A Reality Check Must Be Grounded In Reality

It's a bold headline from my alma mater: "A Reality Check on High Speed Rail" is how UC Berkeley bills a recent HSR symposium. Already Morris Brown is peddling this as yet another reason why HSR is terrible and doomed to fail. Morris wants us to not dismiss the symposium lightly. OK, I'll dismiss it heavily:

Even if high-speed rail attracted everyone who drove and flew between the Los Angeles basin and the San Francisco Bay Area during the year 2007, it would amount to only eight million passengers per year, nowhere near the numbers projected by the California High Speed Rail Authority, explained CEE professor Mark Hansen. But even that estimate is optimistic. HSR would be extremely unlikely to capture most current air travelers due to lack of transportation connectivity in most California cities and regions.

“In Europe and Japan, where HSR has been especially successful, it is a very simple thing to take a subway to the HSR station, go upstairs and get on the bullet train,” explained Madanat. For example, access to Eurostar—the HSR system that passes under the English Channel to link Britain with mainland Europe—is easy and car-less; a typical business passenger traveling from London arrives in downtown Paris in two-and-a-half hours and can walk or take the Métro from the same station to his or her meeting. This connectivity, or short access and egress time, is essential to the success of high-speed rail, and California has very little of it.

Oh really? This would be an accurate statement if HSR stations were going to be built on the edges of city centers. But they're not. The two key endpoints will be directly in the center of the existing mass transit networks in the state: SF Transbay Terminal and LA Union Station. Both are already served by an impressive amount of mass transit, and if Antonio Villaraigosa gets his way, LAUS in particular could be reachable from West LA and much of the San Gabriel Valley by passenger rail by the time HSR opens to SF. As anyone who is even remotely familiar with both SF and LA knows, Transbay Terminal and Union Station are both far more accessible, in a shorter period of time, than slogging through traffic on the freeways to LAX or even Burbank.

We can look to the Acela as an example. The Acela is a successful HSR route. It generates operating surpluses and has no trouble attracting riders. Sure, it helps that NYC has an excellent mass transit system. Washington D.C.'s system is pretty good, built in a very similar way to BART. Stations are located in the centers of both cities, even though DC has an easily accessible airport just across the river from downtown. Suburban DC is very car-centric, as is much of NYC outside the five boroughs, and that hasn't hurt the Acela either.

The presenters at the UCB symposium are not being realistic when they dismiss CA has having "very little" connectivity. Even in cities where the network still has some work to do, like San José (a stop they do not mention), the HSR station will be located very near to the airport (and is actually closer to downtown than the airport), putting both on an equal footing. And unlike SJC, Diridon Station has a stop on the VTA light rail line.

Of course, as Joey pointed out in the comments to yesterday's post, the UCB symposium seems to have neglected the fact that HSR isn't just serving SF and LA, and includes places like San José, Fresno, and Bakersfield, where HSR would still be a compelling choice even without mass transit connectivity.

In short, their theory that HSR ridership depends on mass transit options CA lacks doesn't seem to hold water.

Travelers heading to Los Angeles from San Francisco, for example, will consider the time it takes to go to and from airports at each end of the trip, versus the time spent getting to a high-speed rail station. Time spent on the line-haul portion of the trip (actual flying or riding time) is more productive than the access and egress portions. But if access and egress times from HSR stations are as long and onerous as those for air, passengers will save time by driving to an airport instead.

“High-speed rail trades unproductive access and egress time for productive line-haul time,” explained Madanat. That is advantageous to travelers, and they are willing to spend an extra hour or more in line-haul time if egress and access time are diminished. Air travel between some cities in Japan has become nonexistent, thanks to the ease of traveling by high-speed rail.

I'm sorry, but Madanat is just plain wrong here. The unproductive access and egress time belongs entirely to airplanes, at least in California. He does not appear to have included the ridiculous security theater involved in air travel that adds up to a half hour to travel times. TSA recommends people arrive two hours before a domestic flight. Add in the travel to LA-area airports, none of which have good mass transit connections (whereas LAUS is the hub of the entire Southern California mass transit network), and it is not conceivable to me that HSR is at a disadvantage in terms of travel times. If anything it is likely to have an advantage, or would be comparable, which is all it really needs to be.

Again, we can look at reality to demonstrate the point: if HSR was such a bad deal, why does the Acela have half the market share on the Northeast Corridor? Madanat apparently didn't speak to actual Acela users:

Barry Ginsberg of Deer Park, N.Y., boarded an Acela train after a meeting in Washington.

"It's a lot less hassle and more comfortable," Ginsberg says. "When you figure how much in advance you have to get to the airport, it's a lot more convenient."

So there's another strike against the "reality check."

The other piece of the symposium report deals with emissions, and claims that HSR won't actually be the cleantech wonder we expect:

Proponents of California high-speed rail tout its energy-saving, greenhouse gas–eliminating characteristics. But panelist Arpad Hovath, also a CEE professor, reported on research showing that, unless ridership is very high, rail cannot perform better than air travel. To compare the carbon footprint of rail with air or driving, he explained, far more than just tailpipe emissions must be taken into account.

Horvath’s life-cycle analysis of the three modes suggests that high-speed rail will produce some 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year during construction. Furthermore, electricity to run the trains must be generated from coal-fired plants, leading to additional greenhouse gas emissions once HSR is operational.

Except that Horvath didn't mention the reality that the CHSRA has mandated that its trains will be powered by alternative, renewable sources to the maximum extent possible, with the goal being generation from 100% renewables. CHSRA's very existence helps bring online that capacity, by providing a guaranteed buyer of solar and wind power.

Horvath's assumptions also assume that ridership will be low. It will take about five years to reach the projected ridership levels (which is why many of CHSRA's projections are for 2030, not 2020), but once you're there, HSR will produce the reduced carbon footprint we expect.

He also charges that the construction alone will generate 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Maybe it will. But the cost of doing nothing is not zero. Even those tons of CO2 are a worthwhile investment for long-term significant reductions in CO2, since without HSR CO2 emissions are either going to continue rising and drown us in rising seas, or they'll crash totally without any alternative method of transportation when the oil gives out. And no, this symposium report does not mention "peak oil" at all. If it was discussed, UCB didn't see fit to mention it.

Oh, and the symposium report got in one last shot that Morris Brown, Stuart Flashman, and the PCL will just love:

Changes in alignment could help build ridership early, Madanat said. By switching the Northern California route from Pacheco Pass to Altamont, many more potential riders from fast-growing areas of Contra Costa and Alameda counties could be lured away from air travel.

Or Madanat could have mentioned the Altamont HSR corridor that the CHSRA is planning, which will bring the very kind of "connectivity" he claimed those potential riders needed in the form of a much faster ACE train.

Now it's possible that the problem here is with the staff producing the UC College of Engineering newsletter in which this article appeared. They didn't have to frame it as "reality check" and there may have been a more balanced discussion than what the article presented.

Still, it's a pretty lame "reality check," especially since it doesn't actually consider the realities I described above.

UPDATE: In fact, that's what seems to have happened. Alon Levy in the comments points to a post by Andy Nash about the symposium, which was apparently far more balanced, insightful, and useful than the UCB newsletter made it appear:

Professor Carlos Daganzo gave the first presentation. He showed convincingly how high speed rail can bring down the total cost of travel given the expected increase in travel demand combined with the HSR's decreasing cost per passenger model. This means that there is a very strong case for subsidizing high speed rail in the early stages of development, since it will improve the overall transport system....

Professor Mark Hansen spoke next. Hansen looked at the relationship of HSR to air travel. He believes that with HSR the air travel market will become less competitive and that the reduction in flights will be most evident in secondary airports (only a small share of SFO, LAX and SAN flights are intra-state ... although they use more than their share of capacity since they are generally smaller planes)....

Professor Robert Cervero proposed four lessons for California: (1) station siting is critical, building stations in freeway medians or surrounded by free parking will lead to more sprawl development and greater driving; (2) feeder systems are important for solving the "last mile" problem, extended TOD corridors are a good solution; (3) TOD as a necklace of pearls (e.g. like Copenhagen's approach) would be excellent, but California's current planning regime does not support this approach; (4) joint development must be high quality and pedestrian-oriented, studies of joint development in Hong Kong show that these types of joint development can be much more effective than the alternative basic systems.

