HSR and TOD

The middle of a severe recession led by collapsing real estate values may not seem like the best time to start talking about developing property around planned HSR stations. But the economy will eventually recover (even on the slow timescale forecast by many economists there will probably be real recovery between now and 2018) and that in turn will mean developers will bring the capital and the will to use HSR stations as anchors of new projects.

The CHSRA has always emphasized their stations as bringers of urban density; you can see it in the NC3D animations produced last year for the Authority. Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is one of the strongest selling points for high speed rail, as it will help provide needed new housing in city centers, spur the development of other housing, commercial, and retail properties, and help act as magnets for bringing growth back into the cities and away from the exurban sprawl that characterized California's last period of economic growth (a sprawl which was directly responsible for the current economic collapse).

The question, as the San Diego Business Journal points out, is timing:

“I think not only is it something that is a good thing, it’s certainly going to be a phenomenal planning tool for the next generation of growth,” said Perry Dealy, president of Dealy Development. “The opportunity to take the high-speed stop hubs and convert them to maximize their mixed-use, high-density potential is great. You’d have what I’d call a TOD, transit-oriented design, starting with residential, work-live, retail, entertainment and other kinds of venues that are part of the mixed-use characteristics.”...

Dealy said that the type of project he has in mind would ultimately cost $1 billion to $2 billion. It would entail acquiring land to build on, adding or refurbishing infrastructure, and preparing a master plan.

“There is demand for the region to grow, we’re definitely going to add a million people, maybe not in 10, but in 12, 14 years it’s going to happen,” said Dealy. “Now’s the time to actually get these concepts defined.”

Of course, Dealy will have even more time than that to plan for San Diego, where revenue service may not begin until as late as 2030. But for some of the other stops, such as Anaheim, Fresno, Gilroy and San Jose, now may well be the right time to get TOD concepts under way, especially as cities start evaluating land use rules surrounding the proposed HSR stations.

Some developers aren't convinced there's any rush to get plans started:

Shawn Tobias, project manager at Houston-based Hines, a real estate firm and commercial developer, stated that he doesn’t see that much of a push from the development side to start planning for a project like this immediately.

“I think (development) firms in general right now tend to be shortsighted in terms of their business, just to make sure that they’re weathering the current conditions well enough, but planners are certainly into the future,” said Tobias. “Whether that becomes a reality is a different situation because the real challenge is integrating the plan within the existing municipalities, but it certainly is on Hines’ long-term radar.”

Tobias cited economic factors for the reasons that some developers have chosen to focus on more short-term projects.

“I don’t see a planning rush right now because most people are in survival modes,” Tobias said. “Once the economy starts to heat up and there’s more demand for development, I think you’ll see more firms clamoring for this.”

Of course, Hines isn't really saying anything that different from Dealy - both agree that HSR TOD will make a compelling financial opportunity for developers, investors, and buyers, but they aren't sure whether there is the resources out there right now to get this started given the economic climate.

As HSR TOD plans begin to take shape we'll start covering them in more detail here on the blog. One issue that the HSR stations raise related to development is whether there will be overnight and long-term parking allowed at these stations, a question Rafael brought up in the comments to yesterday's post. If such parking is allowed, Rafael rightly argues, it could mitigate against TOD, especially in lower density locations like the Central Valley.

Parking is a big issue when it comes to development in existing urban centers. TOD and density advocates have increasingly pushed to limit or eliminate city planning codes requiring new developments to provide a fixed number of parking spaces, and more attention is being drawn to the drawbacks of urban parking lots.

On the other hand, overnight and long-term parking would represent a potentially significant revenue stream for the CHSRA. There are many years of studies ahead that will examine this question, which will have an impact not only on how Californians interact with the HSR trains, but how the HSR system interacts with its surrounding urban environment.

False Consciousness

We've reported on some rather silly anti-HSR op-eds in recent months here at the blog. Typically these come from the far-right, specifically from the Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Association.

This week brings evidence that HSR denial exists on the left side of the spectrum as well (although I have a hard time acknowledging anti-rail concern trolling as anything but fundamentally right-wing). Ben Adler, a writer at the Politico and a fellow at The Next American City (a wonderful publication), has an op-ed at CampusProgress.org titled "Alternative Travel for the Wealthy", arguing that high speed rail is an elitist plaything that does nothing for Californians who need passenger rail service. The concept is absurd, but the execution is stunning in its failure to grasp even the most elementary aspects of HSR and its place in the overall mass transit universe.

But the idea of long-distance high-speed rail is primarily of interest to business travelers and the relatively wealthy.

This is utterly ridiculous nonsense and shows an almost total ignorance of the lived experience of middle-class and working-class Californians.

Does Adler really, truly believe that only the wealthy have a use for long-distance travel? If so he must believe that nobody else wants to see family for the holidays. That nobody else must travel to seek a job. Has Adler ever heard of the concept of migratory labor networks?

As this summer demonstrated, soaring oil prices and the long-term prospect of peak oil - neither of which Adler mentioned - indicate that intercity travel is very much of interest to all Californians. Without affordable rail travel that runs on renewable energy, working-class Californians will not be able to travel around their state. That denies them economic opportunity and cuts down on jobs that their travel creates.

Further, as Matt Melzer pointed out in a comment to Adler's post, HSR is going to provide direct material benefits to all classes of Californians by the considerable numbers of jobs it will create:

a UC Merced study found that HSR will bring $3 billion in direct economic benefits to the Central Valley. State estimates show that HSR will create over 400,000 jobs across a variety of sector, which can only be good for the working class.

Those jobs are green jobs, jobs that can't easily be outsourced. Adler betrays his own class position by dismissing the need for such jobs in a state whose unemployment rate is 7.7% and rising fast.

Adler also shows a lack of understanding of HSR's role in promoting urban density:

Even if you’re considering the middle class who might make trips between cities fairly often, high speed rail does little to combat the fact that one cannot get around L.A. or San Diego without a car upon arrival. If people plan to take the train for shorter trips between cities, they may end up needing a car on the other end. For mass transit to really remove auto-dependence it has to connect walkable urban areas.

This section suggests to me Adler simply does not understand how HSR works. HSR acts as a spark for construction of other mass transit connections. Since the stations themselves are in city centers, they create demand for new transit links to ensure folks can get around without a car. Those stations, being in city centers, promote transit-oriented development (TOD) which, yes, create demand for new transit links. You want a walkable neigborhood? Build an HSR station. You want more people to get around without a car? Build an HSR station.

Adler also shows his ignorance by neglecting the fact that in fact, Californians DID vote for urban transportation programs of the very kind that he calls for:

This was the only smart growth ballot initiative on the ballot; there weren’t other initiatives for increasing city transit.

