Media News Group Launches Another Anti-HSR Editorial Attack

One of the most reliably anti-HSR voices in the state is the Media News Group, publisher of several major newspapers (including the San Jose Mercury News). During the 2008 campaign they were among the most die-hard HSR deniers. Now that a judge has issued a mixed decision in the Atherton v. CHSRA lawsuit, MNG is taking advantage of the situation to yet again try and kill high speed rail:

OFTEN THERE IS a wide gap separating a concept from reality. Such is the case with California's high-speed rail project. Conceptually, fast, comfortable, fuel-efficient, intercity, passenger rail transportation makes a lot of sense as fuel prices rise and reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are mandated.

However, there are a number of inconvenient realities that come between California's dream of high-speed rail service and actually constructing it.

The latest roadblock is a court ruling that the High Speed Rail Authority's environmental impact report is "inadequate." The court's conclusion is hardly surprising considering that the EIR failed to address Union Pacific's decision not to allow the trains to run along its tracks from Gilroy to San Jose.

It never ceases to amaze me how usual standards of journalistic practice, such as they are, don't apply at all to the editorial page. The judge most assuredly did NOT rule that the EIR as a whole was "inadequate." He ruled that three specific parts of it were inadequate, but that the overwhelming majority of the contested portions were perfectly adequate, including the basic elements of the choice of the Pacheco Pass over the Altamont Pass for the HSR route. This inconvenient truth doesn't stop the MNG editorialists from plowing ahead with further bits of disinformation:

When the high-speed rail project was first proposed, supporters assumed it would use the Union Pacific's tracks. Without Union Pacific's right of way, an alternate route would have to be considered, affecting the Monterey Highway or requiring the taking of additional private property.

The ignorance here is astounding. UP's tracks were NEVER going to be used, at least not in any plans I've seen over the last two years. I can't speak for the CHSRA, but this HSR supporter never expected to use UP's ROW either. Ever since I became familiar with the situation in May 2008, I understood the plan was to use land next to UP's ROW, but not the ROW itself. Additional private property may have to be taken, but as southern Santa Clara County region is much less built up than the Peninsula, this should not require much if any loss of housing.

As a result of the court's ruling, the rail project is likely to be considerably delayed as a new EIR is written and the additional time and costs of buying land or battling Union Pacific in court are considered.

This is blind speculation almost entirely lacking in evidence. We have no indication what remedy the judge will order. A new EIR does not seem likely, and although it is a possibility, MNG has no basis whatsoever to assume it is a definite outcome. The time and cost of dealing with UP is certainly a consideration, but as I explained yesterday federal assistance can expedite this process.

Alternate routes, such as one over the Altamont Pass, which some rail advocates favor, are even more costly and also would require a new EIR.

Well, at least they got that one right. Altamont is dead. Will groups like the Planning and Conservation League finally accept that reality and devote their efforts to actually supporting HSR?

Voters approved a $9.95 billion rail bond measure last November. The rest of the money is supposed to come from the federal government and investors. Delays can only increase the costs and discourage investors.

But that is hardly the only problem with the high-speed rail project. The business plan is inadequate. There is no accurate estimate of ridership, fares, operational costs and investor interest. Also, the $40 billion cost estimate is dubious.

I see MNG decided to rehash a bunch of the old discredited HSR denier nonsense for good measure. I suppose this means that once we've discredited this editorial we can expect its claims to keep reappearing in MNG editorials for years to come?

With so many other greater capital project needs such as fixing the Delta, highway repair and school renovations that require large amounts of funding, California should sidetrack its highly questionable high-speed rail project.

This is the new line of attack against HSR, and we heard it in Menlo Park last week: that HSR isn't worth the money given all the other priorities.

The fact is we need to and can do all of these things. HSR is necessary to this state's future. To sacrifice it because we're too cheap to find money to pay for our other priorities would have been like refusing to build the Golden Gate Bridge during the Depression. That move, funded by local bonds issued in the depth of the Depression, worked out pretty damn well for California. So too will HSR. MNG will never admit it, and that's fine. We didn't need them in the campaign to pass Prop 1A, and we don't need them in the campaign to ensure that the will of the voters is respected and the HSR project built.