So now the question is, why the biased report by the UCB "Innovations" newsletter?!

Comparing Fares for Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Over at The Transport Politic Yonah Freemark has offered two insightful posts this week on the question of HSR fares as compared to those for air and automobile travel (including buses). The first, Getting the Price Right: How Much Should High-Speed Fares Cost? argued that Amtrak has set fares on the Acela too high, though faster speeds and higher-capacity trainsets would enable the operating costs and thus the fares to drop. Freemark compared the Acela to European and Asian HSR systems and found that those systems not only offer better fares than the Acela - they also offer better fares than airline flights on the same route. However, Freemark's analysis suggests that California HSR is poised to replicate the European experience, and not that of Amtrak and the Acela (at least in terms of fares):

The California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is planning the nation’s most ambitious new rail project, has considered the effect of pricing on ridership. It predicts strikingly varying ridership outcomes depending on the cost of its future services; in 2030, with the full system operating, the agency estimates 93.1 million yearly trips if fares are set at 50% of air travel levels and 74 million if fares are set at 77% of air travel levels. Though final fares have not yet been established, one thing is for certain: California will not copy Amtrak and charge customers exorbitant rates to ride the train....

If American high-speed services offered similar prices for time traveled as Amtrak does today — at $45 per hour of running time for standard fares and $15 at reduced prices — on faster trains, U.S. commuters would switch to rail in droves. The San Francisco-Los Angeles route being planned by the State of California, with a travel time of 2h40, would cost $40 for reduced-price tickets and $120 for standard fares; those costs seem perfectly acceptable for just about everyone. A renewed Northeast Corridor, offering travel between New York and Washington in 1h40 (at an average of 220 km/h), would cost $25 for customers buying reduced-price fares. People currently driving their own cars or riding buses between the cities would take a second look at those prices.

Previous statements from the CHSRA have indicated that the fares would be around $55. I have repeatedly said we should not get attached to that number, and Freemark's conclusion that the fares will range from $40 to $120 is much more sensible.

Of course, anytime we have this discussion, you get people arguing that airfares are already cheap, nobody would pick a train over a $49 fare on Southwest or JetBlue. So some remedial discussion of this matter is valuable before plowing ahead.

Those fares are advance purchase and are almost never available on the eve of travel. And Freemark's suggestion is that CA HSR fares will work pretty much the same way. $40 or so for advance purchase, higher once you get closer to the travel date or for a "regular fare." In exchange you get a smoother boarding and deboarding experience, no TSA to deal with, a comfortable ride, and most crucially of all, city center to city center travel. The proposed HSR stations are all in much more centralized locations than the airports in the metro areas they'll serve.

More crucially, the ability of airlines to continue to offer those low fares is very much in jeopardy. Airlines received massive bailouts in 2001, but just a few years later began implementing fees for baggage and other previously standard, complimentary services. That's the mark of an industry in trouble, of an airline crisis that threatens the future not of air travel but of cheap air travel.

Southwest Airlines, which is frequently pointed to as evidence that we don't need HSR (including by someone at the Menlo Park Town Hall), has avoided this fate only through the use of complex fuel hedges. They locked in their price at $51/bbl several years ago. We're at $72/bbl, and virtually every observer expects that price to rise, if not soar, once global economic recovery finally happens. Southwest's fuel hedges expire between 2010 and 2013. There's no way they'll be able to lock in those rates again. And either LUV is going to have to raise fares or cut services.

Freemark's second post on the topic, Reframing the Fare Debate, focuses on what he sees as a more pressing topic: "attracting people away from cars and buses."

There are two ways to encourage people currently relying on road-based transportation to travel by trains: one, lower ticket prices; two, increase speeds. Both actions would provide a substantial motivation for highway users to reconsider their options. The first would put train travel back into the sphere of the economical. Plenty of bus companies market service at less than $20 between New York and Washington. At $2/gallon, a 26 mpg car could be driven between the cities for less than $20 in gas. That number doesn’t account for maintenance and ownership costs, but drivers rarely consider those factors when making decisions about how to get from one place to the next.

By increasing speeds, train travel’s time benefit multiplies significantly. While buses get into traffic, they can still make the trip from the capital to Gotham in five hours — versus the three hours required by rail. This is an advantage for train users, but increasing speeds to allow for a 1h40 trip would make it nearly impossible to justify riding the bus or driving, even at a lower cost.

Freemark's analysis is based on the Acela, but it applies even more strongly to California. Whereas buses play an important role on the Northeast Corridor, they play hardly any role in the SF-LA corridor, especially since Megabus dropped its experiment to provide their cheap service on that route last year. (Intercity buses do play a bigger role on other corridors in California, particularly Central Valley-SoCal-Mexico.)

So we're looking primarily at driving. And a lot of Californians drive from the Bay Area to LA, or from either of those regions to the Central Valley. This is especially true at the holiday season, as I discovered on one 10-hour trip back to Berkeley on I-5 around New Year's 2001.

Let's assume a trip from SF Transbay Terminal to LA Union Station in a relatively fuel efficient non-hybrid car: my 2007 Honda Fit. By car that's a 381 mile trip. I usually get about 300 miles to the tank on the open road, or about 36-39 mpg depending on conditions. That means two fillups - one at the trip's outset, another somewhere along I-5. The first fillup is going to be at least $3/gal, likely around $24 if I'm nearly empty (usually 8 gallons). The second will be about the same. So that's $42 for a one-way trip, and another fillup somewhere on the way back, depending on how much driving I do in SoCal, is going to bring the total in gas to at least $66.

True, that's for the car. I can add several passengers at essentially no extra cost, whereas they'd have to pay their own tickets on an HSR train. Even when you add in wear and tear, which on a newish Honda vehicle isn't all that much, driving is likely going to be cheaper, at least until oil prices rise dramatically again.

But when you add in time, the train becomes a compelling alternative. Google Maps gives a driving time of 5 hours, 51 minutes from SF Transbay to LAUS. If you hit no traffic at all and have lead foot you could do 5:30, maybe even 5:15. But for most people it's at least a 6-hour drive.

Whereas the train is going to take 2 hours 40 minutes. That's about half the time of driving. A lot of Californians will pay a bit extra to take the train in order to get the time savings - that's what "competitive" means. For people looking at a weekend trip, that 6 hours saved is a huge deal - the difference between a Friday evening and a Saturday midday arrival, extra time at the grandparents' or at the beach or at the ballgame.

For others it may not be enough of a compelling alternative. They may want the flexibility the car offers them, or they may have lots of stuff to carry that can't be easily checked onto a train, or they may have other reasons to prefer to take a specific trip in the car. That's fine. HSR isn't about forcing people out of cars.

It's about providing options and choices. Expanding transportation capacity in a sustainable, environmentally and climate-friendly method, giving our freeways and airports a chance to breathe. Giving people a fast way to get between cities without the higher fares or inconveniences of air travel, without the long travel times and other uncomfortable aspects of sitting in a car on I-5.

HSR isn't meant to put the airlines out of business or to eliminate vehicle traffic on I-5. It's intended to give Californians the choice of traveling at a fast speed for a reasonable price, thus fueling economic growth in the 21st century in a way that fossil-fuel based methods of travel are already proving incapable of providing. Californians instinctively understand this - it's why Prop 1A passed last fall.

I'll close this post by letting Freemark explain the reasons why this matters:

There are significant advantages to lowering ticket prices to the lowest level possible while keeping operational finances in the black. California predicts a higher revenue stream for its rail system if it charges customers fares that are at 77% of airline levels: $4.3 billion annually versus $3.6 billion with tickets at 50%, even though the latter would attract 25% more riders. But opening services to a greater percentage of the population has a number of benefits beyond those affecting the bottom line, and American policy should be to encourage low-cost rail travel. It reduces carbon emissions as people choose to drive fewer cars. It encourages the sense that trains are an engine for universal mobility, rather than a limousine on tracks for the rich. It will, most importantly, smash the conception that Americans won’t take advantage of rail services, and encourage the creation of a train-riding society.