That's a jaw-droppingly ignorant statement. Los Angeles County, where most of the "housekeepers who commute from East L.A. to Westwood by bus or car" who Adler claims to want to help actually live, passed Measure R in November, which provides funds for a massive expansion of the regional rail network. Santa Clara County may have passed Measure B, which will bring BART to San José along the Santa Clara Street corridor, which will help working-class residents in East San José more easily reach jobs in downtown SJ and in other parts of the Bay Area. Marin and Sonoma counties passed Measure Q creating a passenger rail system there as well.

How can we take Adler seriously when he gets his basic facts so very wrong?

I don’t want to set up a false dichotomy between inter-city travel like the high-speed rail initiative and intra-city and commuter transit like city buses; each is beneficial in their own way.

But that's precisely what Adler has done in his article. That is the sole reason the article was written. Adler is arguing that HSR is a toy for the wealthy that sucks up money from transit projects for everyone else.

Those of us who actually understand the high speed rail project know that HSR is anything but elitist. It is a rising tide that lifts all transportation boats. It helps retrofit the suburbs by providing rapid, affordable commuter services. It helps spur creation of new transit links and TOD in the city centers where the HSR stations will go. It will make travel on Caltrain and Metrolink faster and safer by providing grade separations and dedicated tracks. It will bring reliable and fast passenger rail service to working-class cities currently underserved by rail, including Gilroy, Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield.

I'm rather stunned that the Center for American Progress, usually a very solidly progressive organization, put their name to this ridiculous article. Adler's facts are wrong and he shows an almost total lack of understanding of the issue. Surely Campus Progress and the CAP can do better.

The Transbay Terminal Tempest

In the comments on the last post there has been quite a lot of discussion about this SF Examiner article with the hyperbolic and overly dramatic headline "Transbay Transit Center Going Off Track":

However, that would necessitate a $2 billion, 1.3-mile extension of Caltrain’s tracks from their current terminus at Fourth and King streets in Mission Bay to downtown’s Transbay Transit Center at First and Mission streets, as well as a “train box” — a massive space underneath the bus terminal big enough to hold six rail platforms and tracks — that could later be tunneled into and developed into a station for Caltrain and high-speed trains.

Transbay Joint Powers Authority spokesman Adam Alberti said the authority began lobbying for funds from the high-speed rail bond in a letter issued last month.

But at least one authority has eschewed the possibility that high-speed rail will pay for the extension.

“We do not need First and Mission. I am satisfied with Fourth and Townsend,” said Judge Quentin Kopp, chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority. “We are not going to pay an extra billion-plus dollars to take the high-speed rail an extra 1.4 miles.”

Kopp is not wrong, but neither is he right. The HSR project can survive without the Transbay Terminal. However, the project is much better off with it included. That 1.3 miles is quite a distance in San Francisco, the difference between the edge of the urban center and the center itself, the core of California's most densely urbanized place. The Transbay Terminal will be located within easy walking distance of a BART station and all Muni Metro lines, as well as the Ferry Terminal. The HSR line ought to go there.

Kopp is likely posturing here to let all parties know that Prop 1A money isn't a free for all. That has value. And it's likely Kopp has been quoted out of context here. Still, he could dial it down a bit. His strong style has value at times but misses the mark here. The Authority doesn't necessarily have to pay all or even any of the cost of the extension. But Kopp ought to work to build consensus to ensure that the HSR line gets completed all the way to the Transbay Terminal. I don't think these comments get us in that direction.

Especially since everyone else appears to be busy playing "pass the buck":

The extension will have to be resolved — and funded — by The City and Caltrain, he said.

But spokeswoman Christine Dunn said Caltrain has not considered devoting any funds to the project, and it would have to be funded by The City and the Transbay project.

Jerry Hill, a member of Transbay’s board of directors and state Assembly member-elect, said that though Transbay hopes to secure some funding for the extension from the high-speed rail, they are not seeing the project as a “cash cow,” and the success of neither high-speed rail nor the Transbay Transit Center depends on the extension.

Hill's comments are especially important here, as they suggest this is not the "omg crisis!" that the Examiner would have us believe. There is a money dispute here, which should surprise nobody. We're going to have to deal with these kinds of issues for at least the next ten years. The political need for multiple funding sources virtually guarantees it. But that doesn't mean these issues can't be resolved.

HSR and the Transbay Terminal are better off with each other. The city of San Francisco and Caltrain ought to be expected to kick in some money as well. So should the feds. Perhaps this is a more important project than the Central Subway that Nancy Pelosi has been pushing for years. And it really is an either/or - if the Central Subway is built then that would enable BART riders to get to the Fourth and King station more easily, if not exactly conveniently; but if the Caltrain and HSR extension gets built then the Central Subway becomes a less necessary piece of infrastructure.

In any event, leadership is needed here to ensure that the Transbay Terminal project and the HSR project both meet their full potential - which means the trains reach the terminal. The CHSRA ought to negotiate in good faith with the Transbay Terminal Authority and all other parties. The extension to the Terminal is an important part of the overall project that ought to be maintained, although fair and equitable cost arrangements should certainly be made.

UPDATE: It is worth noting that the CHSRA board unanimously selected the Transbay Terminal as the preferred terminus in San Francisco for the route when they approved the Final EIR in July. Specifically, Chapter 8 explains the rationale, repeating much of what I said above:

The Transbay Transit Center site is the preferred station location option for the San Francisco HST Terminal. The Transbay Transit Center would offer greater connectivity to San Francisco and the Bay Area than the 4th and King site (about a mile from the financial district) because of its location in the heart of downtown San Francisco and since it would serve as the regional transit hub for San Francisco. The Transbay Transit Center is located in the financial district where many potential HST passengers could walk to the station. The Transbay Transit Center is also expected to emerge as the transit hub for all major services to downtown San Francisco, with the advantage of direct connections to BART (1 block from the terminus), Muni, and regional bus transit (SamTrans, AC Transit, and Golden Gate Transit). Moreover, the Transbay Transit Center is compatible with existing and planned development and is the focal point of the Transbay redevelopment plan that includes extensive high-density residential, office, and commercial/retail development. Sensitivity analysis on the Pacheco Pass “Base” forecasts (low-end forecasts) concluded that the Transbay Transit Center would attract about 1 million more annual passengers a year by 2030 than the 4th and King station location option.

The capital costs needed for the HST component of the Transbay Transit Center (including the 1.3-mile extension) is estimated to be similar to the estimated costs for the 4th and King option. (Page 8-18)

So that strikes me as a pretty clear indication that Kopp was likely quoted out of context and that the Examiner is trying to stir up controversy where it doesn't legitimately exist. The CHSRA is still committed to the Transbay Terminal, and Kopp probably meant to say that if something were to happen and the Transbay Terminal project fell through, HSR could manage.

Obviously there will be things that need to be resolved as detailed plans get made, especially with the Transbay Terminal. How many trains? Where exactly will the "train box" go and how big will it be? What will the specific funding arrangements be? Such issues are ones we're going to have to deal with up and down the route as the plans near completion.