The Multi-Pronged Attack on California HSR

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

That was the easy part.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's have a look at some examples.

Lying About Altamont/Pacheco

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

Embracing NIMBYism

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

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

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

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

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

Allying With Legislative Enemies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The View From the Valley

I've spent two very interesting days here in Fresno organizing for another issue, but have had some time to talk to people about high speed rail (because really, what sort of HSR activist would I be if I didn't?!). I've found that the project actually has a fairly high profile here - most of the diverse group of people I've talked to actually know about it and support it. As there are at least 2.5 million people living along the HSR route between Merced and Bakersfield, their backing of the system is crucial - lest we forget, Merced, Fresno, and Kern Counties ALL voted FOR Prop 1A back in November.

What's behind the support? In my conversations there are some common reasons given:

1. Desire to connect to the rest of the state. Whether they love living in the Valley or not, most people here want to be able to get to and from the bigger parts of the state quickly. They may have family or friends going to school in LA, or want to see a show in SF. Typically they're going to drive, which is usually at least 3 hours in each direction. A rapid train will help make that easy.



2. Desire to cut pollution. Even though it's an early spring day, the air quality here in Fresno hasn't been so great this weekend. It reminds me of the 1980s in Southern California, where smog was commonplace. The San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air pollution in the entire nation. Asthma and other respiratory diseases are extremely common, and given the frequent traffic on Highway 99 it's no surprise. People here WANT a method of travel that will not make their health problems worse.



3. Desire to stop sprawl. To hear some people tell it Valley residents love sprawl. That's always been a debatable point; in reality it's the Valley's political leaders who have promoted it, along with the inexorable logic of having built an entire national, even global economy on sprawl. With the housing bubble collapse, which has hit the Valley harder than probably any other place on the globe, there is a clearer desire for preserving farmland, stopping sprawl, and channeling growth inward. The people I talked to get this.



4. They're sick of being ignored. With at least 2.5 million people along the initial HSR route, and with over 5 million in the Valley as a whole (including Sacramento), Valley residents have watched state funds and projects go to the "cities" - SF Bay Area, Southern California, while Highway 99 has been ignored. And that enables opponents of mass transit, for example, to demagogue on the issue - "don't vote for this project, it's just going to help those Bay Area liberals who don't care about you." Which in turn emboldens those voices here that tell Valley voters "the cities will just take your tax money and give nothing in return" (if the Valley elected more Dems the 2/3 rule would no longer be an issue). San Joaquin Valley residents feel, quite reasonably in my view, that they deserve to be part of this system.
   
   And it makes practical sense in this case to include them. The flattest route between SF and LA involves the Central Valley. The 2.5 million people who live along the San Joaquin Valley portion of the LA-SF route are an important part of the potential ridership base of a financially viable HSR system. And it will play an essential role in achieving the kind of long-term shift in land use policy in California, a shift that cannot succeed unless the Valley is included. Otherwise the Valley plays the role of a kind of China, undercutting the efforts at higher labor and environmental standards elsewhere in the state.

I know that there have been some comments suggesting that we just bypass the Highway 99 corridor when building the LA-SF route, that the inclusion of Fresno and Bakersfield was just a political ploy, that it's just not necessary to build HSR in these places. I could not disagree more strongly. California High Speed Rail will not be successful unless it includes the Valley.

The Acelafication of California High Speed Rail

Today marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. I'd actually been trying to build out a much bigger pro-HSR site using a dedicated URL, a Joomla! installation, and with neat bells and whistles. But it was taking months, and by March 2008, I gave up and decided to just whip something up on Blogger to fill what I felt was a big gap in the online world, a lack of a site dedicated to both the discussion and support of the California High Speed Rail project.

It's been an eventful year, to say the least. The dramatic gas price spike that showed Californians passenger rail was an essential part of our future infrastructure. The long fight over AB 3034. The constant efforts of HSR deniers such as the Reason Foundation to sow misinformation about HSR to the public. The passage of Prop 1A. And now the fight over whether there will be high speed trains on the Peninsula. We've covered all of it here, sometimes contentiously. I think we've all achieved something fantastic here, and I thank all of my readers and especially the commenters for helping keep this blog going.

