainly time to provide general fund support for transportation projects. Infrastructure, especially mass transit infrastructure including high speed rail, is at the center of this nation's economic recovery effort and our 21st century prosperity. Unfortunately, Congress seems to have totally abandoned any interest in economic recovery or long-term planning, and is instead dominated by obsolete 20th century concerns about the politics of taxes and user fees.

Barbara Boxer's reluctance to propose revenue solutions, and her desire to kick the can down the curb, is part of a growing trend in her approach to policymaking that is much more risk-averse and centrist than we are used to seeing from the more liberal of our two senators. Facing re-election in 2010, Boxer appears to have concluded that she needs to play to an assumed political center, seeking bipartisanship (with James Inhofe? ha!) and avoiding anything resembling a tax increase for fear of how it would play with California voters.

These concerns are misplaced. Californians have shown they will support raising revenue for sustainable transportation solutions, as the November 2008 election made clear. Not just in the passage of Prop 1A, which after all was a bond, but in the passage of outright sales tax increases in Los Angeles, Santa Clara, Marin and Sonoma counties. Those counties have nearly 15 million residents, and over 67% of voters in those counties supported the concept Yonah Freemark described above, of asking everyone to subsidize mass transit, not just those who use it.

Boxer's unwillingness to lead is sadly being matched by President Barack Obama. Over the first six months of the Obama Administration a disturbing trend has made itself clear. Obama likes to talk a big game, and will make public statements promising a new era, broad reform, and an embrace of policy change. He then leaves all the details up to Congress, refusing to get involved in the nitty gritty of the negotiations. As a result Congress's natural tendency to either do nothing or do the wrong thing is asserted, and we get outcomes like an 18-month postponement.

How this affects HSR is unclear. High speed rail will be a part of the new Transportation Bill. How it will be funded remains totally unclear. Obama wants to see a long-term HSR program come out of Congress, but as with so many other aspects of his agenda, Obama is going to have to learn that if he wants Congress to do something, he is going to have to force the issue and make it happen himself.

Until Obama does, the US Congress will remain a graveyard for common sense and smart, proven, effective policy.

So What's Happening With The Transportation Bill?

by Robert Cruickshank

As we've mentioned here before, the $8 billion HSR stimulus is just a first step toward a long-term solution of how to fund the development of a faster and more robust intercity passenger rail network in the US. The real money comes in the quintennial Transportation Bill, which is due for renewal this year. President Obama and many Congressional Democrats see that bill as the place where the nation's transportation priorities can finally change, away from massive subsidies to roads and starvation diets for rails. It's perfectly timed to take advantage of a popular new president who has majorities in both houses of Congress - rather than wage an election year battle or deal with a Congress controlled by the other party, Obama can work with allies to craft a new model of funding transportation.

Transportation advocacy groups and reformers are already at work proposing their agendas in an effort to seize the opportunity the Transportation Bill offers. One of the best comes from Transportation For America which yesterday offered The Route To Reform: Blueprint for a 21st Century Federal Transportation Program. The blueprint is an extensive and sensible proposal for decreasing our dependence on oil and cars and boosting rail and other non-motorized methods of transportation. Summarizing it in this post is almost impossible, but I'll pick out some of the best elements:

Performance Targets: Reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled by 16%; Triple walking, biking and public transportation usage; Reduce transportation-generated carbon dioxide levels by 40%; Reduce average household combined housing + transportation costs 25% (use 2000 as base year)

New Federal Transportation Structure: Comprised of four elements: National Transportation Priority Programs (including planning and maintenance backlog); Geographically-Tiered Multimodal Access Program (state, regional, and local); Programs to Complete the National Transportation System (intercity travel, green freight, and "projects of national significance); and Innovation Incentive Programs to boost sustainable and smart growth.

Possible New Revenue Sources: Sales Tax; Gas Tax; Oil Tax; Container and Customs Taxes.

What I really like about the T4America proposal is it emphasizes performance targets that are set up to ensure the development of a passenger rail infrastructure in order to achieve goals we should all be embracing (Peninsula NIMBYs too): reducing dependence on oil, cutting carbon emissions, and saving people money. The whole plan looks quite sensible and workable to me.

Whether it will be incorporated in any way into the final transportation bill is another matter entirely. In the House we have a strong ally in Rep. James Oberstar, Democrat from Minnesota. Oberstar is determined to produce a bill that will boost transit funding, as reported by Infrastructurist:

• The outline calls for "transit equity." Right now the feds pay 80 percent of highway projects and 50 percent of transit projects. That would change.

• It would create DOT agencies focused on a "national strategic plan" and on "mega-projects."

• "DOT's 108 programs [will be consolidated] into four "major formula programs": critical asset preservation, highway safety improvement, surface transportation program, and congestion mitigation and air quality improvement."

• The document seems to call for more transparency with transportation data.

Oberstar has also said that the Transportation Bill has to fund from $400 to $500 billion worth of projects over the next 5 years. If either his approach or T4America's similar approach are successful, we could have a clear source identified for HSR projects. The funding may be explicitly earmarked for HSR or it might be set up to ensure HSR gets it through the program allocations and targets.

The House is likely to produce a very good bill. The Senate, not so much. As has become clear in 2009, the US Senate is where good and sensible ideas go to die. Controlled by right-leaning Democrats in the pocket of banks, large corporate donors, and who are otherwise in thrall to a 1990s-style "pro-business" neoliberal agenda, Senate Democrats are busily planning to water down health care reform, Obama's budget, and the Transportation Bill as well, just as they watered down the stimulus.