And that's why California's HSR matters - as well as why it will be a financial success.

Another Peninsula NIMBY Lawsuit

Clem has the scoop over on his blog about a planned lawsuit from an Atherton resident opposed to HSR that argues Union Pacific's consent must be given before the HSR project can proceed. From a Palo Alto Daily Post article:

Atherton resident Russell Peterson said yesterday he will file a lawsuit that will attempt to stop the state High Speed Rail Authority from starting any construction without the full approval of the Union Pacific Railroad....

Attorney Mike Brady, a Menlo Park resident representing Peterson, said the suit will ask a judge to require all plans for the bullet train to receive Union Pacific approval before construction begins.

As Clem lays out, this stems from Section 2.7 of the agreement between Caltrain and the UPRR, which seems to indicate that UP has to give its consent before any intercity trains can use the tracks. It is this clause that Peterson is using as the basis of his suit. I would be surprised if a judge finds Peterson has standing to sue using this agreement as a basis - wouldn't that be UP's place to decide whether or not to uphold their contractual agreement?

But as Clem found, there are other parts of the agreement that suggest Caltrain actually holds the cards here:

8.3.(c) In the event that Owner demonstrates a reasonably certain need to commence construction on all or substantially all the length of the Joint Facilities (including User's Cahill/Lick Line) of a transportation system that is a significant change in the method of delivery of Commuter Service which would be incompatible with Freight Service on the Joint Facilities (other than User's Cahill/Lick Line), Owner may, at its sole cost and expense, file no sooner than nine months prior to the commencement of such construction for permission from the ICC to abandon the Freight Service over the portion of the Join Facilities (excluding User's Cahill/Lick Line) upon which the construction is to occur. User shall not object to or oppose such a filing; however, it shall be allowed to participate in the abandonment proceedings.

Clem's interpretation is that the Caltrain/HSR project qualifies under this provision, although both Caltrain and the CHSRA have preferred to work with UP instead of against them. And that makes sense to me.

Peterson's suit will probably not go anywhere, but it does raise the issue of UP, its trackage rights, and how this affects Peninsula HSR planning. As Rafael has pointed out on several occasions, the tunnel that Peninsula NIMBYs prefer for the Caltrain/HSR corridor would almost certainly prevent freight trains from continuing to use the route.

Although it is theoretically possible that a tunnel could be built south of Redwood City and the Dumbarton rail bridge rehabbed to allow the UP freight hauler to continue to use the tracks, no money has been identified for this option, nor has it been seriously discussed. It's also worth noting that this would do nothing to help the cities further up the Peninsula, like Burlingame and San Mateo, that have also been calling for a tunnel. (Of course, I am quite confident that if Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto felt they could solve their own problems by screwing the other Peninsula cities, they would gladly do so.)

If UP wants to continue running freight along the route, they are best off with an above-grade solution, and one has to assume they are quite well aware of this. Caltrain and the CHSRA are designing the route with UP's needs in mind. So why would UP have any interest in suing? No wonder a Peninsula NIMBY has to go it alone.

The Multi-Pronged Attack on California HSR

Last year this blog led the fight against the staggering amounts of misinformation put out by opponents of mass transit in their effort to defeat Proposition 1A. Even though these opponents were frequently given room to spout their misleading claims in TV and print reports around the state, whereas pro-HSR forces rarely ever got that opportunity, we won the battle. Californians rejected the arguments of the HSR deniers, the people who tried to argue against the evidence that high speed rail would be a financial disaster or that it wouldn't work in California or that people would never ride the trains. The voters showed that they understood the value and need for sustainable transportation, for economic recovery, for giving Californians an alternative to soaring oil prices.

That was the easy part.

2009 has seen a different and much more challenging battle taking shape. The Reason Foundation is still out their with their talking points, but few are listening. Instead most HSR deniers, like Morris Brown, have shifted tactics. Instead of arguing against passenger rail - a losing argument in California - they are trying to play on the environmental concerns of Bay Area residents. In order to undermine high speed rail, which will be one of the most environmentally beneficial projects this state has ever seen, they have joined with misguided environmentalists to try and block the progress of California high speed rail by claiming the project as planned will harm the environment.

Environmentalists have made a deal with the devil (so to speak) and allied with people who are fundamentally opposed to high speed rail. The environmentalists in question - particularly those from the Planning and Conservation League - apparently believe that they can use the HSR deniers for their own purposes without enabling the deniers' broader attack on the HSR project. In this the environmentalists are very, very wrong. They are jeopardizing the viability of the project as a whole, are placing a parochial and small concern above the concept, and are enabling anti-environment, anti-rail arguments in order to achieve their goals.

Californians rightly want to protect their environment. They rightly want big infrastructure projects to be built affordably and properly. And even though the environmental/NIMBY alliance ultimately seeks none of that - in fact, they are pursuing methods that jeopardize those values - they are increasingly effective at spreading their misleading claims among both the public and the state legislature.

As longtime blog readers know, these criticisms of mine are not new. What is new is that the Planning and Conservation League and the BayRail Alliance, two normally progressive organizations that support environmental and mass transit projects, have allied with the vehemently anti-HSR TRANSDEF, the "Cal Rail Foundation" (and its three members), and the cities of Menlo Park and Atherton to launch a deeply misleading attack on the high speed rail project.

The centerpiece of the attack is a new website: HSR: Let's Do It Right. The site is chock full of misleading statements, and embraces messaging that will ultimately and fundamentally undermine the HSR project they claim to support.

Before taking an in-depth look at the flaws of this site, let's lay out the landscape of HSR opposition in California:

Peninsula NIMBYs. Concentrated in the Menlo Park/Atherton/Palo Alto area, these are a quite small but vocal group of well-off homeowners who are adamantly opposed to building a grade-separated railroad for Caltrain and HSR, despite the numerous safety and environmental benefits of doing so. They've been convinced that a tunnel is a better solution, but have not identified any funding source for such a ridiculously expensive solution. They have no organization, but have instead brought on board the cities of Menlo Park, Atherton, and Palo Alto to their cause.

HSR deniers. Contrary to those who criticize the use of the term, this refers to a very distinct group of people who deny the proven benefits of high speed rail and want to kill the project outright. They are called "deniers" as an analogue to global warming deniers, based on the HSR deniers' repeated use of claims about HSR's supposed lack of financial viability, its supposed inability to meet projected ridership, and/or its supposed lack of environmental benefit. They tend to be ideologically opposed to government spending and to passenger rail projects. Not all HSR opponents are HSR deniers. But HSR deniers have had a lot of success in allying with more mainstream and respectable groups to advance their cause - specifically, the NIMBYs. HSR deniers have achieved significant gains by convincing some Peninsula residents that above-grade tracks will be a horrible city-killing disaster and that a tunnel is a better alternative - despite the fact that a tunnel is too expensive to ever become reality. HSR deniers hope that NIMBYs will provide the political power they themselves lack, and kill the project when it becomes clear that there is no viable alternative to grade-separating the Caltrain corridor.

Parochial environmentalists. The state's main environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club, strongly embraced high speed rail AND worked to ensure Prop 1A was as environmentally strong as possible (particularly by writing a ban on a Los Banos station into Prop 1A). They recognized that HSR will be a revolutionary shift in California infrastructure in favor of truly sustainable transportation that helps fight global warming, reduces pollution, and grows mass transit while shrinking the ranks of automobile commuters. But a small group of environmentalists have chosen to reject these broad benefits in a fit of pique about the choice of the Pacheco Pass alignment. The Planning and Conservation League is the biggest offender here, apparently convinced that the Pacheco alignment is so horrible that it is worth risking the entire HSR project to block it. To do so they are now allying with the NIMBYs and HSR deniers.