Looking back on that year, two things have stood out to me that define this project:

1. The public as a whole supports high speed rail and wants it to happen.

2. However, the political conditions that produced 40 years of passenger rail stagnation, as well as California's broad 21st century crisis (an economic, environmental, and energy crisis), are still there, and the necessary political leadership to overcome those conditions and solve those crises does not yet exist.

President Barack Obama may be the game-changer here, as he is in so many other aspects of American life. His support for high speed rail is genuine, as he played the central role in putting $8 billion in HSR funds into the stimulus. His budget proposal includes $5 billion more for HSR. He could provide the leadership that has been lacking, and could help bring groups to the table to hammer out differences.

Such leadership is desperately needed right now in California and on the Peninsula in particular, where concern over above-ground structures - concerns I believe to be overblown and misplaced - have given rise to a de facto willingness to weaken the HSR project unless it is built underground. Way too much of the NIMBY commentary on the situation implies that HSR isn't necessary, and some of the old HSR denier arguments from the 2008 campaign - that HSR can't turn a profit, that the ridership numbers aren't credible, that the Peninsula doesn't really have any need for this anyway - have unsurprisingly been mobilized to attack the project.

This is but one example of some of the underlying political conditions that have produced passenger rail stagnation and economic crisis. Parochial self-interests have spent the last 30 years constructing any number of methods to veto policies they don't like, whether it's the 2/3rds rule or systematic abuse of the environmental review process to accomplish inappropriate NIMBY objections.

And some of it stems from an ongoing unwillingness to admit the need to change. The NIMBY attack on HSR is grounded in the assumption that the status quo is perfectly acceptable - a state dependent on carbon emitting, pollution spewing, fossil fuel burning methods of travel that are not physically sustainable or economically viable. That the physical landscape of Menlo Park can remain that way for all time.

Nobody here wants to destroy communities. But when some in those communities define the way things look in 2009 as a perfect status quo that must not be changed, then ANY change, no matter how sensible or beneficial, becomes viewed as a threat.

Such attitudes have led to the economic crisis we face, where an unwillingness to confront basic realities, stemming from a desire to cling as tightly as possible to a status quo that is quite clearly failing, has prevented necessary action.

Unfortunately we've been here before. In the early 1990s the Northeast Corridor High Speed Rail project was announced with much fanfare, and was promised to finally bring true high speed rail travel to the United States.

15 years later, we have the Acela. It's a workable system, a train that has over 40% of the market share on the NEC and a generally positive reputation among travelers. But it's also not what was intended. The Acela only achieves its true top speed of 150 mph in a few places; in many others it's held to 79mph.

What happened? To put it simply, stakeholders weren't willing to accept some changes in order to build the Acela properly. Some didn't want to give up land to straighten the tracks. Others were concerned about noise and speed. Some didn't want to spend money upgrading the infrastructure. The FRA wouldn't relax its inane weight rules. And in the 1990s, cheap oil lulled people into complacency, believing that passenger rail was a toy that had little practical use, that filled little practical need.

To me it is self-evident that if we're going to build a project, we should build it the right way. That if we ask voters to approve something - especially if we ask them to help pay for it - then it seems self-evident to me that we should deliver exactly what they approved. The City of Palo Alto and many others on the Peninsula appear happy to gut the HSR project by forcing it to run unacceptably slowly along the SF-SJ route, or to force an unworkable transfer to Caltrain at SJ Diridon that will significantly reduce ridership, or to bypass the state's third largest city (San Jose) just to make a small handful of residents happy.

That's just not right. We must build HSR the right way. We can build it in a way that meets the needs of everyone in California, but when NIMBYs refuse to compromise, they're implicitly saying that a flawed system or no system is preferable to one they don't like. They're happy to Acelafy our project.

We see these problems anytime efforts are made to address our multifaceted crisis. Obama wants to restore higher tax rates on the wealthy to pay for his economic recovery plan? Oh god no, can't have that! Solar energy companies want to build a solar plant in a sunny desert spot, but need to build power transmission lines through open desert to get there? Oh god no, can't have that! We need to build a high speed train along an existing rail corridor? Oh god no, can't have that!