One of those who might want a less strong bill than the House is California's own Barbara Boxer. She's up for reelection next year and though she is widely seen as more liberal than Dianne Feinstein, apparently she is worried enough about former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina that Boxer is trying to not look quite as liberal as before, as this Reuters article suggests:

"What I think is very important is to index the gas tax to inflation, because, obviously the gas tax is falling behind," she said at the Reuters Infrastructure Summit. "I also don't want to increase the gas tax, but I want it to keep up."...

The Senate is also considering raising the tax on diesel, changing exemptions to the gas tax given to certain groups, taking a percentage of customs duties, relying on private finance, and charging drivers fees based on Vehicle Miles Traveled, she said.

The bill's authors, though, have rejected attaching a small device to cars to measure Vehicle Miles Traveled, Boxer said.

"We're looking at options. Are there ways for people to -- an honor system, when they register their vehicles -- just say, 'This is the miles I had last year, this is the miles I have this year,'?" she said.

Boxer is inconsistent here - she says she doesn't want the gas tax to rise but then wants to index it to inflation. The fact is that indexing means it will likely rise, although the increase would be somewhat more hidden. As to a VMT box, I'm not sure an honor system is necessary, but perhaps it could be as easy as a DMV staffer checking the odometer when you are up for your annual renewal? (Then again, that would increase pressure on the DMV staff, since currently in California you can renew by mail without having to visit a DMV office.)

Boxer's also uncertain about Oberstar's plan to give the states more flexibility:

Like Oberstar, Boxer wants to pass a transportation bill that emphasizes efficiency and consolidates the numerous transportation programs.

But she wants to maintain the same relationship between the federal government and states, whereas Oberstar is considering giving the states more discretion in spending.

An environmental leader in the U.S. Congress, Boxer said she was finding common ground with Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee that she chairs for reducing traffic and congestion.

That last part is simply absurd, and I'm disappointed in Boxer for saying it. The ranking Republican on that committee is Oklahoma's James Inhofe, a noted global warming denier and opponent of mass transit. Boxer should feel no need or desire whatsoever to work with Republicans, unless they are willing to accept the values that Oberstar and T4America, as well as President Obama are proposing.

Streetsblog SF articulates some more concerns about Boxer:

Any chance of reforming the transportation bill, which advocates are clamoring for, will require deft political maneuvering to mollify ranking committee member Senator James Inhofe.

Several sources said that Boxer's cooperation with Inhofe is simple math. The $312 billion baseline for transportation over six years is insufficient to meet state of good repair needs and set the country on a course for innovation. Minnesota Representative James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, has suggested $400-500 billion would be needed, while the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Organizations (AASHTO) and the American Public Transit Association (APTA) argue in their Bottom Line Report that at least $160 billion will be needed annually. In order get from $312 billion to $500 billion or better, Boxer will need to get approval for new revenue streams, which would require a filibuster-proof majority, something she might not get without Inhofe and other reluctant members on the committee.

Several interviewees also pointed to Senator Boxer's alliance with Inhofe on an amendment in the federal stimulus bill for an additional $50 billion in highway money as a bad sign.

"You have polar bears and glaciers on your website... then throw people back in their cars?" said one official who insisted on anonymity.

I'm used to watching DiFi like a hawk. Not so much with Boxer. The rest of the article notes some more discomfort with Boxer's positions, so I suspect we're going to have to target Boxer frequently this summer as the Transportation Bill works its way through the Senate.

That is, unless it gets pushed back to 2010 as Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia suggested yesterday:

But Sen Mark Warner (D, Va.) is now saying he’s “not sure” that the estimated $500 billion authorization will happen until next year. According to a story by Terry Kivlan in CongressDaily, Warner thinks that “Congress might have too many big-ticket items on its agenda this year to take on a transportation package.” Speaking at an infrastructure-focused conference hosted by the Departments of Transportation and the Department of Commerce, the senator remarked: “I’m not sure you are going to see a full transportation bill put out this year.”

He’s specifically worried about funding availability in light of the fact that revenue from the gas tax, which pays for highway and transit programs, is no longer sufficient to cover outlays. He called this the “elephant in the room” with respect to infrastructure funding.

In short, Warner is saying that he's scared about anything involving fiddling with the gas tax, and that the big bad Republicans might hit Dems on that after a big fight over health care and the budget. What Warner doesn't explain is how 2010 is any better a time to deal with the Transportation Bill, as it would be an election year.

This would be so much easier if the US Senate wasn't populated by the timid and the right-leaning. Unfortunately, we're going to have to deal with them if we want a good Transportation Bill and not something that mindlessly repeats the same flawed anti-transit policies of the past.

West Coast High Speed Rail?

by Robert Cruickshank

I'll be honest, I never expected to see this story this soon. From The Olympian (based in Olympia, the state capital of Washington):

Washington state and California officials have held preliminary discussions about a high-speed, state-of-the-art rail line that would connect San Diego and Vancouver, B.C., with trains that could travel in excess of 200 miles per hour....

But Scott Witt, director of the Washington state Department of Transportation’s rail and marine program, said that though he and others are focused on the “here and now,” high-speed trains running nearly the length of the West Coast aren’t just a fantasy.

“They would go like a son of a gun,” he said.

This topic has come up every so often when discussing either long-term HSR planning, the California and/or the Cascades HSR corridors, or when we're sitting around with nothing better to do than draw lines on a map and say "wouldn't it be neat if...?" (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Objections to a border-to-border HSR route are several. The first is that numerous studies have shown that HSR is only competitive with airlines when the route is around 400 miles or so. Beyond that, the travel times tend to be off-putting for many passengers, who prefer the convenience of flying. Of course, that's given present conditions, and spikes in oil prices and other events that could make flying undesirable or costly might change the calculus.

