We've been calling for federal representatives to speak up and help resolve some of the key HSR disputes in California, and it looks like that's exactly what they're starting to do. Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote a letter to Ray LaHood calling for the feds to fund the construction of an HSR train box at Transbay Terminal, as is currently called for in the plans:
The California High Speed Rail Authority may be looking at possible alternatives to a new Transbay Terminal to bring bullet trains into San Francisco, but our former mayor and California's senior senator says the choice is clear.
Go with the proposed Transbay Transit Center.
That's the message Sen. Dianne Feinstein sent in a letter Wednesday to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in advance of the Obama administration's decision on federal stimulus funding for high speed rail projects across the country.
A new Transbay Terminal at First and Mission Streets is "an ideal destination for high speed rail" and a project where construction could begin in the first three months of next year, Feinstein wrote.
"The project represents a real downtown station in one of America's great cities, assuring that high speed rail delivers travelers to the city center without the traffic or delays that afflict other modes of travel," the senator wrote. "This project will not only put thousands of Californians back to work, but will also move the state's plans for high speed rail one step closer to reality."
Feinstein joins fellow Sen. Barbara Boxer and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in calling for federal funds to build San Francisco's high-speed rail terminus at the site of the old bus station.
"Transbay will become the 'Grand Central of the West,'" Boxer wrote to LaHood.
Feinstein and Boxer's comments come along reports I have heard that Speaker Nancy Pelosi not only prefers the Transbay Terminal to be the SF terminus, but that she has said the $400 million for the train box is all ready to go, except for CHSRA's objections.
Let's also not forget, of course, that voters approved TBT as the SF terminus when Prop 1A passed last November.
CHSRA continues to argue they are mandated to explore other alternatives, a position the California Attorney General's office supported. However, California's leading federal representatives are clearly uniting behind the Transbay Terminal project.
Led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, 23 of California's Congressional delegation have signed a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FRA Administrator Joseph Szabo supporting the CHSRA's application for federal HSR stimulus funds. The presence of Pelosi and the two Senators alone is significant, as they are among the three most powerful members of Congress, but the other 20 members of Congress are significant as well in that they show widespread support in California for this application.
As you can see in the letter below, the members of Congress emphasize the potential for significant and badly needed job creation as a primary reason to approve the stimulus application:
One name is notably absent from the letter: Anna Eshoo. She represents the 14th Congressional District, which includes the Caltrain corridor from Redwood City to Sunnyvale. In contrast, Jackie Speier, who represents the other half of the Caltrain corridor on the Peninsula, did sign the letter. Speier has been a tenacious advocate of passenger rail, particularly during her time in the state legislature - and her work in support of Caltrain earned her the distinct honor of having a Caltrain locomotive named after her. Other representatives whose district includes or is near the Bay Area portion of the HSR route, including Mike Honda, Zoe Lofgren, and my own representative Sam Farr, all signed the letter.
So the question is, what does Anna Eshoo have against job creation in her district?
Addendum by Rafael:
This is an economic stimulus issue, the focus is on jobs, jobs, jobs.
Considering the fiscal hole California has fallen into is even deeper than already feared, getting people back to work is indeed a high priority. Remarkably, California state bonds are now trading at yields slightly below those in April, though 7.23% is still nosebleed territory for the eighth-largest economy in the world. Still, investing in infrastructure now is the right thing to do, even if the cost of borrowing is high. The Bear Republic cannot recover through spending cuts alone, it needs to take on additional debt so it can act as the spender of last resort - in partnership with the federal government.
The letter is signed by both of the state's US Senators and 22 members of the House, all of them Democrats. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D - 10th) resigned in June to serve as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security in the Obama Administration. Her seat is vacant, a special election is pending.
That means 11 Democratic and 19 Republican members of the California delegation failed to sign this letter, whose sole purpose is to bring $4.7 billion federal dollars to the Bear Republic just when they are most needed. Anna Eshoo is among them, but she is not alone.
To see if your Representative in the House is among those listed above, please consult the maps of congressional districts. If so, ask him or her to fight the Golden State's corner!
Been meaning to write about this for a few days now, as those that I talked to at the Palo Alto teach-in can attest. As you've probably noticed if you've followed some of the blogs and even local news outlets, there's quite a dispute emerging over the Transbay Terminal project, with Quentin Kopp making moves in recent weeks to push for major changes to HSR's interface with it. One of the best overviews of the matter is over at Eric's Transbay Blog:
So what’s the beef now? Rather than employ the downtown extension alignment and station location previously adopted by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the CHSRA would instead like to override the TJPA’s previous efforts and study alternative locations for the San Francisco terminus in its project-level EIR/EIS for the San Francisco-San Jose segment. In particular, the CHSRA has set its sight on another terminal to accommodate its exaggerated capacity requirements — the Beale Street terminal, situated parallel to Beale Street, and stretching roughly from Mission Street to Harrison Street. But this is an alternative that was resurrected from the dead. In the 1990s, a handful of potential Caltrain downtown extension alignments were considered. Most of those, including alignments leading to a Beale Street terminal, were rejected as undesirable or infeasible.