If the underlying political problems did not exist - a state government hamstrung by the 2/3rds rule, a small but vocal group of NIMBYs who are expert at hijacking planning processes, a lack of political leadership on passenger rail - then we wouldn't have these crises at all. HSR would have been built long ago, California's budget would be in the black, and the US would not be staring economic Depression and the massive effects of global warming in the face.

The reason I am such a strong advocate of California high speed rail is because I understand that things must change if our state is to survive this crisis. HSR is just one aspect of the changes that need to be made. And that requires fixing the underlying problems that have produced the crisis and threaten to strangle the HSR project.

The big picture has been lost. If people truly believe that an above-grade trackway is more of a problem than mass unemployment and global warming, then maybe we're in a bigger crisis than even I imagined. If a small group of NIMBYs can block HSR, what's going to happen when we try and build wind turbines or tidal energy projects?

One year later, I am encouraged that Californians as a whole understand the need for passenger rail. But I am concerned that even HSR supporters have lost sight of the big picture, and aren't sufficiently willing to challenge the failed assumptions, rules, procedures, and practices that have brought us to this crisis point. Palo Alto is a warning shot across our bow. Unless we find away to remind Californians of the stakes, of why HSR is such a vital part of the solution to our multifaceted crisis, it will be turned into another Acela, rendered less effective and less viable because we did not have the courage to face down those who created this crisis, and those who believe there's no urgent need to do anything at all to solve it.

How Is the CHSRA Supposed To Work Without Money?

One of the more common complaints on the Peninsula has been "omg nobody told us about this!!" Such claims are not credible, as there was widespread discussion especially in the news about the HSR project and that it would involve the Caltrain ROW - enough discussion to lead the city of Palo Alto to unanimously endorse Prop 1A and begin discussing how to implement it within their town.

Of course, you can never have too much engagement with the public, and during the recent fight, some artist renderings of what possible structures might look like along the Peninsula route would have been incredibly useful in helping to dispel the "Berlin Wall" lie that has been dishonestly spread around the region.

Unfortunately it has been difficult for the CHSRA to provide that level of information because the state budget crisis has left the CHSRA unable to pay its bills. The agency has been struggling with a lack of financial support from the state of California since at least 2007, when Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed an almost total elimination of CHSRA funding. Last October Quentin Kopp reported that the CHSRA's executive director, Mehdi Morshed, had not been paid for months because of the Legislature's inability to pass a budget.

The situation has now grown quite serious, as reported by the AP:

California may have to halt work on its high-speed rail project if it does not get an infusion of cash from the state's infrastructure fund.

Aides told the state's high-speed rail board today that the project is out of money and unable to pay its bills. The problem is an outgrowth of the state's larger budget crisis.

Some of the rail project's engineering and environmental review contractors have said they will not continue working without being paid.

The rail board has asked the state's Pooled Money Investment Board for a $29.1 million loan to fund its operations through the end of June. But the state's budget problems forced the board to freeze funding for infrastructure projects.

That has not changed even though the Legislature passed a two-year budget plan last month.

It must be made quite clear - because HSR deniers on the Peninsula will spread misinformation about this - that this is not the result of any wrongdoing or mismanagement on the part of the CHSRA. They are at the mercy of the state government as a whole and cannot create money out of thin air. They have asked contractors and their own employees to work without pay for months. Clearly that is an untenable situation.

The PMIB will likely restore funding for infrastructure projects, including the CHSRA, but that will take some time. And the state budget mess is far from over - if the initiatives on the May 19 special election ballot fail, California will face a $6 billion gap, on top of whatever gap the state will face as a result of the worsening economic crisis.

Again, there will be some critics who will take this to mean that the state cannot build HSR at all. That would be an extremely reckless answer to this problem, abandoning economic recovery because "gee it's too hard to fix the current crisis." California must demonstrate a commitment to high speed rail and fund the operations of the CHSRA - funding that will help provide accurate information to the residents of the state and counter the lies being spread by HSR opponents.

All of this is further evidence that California politicians must make a clearer and stronger commitment to high speed rail. It is all to easy to let this necessary project fall prey to the same failed politics that have produced the dire crisis the state finds itself in today. To borrow an overused phrase, high speed rail is too important to let fail.