The second issue is the geography. Vancouver to Eugene and Redding to San Diego is pretty easy. Eugene to Redding is not. There are a lot of mountains in the way, and the easiest route - the current Coast Starlight route, over Willamette Pass, parallel to US 97 through Klamath Falls, and through the Shasta Lake region - almost totally misses the population centers of Southern Oregon.

Both issues contribute to the third, which is cost:

Constructing a truly high-speed West Coast rail corridor wouldn’t be easy. It would require entirely new rails and a new corridor that smoothed out grades and corners. Picking a route and deciding where the trains would stop would be politically bruising. And the cost could be astronomical.

The 1,500-mile line, by some estimates, could cost between $10 million and $45 million per mile to build. Witt said he has been talking with his counterpart in California for about three weeks.

“It’s very, very preliminary,” Witt said. “But it makes a lot of sense.”

An alliance with California and perhaps Oregon would make it easier to leverage federal planning funds, he said.

The Olympian didn't do the math, but at $27.5 million per mile (the midpoint of the estimates) that comes to $40.5 billion. Which is about the cost of just building the CA HSR project (SD and Sacramento phases included). So I am not confident in that estimate.

Still, as the above quote shows, these conversations ARE happening. As far as I can tell it may be part of an effort by Washington State, which recently cut passenger rail staff at WSDOT, to get a more favorable position regarding the federal stimulus and longer-term federal HSR planning for the Cascades corridor by allying with Oregon and California. Show USDOT that the California project is part of a wider vision for the West Coast, so let's fund stuff in the Pacific Northwest too!

I'm all for helping fund HSR along the Cascades corridor. It's a perfect place to implement HSR - most of the Northwest's population lives there, the stations are in the city centers, and in Portland and soon Seattle will be linked by a robust network of local rail and transit.

And I'm not opposed to upgrading the West Coast passenger rail corridor. Upgrading the Eugene-Redding corridor where possible to allow for some higher speeds could make it possible for an overnight connection from Eugene to Sacramento, and someone could get from Seattle to LA in about half the amount of time it currently takes via rail.

One of Washington's US Senators, Patty Murray, suggests we take this seriously:

“This is real stuff about moving people, creating jobs and reducing greenhouse gases,” Murray said.

As for a high-speed San Diego to Vancouver run, Murray said not to dismiss it out of hand.

“Obviously it would be in the future and it would be great,” she said. “But if this (stimulus spending) can lead to that, it would be amazing.”

Patty Murray is fantastic, and if she says to not dismiss it out of hand, I won't. But I'm going to remain highly skeptical.

Especially since I'd be a frequent user of a West Coast HSR route. I just came back from a weekend in Seattle, and as someone with friends and family in that town and in Portland, I'd love a faster and more reliable way to get there and back via train. But I'm not convinced this is a particularly high priority for us right now.

My own conclusion is that my views all along have been right: that we must first focus on building HSR in the key corridors, and then work on upgrading passenger rail between states and regions. A Eugene-Redding HSR line would come at the end of a national passenger rail project and not at the outset. Something I'd envision for 2050, not 2030.

Fresno Bee: Fund the High Speed Rail Project

The looming cash crisis facing the California High Speed Rail Authority - which, I must repeat, is not the Authority's fault but instead the product of a flawed state budget process that has caught the CHSRA within its grasp - is the subject of a great Fresno Bee editorial today that calls on state lawmakers to find a solution and prevent the new national support for HSR from passing California:

The California High Speed Rail Authority is out of money, and may have to call a halt to all the planning efforts now under way. That could put the state at risk of losing out on federal funds in both the stimulus bill and the omnibus spending bill....

California is currently ahead of the rest of the states in planning its high-speed system. We're the only state whose voters have approved spending our own money on such a project, and the environmental and engineering studies required for the massive project are already well begun.

But that lead could evaporate quickly if California's efforts are stalled by money woes. Not a day passes without news of the enthusiasm that's rising in other states and regions to build high-speed systems -- the Midwest, the Northeast corridor, Texas, Florida.

In the meantime, some of the private contractors doing the engineering and environmental reviews in California have already stopped the work because they aren't getting paid. Most of the work of planning, designing and building the high-speed system will be done by private sector companies -- but they won't work for free, nor should they.

California's budget crisis is growing worse, and the US Senate's decision to tell the states to "drop dead" by cutting the state stabilization funds is a huge part of the problem. Still, $29.1 million is not an enormous amount of money and is a smart investment in enabling billions in federal money to come California's way.

State legislators and administrators must find a way to ensure the CHSRA has the money it needs to do its work. Otherwise we're going to see an emboldened NIMBY and HSR denier movement that will destroy high speed rail in the absence of the kind of information, charts, graphics, and public meetings that the CHSRA can offer.

Getting voters to approve Prop 1A was the easy part. Changing the underlying politics that frustrated passenger rail projects for over 40 years is the hard part. We have an opportunity to do that now. We cannot afford to let it pass us by.

The Stimulus Bill Saga: Senate Edition

UPDATE: MSNBC reports that the cloture vote on Nelson (D-NE) / Collins (R-ME) amendment just passed 61-36 in the Senate. This development suggests that both Sen. Collins and Sen. Snowe (both R-ME) and Sen. Specter (R-PA) have voted in favor and, makes is very likely that the version discussed below will reach cloture and pass on Tuesday. Note that there are multiple numbers describing the dollar volume of the bill, perhaps because of varying estimates of costs related to tax cuts and assistance for the unemployed.