Parochial state legislators. California's Legislature is a broken institution totally incapable of governing this state in a time of crisis. One reason for this is term limits, which encourage legislators to ignore long-term planning and focus on their own careers. This incentivizes a focus on their own districts at the expense of the state's needs. As it relates to HSR, it enables ideological opponents of HSR like Senator Roy Ashburn, a genuine HSR denier, to try and tie down the project through burdensome and unnecessary oversight rules. It also enables people who don't care about the project's stated purpose of providing sustainable intercity transit to try and use the Prop 1A money to fund pet projects in their own backyards, like Senator Alan Lowenthal. NIMBYs, HSR deniers and environmentalists are allying with both Ashburn and Lowenthal to try and kill the HSR project by running it aground on the shoals of the legislature.

All four of these groups are represented on the HSR: Let's Do It Right site. The website is an incoherent jumble of anti-HSR claims that are sometimes mutually contradictory, but together represent a formidable threat to high speed rail.

Let's have a look at some examples.

Lying About Altamont/Pacheco

The main intent of the site is to rally the public to oppose the Pacheco alignment and force its abandonment in favor of Altamont - despite the fact that the decision for Pacheco was made through a legitimate process a year ago, and despite the fact that it was ratified by voters at the November 2008 election. Their Why Altamont? page consists of this extremely dishonest graphic:



This is pretty ridiculous stuff. The notion of "fewer impacts on communities" is only true if you don't consider Fremont, Pleasanton, Livermore and Tracy as communities. As I'll explain in a moment the site is full of "concern" for the "livable communities" on the Peninsula that would be harmed by HSR, but no such concern is offered here for the East Bay cities along the proposed Altamont route. There are about the same impacts on communities in the Altamont alignment - but those communities do not count, are not relevant, to the PCL and the other backers of this website.

It is true that expanding passenger rail along the Altamont corridor would help ease congestion. Which is why Prop 1A created a high speed corridor along the Altamont Pass and directs the CHSRA to spend money upgrading it for the purpose of easing congestion. But you wouldn't know that from the site or this graphic.

Sure, a shift from the Pacheco to the Altamont alignment might serve more East Bay residents. But it would come at the expense of about the same number of people in Santa Clara County and the Monterey Bay Area. Given that San José is the state's third largest city and one of the state's key economic centers, you'd think that it would have a pretty strong argument for being included on the HSR line. But you won't hear that argument on the website.

The claim of "$2 billion saved" is not sourced or proved. Given the support for Peninsula NIMBYs, the site's authors are in no position to make claims about saving money.

As to the wilderness area, this is is complete bullshit. The graphic is designed to mislead people into thinking the whole wilderness as shown on the map is under threat from HSR. It isn't. The tracks will run close to the existing Highway 152 corridor, and will go underneath Pacheco Pass State Park in a tunnel - which is conveniently not mentioned anywhere in this graphic or on the site.

Another lie is the "no sprawl effect" claim made. The graphic labels "land speculation" as possible in the Los Banos area, not informing readers that a station at Los Banos was specifically outlawed when Prop 1A passed. No station is planned on the western side of the Pacheco Pass. There IS a station planned at Gilroy, but that alone doesn't induce sprawl - unless the site's supporters think Caltrain service to Gilroy does that already. South County has its sprawl issues, but those already exist without HSR, and residents of Gilroy have already shown their willingness to oppose sprawl (fighting a planned Wal-Mart supercenter, for example).

Embracing NIMBYism

Environmentalists who actually care about doing something to stop global warming should be extremely wary before getting into bed with NIMBYs. NIMBYs around the country have fought wind turbines, solar power generators, and the transmission lines needed to bring clean, sustainable, renewable power to cities that need them. Solutions designed to protect our environment and arrest the pace of global warming will necessarily impact communities in ways some won't like. We have to weigh their objections against the dire and pressing need to act to reduce pollution and reduce carbon emissions.

The environmentalists who put the website together have thrown all such caution to the win. Desperate to stop the Altamont alignment, they are busy fueling misleading NIMBY claims that WILL get used elsewhere in the state to attack the HSR project, presumably in places where the PCL (among others) claims to support HSR - like Pleasanton.

The site includes a paged titled Visualize What Disaster Looks Like. It's the old misleading "Berlin Wall" images from Menlo Park that we debunked back in March.

But that's not the most insane and crazy element of the unholy alliance between the PCL and the NIMBYs. On the contact page, which includes the list of organizations sponsoring the site, in bright red capital letters is written the statement "REMEMBER: THE CITY YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN!"

Umm...wow. Is that a message people who supposedly support the HSR project, as the PCL and the BayRail Alliance claim, want to spread? By claiming that HSR will destroy cities, they're inviting open season on the HSR project from other cities, including those along the Altamont alignment. Does the PCL want Fresno to sue? Do they want Fullerton to sue? This is madness.

Allying With Legislative Enemies

The final lunatic aspect of the site I want to examine is their alliance with a broken legislature and in particular with legislators whose opposition to high speed rail has frequently been demonstrated. The site encourages the broken legislature to exert "oversight despite the fact that the legislature is incapable of effectively doing so until that institution is repaired and restored to functionality. There is no better way to undermine the HSR project than to make it dependent on a legislature that can no longer effectively govern the state.

Especially when the site specifically calls out for praise known HSR opponents. One of these is Senator Roy Ashburn, who tried to postpone the Prop 1A vote beyond 2008. Here's what the site has to say about Ashburn, listing the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee (emphasis mine):

Below is a list of Senators on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Note that Senators Simitian, Yee, Cedillo, Corbett, and Oropeza, along with Senator Ashburn, are on both Committees. Senator Ashburn has been very sympathetic:

Perhaps the site would like to explain WHY Ashburn has been sympathetic? That he has worked hard in the last year or so to throw as many roadblocks and obstacles in the path of HSR as he can?

Although Alan Lowenthal is not singled out for praise (yet) on the site, he is one of the leading figures in the legislature trying to use "oversight" to destroy the project. This blog has frequently demonstrated Lowenthal's desire to chop the statewide project into disconnected pieces, to create a glorified commuter rail benefiting Southern California and presumably the Bay Area (although the alliance with Peninsula NIMBYs jeopardizes that).

There are more flaws with the website in question, but I've gone on long enough as is. The above should be enough to make it clear that the folks behind that site are not interested in telling Californians the truth about the high speed rail project, and certainly aren't interested in ensuring that HSR actually gets built.

In fact, as I will demonstrate tomorrow, the Planning and Conservation League has taken a leading role in trying to undermine California's application for federal HSR stimulus funds, thus jeopardizing the financial viability of the entire project. There's much, much more to come.

Better Modeling of the Above-Grade Peninsula Caltrain/HSR Project

One of the most unfortunate parts of the debate on the Caltrain/HSR project on the Peninsula is the lack of accurate information. NIMBYs and other project opponents have already convinced many people that an above-grade solution would be a sort of "Berlin Wall" through the city, and Jim McFall's video reinforces that errant conclusion. The problem is that McFall's video has been the only attempt to visualize what the corridor would look like with above-grade tracks.

Until now.

Mike, who brought us the point by point refutation of the notorious Cox-Vranich HSR denier report last year, is back to inject some sense and fact into the debate over HSR. He has put together a YouTube video of simulations of the Churchill Avenue crossing in Palo Alto - including the existing at-grade model, the proposed CHSRA above-grade solution, and the flawed McFall model. Mike added authentic sounds of the crossing - a recording of Caltrain crossing at-grade, and of the Acela. Here's the video:



You can see clearly that McFall's model is misleading on several counts. He has the dimensions all wrong - the structure is higher in McFall's model than is actually proposed, and the catenary poles are too densely packed together. More importantly, McFall's video doesn't include existing landscaping that would mitigate much of the visual impact of an above-grade solution. There are no trees in the McFall video, whereas Mike's video makes clear that trees are indeed part of the solution.

The results of misleading misinformation on the Caltrain/HSR project (such as the McFall video) could be seen in Atherton on Thursday night, where a crowd came to speak in favor of the city's avowed "tunnel or nothing" stance:

Duncan Jones, Atherton's public works director, laid out the town's case for both joining the lawsuit and still participating in the high-speed rail planning process. "We need to hedge our bets," he said.

Mr. Jones, a former rail consultant, said that the town's fallback position -- if the route doesn't change, put the high-speed trains in a tunnel, rather than on a raised berm -- isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.