Debating Peninsula HSR

Wow, 70 comments and counting on the last post - hardly any of which were about Sir Richard Branson and private operators! (I'm sure Branson's ego won't mind.) I think I know what's on some folks' minds regarding HSR, and it's the debate over how to build HSR on the Peninsula.

We haven't had contentious discussions here for a while - not since October - and so perhaps some folks have forgotten the rules of etiquette around here. I'll delve into that first, and then offer some more general comments on the debate.

First, I ask that all users post with a username. It can be a pseudonym. Call yourself Ishmael if you want, I don't care. It's impossible to follow which anon said what. Blogger doesn't offer a way to ban just anonymous comments - I'd have to force everyone to register either with Google or with OpenID or something else. I would prefer to not do that, but will do so if necessary.

Second, I ask that comments have some basis in fact and evidence. If someone persists in making stuff up, I'll delete the comments. Same goes for any comments that are abusive or contain personal attacks on other commenters.

Other blog platforms offer more functionality, like WordPress. I'll be honest that I simply do not have the time to implement that system, though if anyone wants to help I'll work with you on that (and I mean that this time!).

Now, the discussion on the peninsula. I think Clem at the Caltrain-HSR Compatibility Blog put it well when he made this comment on his blog's most recent post:

HSR has strong political backing from SF, SJ, Sacramento and Washington DC. I don't believe the city or the developer will be allowed to delay the project. While the process may indeed be acrimonious, I believe it will be short.

Anyone on the Peninsula who thinks they can kill this project is nuts. By "kill the project" I mean cut it off at San José, try and reroute it through Altamont (where cities like Fremont and Pleasanton will put up a huge fight), or stop its construction altogether.

None of that is going to happen. It's not possible. HSR has solid support from the highest level in American politics - President Barack Obama - and is widely supported in Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Congress. This line will be built and it will be built as is currently routed: along the Caltrain line on the Peninsula.

Let's be clear about what the political effect of trying to kill HSR via lawsuit, street protest, or whining on a blog will be. Californians will look at you as if you've signed on to Bobby Jindal's 2012 campaign. You will be seen as attacking a popular president and a popular project and will very quickly become isolated. I don't know if that's fair, but it's the reality.

Peninsula residents have the right and the responsibility to speak up about this project and seek to work out the best methods for constructing HSR in their communities. But there needs to be both a sense of collaboration, of working for the public good, and supportiveness of the HSR concept. When that is absent, concerns will be ignored. Again, that may not be fair, but it is reality.

There appear to be three camps on the Peninsula regarding HSR. The first is likely the largest: outright supporters who just want this thing built. Over 65% of San Mateo County residents voted for Prop 1A, after all. The second are people who are a bit concerned about this or that aspect of the project, but who are willing to work constructively to ensure the project is built in a way that meets their needs. The third are HSR deniers who never accepted Prop 1A's passage and who are using the fight over how to build it on the Peninsula to try and kill high speed rail outright.

The problem is that the local media on the Peninsula likes to feed the trolls in the third group, and blows the opposition out of proportion. And that's how HSR denial and NIMBYism works - shout really loudly and hope those in power decide to placate you. That isn't going to happen this time. Again, HSR will be built. The question is how to build it the right way.

I would set out some key points for everyone to understand in this debate:

1. HSR is going to be built along the Caltrain route from SF to SJ.
2. We want to build this in a way that works for all the communities affected. But we're not going to give into NIMBYism or HSR denial.
3. If people on the Peninsula want a trench or a tunnel they must pay for it themselves. We're going to focus on raising money to build the entire system and can't devote systemwide funds to give Palo Alto a trench.
4. HSR will benefit all communities along the line by providing faster, safer, and cleaner transportation options that do not rely on the automobile.

Bil Paul's column on trenching is a welcome bit of sensibility on this debate, although he conveniently avoids the issue of payment.

Let's hope that we can have a more reasonable discussion among the first two groups I described above. Those who just want to refight the Prop 1A battle, or the Altamont vs. Pacheco battle (which Bil Paul rightly said is "final" and "futile" to try and reopen) should leave the debate to those of us who actually want to do this thing the right way.