UPDATE 2: As expected, the Senate has passed its version of the stimulus bill with the help of yes votes from Sen. Collins (R-ME), Sen. Snowe (R-ME) and Sen. Specter (R-PA). CNN previews the compromises both houses will have now have to make in conference.

---

The Huffington Post has published a summary of the compromise on the stimulus bill as hammered out by centrist Republicans and Democrats to secure a filibuster-proof majority in the crucial vote expected on Tuesday, Feb 10. With amendments introduced and voted on in record speed, it has been difficult for Senators - never mind the general public - to ascertain the precise status of the bill over the past few days.

For the purposes of this blog, the most relevant section is the one on transportation. All line items are limited to capital projects, the numbers in parentheses refer to the amount in the amended House version as received by the Senate.

- $27.06b for highways (was $30b)
- $8.4b for transit (was $7.5b)
- $5.5b for general-purpose grants (was $2.5b)
- $1.3b for commercial aviation (was $3b)

- $2.0b for high speed rail (was $2b for fixed guideways)

- $250m to states for intercity rail (was $300m)
- $850m for Amtrak (was $800m)
- $160m for small shipyards + ferry services (was $0)
- $830m for roads on public lands (was $750m, but as part of $30b highway grant)

Total: $47.34b or 6% of the entire $780b Senate version (was $46.1b or 5.6% of the entire $819b House version)

Readers of this blog will be pleased to see that the Senate version targets $2b specifically at high speed rail in the corridors designated by DOT, especially since the California project is currently the only one with a completed program EIR/EIS. However, as currently defined by DOT, "high speed" translates to a minimum top speed of just 90mph. Note that the House version permits applications for arbitrary corridors and lower-speed technologies (e.g. commuter rail, subways, light rail, streetcars, guided buses, unmanned people movers, monorail systems, even urban gondolas).

Unfortunately, it's not entirely clear in either version into which funding category e.g. Amtrak California, a joint venture between Amtrak and Caltrans, would fall. California HSR is arguably also intercity rail, but I don't think that's what Senators had in mind. Similarly unclear is the distance at which local transit ends and intercity rail begins or, how it relates to the size of the state(s) requesting funding. In California, consider e.g. the cases of BART, Caltrain, Metrolink, NCTD and SMART. Comparable systems might well be interstate services in parts of New England! A paragraph clarifying these demarcations, if only by reference to existing DOT definitions, would be helpful.

All told, the Senate version actually increases transportation spending by around 3% relative to the House version, in spite of cutting the total bill volume by almost 5%. In particular, some funding has been shifted away from oil-intensive highways and aviation and toward fuel-efficient transit.

Also greatly increased is the level of general-purpose grants that DOT, i.e. the Obama administration, may award to any mode of transportation in an as-yet ill-defined competitive bidding process. The general policy direction of the administration appears to be in favor of weaning the nation off oil, but that may be superseded by a need to spend money as quickly as possible and/or to reward the Republican Senators that are breaking ranks. Both Maine and Pennsylvania have plenty of existing infrastructure, e.g. road bridges, in urgent need of repair. Once the stimulus bill is out of the way, the President may well seek to secure ongoing support from these centrist Republicans by negotiating a formal European-style coalition agreement with them - plus Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi - through end of year 2010.

If the Senate passes this latest version of the stimulus bill as-is, it will still have to be reconciled with the engrossed House version in conference. IMHO, given the razor-thin majority in the Senate, it is likely that House Democrats - after some huffing and puffing - will swallow their pride and make do with relatively minor last-minute adjustments so the President can sign the bill into law as soon as possible.

As a whole, it is arguably very much imperfect, especially in its emphasis on tax cuts over emergency assistance to states whose tax base has collapsed. Unfortunately, politics is the art of the possible. By including generous tax cuts from the outset, the President denied the GOP the opportunity to be seen exercising what little power it has left. It doesn't matter that those cuts were a key campaign promise, since the President had been careful not to specify when it would be kept. Thus, the GOP could have claimed to have forced him to concede them earlier than he might have wanted to and, pretended that this morsel of fake red meat constituted the basis of true bipartisanship. "No drama Obama" simply forgot that for opposition Senators, grandstanding is the point. They need their 15 minutes of C-SPAN fame.

Meanwhile, most state constitutions - including California's - require balanced budgets. This effectively forces Governors to act as Mini-Hoovers, furloughing or letting go state employees, thus reducing their ability to prop up an economy in desperate need of consumer demand. It would be prudent to restore the $40 billion in aid to states that was cut, but with strings attached - especially for the state of California, whose deficit dwarfs that of the other 49. For example, there could be a requirement that balanced state budgets be passed with simple majorities going forward, subject only to a gubernatorial veto. If compliance requires a change to the state constitution, so be it.

Alternatively, the stimulus bill could be amended to authorize the Federal Reserve to buy a certain dollar volume of long-term state bonds at reasonable rates, e.g. those prevailing prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers (i.e. based on a credit rating of A+ rather than A for California). At a recipient state's request, the authorization would waive repayments in 2009 and 2010, with interest accruing in the interim. With regard to capital investments, only the difference between the interest offered by the Federal Reserve and that available on the market would represent a federal contribution.

Fortunately, the above comparison suggests the House will probably not seek to reduce spending on transportation projects, which enjoys broad support from the electorate. Indeed, it is theoretically possible that an amendment co-sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to add another $25 billion for highway, water and transit infrastructure could be incorporated into the bill in conference, especially if attempts to reverse cuts in general aid to states should fail. The amendment had received 58 votes in the Senate, just two shy of the number needed to overcome a Senate filibuster on the issue.