I do still believe that it is in the interest of all the various transit agencies to continue working together on this. The desire to build all the way to the Transbay is there. Let's not allow a one-off article to distract us from that.

SPUR on Prop 1A

San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association - SPUR - is one of the leading and most respected urban planning organizations in the state. And now they have offered an excellent overview of the case for Prop 1A and some excellent rebuttals of the HSR deniers:

The high-speed train system is well planned and long overdue. Criticisms of the proposal, for the most part, amount to the charge that "it's not good enough," and its associated presumption that we should reject this proposal until a better one comes along. This point of view fails to recognize that every delay in building the system increases its costs due to the severe escalation in construction costs hitting all construction projects.

An excellent point. Those who claim that we can and or should wait are actually suggesting we should take the financially reckless path. If HSR is "not affordable" now, when exactly WILL it be? What could possibly be a better and more valuable time to build this than now, when the economic stimulus will be at its most potent, before the costs have risen?

Further, while connecting downtown San Francisco to the downtowns of other California cities with fast and efficient train service would have a positive benefit to San Francisco's economy, it could transform the economies of struggling downtowns in the Central Valley, as well as help expand jobs and increase the number of residents in and around downtown San Jose. Suburban office sprawl is as dangerous a contributor to global warming as residential sprawl. High-speed trains give us the opportunity to vitalize downtowns that need it.

We haven't heard much from the "HSR will cause sprawl!" crowd but even if they've changed their tune, SPUR has identified an extremely important aspect of the project. It will help concentrate jobs away from suburban office parks and in city centers. HSR will have the same impact on urban residential patterns:

Finally, the system is planned to minimize the effects of sprawl and maximize the potential for transit-oriented development throughout the system. In response to urging from SPUR and others, the California High Speed Rail Authority chose to place the route along the populated U.S. Highway 99 corridor instead of along the Interstate Highway 5 corridor. It also agreed to place the train stations in the city centers instead of at the edges, and it has developed principles and guidelines that must be followed before cities will receive a station. These decisions slightly increased the cost of the project but dramatically increased the benefit, as city-center stations would lead to transit-oriented development and limit the sprawl inducing effects that might otherwise be the result of a high-speed train system that makes it easier to commute long distances.

This bond is necessary to improve mobility throughout California, shift the growth in intra-state travel from cars and planes to trains, and reshape our low-density, sprawling land use patterns of the past half century.

Which is the entire point. California's dependence on sprawl has wound up bankrupting the state, wrecking its economy, and destroying its climate and environment. Most Californians understand the need to move beyond sprawl and HSR is a necessary move in that direction.

And our opponents - the HSR deniers - are all fundamentally animated by a desire to maintain the 20th century sprawl regime even despite its epic fail. Whether you're Morris Brown, the Reason Foundation, or the Howard Jarvis Association, sprawl is at the core of your policy agenda, the animating force behind your opposition to Prop 1A. It's good that real urban planning experts, as opposed to fake experts like Joseph Vranich, understand the importance of HSR and of ending sprawl.

Their Past vs Our Future

With just over a week until the votes are counted we are about to learn whether California will embrace the 21st century or go down with the sinking 20th century ship.

Proposition 1A and high speed rail are a cornerstone of California's efforts to build prosperity for the 21st century. The infrastructure that built 20th century prosperity - including those paid for with bonds approved by voters in the depth of the Depression - has taken us as far as it can. California's 20th century prosperity was based on cheap oil, which is beginning to run out.

And yes, it is still running out. Neither the summer price spike nor the current price collapse change the underlying facts - we are reaching peak oil which means long-term supply shortages and price increases. The current decline in prices is due to demand destruction, which means that if people take advantage of lower prices by driving more...the price will again rise. And of course OPEC isn't going to take this lying down - the last time gas prices dropped dramatically, in 1999, was merely prelude to a steady, 8-year, 1300% increase in the price of oil.

Well before gas prices hit $4 this summer they had destroyed the American economy. The housing bubble burst in 2006 - at precisely the moment gas prices hit $3. And which areas have seen the steepest home value declines and the highest foreclosure rates? The car-dependent suburbs. Which areas have held their values and had the lowest foreclosure rates? City centers and neighborhoods with mass transit options.

This was clearly illustrated by a recent episode of NOW on PBS, Driven to Despair. The episode contrasted two young couples - one living in Hemet (east of Riverside) and one living in South Pasadena near the Gold Line. The family living in Hemet was facing serious financial distress and a lower standard of living owing to their dependence on oil. The family living in South Pasadena had more disposable income and a happier life because they were free from that dependence.

On a macro level we have already demonstrated the green dividend that results from building mass transit - a multibillion dollar economic shot in the arm. In the case of high speed rail this will be compounded by the significant economic stimulus of HSR - just as the Golden Gate Bridge and Shasta Dam were in the Depression. 160,000 construction jobs is nothing to sneeze at.

We also need to remember the environmental benefits of high speed rail. It seems global warming and carbon emissions have faded a bit from the public's consciousness which is a shame - pollution and carbon emissions cost money and the longer we delay in reducing them and building a sustainable alternative, the more expensive life will ultimately become here in California.

To ignore all of this and embrace the status quo is to look at a broken economy and shrug and hope we somehow magically recover, and that somehow the conditions that caused the economic downturn will magically disappear. They won't. If California wants to enjoy the kind of widely shared prosperity in the 21st century that we had in the 20th we need to reorient this state away from oil and sprawl and toward urban density and sustainable transportation. HSR will stimulate both.

It's no accident that those lined up to oppose Prop 1A are from that shrinking group that still benefits from the 20th century status quo. The right-wingers at the San Diego Union-Tribune don't want to see their anti-government, anti-transit dreams get shot down by voters. Dan Walters is one of the state's leading defenders of sprawl and small government, so it makes sense that he'd oppose Prop 1A as well.

Then there is the Reason Foundation, which is swimming in oil money. They have every reason to want to kill HSR, which would undermine their anti-government, pro-oil, pro-sprawl agenda. Sure, their arguments are riddled with factual errors and their flagship study lacks credibility. But it's all well and good in the service of defending the status quo, which has failed for America but succeeded for their oil company buddies.

It would seem to me that when a project's opponents are the far right and the oil companies, you're doing something right, you've got a winning idea.

But that's not why HSR and Prop 1A are a good idea. They are the gateway to a more secure, more prosperous California in the 21st century. I do not see why we would listen to those who helped create the current economic failure when they pontificate against Prop 1A.

Why Is Adrian Moore Lying in the LA Times?