So, get your Peninsula fix in here. Tomorrow I'm writing about something totally different.

HSR Denial Alive And Well In San Diego

Just as passenger rail advocates are celebrating the federal government's down payment on high speed rail, and as we become aware that the retreat from last summer's record gas prices was a temporary respite, we get word from San Diego that the HSR deniers are still plying their trade, passing along the same old lies as if nothing interesting had happened between, say, November 1 and February 15. The San Diego Union-Tribune, which had happily spread some of the worst smears about Prop 1A during the campaign season, yesterday called on the state to "pull the plug" on high speed rail:

Nevertheless, a sober assessment of the project still raises profound questions – both about its viability and its advocates' honesty.

I quote that just to be clear at the outset that the U-T wants to make "honesty" part of the issue. That's worth keeping in mind as you read their lies:

We start with the High Speed Rail Authority's own official business plan. It was supposed to be made public by Sept. 1. Instead, it wasn't released until just after Proposition 1A was approved.

How often do we have to refute this zombie lie? The business plan was delivered 45 days after the state passed a budget. The September 1 deadline - given to the CHSRA five days before the deadline (on August 26) - was impossible to meet because of a budget crisis provoked by Republicans. There literally wasn't the money to hire consultants to produce the plan.

Given the business plan's contents, it's understandable why it was kept from voters (and the media). Throughout 2008, advocates touted the eagerness of the private sector to provide a large chunk of the project's huge tab. The plan, however, paints a far different picture. It warns that private investors could be wary of the project's risks and says private firms expressing interest “made it clear that they would need both financial and political commitments from state officials that government would share the risks to their participation.”

Of course private interests would have some wariness - but "wariness" doesn't mean "omg we're not investing in this" - it just means they're going to take a close and smart look. And they always want risks to be shared. That's commonplace in a large project like this. The U-T does NOT mention that the CHSRA has received over 40 statements of interest from private companies and investors, suggesting that this "wariness" is overstated.

Throughout 2008, advocates depicted the project as a pain-free no-brainer for local governments on the high-speed train's projected routes. The business plan, however, says cash-strapped local governments must come up with $2 billion to $3 billion.

I don't recall anyone saying the project would be a "pain-free no-brainer." Well, it IS a no-brainer that we need to build HSR, but we've always said it's going to cost a lot of money. We've also said that the cost will be worth it. Local government funding is anticipated to play a variety of roles, from a long-planned reshaping of rail corridors in Fresno to the Transbay Terminal to station-area developments in smaller cities. Here again the U-T takes an innocuous, widely-known fact and tries to make controversy out of it. It's essentially the same playbook as John Boehner.

The plan also simply drops claims that annual ridership would be about 117 million in favor of a vague prediction of “more than 90 million” annual trips. Yes, this figure is within the broad range cited by some campaign literature – but it wasn't the number used to persuade voters that the system would be highly profitable and would heavily reduce air pollution because people were using high-speed trains en masse instead of cars.

Note that they do not say the 90 million figure would mean HSR would not generate a profit. Nor do they say 90 million is unlikely. No do they say it would not achieve the air pollution reductions. Nor do they question the notion that people will turn to trains for intercity travel. No, they pull a typical HSR denier move and say "omg you changed the numbers! obviously you LIE!" Even though explaining that a range of numbers is possible isn't even a remotely dishonest thing to do.

Whatever advocates' specific ridership prediction, however, what's crucial to remember is its utter lack of a factual basis. Consider that the entire Amtrak system, with more than 500 destinations in 46 states, only has about 26 million passengers a year. Or consider the fact that the rail authority itself used to predict only 23 million trips a year.

What changed? As far as we can determine from advocates' own presentations, all that changed was their realization that grand claims for profitability and environmental salvation could only be made if forecasts were far higher.

First, comparing Amtrak to HSR is like comparing a Cessna to a 747. They are fundamentally different forms of rail travel. They use the national numbers, which do not explain that most of these destinations and states see one or two trains per day, instead of the Acela, which recently claimed that they now have 62% of the market on the Northeast Corridor. Nor does the U-T look at comparable HSR systems around the world. Nope, they cherrypick a stat and compare it to California HSR, even though the comparison is so logically flawed as to lack credibility.