HSR News From Around the World

Some tidbits for the weekend:

• Portugal to move ahead with Lisbon-Madrid HSR line, slated for completion between 2013 and 2015. The ruling Socialist Party believes it has the funding in place, and though a defeat in upcoming elections might derail the plan, the Socialists currently lead the polls. My wife and I are planning a trip to Portugal later in the year, and we'll make extensive use of their existing train infrastructure.



• Rochester, Minnesota is getting serious about being part of a proposed HSR line from Chicago to the Twin Cities. The Mayo Clinic, a large employer in the town, is strongly in favor of Rochester's inclusion, but other cities in southeastern Minnesota want the HSR route to follow the existing Amtrak route.



• A Georgia Senate panel has endorsed HSR to Chattanooga - don't know much about this particular proposal, but it's good to see Georgia getting serious about HSR planning.



• The FRA got a strong response to a solicitation for interest in building HSR. The Transport Politic has a full list of those groups that submitted bids and plans.



• Also from The Transport Politic (that site is an amazing resource) comes word that the otherwise flawed Senate stimulus bill avoids cutting transit funds and includes the $2 billion for HSR funding that we'd supported. I expect that to remain in the reconciliation process with the House, although it would be good if the state stabilization funds are restored - if California doesn't get federal help to close the deficit, that will hinder HSR planning efforts and hurt transit more broadly around the state.

What's on your mind?

Senate Republicans Shoot Down Billions in Transit Stimulus

Senate Republicans used the cloture rule (60 votes needed to close debate and vote on a bill or amendment) to kill the Feinstein transit amendment:

Already unhappy over the size of the measure, Republicans insisted additional infrastructure projects be paid for with cuts elsewhere in the bill.

But the Democratic amendment garnered 58 votes, just shy of the supermajority needed under Senate budget rules, and many more efforts to increase the measure's size are sure to follow.

"We can't add to the size of this bill," said Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. "The amount is just inconceivable to most people."

This should come as no surprise to anyone. Congressional Republicans have made clear their absolute refusal to consider changing our national transportation priorities away from the failed highway-dependent sprawl model that dominated the 20th century but whose failure lies at the heart of the economic crisis. To wit:

"We need to fix housing first," he said. Republicans are expected to seek a vote on their proposals this week as part of the debate on the overall stimulus measure.

Officials said the GOP was uniting behind a proposal designed to give banks an incentive to make loans at rates currently estimated at 4 percent to 4.5 percent. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were seized by the federal government in September, would be required to purchase the mortgages once banks have made them to consumers.

To put this more succinctly, they're saying "let's refloat the housing bubble!" Banks have made it quite clear that they are in no mood to lend money to many people in this climate, and Americans have made it quite clear they are in no mood to acquire more household debt. Sure, there may be a few folks here and there who want to buy, but by no means are they numerous enough to provide an economic boost.

And even if they could - would it matter? The economic crash was the product of overreliance on housing to drive the economy. That failed - why on earth would we want to try it again? Sustainable mass transit provides near-term jobs and long-term economic value by offering affordable transportation options not dependent on the vagaries of oil prices.

Unfortunately the US Senate clings to arcane and deeply undemocratic rules that hand the minority the power to obstruct the majority. Rafael put it well in the comments to the last post:

Behold the glorious dictatorship of the minority. Let's see them actually reading phone books for a week in a vainglorious effort to oppose funding for the nation's crumbling infrastructure. It's time to call these clowns' bluff - they double the deficit in eight years and now they're choir boys on fiscal rectitude all of a sudden? Puhleeze.

Alternatively, give them the compensatory funding they are asking for. I'd start with imposing a retroactive 100% income tax on bonuses paid to employees of financial institutions that received TARP funds. That's $18 billion right there. Next, take the $5.5 billion currently "at the discretion of Ray LaHood" and allocate the whole $23.5 billion explicitly to water and mass transit, with 10% ($2.35 billion) added to the $2 billion already reserved for high speed rail in the Senate version of the bill.

The Obama Administration and Senate Democrats are showing a lack of seriousness about the economic crisis, the need for new transportation methods, and their own political futures by not moving more aggressively to roll back the filibuster. It's a simple threat - tell Republicans they can either stop blocking the stimulus or the Democratic majority will take way the filibuster (it only requires 51 votes to do that, ironically enough).

This all matters because we are VERY likely to see the same situation play itself out later this year when HSR funding comes back to the Senate. The sooner we win these battles the more likely it is that we will get our federal contribution.

On to the Senate!

The stimulus battle now shifts to the US Senate, where high speed rail could have a very, very good week - but will have to navigate some rough waters to get there. As Yonah at the Transport Politic notes, the Senate version of the stimulus has $2 billion for HSR:

To make grants for high-speed rail projects under the provisions of section 26106 of title 49, United States Code, $2,000,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2011: Provided, That the Federal share payable of the costs for which a grant is made under this heading shall be 100 percent.

I very much like the 100% federal share, since it's not looking like California is going to be able to do much matching of federal funds in the immediate future. The Senate version also includes much more flexible - and possibly much better - language on transportation capital projects than the House:

“For an additional amount for capital investments in surface transportation infrastructure, $5,500,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2011… That the Secretary of Transportation shall distribute funds provided under this heading as discretionary grants to be awarded to State and local governments on a competitive basis for projects that will have a significant impact on the Nation, a metropolitan area, or a region… That a grant funded under this heading shall be not less than $20,000,000 and not greater than $500,000,000…”

These funds can be used for highways, bridges, public transportation, New Starts and Small Starts projects, and rail projects. No such open-ended funds under the discretion of the Secretary of the Department of Transportation are provided in the House bill. The bill does not specify a preference for transit or highways and presumably Secretary Ray LaHood would decide if this provision makes it into the final bill.