The LA Times is running a "dust up" in its opinion pages - a weeklong discussion of high speed rail between Adrian Moore of the oil company funded Reason Foundation and Dan Tempelis, project manager for the CHSRA on the Palmdale-LA section of the route. It's something of an unfair fight, as Moore is trained to push misleading framing into the media, and Tempelis is a project engineer trained to build things. Tempelis isn't bad at this, but neither is he equipped to undermine the truthiness Moore spews.

Here's an example of Moore's misleading claims:

There are several reasons why high-speed rail does not stack up as the best infrastructure investment we can make today. Let's start with ridership. When high-speed rail systems were built in Europe and Asia, they served corridors that were already very dense and where a large share of travel was already by train -- and there was still no reduction in overall air travel in those corridors. Most riders of high-speed rail were already train riders. The California High-Speed Rail Authority's estimates for the state show that riders will not come from existing trains (there are very few of those) or much from the airlines. Rather, their plan rests on getting people to ride the train rather than drive. Given the more modest gas prices here, the lower density and car culture, to predict that the California high-speed train will get far more riders than systems in Europe and Japan is ridiculously optimistic.

This is a classic example of what Stephen Colbert called truthiniess - this "feels" true even though Moore hasn't provided any evidence. In fact Moore is passing along a huge pile of outright lies.

For example: "and there was still no reduction in overall air travel in those corridors." Um, WTF?

• Madrid-Barcelona AVE takes 30% of market from airlines in six months



• Eurostar Grabs Even More Passengers From Airlines



• Romance of Rail Jeopardizes Domestic Air Routes (Taiwan)

We could go on, but there's more Moore misinformation to correct, like "Most riders of high-speed rail were already train riders." Wrong again. As NARP's Matt Melzer pointed out in July Spain's experience proves that many HSR riders are in fact new train passengers. The images below compare the before and after the inaugural AVE line opened between Madrid and Sevilla in 1992:





Melzer's post also destroys another of Moore's claims, that California lacks the density for HSR, showing that in fact CA and Spain are very comparable on this basis:



Moore's left with lame defenses of California's "car culture" - never mind the fact that Amtrak California intercity routes are setting monthly ridership records. From here Moore moves on to equally truthy claims:

This despite that fact that every other high-speed rail line in the world, all with many advantages over a California system, are subsidized.

Wow. Just...wow. This is a bald-faced lie. In France the situation is reverse - HSR subsidizes all other trains. France alone disproves Moore's lie.

there is no doubt that the high-speed train will need to be subsidized; the Reason Foundation's middling estimate is that it will require about $3 billion per year.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office reported that in the worst-case scenario only $1 billion would be required. This isn't the end of Moore's careless numerology:

Taxpayers should expect the final bill for this train system to be closer to $80 billion.

Moore has NO evidence for this claim. He uses a discredited study to claim there are 45% cost overruns on rail - Angelenos can look to the Metro Gold Line extension to see an on-time, on-budget rail project. Further, if Moore is going to give a specific figure, he needs to explain precisely where the cost overruns will come from and why they will amount to $80 billion. Since he can't, he's merely pulling the numbers out of his ass, an effort to mimic Dr. Evil.

Much of the rest of Moore's argument comes from a discredited Reason Foundation study. It would be nice if more members of the media would challenge this study instead of allow Moore to cite it as if it were gospel.

Dan Tempelis does a good job explaining the economic stimulus benefits of high speed rail and the fiscal safeguards in Prop 1A. But it's an unfair fight, since he's up against someone who will lie to readers to make his points. Yes on 1A advocates need to do a better job pushing back against the bullshit coming out of the Reason Foundation - they are lying to the public and will kill HSR if their lies are not countered.

Sadly that is the story of the 2008 election - lies, lies, lies everywhere. We're dealing with the same problems in the presidential campaign and the fight against Proposition 8. This blog has been consistently willing to debate HSR deniers on the issues. But instead all we get are lies.

If Prop 1A is going to pass, we need to fight back hard against these lies. The official campaign would do well to take a more aggressive tone here.

Finally, Some Real Experts

Michael Cabanatuan's article on Prop 1A in today's San Francisco Chronicle is one of the best articles I've seen from the media on high speed rail - partly because he doesn't just play the "he said, she said" game where someone from the oil company funded Reason Foundation spouts off a bunch of numbers and then someone from the authority responds. Cabanatuan, almost alone among California journalists, actually interviewed longtime HSR experts - people who have spent their careers in the field and who know what they're talking about:

California's system would be the first in the United States. But high-speed rail has been running in Europe and Asia for three to four decades.

"It's a proven business model in many parts of the world. Most of the high-speed rail in Europe is 25 years old," said Roelof Van Ark, senior vice president for North America for Alstom, a French firm that develops and builds high-speed rail trains and systems.

Japanese companies and Alstom are both interested in possibly investing in the California system, [Noriyuki] Shikata [of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs] and Van Ark said. And both are convinced that high-speed rail can fly in California - if voters approve it at the polls.

"The world is booming in high-speed rail," Van Ark said, citing new lines around the world and expanding networks in Europe and Asia. "The model has proven to be successful. It's only a matter of time before it comes to North America. But you've got to start somewhere."

Alstom understands how high speed rail works, and would not be interested in a California high speed rail project if they did not believe it to be financially and practically viable. They also know that California has optimal conditions for high speed rail to be as successful here as in Japan and Europe:

Van Ark and Shikata agree, saying a line connecting the heavily populated Bay Area and Southern California, and running through the flat, more sparsely developed San Joaquin Valley, is ideal.

"That stretch between San Francisco and Los Angeles is such an optimum stretch," said Van Ark. "You want a long stretch where you can actually use the maximum speed of the train."

Cabanatuan's article also points out the importance of having high density around the HSR stations. The Reason Foundation is again quoted as saying California doesn't have the population density period to support HSR but we have disproved that argument before, showing that California and Spain are very similar on that point. Van Ark pointed out that HSR actually spurs urban density as the land around a station becomes more valuable.

The Central Valley will be key to this, as cities along the line will have to shift their land use policies to favor infill density development. It's always been my argument that this is going to happen anyway given the factors that make sprawl less economically viable or practical. SB 375, recently signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, provides a powerful weapon to make that happen, tying land use law to global warming reduction targets and favoring urban density.

In any event, it's refreshing to see a California journalist write an HSR article that actually informs the reader and provides a thoughtful discussion of the issue, rather than acting as a proxy for the Reason Foundation's anti-transit diatribes. Kudos to Michael Cabanatuan for this article.

Prop 1A and HSR's Role in Fighting Sprawl

In the comments to Thursday's post we saw an old claim get revived - that somehow Prop 1A and HSR would induce sprawl. The entire argument is absurd.

If you were concerned about sprawl in the first place, you're likely to also understand the need to reduce carbon emissions, reduce pollution, and wean California off of oil. So why on earth would you argue against a project that will cut 12 billion pounds of carbon emissions per year or save 12.7 million barrels of oil every year? The Sierra Club endorsed Prop 1A after a very thorough and detailed discussion. They were satisfied that Prop 1A will not add to sprawl, and understand that we would be crazy to miss this vital opportunity to build sustainable mass transit.