What happened was this: CHSRA obtained a legal opinion from lawyer Duane Morris that claims TJPA is obligated to review the Beale Street alternative under both CEQA and NEPA, under the argument that the existing EIR/EIS was approved on the basis of Caltrain being the primary user of the downtown tunnel extension (DTX). Since HSR's use requirements are different, the opinion goes, a new EIR/EIS is needed that would include the Beale alignment.
As Rafael has charted before, there are legitimate concerns with the design of the train box at Transbay, including the curvature of the "throat." But Eric at Transbay Blog suggests CHSRA is actually motivated by financial concerns:
But it does not seem coincidental that the agency’s temper — presumably largely fueled by, or embodied in, its ever-colorful former chairman, Quentin Kopp — flares up at the exact points in time when the TJPA competes with the CHSRA for access to new pots of funding that are being made available for high-speed rail....California has submitted project requests to the U.S. Department of Transportation, including a $400 million request that, if granted, would allow the Transbay Transit Center’s train box to be excavated sooner rather than later, using a “bottom up” construction approach. Transbay, by virtue of its completed environmental documents, is classified as a “ready-to-go” project, eligible for a Track 1 high-speed rail stimulus grant. In just a few weeks, the Federal Railroad Administration will announce the Track 1 projects that it has selected for grants.
It is this issue that has caused tempers to flare over this dispute. The Federal Railroad Administration is going to decide soon on whether Transbay and the train box will get federal HSR stimulus money. TJPA and the Bay Area transit community are concerned - rightly - that CHSRA's actions will jeopardize that money.
To that end Brian Stanke, Executive Director of Californians for High Speed Rail, has authored the following letter to Joseph Szabo, Administrator of the FRA. It is a detailed argument as to why Transbay Terminal deserves the $400 million, and why CHSRA's claims are invalid and should not be used to withhold that money:
CHSRA has not offered any official comment on this subject for this post, despite my inquiries. Based on other published reports, including things we have discussed at this blog, we do know that CHSRA has raised concerns about the platform capacity at Transbay. We also know that the relationship between TJPA and CHSRA is very sour. Last December Kopp blasted TJPA's Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan for trying to keep Kopp and CHSRA out of the planning and discussion process. For their part, as Eric noted above, TJPA believes CHSRA has been trying to undermine the Transbay project at almost every turn.
Although the CHSRA may believe any problems with the HSR/DTX project lie with TJPA, it should be quite clear to them they have lost this particular battle in the court of public opinion. Bay Area transit advocates are outraged at the prospect of the Transbay trainbox losing out on badly needed federal funding. The use of development rights - specifically, selling the air rights to build skyscrapers to help pay for the Transbay project - is correctly seen as an innovative model for funding urban transit infrastructure. The DTX and train box are considered vital for bringing more mass transit commuters to the SF urban core - particularly for Caltrain. Proposition H passed by a significant margin in 1999 by SF voters to approve the project, and the project remains popular with San Francisco residents.
We don't yet know if it is too late, but my strong advice to CHSRA is to make peace with the Transbay Terminal project. If the federal funding is denied, it will do nothing to help CHSRA's relationships around the state and could cause a reaction from SF's influential political leadership. If there were enormous flaws with the design then that would be good reason to oppose the funding and redesign the project, but even those who have criticized the design of the "throat" haven't suggested the project be scrapped or that the "throat" design is unworkable (although it is not an ideal design).
I also renew my call for federal intervention. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein are extremely well positioned to play a role as mediator between TJPA and CHSRA. We called for this to occur last December when the CHSRA/TJPA dispute first emerged. It hasn't happened and both the Transbay Terminal and the HSR project are worse off for it.
Think all news is bad news during this epic recession of ours? Think again -- over the past three months, real wages have increased 23 percent, an enormous gain. At a crucial period for many working families, paychecks are going a lot farther than they did back in the summer.
The explanation is simple: wages are flat, prices are down. The labor market operates on a bit of a lag, so while the recession affected oil demand and prices very quickly, layoffs and falling wages are emerging more slowly. Eventually, the weak economy will catch up to workers (those who still have jobs), and spending power will decline.
But this is important to remember given the trends of the past decade. When economies are growing, oil prices rise. This means that even while wages are growing, it's difficult for consumer spending power to keep up, unless we reduce the intensity of oil in our economy.