This is where the choice of Ray LaHood at Transportation may make or break things. If the Senate language stays in place, then LaHood could potentially implement an Obama shift away from highways and toward rail. But the language might also allow him to maintain a misguided emphasis on roads, in the name of "immediate stimulus" even though there are billions of dollars of shovel-ready transit projects out there as well.

There's also plans afoot to boost transit infrastructure spending significantly even beyond what's already in the bill. Charles Schumer planned to offer a $6.5 billion transit amendment but apparently, as The Transport Politic reports, that may be pulled in favor of a $20-$30 billion infrastructure amendment, heavy on transit, that will be proposed by Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and our very own Dianne Feinstein.

What could we do with some of this money? In the comments to Saturday's post Rafael makes some very good suggestions for ways to bring federal stimulus money directly to California high speed rail:

TJPA and CHSRA should submit a joint request related to SFTT so everyone can save face and get it all built. In particular, there is no reason not to ask for a slice of the transit stimulus funds to help pay for the bus depot + ramps, the underground pedestrian passage to Embarcadero BART and the fraction (2 of 6 platform tracks, i.e. 1/3) of the trainbox + DTX tunnel reserved for Caltrain. The HSR project needs to chip in the other 2/3, but TJPA must not cook the books to misrepresent the fraction of the total construction cost related to heavy rail operations.

Straight HSR feeder projects such as the BART extension to Santa Clara and Caltrain electrification should seek federal funding from the transit, rather than the HSR portion of this bill. Grade separations should be characterized as highway improvement projects, since they add zero functionality to the railroad.

That all makes a lot of sense, and would be a clever way to maximize the stimulus impact on HSR even when using money not specifically earmarked for HSR. For this to happen there needs to be a lot of coordination among different players in California, which one would hope can happen given Dianne Feinstein's oft-stated commitment to HSR. There are leaders in this state with the ability to bring together a consensus around federal stimulus for HSR. Let's hope they will make their voices heard over the coming week. We certainly plan to do so ourselves.

Stimulus Update

Good news from the floor of the US House of Representatives: the Nadler amendment described yesterday was approved by the full House and is now part of the stimulus. The Nadler amendment would:

According to Nadler's floor speech, 1.5 billion will go to the transit capital formula program, which goes to all states, and 1.5 billion to the new starts program. The AFL-CIO and environmental organizations will "score" this amendment, he said, meaning they'll factor members' votes on this issue into their scorecard ratings for each Representative. Since it was a voice vote, though, we don't know who opposed the amendment, making that impossible.

John Mica (R-FL), ranking member of the Tranportation Committee and the House's leading pro-transit Republican, called this "an amendment we have to support." The Appropriations committee, he said, "took one of the most important parts out: that's the rail and transit." Transit infrastructure creates jobs, he said. "Support the Nadler amendment!"

Transportation Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN) said, "we heard very clearly from the major transit agencies in this counrty. They have options for buses. They have options for railcars that could be exercised within days." Manufacturers can ramp up production and create jobs all across the county.

Apparently members of Congress reported "phones ringing off the hook" about the Nadler amendment. Americans are fired up about passenger rail, and so is the House - which also defeated a ridiculous amendment from Arizona Republican Jeff Flake that would have eliminated all Amtrak funding in the stimulus.

It's true that HSR is not directly funded through the Nadler amendment, but its victory is very important for us anyway. HSR wins when passenger rail wins. The more lines that are built, the more people that ride rails, the more Americans who come to see the benefit of passenger trains and who will support efforts to fund them. Along those lines the Nadler amendment victory also shows that passenger rail is a political winner on Capitol Hill, and that can only help our cause when it comes to actual HSR funding.

Next up is the Senate, where we're likely going to have to fight this battle again. And this is where we will need Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein in particular to step up big for passenger rail.

UPDATE: Corinne Brown's response to the moronic Jeff Flake, who argued that Amtrak shouldn't be funded because after nearly 40 years it hasn't shown a profit:

There is no form of transportation that pays for itself. None whatsoever. Whether we're talking about rail, airlines, cars, none of that. We subsidize all of that.

I love it when someone talks sense like that. The Overhead Wire has more.

New Republic: Obama Needs A Bigger HSR Commitment

The New Republic's Senior Editor John Judis has a column out today concerned that Obama's stimulus is too modest and doesn't adequately prepare a new basis for American prosperity - and that high speed rail should be at the core of the solution.

First, his assessment of the problem:

Still, I worry that the president elect is underestimating the problem he and the country faces.

We may not simply be facing a steep recession like that of the early 1980s, from which we can extricate ourselves in a year or two, but something resembling the Great Depression of the 1930s....There's much to like in Obama's plan. But there are two important ways he may have to go further. Most economists agree that what finally pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression was military spending for World War II....I am not suggesting that the United States start a world war in order to solve the world's economic problem. But I am suggesting a strategy that could be called the fiscal equivalent of war.

It would consist not merely of updating or repairing the nation's infrastructure, but in undertaking massive new investments that would expand the scope of American industry, and address other urgent problems in the process: global warming, over-reliance on petroleum, and the need to revive America's domestic manufacturing capabilities--not just to provide jobs, but also to provide tradeable goods that can reduce the country's current account deficit.

This blog has made similar arguments since March of 2008, so it's good to see a prominent political magazine getting into the act. This economic crisis is as serious as it gets, but Obama has not shown he grasps that. The stimulus is laden down with tax cuts for business and block grants to state DOTs for transportation projects - which in most states are highway projects.

So Judis argues Obama needs to more centrally embrace a much bolder economic stimulus - high speed rail.