This opportunity is not likely to return anytime soon if we miss it. High speed rail will help bring millions more Californians on ALL our passenger rail systems, from bullet trains to Amtrak California to commuter and urban rail. Prop 1A will provide Amtrak California and Metrolink with badly needed additional funding. Voting against Prop 1A means voting against improving alternatives to oil.

But we can go further. Sprawl is NOT a force of nature. It is a product of three factors: cheap oil, cheap credit and favorable land use laws. Cheap oil is a thing of the past. Cheap credit is, as we all know from this last week, gone as well. Even with a bailout, we are highly unlikely to see a return to the lax lending practices, fueled by cheap credit, that enabled the most recent binge of Central Valley sprawl.

As to the last point, land use rules are going to have to change regardless of Prop 1A's fate. Defeating Prop 1A isn't going to eliminate sprawl, far from it. But to eliminate sprawl, you need to provide opportunities for urban density and transit-oriented development. Portland, Oregon provides the model. Portland has strict anti-sprawl rules, but these were only successful because Portland promoted urban density. Providing passenger rail has been the key to that. In short, if you want to stop sprawl, you need to give people another option.

HSR is that other option. Without HSR Central Valley cities will have less incentive to channel development to city centers and will lack the infrastructure to make it happen even if they chose to do so.

That's not all. The state legislature is also planning to link land use, sprawl, and global warming via Sen. Darrell Steinberg's SB 375. Prop 1A contains a provision forbidding construction of a station at Los Banos, a key demand of anti-sprawl advocates. Some HSR deniers claim that doesn't mean much since the Legislature could reverse it - but the Legislature can reverse virtually anything, including CEQA, including the AB 32 global warming reduction bill. That doesn't stop us from rightly pursuing strong legislative action and defending it once we get it.

Environmental justice activist Van Jones recently explained the need to move from opposition to proposition. If you want to stop sprawl, you need to propose something better. HSR is that "something better." Folks who hate sprawl will love Prop 1A and high speed rail, one of the most revolutionary anti-sprawl measures in California history.

Palo Alto: Prop 1A is "Opportunity of a Lifetime"

As their neighbors to the north spend waste their time and taxpayer money on lawsuits, Palo Alto has chosen a more sensible yet visionary reaction to high speed rail. An article in the Palo Alto Weekly explains how the city is looking to Prop 1A as an opportunity to reshape and improve the rail corridor that splits Palo Alto:

The disruption happens more than 55 times a day along Alma Street: Bells clang, crossing-guard arms lower, and people and cars grind to a halt as hundreds of tons of locomotive steel approach.

The train thunders by, horn wailing, leaving wind and dust in its wake. Then life returns to normal.

One day, all that could be history if an idea being floated by some Palo Alto leaders becomes reality.

Call it visionary or call it far-fetched: They think the railroad could be put underground — in tunnels 50 feet below the surface.

If that were to happen, drivers might experience Alma as a grand boulevard in the European tradition rather than a commute corridor flanked on one side by railroad tracks and bushes.

Where tracks now lie, bicyclists would glide on paths along a greenbelt, while office workers would look out their windows as commuters drive by.

And in the tunnels underground, bullet trains would silently whisk their passengers to destinations along the Peninsula.

No more street-traffic delays due to the rail system. No more train-on-car accidents. No more fatalities.

Atherton and Menlo Park would have Californians believe that HSR will destroy their communities, but Palo Alto points out how it will help make these communities more livable. No more accidents, no more diesel emissions, no need for a wailing horn. And if Atherton and Menlo Park wish to follow Palo Alto's model, a tunnel could provide either a lovely boulevard or an opportunity for new development.

How would Palo Alto pay for this? The Palo Alto Weekly article explains it like this:

The idea could also raise a lot of money, the group contends. By selling or leasing "air rights" — rights to build on the land, without acquiring the land itself — the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board in theory might garner enough funding to pay for the added cost of undergrounding. The board owns the right of way and manages Caltrain.

"If you go along with our estimates, we get to about a half billion dollars of land value, which hopefully is the marginal difference in cost between what high-speed rail would pay for above-grade [rail] and the cost of undergrounding," Carrasco said.

The article goes on to reference Grand Central Terminal in NYC and BART through downtown Berkeley as examples of how undergrounding rail can provide financial and developmental benefits. Berkeley did wind up having to use redevelopment money and a sales tax to pay for the costs. Obviously Palo Alto residents will have to debate the details of this proposal and determine what's best for them.

Already some of the comments on the article are getting into these details. Some argue that this isn't a good use of government money in a recession, but those are the same folks who probably would have thought the Golden Gate Bridge and SF-Oakland Bay Bridge shouldn't have been built during the Depression. Californians need to start thinking about how to produce economic recovery, how to create jobs and new investment opportunities. High speed rail and Prop 1A provide those to not just Palo Alto, but to downtown San Francisco, Mountain View, San José, Fresno, Bakersfield, downtown LA, and Anaheim - and ultimately to the state as a whole.

Even if Palo Alto residents decide they can't or won't pay for undergrounding, at least they're thinking positively and constructively about their community's future. Trains have been part of Palo Alto for the city's entire history, they are the reason it exists. Passenger rail is now an obvious and necessary part of our state's future and we ought to be thinking about how we can make it work effectively and affordably. Prop 1A will provide just that kind of train service, and Palo Alto should be lauded for showing us how it can improve communities, as well as our economy, environment, and mobility.

Truth vs. Truthiness on Prop 1A

I've been regretting not having the time to write a thorough deconstruction of the Cox-Vranich HSR denier report. But the nice thing about high speed rail is that we have a genuine popular movement behind it. This blog is a part of that movement; whether we're a significant part or not I leave for you to decide. For example, this blog isn't just about me and what I choose to write about - we have some of the best and brightest commenters I've ever seen on a blog. They raise the level of discussion and provide the most complete insight on California's HSR project anywhere online.

One of our commenters, "mike", offered an excellent takedown of the HSR denier study in the comments to Thursday's post. I'm reproducing it here on the main page in its entirety, because "mike" does an excellent job of exposing what Stephen Colbert so memorably called truthiness - if something feels true, it is true, even if the facts don't support it at all. The Cox-Vranich study is a classic example of truthiness - it confirms the beliefs of those who already hated HSR, even though even a cursory glance shows its basic arguments to be unusually flawed.