The rail corridor in Atherton is lined by expensive homes, and widening it to accommodate high-speed rail would require purchasing swaths of private property.

"When (the authority) looks at all of the costs and impacts, they may find out that going underground may be cheaper," Mr. Jones said.

Jones's comments are barely credible. I cannot imagine that buying a few strips of backyard will cost a billion dollars - which would be the minimum estimate for tunneling through Atherton, even with a cut and cover model. The San Jose Mercury News article on the meeting noted that Hatch Mott MacDonald executives estimated a tunnel through Atherton would cost:

A tunnel on the Peninsula would likely follow the same model as the San Jose BART extension, Townsend said, because both areas have soft ground. A high-speed rail tunnel would likely cost somewhere between $100 million to $250 million per mile, compared to less than $100 million for an at-grade system, he said.

I have a difficult time imagining that the cost of eminent domain for a few backyards would be $100 million. I am also skeptical of the lowball cost of an HSR tunnel that Townsend offered, but even if these estimates are accurate, it represents a doubling of the cost of building on the Peninsula.

Such is the fact-free nature of the debate on the Peninsula, unfortunately. Let's hope Mike's more accurate animation gets spread far and wide, and that people on the Peninsula can actually make informed choices about the Caltrain/HSR project.

Can DesertXpress Break Ground Next Year?

That's what their execs are saying:

Construction crews could begin work on a proposed high-speed rail line to Las Vegas as early as next year, executives with the company behind the project said.

"The strong need for the project is clear and obvious," said Andrew Mack, vice president of Las Vegas-based DesertXpress Enterprises.

The devil is in the details of course. DesertXpress sees their financial plan as using ticket revenues to pay the costs of both construction and operation:

DesertXpress reports that construction and other start-up costs will total $3.5 to $4 billion. and that the line could be built in four years. The midpoint fare price is projected to be about $50.

If that pencils out, then this would be a pretty damn ideal solution. The $4 billion question is "will Southern Californians drive to Victorville and hop a train to Vegas?" and DesertXpress is confident that their ridership studies prove the answer is "yes." For everyone's sake I hope they are correct. My gut says they are - the ability to avoid the massive traffic jams on Interstate 15 on holiday weekends like this would be compelling. People would like the ability to relax on the trains, maybe get some work done as they approach their Vegas vacation, etc.

DesertXpress is also thinking ahead:

If DesertXpress happens, Mack said the most logical city to expand to would be Palmdale, where he said the train could link to the proposed California High Speed Rail system...

Victorville mayor pro tem Tom Rothschild, a Desert XPress supporter, said a high-speed rail line can be built in the near future. He thinks Maglev, which uses magnetic force to levitate and propel trains, is not yet practical.

"Maglev is great, don't mistake me. I think it's the greatest technology for the next half of this century," Rothschild said.

That being said, maglev still has support from Nevada politicians:

Yet for some reason maglev in the U.S. has yet to be widely embraced. It can be understood why this is the case in Europe, given its intricate, interconnected network of traditional and high-speed passenger trains with maximum speeds of 180 mph. In this country, however, we have the advantage of starting fresh.

We can paint the high-speed rail picture any way we want to. And, given the lack of a preexisting passenger rail infrastructure and great distances between U.S. cities (especially in the West and Midwest), the advantages of safe, environmentally responsible and state-of-the-art 300-mph maglev technology should be obvious.

The California-Nevada Interstate Maglev Project, which our administrations helped spearhead through local public-private partnerships, is one such effort that deserves the nation’s support.

I'm no expert on Nevada politics, so I don't quite know what influence former governors Kenny Guinn and Bob Miller still have in the state. But combined with Senator Harry Reid's big push for maglev, it suggests that while DesertXpress seems to be the more financially and technically viable solution, maglev still has the key political support.

Which is a ridiculous situation. Maglev isn't going to get built on the LA-Vegas corridor. *If* the US were to ever embrace maglev I cannot imagine it would happen on that low-population, low-importance corridor. I could see it happening in the midwest or on the Acela route. Not here.

The sooner Nevada's political leadership can line up behind the DesertXpress plan, the better we will be.

"Context Sensitive Solutions?"

Back to the Peninsula this Saturday afternoon, where Palo Alto is working to find allies to demand a "tunnel or nothing" approach to HSR:

At the same time, city officials have been getting a plethora of free assistance from a group of city residents who, over the past few months, immersed themselves in rail-related issues. One of the group's leaders, Sara Armstrong, has been reaching out to neighborhoods both inside and outside Palo Alto to strengthen the citizen coalition. Residents Rita Wespi and Elizabeth Alexis have been tracking the web of rail-related bills passing through the state Capitol, while Nadia Naik has joined Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto in advocating a "context-sensitive solution" to the design of the new system.

We will be doing the same kind of work in tracking rail-related bills - if anyone wants to help, drop me an email (my last name at gmail).

But the part that really stood out to me, as you can tell by the title of the post, is Kishimoto's "context-sensitive solution." Just as with Redwood City and "stakeholders" how you actually define these terms matters a great deal. What is the "context" that Kishimoto describes? Is it a very narrow notion of context, including the 1/4 mile next to the Caltrain ROW? Or is it a holistic notion of context, including the community as a whole, the economic, environmental, and energy context? Do finances play a role? As the news this week shows, there isn't exactly a whole lot of money lying around to build a tunnel. Or are those things arbitrarily excluded from Kishimoto's notion of "context"?

The residents recently formed a new group -- Citizens Advocating Reasonable Rail Design -- which lobbies for more transparency for the $40 billion project and for the context-sensitive approach, which requires outreach to stakeholders before development of a transportation project and a focus on local context when designing the project.

So what looks to be the case here is "local context" which is probably defined as "whatever a small group of Palo Alto residents who bothered to organize the group want the HSR to look like." I would be pleasantly surprised if finances, job creation and ability of ALL residents to afford travel, impact on air quality and global warming, and on energy independence are included as part of the "local context." If those things are not included, then this "context-sensitive solution" will not be context-sensitive at all, and it certainly would not qualify as reasonable rail design.

Dominic Spaethling, project manager for the San Francisco-to-San Jose segment of the proposed line, said the rail authority and Caltrain are both sensitive to the concerns of the various communities. But he warned that cities could have different ideas for how to collaborate with the rail authority on design ideas.

"It's important to acknowledge the need for collaboration in design, but it's not a 'one size fits all' situation," Spaethling said. "Charrettes may be fine for Palo Alto, while other cities may have other approaches."

Which is a key point, since Palo Alto is trying to impose a solution on the CHSRA and Caltrain - and the whole of the state. And unfortunately, the city is still trying to undermine Caltrain service by demanding that the 101 corridor be studied:

On Monday, the City Council attempted to make this dialogue smoother by adopting a set of guiding principles for its newly established ad hoc committee. The committee, which includes Kishimoto and councilmen Pat Burt and John Barton, is authorized to speak on behalf of the full council on rail-related issues whenever the city's input is needed on short notice.

The principles proclaim the city's support for consideration of alternative alignments (other than the Caltrain right-of-way). They also call for a collaborative approach to urban design, more transparency in the design process and an economic study that would help determine which design alternatives are feasible.

Councilman Greg Schmid, who wanted the principles to explicitly state the city's concern about elevated trains, was the only council member who voted against adopting the principles (Barton and Vice Mayor Jack Morton were absent).

Hey Greg: if you're going to have a process where all implementations are fairly studied, you can't stack the deck by saying "we hate elevated trains." Of course, the rest of Palo Alto's work is merely an effort to stack the deck using more subtle means.

It's entirely possible that Kishimoto's efforts are well-intentioned and meant to get HSR built in a way that's acceptable to both Palo Alto and the state they are still a part of. But the way the efforts are set up and defined strike me as being too much of an effort to force CHSRA and Caltrain to accept a tunnel. And in the absence of a reasonable discussion of finances, it is difficult to take seriously those that demand a tunnel.

BNSF: HSR Funds Should Be Targeted

So says BNSF CEO Matthew K. Rose:

An estimated $13 billion in new federal money for high-speed passenger rail service should go to a single project that demonstrates its effectiveness, the top executive of freight railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNI) said Thursday.