One area that is ripe for such investment--and that is not, from what I have seen, a declared priority of the Obama administration--is high-speed rail....Investing in high-speed rails would be very expensive, but unlike tax cuts--the benefits of which can be siphoned off in the purchase of imported goods--the money spent would go directly to reviving American industry and improving the country's trade balance. That doesn't just mean jobs creating dedicated tracks or new rail stations: Though the U.S. abandoned train manufacturing decades ago to the French, Germans, Canadians, and Japanese, this kind of production could be undertaken by our ailing auto companies or aircraft companies--if the federal and state governments were to place orders. And building trains that would run on electricity would be a paradigmatic example of the "green jobs" that Obama often touts.

What Judis is explaining is a key value of both HSR and the stimulus. If we are going to spend nearly $800 billion, shouldn't we be taking steps to ensure that money stays here in the US, building things that will provide long-term value?

So far Obama has been making the consistently wrong moves on the stimulus, and even members of his own party are expressing concern and criticism. It's time for the president-elect to offer the bold solutions he promised in the campaign, and putting HSR at the center of a Green New Deal as John Judis suggests would be an excellent way to start.

UPDATE: The Judis article is getting lots of coverage around the blogs: Matt Yglesias, Atrios, and Ryan Avent, to name a few. Yglesias and Avent seemed too willing to accept that HSR can't be built quickly - the beauty of Judis's argument was that we needed to accelerate how quickly we can build sustainable transportation infrastructure. Environmental rules are good, and surely there are ways we can improve them to help get good projects built more quickly. Too often those rules are posited as working against mass transit. They ought to be working together.

The HSR Deniers Stir

Leading HSR deniers at the Reason Foundation are attacking Arnold for having supported Prop 1A and abandoning Milton Friedman's dogmatic economic conservatism:

What are some of these “necessary programs”? How about a $9.9 billion bond for a long-dreamed-of high-speed rail project between Los Angeles and San Francisco that is expected to cost at least $45 billion, which even supporters such as the Los Angeles Times editorial board think will require “many billions more” in subsidies?

As we repeatedly explained, the Reason Foundation willfully ignores the economic stimulus and long-term economic value of high speed trains, their overall savings to the traveler, and their overall savings in cost of energy used. It's no surprise that they're continuing to attack HSR and those who supported it as being fiscally irresponsible, as that is going to remain their central anti-HSR, anti-mass transit charge for at least the next decade.

That isn't to say Arnold Schwarzenegger is a paragon of fiscal responsibility. He continues to refuse to sign a budget deal, demanding concessions on privatization of government construction projects and weakening of environmental and labor protections. Although Democrats have agreed to most of this, Arnold wants all or nothing - and yet STILL refuses to say whether the Dems' workaround that avoids the 2/3rds rule is something he'll support.

As Obama debates and continues to make the wrong moves on the stimulus (in this case insisting it be capped at $775 billion when most economists say $1 trillion is best) Arnold's game of chicken with the state's solvency is particularly damaging. We already have shut down all infrastructure projects in the state to save money - precisely the opposite of what we should be doing, including spending the $950 million in Prop 1A on non-HSR trains as quickly as is practical.

California's delays and ongoing financial problems will likely be fodder for Congressional Republicans, who are already beginning to make noise about opposing Obama's spending plans. They will argue that we can't afford new government projects and may even filibuster the stimulus as they did with Clinton's 1993 stimulus. If that happens - and if Obama doesn't find a way to break it - then future spending plans, including the federal contribution to California HSR, will be imperiled.

Arnold Schwarzenegger + Jim Gibbons = Maglev to Vegas?

So claims the Las Vegas Sun:

For over 20 years, boosters have dreamed of and lobbied for a train that could travel from Southern California to Las Vegas at 300 mph.

The proposed magnetic levitation train line linking Las Vegas and Anaheim, Calif. — attacked by critics as a multi-billion dollar pipe dream — has gained new life.

Near the bottom of a news release detailing Gov. Jim Gibbons’ meeting last month with President-elect Barack Obama was the announcement that Gibbons and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had agreed to move ahead with the high-speed train project.

“Arnold and I agreed to jointly work together on the project,” said Gibbons, who is planning to travel to Sacramento to talk with Schwarzenegger about it.

The train, Gibbons argues, should be a candidate for federal economic stimulus money.

The rest of the article goes on to discuss "pork" in the stimulus bill and how infrastructure stimulus should emphasize projects with lasting value. We agree, of course, and HSR is one of the best possible examples of infrastructure that provides both short-term stimulus and long-term economic value.

The question here is, does Harry Reid's maglev from Anaheim to Vegas count toward that goal? Maglev is a notorious form of vaporware on an intercity scale - the cost is enormous and no project to build intercity maglev has gotten off the drawing board. That hasn't stopped Reid from getting $45 million from Congress to study maglev to Vegas, even though a competing firm has a more realistic plan to build conventional steel-wheel HSR from Victorville to Vegas. Reid dismissed the Desert Xpress plan:

Reid has criticized that project because he doesn’t think people will drive from Los Angeles to Victorville and then board a train to Las Vegas.

What Reid apparently doesn't realize is that it's a mere 50 miles from Victorville to the planned HSR station at Palmdale Airport:



So wouldn't it make sense, Senator Reid, Governor Gibbons, and Governor Schwarzenegger, to link a Vegas HSR line to our existing HSR plan - using the Desert Xpress model, merely extended west across the flat Antelope Valley desert from Victorville to the Palmdale Airport station? That would solve the cost issue, provide a direct train connection from LA to Vegas, and even could help logroll both Nevada's and California's HSR needs into a single plan.