Without further ado, here's "mike":

***

Robert & others:

Intellectual garbage collection is dirty work, but someone has to do it. Here is an analysis of the important points stressed by the Cox-Vranich (C-V) report:

Projected Ridership:

C-V's ridership figures are wildly inaccurate. Using C-V's preferred measure, JR Central reported 2007 ridership of 80 million passenger km per Shinkansen route km (44.5 billion passenger km / 552 km route). In the "high" scenario, CA HSRA is forecasting roughly 27 million passenger km per HSR route km (30 billion passenger km / 1,120 km route). So C-V's claim that CA HSRA is using numbers higher than those achieved on any other system in the world is absurdly false - in fact, CA HSRA's numbers are only 1/3rd of what has been previously achieved.

JR Central's Shinkansen is the densest ridership in the world. A more informative comparison would be the TGV or the new Taiwan HSR (THSR). We don't have passenger-km ridership for those lines, but we can compute passengers per route-km. The TGV Paris Southeast (PSE) line gets 45k passengers per route-km (20 million pax / 448 route-km) while the THSR gets 101k passengers per route-km (34 million pax / 335 route-km). CA HSR is forecasting a high of 80k passengers per route-km in 2030, or around 56k passengers per route-km at today's populations. This is slightly above TGV PSE but well below THSR. It does not seem unreasonable since the LA Metro Area is larger than Paris Metro Area or the Taipei Metro Area. And more importantly, the SF Bay Area is twice as large as the Kaoshiung Metro Area and four times as large as the Lyon Metro Area.

Cost Overruns:

C-V project an expected cost overrun of 33%. IMO, this is the most reasonable part of their report. There is some non-zero probability that this could happen. In contrast, their other claims are laughably inaccurate. That said, cost overruns are a potential flaw of any infrastructure project, so if they want to make their argument based on cost overruns then they have to oppose virtually all public infrastructure projects (which, being associated with the Reason Foundation, they might, though Wendall Cox does seem to love building highways).

[Note from Robert: I agree, though I think we are also right to insist that cost overruns be discussed with respect to reason and evidence. C-V treat them like some inexorable law of physics, which is nonsense.]

Operating Costs:

C-V claim that operating costs will be 4.8 cents/seat mile rather than the 3.5 cents/seat mile. This sounds troubling until you consider that the operating costs for US airlines are 11.9 cents/seat mile (April 2008), and on the short California routes they will be closer to 14-15 cents seat/mile. AAA estimates average car or truck operating costs at 17-24 cents/mile (sedan is lowest, SUV is highest) So even using C-V's own figures, HSR can undercut airlines by 65%! More likely, HSR would undercut airlines by, say, 35% and then give the additional 30% back to the state (or, in the first couple decades, use it for system expansion).

Cost of Alternatives:

C-V get really outlandish here. They use an average cost of $6 million/lane mile for highway widening projects despite the fact that most recent Caltrans highway widening projects have averaged around $20-40 million/lane mile. More incredibly, they use an average cost of only $33 million/lane mile for a new Bay Bridge despite the fact that the current one (which should be much cheaper than a future one, given their argument about escalating costs) cost $260 million/lane mile!! CA HSRA's cost projections are not going to be exact, but they will never be anywhere as wildly inaccurate as C-V.

Trip Diversions:

C-V claim that CA HSR will divert a total amount of highway traffic equivalent to only 175 lane-miles of capacity. This claim does not pass the laugh test. Using C-V's own (very low) ridership estimates, HSR will carry at least 35-46 million passenger-miles per weekday. 175 lane-miles of highway capacity is only sufficient to transport 4-5 million vehicle miles travelled per day, so by C-V's own calculations only about 1 in 10 HSR riders will be a road-diverted driver. They also claim that HSR will have limited success in capturing airline passengers, so fully 80% or more of the passengers in their ridership forecasts are induced demand! This is an incredible result that no reasonable economic model could generate. It also strengthens the case for HSR, rather than weakening it, because induced demand is better than demand captured from other modes. If HSR steals people from highways or airplanes, all that we can conclude is that it provides a product that is at least as good as those modes. But if HSR induces new travel, we can conclude that it is providing a product that is far superior to those modes, since people who before refused to use either air or highways are now being induced to travel by the new superior modal option.

Composition of Passengers:

C-V complain that CA HSRA's ridership numbers are over-optimistic because almost no one will ever choose HSR over driving for shorter, commuter-like trips (under 100 miles). At the same time, they claim that the low-speed Northeast Corridor is instructive for projecting what CA HSR ridership might look like. The NEC serves around 10 million long-distance intercity riders per year and 60 million shorter-distance, commuter riders per year. Thus the ratio of short-distance to long-distance riders is 6:1. Even if we omit Metro North's New Haven line, the NEC still serves over 30 million shorter-distance riders per year (ratio of 3:1). C-V's claim that shorter-distance riders will comprise only a trivial fraction of HSR riders is thus completely refuted by the NEC data that they themselves argue should be instructive.

In summation, given the horrible factual inaccuracies of the report (so bad that some of them must be intentional), I agree that going forward it is sufficient to dismiss anything from the Reason Foundation or these authors by simply noting that their track record on telling the truth is abysmal.

At the same, the fact that even under Cox and Vranich's own figures, HSR has a cost advantage of around 3:1 vis a vis airlines and 4:1 vis a vis cars should give us a great deal of confidence in its ability to successfully attract ridership and generate a substantial operating profit.

The Sierra Club Loses Focus

It wasn't the article I was hoping to read upon my return from my honeymoon, but it's not that surprising to read in the Fresno Bee that the Sierra Club and the Planning and Conservation League are hesitating on backing Prop 1 and even considering a lawsuit - and for the nonsensical reason that the choice of the Pacheco route might "induce sprawl." That objection is bad enough, for reasons I'll discuss in a moment.

But what's really disturbing about this move is that it suggests the Sierra Club and the PCL have lost their focus - instead of looking at the big picture of high speed rail and emphasizing the game-changing environmental benefits it brings, they're focusing on a small non-issue instead. They've lost sight of the forest for the trees and instead of providing leadership on this issue they may instead cast their lot with the far right and leave Californians with no viable alternative to soaring fuel prices and a transportation system that is making our environmental problems far worse.

First, their criticisms as reported by E.J. Schulz:

But the environmentalists are still seething over the selection of relatively undeveloped Pacheco Pass as the route to connect the Central Valley to the Bay Area. They favor the more urban Altamont Pass to the north because they say it would induce less sprawl....

Environmentalists would rather see trains run farther north in the Valley before heading west so that more populated cities are served. They like the Altamont route because it would bring trains closer to Modesto, Dublin, Pleasanton and Livermore in the first phase.

By contrast, the Pacheco route -- roughly following Highway 152 -- is in a less populated area. Environmentalists worry that a planned station in Gilroy would induce sprawl in surrounding rural areas.

These worries are baseless. Gilroy and much of southern Santa Clara County have strict urban growth boundaries. If those places were going to sprawl they would have already done so given their proximity to the job center and hot housing market of Silicon Valley. HSR doesn't change that dynamic.