"I'm concerned (the money) will be spread like peanut butter" nationwide and have little impact, said Chief Executive Matthew K. Rose, speaking to the Austin Economic Club, a local business group. "I'm afraid it'll be a missed opportunity."

The federal stimulus package includes $8 billion in seed money for development of high-speed passenger rail service, and U.S. President Barack Obama also has called for an additional $5 billion over the next five years.

Rose said Fort Worth-based Burlington Northern and other freight railroads likely won't see much benefit from the new federal money, aside from possible funding for small projects such as crossing upgrades, because high-speed rail lines require separate, dedicated corridors.

Hmm. "A single project that demonstrates its effectiveness" on "separate, dedicated corridors." Remind you of any state HSR project in particular?!

Rose isn't saying that HSR is a bad idea, far from it:

Still, he described himself as a supporter of efforts to improve the nation's transportation network overall. Rose recently served on a federal commission that examined U.S. transportation needs and potential funding sources.

He estimated Thursday that it could cost $1 trillion over the next 20 years to fully develop 10 to 15 high-speed rail corridors in the U.S.

Despite the daunting sum, "I really do think it's an investment our society ought to make," he said.

But he stressed that the $13 billion to get the effort off the ground won't make much of a dent unless it's targeted.

Separately, Rose noted in an interview after Thursday's event that he has seen little momentum for development of high-speed passenger rail in Texas, despite the new federal stimulus money.

I don't think any of us could imagine that the Obama Administration, which heavily targeted the Midwest for votes in 2008 and will surely do so again in 2012, would stiff them and give the whole pot of money to California, as Rose seems to imply here. But Rose is making a good point that $13 billion is a paltry sum when you get right down to it, and won't do a great deal to build HSR networks or improve freight rail (by moving passenger services onto different tracks).

I also wonder if Rose's comments are designed as a shot at the Texas HSR plan, which doesn't seem to have been making much forward momentum lately. Perhaps someone more familiar with Texas railroading can tell us whether that plays any role.

Still, it's nice to see that there is a major national freight railroad that does not actively hate passenger rail...

(thanks to Matt Melzer for pointing me to this article)

Now THAT Is What Stimulus Looks Like

China isn't screwing around:

China plans to create the world's largest high-speed rail network. The Chinese Ministry of Railways is planning to buy 1,000 high-speed trains within the next few years. The current order from Siemens (SI) includes the first trains to serve the new high-speed line between Bejing and Shanghai.

German train producer Siemens has inked a $1 billion contract to build 100 new high-speed trains for China. The company's Velaro train has a top speed of 218mph (350.84km/h). A typical train will have 16 cars and carry more than 1,000 passengers. With a total length of more than 1,300 feet (396.24m), the new trains will be the world's longest single high-speed units in use, according to Siemens.

By the end of the first quarter 2009, the approved Chinese railway investment exceeds $292 billion including more than $175 billion investment in the process projects. The data shown in the recent “Research Report on the Investment in Chinese Railway Transport Industry, 2009” indicates that China plans to construct 40-thousand-kilometer railways with the total investments of over $730 billion by 2012.

This is a smart strategy for China, which is a major oil exporter and has to get that oil from countries that are more closely allied to the US than to anyone else. China also has a need to provide sustainable transportation for its population, and a need to provide jobs to its people during a consumer-led recession.

Sound familiar?

Obviously there are differences between the US and China - they have huge currency reserves they can spend on this, whereas the US has huge private, concentrated wealth reserves (thinking of the richest 5% of the population or so) nobody really is willing to touch. But if we have the capacity to blow a trillion on a bank bailout that won't really provide long-term economic growth, surely we can spend more than $13 billion on HSR. Right?

The Infrastructurist has a good take on this:

Dithering and doing things half-way are not among the national character flaws that might be pinned on the Chinese. One has the sense that if that country ever gets serious about greening up, it will do it with a rapidity and effectiveness that will make western nations look downright silly.

And, perhaps, they’re already at it with this plan to build the world’s largest high-speed rail network. As of March 31, China has committed $259 billion to the project, and plans to spend nearly a half trillion dollars more in the next three years, boosting the total investment to $730 billion by 2012.

A little context here: The US–a country with a per capita GDP about 16 times that of China–has set rail as a national priority and has committed… $13 billion. Or, about 2 percent as much in China. This, of course, is in a place where it costs a hell of a lot more to get anything done.

Of the Chinese investment, at least $1 billion is going to the German conglomerate Seimens for the purchase 100 high speed train sets. They will be, on average, 16 cars–or 1300 feet–in length, capable of carrying 1000 passengers, and capable of traveling 218 mph. Moreover, they will be running on tracks designed to accommodate that speed. Unlike, say, the Acela.

Ultimately, the Chinese government plans to buy 1000 high speed trains to run on a track network of around 25,000 miles.

Why, oh, why do we have such difficulty approaching serious projects with the required seriousness in this country?

Sure, sure, China doesn't really have labor or environmental standards, or even democracy. We have each, rightly so, and that adds some time and cost to massive infrastructure projects. The tradeoff is worth it. But those differences don't change the fact that China's moving to better position itself for the 21st century than the US. At least we here in California have stepped up to approve our HSR project, the only thing the US has to offer that comes anywhere near China's plans.

Lest we forget, HSR is seen around the world as a strategic necessity for 21st century prosperity in a global economy. Americans aren't trained to think in those terms, since we found prosperity and global leadership with a 20th century economy based on oil consumption, sprawl, and cars. It's difficult to get people out of that mindset and recognize that times have changed and a new basis of growth and prosperity is needed.

Perhaps China's setting of the bar can inspire Americans to catch up - to California and to the rest of the industrialized world.

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.

Amtrak, HSR, and the Need for Speed

by Robert Cruickshank

Joseph Boardman was in Chicago talking to Illinois lawmakers about high speed trains, and threw cold water on hopes of implementing a California-style HSR system in the Midwest:

Introducing ultra-fast passenger trains to the Midwest is less important than the need for more frequent service between cities, reliable schedules that beat the time spent driving and rail connections that permit travel across the United States, Amtrak's chief official said Monday in Chicago.

True high-speed rail clipping along at 200 m.p.h. or faster would be prohibitively expensive to build on the scale needed to serve the U.S., and such systems work best only when the number of stops are limited, Joseph Boardman, president and chief executive officer of Amtrak, told Illinois lawmakers at a hearing in the Thompson Center on the passenger railroad's agenda.

"It's really not about the speed. It's about reduced travel times and more frequency," he told the Illinois House Railroad Industry Committee. "The competitive advantage is with the train."

Boardman said plans in the Midwest for trains traveling up to 110 m.p.h. on corridors stretching over nine states make more sense. He said the immediate focus must be on modernizing infrastructure to increase train speeds in the Chicago area that currently are as slow as 5 m.p.h. because of freight-train congestion and antiquated track and signaling equipment.

Getting up to even 40 m.p.h. on stretches between Chicago and cities less than 50 miles away, such as Joliet, would be a big improvement, Boardman said.

"One hundred and ten is double the national speed limit" of 55 m.p.h. on highways, noted Boardman, who was administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration during several years of the Bush administration.

To which Yonah Freemark at the Transport Politic offered a strong reply:

I hate to point out the obvious — something I’ve had to do in the past — but reduced travel times can only be achieved through (a) reducing the distance traveled, or (b) increasing the speed of trains. Since I’m assuming Mr. Boardman wasn’t suggesting that customers simply start taking shorter trips, the only way you can reduce travel times is by increasing speed. So it really is about the speed. Sorry, Mr. Boardman.

Mr. Boardman used this argument to inform the committee that it was infeasible to build true high-speed rail (that is, “HSR-Express,” as we’re calling 150+ mph service these days) at the scale needed for the United States because of its high cost, and said that speed improvements to service at 110 mph were more realistic.

I have no problem with steadily improving train speeds, nor of course with increased frequency. But we should be investing in much faster speeds along the country’s most important corridors, like San Francisco-Los Angeles or Washington-Boston. Those lines, among others, deserve the same level of rail service as is provided in European and Asian countries, and there’s no reason to think that the U.S. is simply incapable of building them. Whether or not some trips taken by Americans are transcontinental, the fact is that the majority of long-distance trips are made by people traveling between cities 100 and 600 miles apart. Those distances are ideal for high-speed rail.