It's a point I've repeatedly made - oil prices have declined only because of the weakening economy. When the economy grows again, oil prices will rise again and eat into wages, jeopardizing the recovery. To break that cycle we must move away from oil. High speed rail is a key part of that overall strategy, which is why it and other forms of mass transit must be included in the stimulus.
Avent goes further to talk about the politics of the stimulus:
The lack of transit spending is unquestionably political, and not logistical, in nature.
The possibility remains that the Congressional leadership and the Obama administration are waiting for the 2009 transportation bill overhaul to adjust spending priorities, and indeed, that vote will be hugely important for the future of the nation's infrastructure. There may also be scope for funding in Obama's energy bill. But there is reason for concern here.
The security of our economy and our environment depend upon a sea change in transportation planning. That transit and rail were so easily sacrificed in stimulus negotiations should send us a message -- now is no time for transit supporters to ease up on their legislators. We'll need to fight until the money is in the pipeline.
Emphasis mine. The story is that transit funding WAS in the stimulus until someone either in Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or Barack Obama's office took it out. All three have at one point or another expressed commitment to support HSR and mass transit, so this goes to prove Avent's point - that we have not yet won a victory for sustainable transportation in Washington DC, and that we must continue the fight to ensure that we do win. Otherwise transit and HSR funding might get thrown overboard again in the name of political expediency. We must show our leaders that it is actually costly for them to do so.
UPDATE:Elana Schor at Talking Points Memo explains that mass transit and passenger rail got the shaft in order to make room for more tax cuts, quoting Oberstar:
The reason for the reduction in overall funding -- we took money out of Amtrak and out of aviation; we took money out of the Corps of Engineers, reduced the water infrastructure program, the drinking water and the wastewater treatment facilities and sewer lines, reduced that from $14 billion to roughly $9 billion -- was the tax cut initiative that had to be paid for in some way by keeping the entire package in the range of $850 billion.
Stupid. Just stupid. Tax cuts do not grow the economy; in this environment they will be put in the bank either as savings or as debt service. If they felt that strongly about cutting down infrastructure projects to pay for tax cuts (which is already poor policymaking) then roads and not rail should have been the target.
What this shows is that the new leadership in DC - in both the Congress and the White House - are not committed to mass transit and passenger rail when the going gets tough. Just because it's easy to say on the campaign trail shouldn't mean it's easy to abandon once in power.
This week's issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian includes an editorial calling for construction of the Downtown Extension to the Transbay Terminal. It is based on an article by Steven T. Jones in the same issue that notes, among other things, that the "train box" remains unfunded and outside the plans. First, the Jones article:
Transportation planners say the train box, which is essentially the shell structure in which the train station would be built during the project's second phase, is very important both logistically and financially (doing it later could be very expensive and disruptive to the station's operation), particularly since the TJPA has secured little of the $3 billion needed for phase two....that source must be found by spring to be included in construction contracts.
Um...that's not good. The train box is a must.
The Bay Guardian editorial makes, as usual, some excellent points about why the DTX is so important to the success of high speed rail - and what some of the political obstacles are, namely the leadership of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. From the editorial:
Building an adequate terminal for high-speed rail at its present location would cost at least $750 million, money that would be better spent funding the downtown extension....building the Transbay Terminal with no rail connection would be a disastrous waste of money — and waiting and hoping for more money later isn't a very good financing plan.
So if it's obvious that the Transbay Terminal needs the DTX to succeed, and that a Fourth and King terminus station isn't a good use of money, why is this even an issue? As the editorial explains, the leadership at the TJPA, specifically Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan, isn't doing a good job securing funding or even communicating with partners:
Ayerdi-Kaplan promised us, repeatedly, that there's no way the project will end up getting built without the facilities for rail in the basement.
But Quentin Kopp, a retired judge who heads the state's high-speed rail agency, has nothing but harsh words for Ayerdi-Kaplan and her operation. He insists that she hasn't been working with him and that none of the $10 billion in bond money approved in November for the project will go to extend the tracks beyond the existing Caltrain terminal at Fourth and King. In fact, Kopp is making noises about keeping the end of the line exactly where it is today....
Kopp has some legitimate gripes. Ayerdi-Kaplan, who is supposed to be building the station that will serve as the northern anchor for high-speed rail, has met with Kopp only once. She's going ahead with the project before she has any guarantees that even the framework for the underground station will be funded. And frankly, it's not going to work for the head of the Transbay Terminal project to remain at odds with the head of the high-speed rail authority.
It certainly sounds as if the TJPA needs to get its act together, and one hopes that Kopp and other members of the California High Speed Rail Authority have been trying to proactively work with Ayerdi-Kaplan and her staff to resolve these issues. Apparently she has been hiding behind PR person, Adam Alberti. I can see why Kopp has been making noise about using Fourth and King instead, as a way to force the TJPA back to the table.