Nor does it change the fact that sprawl is facing hard times. Sprawl is bad, but it isn't a force of nature. It is instead a product of three major factors: cheap oil, cheap credit, and favorable land use laws. The first is disappearing for good, thanks to peak oil. The second doesn't exist now, and may never return. Certainly land use policies need to change to limit sprawl, but those changes have long ago been made in southern Santa Clara County. Why should HSR alone carry that burden? AB 32 carbon reduction goals should be applied to new housing developments, and ultimately, localities will have to change their ways.

The loss of cheap oil and the shortage of cheap credit together will lessen sprawl dramatically in the coming decades. I fully support land use changes to further kill off sprawl, but it's not worth holding HSR hostage to produce the changes that need to happen anyway at the state and local level.

The death of sprawl has already made itself manifest in Gilroy. The Westfield shopping center developers had a plan to convert a significant amount of farmland acreage east of Gilroy along Highway 152 into a huge mall. The plan aroused the opposition of the community and it was dropped earlier this year. High fuel prices, the credit crunch, and public defense of urban growth boundaries all combined to kill that sprawl project. Those factors will do so again.

A Gilroy HSR station would produce strong incentives for transit-oriented dense development in Gilroy, the kind of development that California cities need to focus on instead of sprawl. Gilroy is already partway there, and an HSR station where the current Caltrain station is located at 8th and Monterey would actually discourage sprawl because there would be viable alternatives to building on new farmland. The combination of infill development and strict urban growth rules are what have made Portland's anti-sprawl plans a success - you need both for the anti-sprawl measures to work. And high capacity mass transit is a necessary component.

Further, since the Authority has rejected plans for a Los Banos stop, and since as Mehdi Morshed explained in the Fresno Bee article that the communities along the Altamont route were not supportive of HSR, what on earth explains the ongoing refusal of the Sierra Club and the PCL to throw their support to Prop 1?

The only answer is a very depressing one, but an answer that is becoming more widely accepted among many environmental activists, sustainability activists, transportation activists, and folks on the left more broadly: the Sierra Club and the PCL have lost their way, and have lost sight of the big picture. In case folks haven't been paying attention, this country faces a climate crisis and an energy crisis. It's not like we have a whole lot of time to be fighting over objections that are not grounded in fact. At Netroots Nation two weekends ago Al Gore explained that we need to stop burning carbon and make a bold move to power our society with renewable energy. An electrically-powered high speed train system won't achieve that 100% renewables goal itself, but it would provide significant environmental benefits:

-Reduce carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to removing 1.4 million cars from the road, and take the place of nearly 42 million annual city-to-city car trips (Final EIR p. 92)

-Reduce CO2 emissions by up to 17.6 billion pounds/year (Quentin Kopp op-ed)

-Reduce California’s oil consumption by up to 22 million barrels/year (same as above)

According to the Final EIR 63% of intercity trips over 150 miles in California are taken by car (scroll to page 12). HSR would provide a huge dent in that figure.

High speed rail is one of those game changing proposals. How can the Sierra Club and the PCL overlook the cars taken off the road? How can they overlook the CO2 reductions? How can they overlook the reduction in pollution, especially in the Central Valley?

Four years ago Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus criticized the Sierra Club directly in their seminal essay The Death of Environmentalism. In their view the environmental movement, by focusing on small battles, has totally failed to address global warming, and that organizations like the Sierra Club "have little to show" for nearly 30 years of environmental activism after the big victories of the late '60s and early '70s. One of their specific criticisms is that the Sierra Club, for example, often eschews big policy changes for a niggling incrementalism that has done nothing to arrest the rate of warming. This has led them to refuse to articulate a bold vision for addressing the global warming crisis that of course hurts the natural environment, and it has led them to ignore the politics of producing change.

The Sierra Club's failure on high speed rail proves each of Schellenberger and Nordhaus' controversial charges. Instead of helping change the way Californians get around their state, shifting them away from oil-burning methods of travel to clean methods of travel that limit sprawl and generate urban densities, they are focusing on a small objection that doesn't even hold up on close examination. They have endorsed the concept of high speed rail in the past but if they don't endorse Prop 1, what other opportunity will they have to get it passed? If the HSR bonds don't pass this year, they aren't coming back anytime soon. It might take 10 years to revive the project - it's taken 15 in Texas - and that means completion of the line wouldn't happen until close to 2030.

By then it may be too late. Instead of refusing to support Prop 1 out of pique that they lost the Altamont vs. Pacheco argument, the Sierra Club and the PCL should follow Van Jones' advice and move from opposition to proposition. We have a proposition - literally - before us. Instead of being on the constant defensive the Sierra Club and the PCL can help California take a bold step in the right direction with Proposition 1. If we pass these bonds in November it will then be a signal to other states and to Congress that HSR is a politically popular project and it will spur similar projects around the country - projects that we desperately need.

Why would the Sierra Club and the PCL oppose these things? They have let their opposition to the Pacheco alignment blind them to the bigger picture. That decision has been made and even though the Sierra Club and the PCL lost, they can still be big winners. Let's hope they recognize the pressing environmental need for high speed rail before it's too late.

Ashburn vs. Yee

The California Chronicle has two short articles about the State Senate's approach to high speed rail, focusing on Democrat Leland Yee of San Francisco and Republican Roy Ashburn, whose district sprawls across eastern California but is based in Bakersfield. The articles help explain the politics surrounding HSR in our state capital, and may give us a preview of what we can expect to unfold Monday morning at 10 at the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on AB 3034.

The Yee article focuses on his work to restore the "spine" of the HSR corridor, from SF to LA and Anaheim, which as you all know was threatened by AB 3034's provision for building smaller, potentially disconnected HSR corridors instead. The article quotes my comments from Tuesday in support of Yee's position, and includes this portion from a Yee press release:

"The high speed rail bond has always been about finding ways to get millions of people out of cars and airplanes and into a cost-saving and environmentally-sound transportation portal," said Yee. "A piecemeal approach is not what is best for commuters, visitors, or the economy, and is certainly not what is best for our environment. As an advocate for high speed rail, I will continue to be steadfast in securing the San Francisco to Los Angeles corridor of the bullet train and then branching out to other cities."

Yee and I are in full agreement on this. For HSR to have maximal impact on our state's transportation habits, and to provide a badly-needed link between two cities currently connected by an airline industry in crisis, we need to link SF to LA first. I recognize that this can cause worry to those in Sacramento, Stockton, and San Diego who won't get HSR at the outset - but they ought to be reassured that once Californians see this system in operation, and see its value, they will not hesitate to support the extensions to Sacramento and SD, extensions that remain part of the overall state HSR plan.

The article on Ashburn provides some more details on his opposition to the HSR project:

Senator Ashburn asked tough questions, noting several problems with the measure. The Authority has failed to develop a business plan and lacks real experience in constructing such a large-scale project.

