Merced County Approves Castle Area HSR Study

Rafael has long called for Castle Airport in Atwater, just outside Merced, to become a relief airport for the Bay Area by using HSR to bring passengers to and from the airport. While not exactly endorsing that specific plan, Merced County has approved a study of putting an HSR maintenance facility at Castle:

Merced County leaders junked their contract with the private investment firm that had been pegged to transform Castle Commerce Center into a thriving economic hub.

In another move aimed to stimulate the local economy, supervisors authorized money to be spent to show that the Castle center could work as a maintenance hub for the statewide high-speed rail project....

Plans to build a 700-mile passenger rail system that would connect Los Angeles to the Bay Area were first proposed more than a decade ago. With the November approval of a $10 billion bond measure to pay for the first phase of the project, it now appears it may actually be built.

On Tuesday the Board of Supervisors voted to revive the county's dormant High Speed Rail Citizens' Committee and spend $40,000 to prepare a feasibility study on building a train maintenance hub at Castle.

County officials hope both moves will help convince the state's high-speed rail board that Castle is the right choice for the hub. Several nearby counties are also vying for the designation.

On its face this seems like a very smart move for Merced County. Turning an old airport facility into an exurban office and service hub is no longer a viable economic proposition. The Merced region will soon have a glut of office and light manufacturing space, if it doesn't already. An HSR maintenance facility, however, would provide long-term green jobs for Merced County, the kind of economic base that the San Joaquin Valley desperately needs.

I'll let the more technically minded among us debate the practicalities of putting an HSR maintenance facility at Castle. From a political and economic perspective it seems like a sound concept, and could leave open the possibility of developing Castle Airport in the way Rafael has long advocated.

So I like this move by Merced County. The San Joaquin Valley governments, particularly Fresno, have been especially proactive in looking at how to make HSR work well for their economy, their landscape, and their residents. It's exactly the kind of sensible planning work that HSR ought to be encouraging around the state.

It's YOUR High Speed Rail Project

Public involvement and oversight is absolutely crucial to the success of the California High Speed Rail project. This blog is committed to providing you information about opportunities to get involved, attend meetings, or otherwise give your feedback and input to the various agencies planning high speed rail. We support the goals of the project, and realize that if it is to be successful, it needs to be done the right way - and that public involvement is a good way to ensure we get the best HSR system we can.

So in that spirit I offer the following information about public meetings regarding HSR in California this month. If you have any others to add, either leave it in the comments or send an email to my last name at gmail.

• January CHSRA Board Meeting
  Thursday, Jan. 8, 10 AM
  Sacramento Area Council of Governments
  1415 L Street, Sacramento
  Agenda
  
  Doesn't seem to be much on the agenda other than the usual project updates. The board will discuss a MOU with the Caltrain board, which may be of interest to Peninsula residents. These meetings always have scheduled time for public comments, as is mandatory under state law.



• Peninsula EIR/EIS Meetings
  
  As Clem has so helpfully described on his blog the Federal Railroad Administration has announced the process for the final Peninsula EIR/EIS statement which includes the following public scoping meetings:
  
  San Mateo County: SamTrans Auditorium, 1250 San Carlos Avenue, San Carlos, California, January 22, 2009 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.
  
  San Francisco: San Francisco State University, 835 Market Street, 6th Floor (Rooms 673-674), San Francisco, California, January 27, 2009 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.
  
  Santa Clara County: Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Parkway, Great America Meeting Rooms 1 & 2, Santa Clara, California, January 29, 2009 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.
  
  Written comments on the scope of the San Francisco to San Jose HST Project EIR/EIS should be provided to the CHSRA by March 6, 2009, and can be sent to comments@hsr.ca.gov with subject line San Francisco to San Jose HST. (thanks to Clem for this info)
  
  I am going to try and attend the Santa Clara meeting, as that's the closest to us here in Monterey.

As always, if any of you attend these meetings and want to write a report for the blog, let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.

The HSR Deniers Stir

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

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

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

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

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

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

HSR Rolls On Around the World

A few items for a lazy Sunday afternoon from around the world:

• RENFE to open new HSR link between Málaga and Barcelona - a bypass of central Madrid that shortens the journey between the two cities to 5 hours 40 minutes. Further evidence of how Spain, which compares well to California in terms of population density, landscape, and travel distances, has built one of the world's great HSR successes in the AVE system.



• Italy's new HSR line to Bologna gets notice in the NY Times



• British HSR plans continue to evolve, with Labour proposing an HSR hub at Heathrow as part of a third runway project. Labour's support for a third runway has aroused opposition from nearby residents, environmentalists, and even the Conservative Party, whose stronger support for HSR has pushed Labour into its own HSR proposals. Labour is trying to link HSR to the third runway plan in a bit of greenwashing. It may or may not work, but the upshot is that Britain is now warming to HSR in a big way, a shift from 30 years of refusing to seriously endorse the concept.