Boardman believes that improvements in Chicagoland can increase speeds from 5 to 45 mph, and that if you can get trains to accomplish 110 mph, you can bring enough people to trains to make it worth your while.

But that's the key issue here - "worth your while." Sure, you can get more people to ride a train from Chicago to St. Louis at 110mph, but as much as would drive or fly? And would a 110mph train change travel habits as much as a 200mph train would?

If you look at Spain you might get a sense of the answer. Madrid and Barcelona have long been connected by fast trains operated by RENFE above 110mph, but it was only when the AVE was completed to Barcelona-Sants in early 2008 that you started to see a big shift in travel habits away from the airlines and towards the train. Of course, there's about 100 miles difference in the distance between the two cities (Chicago-St Louis is about 300 miles; Madrid to Barcelona is about 400 miles) and that might make some difference.

Still, there does seem to be a solid case that true high speed rail - above 150mph - really does make a big difference in terms of ridership. I think Boardman should not be so prejudicial in his comments against that kind of HSR in Illinois or the Midwest, and I hope he doesn't wind up having any influence over the decision about which HSR projects get funded - because here in California, we ARE going to have trains going over 200 mph, and it's the right thing to do.

National Train Day

by Robert Cruickshank

Today is National Train Day, and although I'm up in Seattle for the weekend, there are a number of California events going on today that you might find worthwhile. The CA events are mostly oriented toward Amtrak, but we support all passenger rail at this site, and these events are open and welcoming of high speed trains. After all, Amtrak does operate the only real high speed train in the country!

The main event is at LA Union Station. There's live music, train displays, including of historic passenger rail cars, galleries and exhibits - including one called "Trains Move Our Economy".

The Coast Starlight is also participating in National Train Day, with a group riding Train 11 from Emeryville to Paso Robles and back - you can follow their activities on Twitter @CSCN, and the Twitter feed for National Train Day is @trainday09. There are events at several stations along the route, and elsewhere in the state - find more by clicking here and scrolling down to the CA section.

RailPAC has more as well.

Richard Florida on HSR, Mega-Regions, and Our Economic Future

Over at The Atlantic, economic geographer Richard Florida has been writing about the economic impact of high speed rail. He believes HSR is a centerpiece of the long-term shift in America's economy - specifically in where economic activity is going to be concentrated. In a March 2009 article he argued that "mega-regions" would emerge from this recession as the location of most economic growth. Just as the "Long Depression" of 1873-1896 shifted the industrial economy from smaller towns like Rochester, NY and Lowell, Mass. to big cities like Chicago and New York, just as the Great Depression eventually produced a shift to suburbs, and as the 1970s stagflation produced a shift to the Sunbelt, the current crisis will accelerate a shift to 11 US "mega-regions". Two of them, "NorCal" and "SoCal", are here in the Golden State - and both are laid out exactly along the proposed HSR route.

The key insight of Florida's argument is that "mega-region" is more expansive than what we currently consider to be a "region." He argues that new technologies and proximity to dynamic economic centers will produce a new geography of growth:

New periods of geographic expansion require new systems of infrastructure. Ever since the days of the canals, the early railroad, and streetcar suburbs, we've seen how infrastructure and transportation systems work to spur new patterns economic and regional development. The streetcar expanded the boundaries of the late 19th and early 20th century city, while the railroad moved goods and people between them. The automobile enabled workers to move to the suburbs and undertake far greater commutes, expanding the geographic landscape still further.

Mega-regions, if they are to function as integrated economic units, require better, more effective, and faster ways move goods, people, and ideas. High-speed rail accomplishes that, and it also provides a framework for future in-fill development along its corridors. Just as development filled-in along the early street-car lines and the post-war highways, high-speed rail will encourage denser, more compact, and concentrated development with growth filling in along its routes over time. Spain's new high-speed rail link between Barcelona and Madrid not only massively reduced commuting times between these two great Spanish cities, according to a recent New York Times report, it has also helped revitalize several declining locations along the line.

What exactly does this mean for California? It means the integration of Modesto, Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield into either the NorCal or SoCal mega-region. Someone can work in Silicon Valley and live in Merced. Now, you might argue "that happens already." But there's a key difference using HSR - faster commutes at a lower cost. Freed from dependence on oil, workers will carry more take-home pay and can invigorate the economies of Central Valley cities. And companies that want to take advantage of the "knowledge economy" using the "creative class" of workers that Florida emphasizes can relocate to one of these mega-region towns, like Fresno, and attract workers from what we now consider to be a "reverse commute".

Already I'm sure this is setting off some folks' sprawl alarms. But as I have consistently argued before on this blog, there's no real reason that revitalizing Fresno or Bakersfield has to mean sprawl at all. HSR stations will themselves encourage greater urban densities. And sprawl itself was a product of the 20th century economic conditions that are dying, and in whose death the mega-region is emerging as the basis of future growth. Sprawl requires cheap oil, cheap credit and favorable land use laws. We're pretty much done with the first, done with the second (even when the credit crunch is over, credit will never again be as cheap as it was in the late 20th century), and laws like AB 32 and SB 375 are changing the third component.

Today Florida expands upon this point, responding to a point Seeking Alpha made about the resurgence of Baltimore and Philadelphia thanks to HSR, enabling those cities to tap into the prosperity and creativity of Washington DC and NYC:

Mega-region hubs are becoming more economically central to our spiky world. There's no getting around this. Chicago has in effect sucked up scads of economic functions that used to be done by other second- and third-tier Midwest cities. On the east coast, Baltimore and Philadelphia and, yes, Washington, D.C. have prospered because of transit connections, including relatively fast rail, which has allowed them to grow by hiving off pieces of economic activity attracted into the world city orbit of New York.

What we are seeing is the further deepening of the spatial division of labor: Suburbia is being stretched in a process of ever more intensive and expansive geographic development.

There's a lesson there for the industrial Midwest and for other regions of the country, North America, and the world. Those places that positon themselves for this new era of spiky, geographic growth and which have the infrastructure that connects them to major centers will prosper, while those that do not will likely fall behind even further.

In short, Florida helps us provide a very clearly argued explanation of exactly how high speed rail is vital to California's economic future. Whereas some in this state delude themselves that the 20th century model of automobile dependence and sprawl can still somehow produce growth, Florida says that is a recipe for turning California into Michigan - too deeply locked into an economic geography that is no longer able to provide economic growth.

California has to change if we are to thrive and prosper in the 21st century. High speed rail is an indispensible component of that shift.

Senators Lowenthal and Simitian Are Getting Played

by Robert Cruickshank

One of the drawbacks of using an independent authority to manage and build the high speed rail project here in California is that it risks not having enough political support to properly do its job. And that may be what we're witnessing here in California, as two state senators - Joe Simitian and Alan Lowenthal - are launching an attack on the California High Speed Rail Authority and its funding. Unfortunately, this attack, particularly in Senator Simitian's case, is based on outright lies being told to him by a very small group of people on the Peninsula who want Simitian to step in and overturn the will of the voters by changing the route of the high speed train.

As related in a recent Palo Alto Online article:

A state Senate subcommittee Thursday expressed concerns about the structure and business plan of the California High Speed Rail Authority -- the agency charged with building the $40 billion rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles....


Simitian said the community's message was "loud and clear." The subcommittee agreed to hold off on authorizing the funds and urged rail-authority officials to expand their outreach efforts.

The senators heard from about 30 concerned Peninsula residents who made a morning trek to Sacramento to lobby for more oversight and transparency.

"What we really asked for is for them to change the structure of who is running this," Palo Alto Vice Mayor Jack Morton, one of the speakers, said.

"It's quite clear that the high-speed rail staff is insensitive to the community and has no ability to be responsible for the funds," he said.

Simitian said the nature of the rail authority has changed over the past few months from a small study group advocating a high-speed rail line to an organization actually building the line. Now is the time to consider changes that would bring more oversight and more community outreach to the process, he said.