Actually, the CHSRA does have a Business Plan. Of course, it was finalized in June 2000, and desperately needs to be updated - which AB 3034 would direct the Authority to do. The frequent postponement of the bond and the low levels of funding for the Authority are the culprits here. The 2000 study was still of value in 2004, but should have been updated for 2006 and surely for 2008. But the CHSRA has not had the level of funding to both prepare a business plan AND continue with the necessary EIR statement preparation and other important studies and planning that voters also needed to see before a vote. And since AB 3034 will produce that updated business plan, it doesn't make sense for Ashburn to oppose it on those grounds.

The project manager is the same contractor that was responsible for many of the problems associated with the "Big Dig" in Boston, recognized as one of the worst transportation planning boondoggles in recent memory.

He is referring to Parsons Brinckerhoff, which surely did screw up the Big Dig. But this is also a deeply misleading statement in several respects. One of the key problems with the Big Dig was poor oversight by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which often turned a blind eye to reports about bad contracting practices in order to speed up construction only to have to spend money correcting those problems. Sound oversight of PB has produced good results in other major projects, and is a necessity no matter who ultimately designs, builds, and operates the system.

Unfortunately Ashburn and many other critics use "the Big Dig" as a kind of bogeyman, assuming that every large public works project will inevitably meet with the same problems as that project. That view ignores the details that caused the Big Dig to experience problems, and more importantly ignores the scores of public transportation projects that have been delivered on or close to the original budget. Seattle's Central Link light rail project will open next summer on budget. Same with the Metro Gold Line extension to East LA.

More importantly, the Big Dig was an unusually complex project, one that had rarely been attempted here in the US or abroad. HSR, on the other hand, is a familiar project to global engineers and builders. It's so common as to become routine. The most complex engineering will be the tunnels in the Tehachapis - but tunnelling through mountains is by no means new or difficult, especially here in California where Caltrans, PB and others have much experience with this; and the tunnel from Fourth and King to the new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco. There will be some cost overruns on the HSR project, no doubt about it - but I do not expect them to be large, and they will be due to factors outside of our control, such as the global inflation in construction materials and the declining value of the dollar.

To use the Big Dig as a reason to not ever build any ambitious project is therefore absurd and ignorant. It's a high profile screw up - but it's also an outlier, not representative of the whole.

Ashburn goes on:

Public employee unions successfully inserted language preventing competition by the private sector.

This refers to the controversial language the Senate Transportation Committee included in AB 3034 last week regarding Caltrans being given project design work. As Erik Nelson explained that provision was not given a final adoption by the committee. Even if this change is adopted, it does not speak to the quality of the project - Caltrans has one of the world's most successful project design records - but to politics. Ashburn and the Senate Republicans are ideologically opposed to public entities doing this kind of work. Such dogma should not be construed as a legitimate criticism of the HSR project.

The article notes that though "some of Ashburn's concerns" were addressed, presumably meaning the business plan, he still believes that the project is flawed:

"After six years and $58 million spent, the full-time Rail Authority still has yet to come up with a viable business plan, but they want the voters to trust them with 10 billion more of their hard-earned dollars," noted Ashburn.

As I discussed above, this is a weak argument at best. Ashburn knows perfectly well why such an update wasn't done and he knows that it will indeed be done in time for voters to assess it before they vote in November.

It would be a shame for Ashburn to oppose a project that would provide such enormous benefits to his constituents, especially those in Bakersfield. Bakersfield is poised to reap significant economic benefits from high speed rail. As permanently high gas prices might make it an uncompetitive location for business, HSR will provide Bakersfield residents with a fast connection to the state's major economic centers, as well as to their airports. It will position Bakersfield to become a bedroom community for Southern California workers, and with the station located downtown Bakersfield can construct a lot of transit-oriented high-density development to serve those workers.

Bakersfield has been hot extremely hard by the foreclosure crisis, with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. The city's growth depends on reliable transportation, and Highway 99 and Interstate 5 aren't going to do the job if fuel prices remain high. The new residents and the subsequent job growth HSR would provide will provide a stable and growing economy for the city for some time to come.

It is a shame Ashburn would toss all that away because the Authority didn't have the time or money to update their business plan. Ashburn's objections are grasping at straws, and he knows it. Let's hope he comes around this week and supports this vital project.

HSR Benefits Property Owners

We all know that many of the HSR deniers are property owners who live in Menlo Park and Atherton, two of the wealthiest communities in our state. They worry that HSR is going to lower their home values - although exactly how is not clear. As Matthew James Melzer pointed out to me today, HSR would most likely increase their property values - providing for electrified trains (no more diesel fumes) and a fully grade-separated track that would dramatically lower the number of accidents along the route. Their property values seem to be holding up just fine even with frequent Caltrain service - so what are they worried about?

As Trains 4 America pointed out today the benefits would extend beyond the Peninsula. Spain's AVE system has produced significant property values gains. They didn't provide Here's a link to the actual article, but and here's the portion that Trains 4 America quoted:

To prove this theory Kyero has launched a new Spanish house price index, which shows property prices in towns and cities served by AVE stations outperform their provincial averages. For example, house prices in Málaga, which is served by the AVE line, are currently 24.7 per cent more expensive than in Andalucia and 23.7 per cent higher than the national average across Spain. Prices in Seville and Córdoba also show a similar trend, where properties are within easy reach of AVE stations.

Currently California cities such as Stockton, Modesto, and Fresno lead the nation in home foreclosure rates. As energy prices soared beginning in 2006 it became difficult to pay the cost of driving and the mortgage, causing the housing bubble to finally burst. HSR will help these cities provide economic growth and jobs that will be desperately needed. And because of the ongoing high prices and HSR's propensity to produce transit-oriented development that growth is likely to come within the city centers themselves, instead of in the form of exurban sprawl.

California's homeowners ought to be looking to projects like HSR to help them meet their 21st century needs, instead of continuing a foolish 20th century "rail merely hurts us" attitude.

California High Speed Rail Video

As requested by tony d. in the comments to the last post, here is a 3D animation of what Diridon Station and downtown San José might look like when the high speed rail system is completed. Some disclaimers are necessary - this is merely one possible configuration, the new downtown construction is conjecture (none of the new buildings are specific proposals and any new development has to be approved by the city of San José), and it's intended as a conceptual vision instead of a hard prediction.



I laughed when I saw the BART station - that's never going to happen - but overall it's a good way to start thinking about the positive impact of HSR on cities like San José. The animation is produced by Newlands & Company for the CHSRA, and they've done similar animations for locations across the state - the Sacramento HSR animation is especially popular on the CAHSR Facebook group, and other videos include the SF Transbay Terminal, the Pacheco Pass, the Tehachapi Mountains, I-5 in the San Fernando Valley, and Anaheim.