I have to confess I've never believed that HSR to Vegas is a particularly high priority for either California or the United States as a whole - there are other corridors that have a greater need for HSR. But if Nevada and their powerful Senator are bent on HSR to Vegas, let's do it the smart way, the right way, instead of wasting millions on a maglev train that will never get built.

Obama And Congress To Screw Up The Stimulus?

That's how I read this Washington Post article which suggests the road and highway lobby may win out over the 21st century in the composition of the economic stimulus package to be offered in January:

Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not exactly the stuff of history, but destined for routine projects that have been on the to-do lists of state highway departments for years. Oklahoma wants to repave stretches of Interstates 35 and 40 and build "cable barriers" to keep wayward cars from crossing medians. New Jersey wants to repaint 88 bridges and restore Route 35 from Toms River to Mantoloking. Scottsdale, Ariz., wants to widen 1.5 miles of Scottsdale Road.

None of this in itself is bad. Maintaining what we've got is necessary. But what does this mean for the more important projects - those that will not only create jobs but provide lasting economic growth and value?

On the campaign trail, Obama said he would "rebuild America" with an "infrastructure bank" run by a new board that would award $60 billion over a decade to projects such as high-speed rail to take the country in a more energy-efficient direction. But the crumbling economy, while giving impetus to big spending plans, has also put a new emphasis on projects that can be started immediately -- "use it or lose it," Obama said last week -- and created a clear tension between the need to create jobs fast and the desire for a lasting legacy...

The Obama transition team is aware of the tension created by its goal of immediate stimulus but contends it can be resolved. For one thing, one aide said, some of the most legacy-building aspects of the recovery plan will be in areas other than transportation infrastructure -- such as expanding the electric grid, retrofitting schools to make them energy efficient and modernizing medical record-keeping.

Defending the emerging list of projects, the aide, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said there simply is a vast need for repairs. But the aide said that the Obama team also has its eye out for longer-term projects to invest in, and that for all the emphasis on quick spending, the recovery plan is considered a two-year undertaking. What is still to be determined is how some of those more ambitious projects would be chosen and how that money would be apportioned.

That aide doesn't really understand what he or she is talking about if that's what they believe provides "legacy". It is essential and at least 30 years overdue for America to stop subsidizing sprawl and start investing in mass transit alternatives, especially rail. Expanding the electric grid is valuable, but the other two mentioned - retrofitting schools and modernizing medical records - are just not significant compared to investing in new transit infrastructure. This is a time for thinking big and boldly, not to pull back and think small-time.

Some argue that it's OK if the economic stimulus doesn't focus on change, since later funding could provide the big investments we really need:

The construction industry also sees a two-step process. "Do the rinky-dink projects, the smaller projects," said Frank Rapoport, head of the global infrastructure practice at the McKenna, Long & Aldrich law firm. Then, later in 2009, he said, the government should use any leftover stimulus money to leverage private equity to tackle larger challenges, possibly via Obama's proposed infrastructure bank....

But that plan assumes that there will be enough money, political will and public support left over after an initial burst of spending to fuel broader investments. It is unclear how much money will be devoted to infrastructure in the stimulus package, which could surpass $500 billion. But the highway officials association has identified more than 5,000 road and bridge projects costing $64 billion that are ready to go, and the transit officials' association has identified 736 projects costing $12.2 billion that could start within 90 days.

If the stimulus funds many of those projects in the short term, there could be less appetite for increasing Washington's long-term investment beyond the roughly $50 billion a year it spends annually now. And on Capitol Hill, members of both parties agree that the focus has to be on the short term.

"Filling the potholes or repaving a stretch of road may not be as visual as the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge, but that paved road is going to make a lot of difference in people's lives," said Jim Berard, spokesman for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "Will there be political will and money" for later spending? "We don't know. We'll build that bridge when we come to it. Trying to do bigger-type infrastructure improvement at this point would be irresponsible. You'd be fiddling while Rome burst into flames."

I don't see anything remotely good or optimistic in that. At all. Given how much money has been committed to various bailouts - the overall stimulus could reach $1 trillion - that's going to make it politically difficult to push the kind of large investments in transportation, like a national high speed rail network, that we need to both recover from this economic crisis and provide long-term growth for the economy the way New Deal projects did in the 1930s. The Congressional spokesman certainly didn't sound that committed - in fact he dismissed "bigger-type infrastructure improvement."

The only thing irresponsible here is NOT making those kinds of improvements. Our economic crisis is largely due to overdependence on oil and sprawl, which has now failed to provide growth and security as it once did. The economic and environmental costs are enormous. If we're going to provide energy independence as Obama has long proposed, we need to start immediately investing in the kind of major projects needed to get us down a more sustainable path.

Other officials understand the need to not throw good money after bad:

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is proud that his city was able to quickly rebuild the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007 while making sure to include capacity for a future transit line on it. But he worries that many of the road and bridge upgrades around the country will not be done in a similarly farsighted way, given the time pressures.

"The quickest things we can do may not be the ones that have the most significant long-term impact on the green economy," he said. "Unless we push a transit investment, this will end up being a stimulus package that rebalances our transportation strategy toward roads and away from [what] we need to get off our addiction to oil."

The details of the stimulus aren't fully public yet, but the above suggests that concerns over Obama's transportation priorities are valid. We need to push back hard against delaying big projects. One way to do this is to go to change.gov and let your voice be heard for high speed rail as part of the stimulus. Sure, it's possible that California will still get funded in a later bill - perhaps John Kerry's - but the more money that goes to road projects in the stimulus, the harder that later battle will be.

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.