"We deferred action in part to ensure that before the funds are authorized for the coming year that we see a stepped-up program for outreach and oversight," Simitian told the Weekly.

Simitian is getting played. There's no other way to put it. Those "30 concerned Peninsula residents" include opponents of the high speed rail project, people who want to exercise an unfair and illegitimate amount of power over the project. They believe that unless the HSR project is compromised and weakened to suit their outdated and anti-environmental preferences, then the project should be killed - and they're working to line up Senate support for it.

I will be blunt here - Vice Mayor Jack Morton lied to the committee, if his words as quoted by Gennady Sheyner are accurate. "Insensitive to the community" is Morton's own distorted spin on events, since there is no evidence whatsoever of such insensitivity. Palo Alto has been regularly consulted. The CHSRA extended the Peninsula EIR comment period to accommodate Palo Alto. The CHRSA has also created a working group with Peninsula cities, including Palo Alto.

Even worse is Morton's lie about CHSRA irresponsibility with funds. As we have explained here the CHSRA's work has been hamstrung by financial factors totally outside its control - the state legislature refuses to pass a budget on time and CHSRA staff and contractors go unpaid; the state can't or won't sell the Prop 1A bonds; Arnold Schwarzenegger tries to zero out CHSRA funding (which he attempted to do in 2007).

Jack Morton should be ashamed of himself for making such blatant misrepresentations of the truth to a legislative committee like that. It is disreputable and makes the city of Palo Alto - which in reality has a diverse set of opinions on HSR, including a large number, probably a majority, of residents who back the project.

As for Joe Simitian, I don't really know where he has been, but as far as HSR is concerned he seems to have been out to lunch. The CHSRA has already worked proactively to provide even stronger community engagement.

Let's be clear here. This isn't about CHSRA's supposed failure to engage the community. This is about a small but loud group of NIMBYs who want to kill HSR outright who are doing the equivalent of whining to mom and dad when they don't get their way. They are making up things to undermine the CHSRA in pursuit of their actual goal - gutting the project - which is quite clear from the statements quoted in the article:

Hundreds have attended community and council meetings to raise alarms about the potential of an elevated wall splitting the city, and to express concerns about the possibility of having portions of their property's seized through eminent domain.

Palo Alto Councilman Pat Burt emphasized the eminent domain issue at Monday's council meeting, calling it the "elephant in the room."

Pat Burt is not being straight with the council or the public, since eminent domain takings are expected to be VERY small. I am also concerned with Yoriko Kishimoto's statements, which may indicate a "tunnel or nothing" attitude:

Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto, who organized a coalition of Peninsula cities that meets weekly to discuss high-speed rail issues, said city officials are now discussing a variety of proposals they'd like Sacramento legislators to consider.

The coalition, which met Friday morning, wants the rail authority to use the "Context Sensitive Solutions" developed by the Federal Highway Administration in designing the new rail line. The method emphasizes stakeholder involvement and design elements that integrate the project with the surrounding communities.

Kishimoto said the coalition also plans to request that the rail authority conduct an economic analysis for the various design alternatives concurrently with its environmental review of the options.

"We don't want to go through all the environmental analysis only to find at the very end of the two-year process that the tunnel is not feasible," Kishimoto said.

Yoriko, I can tell you right now the tunnel is NOT feasible from an economic perspective unless your city plans to pay for it. It's really that simple.

Further, this who "Context Sensitive Solutions" concept is total bullshit unless it includes the true context of HSR. That method must necessarily include:

• The impact of HSR on carbon emissions
• The jobs and economic benefits of HSR
• The benefits of high speed passenger rail and the costs of automobile congestion
• The impact of rising gas prices
• Safety upgrades of grade separations along the Caltrain corridor

Further, who exactly is the "community" that is at stake here? Palo Alto residents are implying they're the only community that matters, and that is nonsense. Such "Context Sensitive Solutions" need to be examined against the needs of the state as a whole if this exercise is to have any legitimacy whatsoever. Palo Alto believes that their needs trump the needs of everyone else. They are wrong about this, as they are about to discover.

The other part of the article notes that Senator Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach is on the subcommittee and joined in the attack on the CHSRA. At this point I am forced to conclude Lowenthal is an HSR denier - someone who not only refuses to acknowledge the benefits of HSR, but who persists in spreading incorrect information and even disinformation about HSR. We have discussed Lowenthal before - his report from June designed to undermine the HSR project ahead of the Prop 1A vote, and his successful effort to get the Legislative Analyst to produce a flawed report on the CHSRA Business Plan.

As long as Senator Lowenthal is in office it seems he is going to try and kill high speed rail. Unfortunately he may now be joined by Senator Simitian, who has gullibly bought the BS being sold by Palo Alto interests who hope to kill the project, or to severely weaken its ability to provide for California's needs.

CHSRA also needs stronger institutional support inside the Capitol. That was supposed to be Quentin Kopp's role, as he was a former state senator, but clearly more is needed. I don't know if that means some changes to the board, or whether it means other Senators need to step up and chide their colleagues for trying to undermine a core initiative not just of California but of President Barack Obama.

Make no mistake - Peninsula NIMBYs are trying to sneak a gutting of the HSR project through the state legislature. They are out of their minds if they think we're going to let them happen.

The first step is to contact Senators Simitian and Lowenthal and ask them why they are opposing the will of the people and trying to undermine the HSR project.

Sen. Joe Simitian
Email page
(650) 688-6384
(916) 651-4011 (Capitol office)

Sen. Alan Lowenthal
Direct email
(562) 495-4766
(916) 651-4027 (Capitol Office)

Barstow Bypass?

by Robert Cruickshank

One of the, shall we say, "interesting" features of the Draft EIS for the DesertXpress HSR project is a lack of a station in Barstow. As revealed at Wednesday night's scoping meeting in Barstow, this has locals rather upset:

During a public comment session in Barstow Wednesday night on a proposed high-speed rail line that would run from Victorville to Las Vegas, city officials and residents remained critical of the project’s lack of plans for a stop in Barstow and the potential for the route to encroach on development in the city’s industrial park....

Barstow’s City Council unanimously voted at a special meeting Tuesday to approve written comments that criticize the environmental document for failing to analyze placement of a station or maintenance facility in Barstow. The comments also highlighted the potential impacts on development from a proposed route that would cross diagonally through the Barstow Industrial Park.

The article explains some of the back-and-forth between Barstow and DesertXpress - DX claims the city didn't get in touch with them until too late in the EIS process; Barstow claims DX had heard their concerns but never followed up on them.

As pretty much the only major settlement between the edge of the SoCal megalopolis (in this case, Victorville) and Vegas, Barstow probably deserves a stop. It could add riders from the Central Valley and the SF Bay Area - if I were driving to Vegas and had an option of parking in Barstow and riding a train the rest of the way I'd probably take it, and I suspect many others would as well.

Not everyone in Barstow is sure about the HSR concept, however:

Other commenters questioned whether the train project would be viable and whether it would really relieve congestion on Interstate 15, when people would still need to drive up the Cajon Pass from the Los Angeles Basin in order to board the train in Victorville.
“(Californians) love their cars, and they’re not going to let them go to come to Victorville to go to Vegas,” said Barstow resident Carmen Hernandez, who also sits on the city’s Planning Commission.

Ah, the "Californians love their cars" canard. Whenever a viable alternative has been given to them - subways, light rail, commuter rail - Californians have proven over and over again that they will take it. California's "love affair" with the automobile more closely resembles an arranged marriage. I love driving through Big Sur as much as the next person, but give me a train to SF or LA or Vegas any day over driving there.

I also wonder if Hernandez and others are concerned about the impact of a train on Barstow businesses. Barstow has always existed as a waystation for travelers. First for the transcontinental railroads, and then for folks driving to Vegas. Most of the city budget comes from sales taxes on traveler spending.

Still, if Vegas HSR is going to happen, it'll be on the DesertXpress model, and Barstow would do well to get in on the action. DX should include a study of a Barstow stop, and the city should unite around the steel-wheel HSR solution and quit daydreaming of a maglev train that is NEVER going to be built.