Still, this seems to be a leadership issue most of all. San Francisco has a lot of political leaders who could help bring the parties together - Mayor Gavin Newsom, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Perhaps our federal officials can help provide funding for an infrastructure project ready to break ground. It's time for someone to step up and solve this issue before it gets worse with time and built-up enmity. As we've said before the DTX and the Transbay Terminal are essential to the HSR project's success.
The economic crisis that has been slowly unfolding over the last year or so is growing worse by the day, and the incoming Obama Administration and its allies in Congress are already discussing plans for a new economic stimulus package, one that will likely include infrastructure spending. The figures being tossed around so far have been between $50 and $150 billion.
All indications are that the new administration will offer a major stimulus package. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.
If we are talking about stimulus of that size, then $12-$16 billion for California high speed rail should be no problem. Some might argue that since construction won't begin until 2010 that it's not a good use of stimulus money. But as Krugman has argued before, this downturn is going to be long:
The usual argument against public works as economic stimulus is that they take too long: by the time you get around to repairing that bridge and upgrading that rail line, the slump is over and the stimulus isn’t needed. Well, that argument has no force now, since the chances that this slump will be over anytime soon are virtually nil. So let’s get those projects rolling.
That makes Congress and the White House the next stop for our own high speed rail project, even as we continue to keep a close eye on the state legislature to ensure there's no backsliding. Quentin Kopp is optimistic about our prospects in Congress, according to an article in today's issue of Bond Buyer:
"I am satisfied from my readings that enthusiasm has increased in Congress for high-speed rail," said Quentin L. Kopp, chairman of the rail authority's board...
Kopp, a veteran of 12 years in the California Senate and a decade and a half on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, laid out the challenge in political terms.
"Now we have to fend off other states," he said.
Of course a $600 billion package would make the competition among states for HSR dollars less intense. Even if there is much competition, California is in a very strong position to lay claim to federal HSR dollars. Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein have already shown their support for HSR, and having two of the most powerful members of Congress in your corner is a pretty damn good place to start.
Over email rafael pointed out that the renewable energy aspects of HSR would also appeal to President Obama's own desire to put energy independence at the forefront of his own policy efforts:
California HSR plus local/regional HSR feeders may become much more attractive to an Obama administration looking for worthwhile public works projects if proponents stress that these will run on renewable electricity. Transportation planners may care more about system capacity, but politicians are keen on energy independence right now.
What exactly is federal funding going to look like? It's highly unlikely that it's going to be a check for $12 billion. From the Bond Buyer article again:
the Authority expects to pursue funding sources that include straightforward federal grants, tax-credit bonds, and funding derived from carbon credits.
One thing we will need to ensure, along with the delivery of federal funding period, is that such funding is stable. Some mixture of the above seems quite workable assuming it adds up to the requisite amount.
It's clear that the global economic crisis is worsening, and all eyes are going to be on Washington DC for answers. We're going to have to make sure Congress and President Obama do the right thing for California and the nation by passing a large economic stimulus bill early in 2009 - a bill that must include funding for California high speed rail.
At a press conference in San Francisco today Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom all spoke out in favor of Proposition 1A. Their presence ought to dissuade some of the Prop 1A critics who claim that federal funding is uncertain - in 2009 these two members of Congress will be among the most powerful politicians in America and will be in a VERY strong position to help fund California High Speed Rail. They emphasized the environmental and the economic benefits of the project, and DiFi had some strong words for the HSR deniers:
One newspaper said now is not the time because we can’t afford it. I would say we can’t afford not to do it.
Which is of course the truth. As Paul Krugman explains in today's column deficit spending by government to prime the economic pump is an absolute necessity for getting the country out of the recession.
It's not just leading national politicians and Nobel laureate economists making this point. Average Californians grasp the necessity of passing Prop 1A as part of an overall economic stimulus program, as shown by this letter in the Modesto Bee:
California has budget problems because our legislators have been unable to control spending growth and have been unwilling to raise taxes. The current budget uses gimmicks and tricks and is unbalanced. Our state government is dysfunctional. Killing beneficial infrastructure projects will not solve California's problems. We need to invest in California. In the long run this will lead to better lives for the state's residents and will result in increased state and local tax revenue. We need to approve the high-speed rail measure, and we need to demand that the Legislature do its job. These are compatible goals.
JOHN MENSINGER
Modesto
Thanks John for helping inject some common sense into the debate. Killing Prop 1A will do absolutely NOTHING to help California's economy or budget. Nothing at all. Especially when you consider that the cost of doing nothing is not zero - whether it's the cost to consumers of higher gas prices or the cost to the budget of expanding roads and airports, Prop 1A and HSR is the affordable solution.
The California High Speed Rail Blog is a creation of Robert Cruickshank. The articles posted here are the opinion of their respective authors and no other entity. To contact Robert, send an email to his last name at gmail dot com.