It's not too late for state leaders to try to find a way to pull the plug on this project. Even in the best of times, it's unacceptable to commit taxpayers to spend nearly $10 billion on a project predicated on the fantasies of true believers and likely to end up costing taxpayers far more. In bad times, it's utter folly.

Sorry. America has spoken. We want high speed rail. And we're going to build it. The San Diego Union-Tribune can make up as many lies as it wants to about HSR - voters have shown they support it, America's political leadership has shown they support it, and the need is clearly there. If the best these HSR deniers can do is collect a bunch of lies and call it an "editorial" then they're in even worse shape than I imagined.

Can't wait to ride the California high speed trains to San Diego...

Sacramento Meltdown

Note: Rafael contributed to this post as well.



As the LA Times reports, the state of California still doesn't have a budget after a 30-hour marathon session in the state senate. Lawmakers on both sides were so exhausted many fell asleep at their desks.

That means pretty soon CHSRA officials will no longer get paid, their consultants are already being offered IOUs. If the impasse is not resolved, the HSR project could be seriously delayed unless the Obama administration awards some stimulus funds directly to the authority, bypassing the deadlocked state legislature. It's conceivable that might happen, but politicians from other states will wonder if it's wise to spend anything at all on such an ambitious project in a state whose own funding depends on a budget process that is broken beyond repair. As an indication of things to come, consider that the national media are now lampooning (starting at 2:10) the whole thing as the political equivalent of a horror movie, the production of which the proposed state budget would subsidize. While they mention why lawmakers are asleep, the mere fact that it has come to this means the Bear Republic is now the front line in this era of serious financial crisis.

It should be noted that Prop 1A and the HSR project are not to blame here. Our bonds haven't even been sold yet. Of course, the longer this crisis goes on, the more costly it is going to be to float those bonds, and that means less money for high speed trains and tracks.

But perhaps the worst possible outcome of this mess is a proposal that is likely to be on the May 2009 special election ballot. It's a "hard spending cap" - a far-right effort to ensure that the spending cuts that are being made can never be reversed. It's actually worse than that, as it would prevent the state from ever taking on a major new project, regardless of its level of popular support, regardless of its need, and regardless of its ability to pay for itself.

The way a cap like the one proposed works is this: spending is only allowed to grow by a rate determined by population growth and inflation. If those numbers are 0, then no spending growth is possible. The cap might allow for 5% growth in spending, but only meet the educational and social services need of those new people and the higher cost of doing business thanks to the inflation. ALL state spending is subject to this cap, even something like high speed rail.

In practice what this means, as the state of Colorado discovered when their cap hit hard earlier this decade, is that government programs have to fight each other. If California wanted to spend $2 billion of the Prop 1A bonds in, say, 2012, then $2 billion in corresponding cuts have to made elsewhere in the budget. HSR would be pit against schools and hospitals. I don't know about you, but that's not a good situation for us to be in.

Worse, the spending cap means that California will have to make further cuts in coming years even above and beyond what Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposes, and that's itself a set of rather conservative spending plans. The California Budget Project shows what the impact looks like:



In short, a spending cap like the one proposed could be catastrophic for the California High Speed Rail project. The Legislature has already voted to put it on the ballot in May. Defeating it is going to be a high priority for HSR supporters and transit advocates around the state.

Slow Orders

Should California cater to a small number of Peninsula NIMBYs and truncate the HSR line from LA to SF at San José? That's a question that has popped up during some of the Peninsula scoping sessions, as some residents think "well let's just drop everyone off at Diridon Station and put them on the Caltrain Baby Bullets! Isn't that good enough?"

As Clem points out at the Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog, however, not all "bullet" trains are alike:

Baby Bullets look sleek, and they impress when they blast by, horn blaring. However, they are nowhere near as fast on average as the proposed high speed trains. Timings from San Jose to San Francisco:

* Caltrain local: 96 minutes - max speed 79 mph - average speed 29 mph
* Caltrain Baby Bullet: 57 minutes - max speed 79 mph - average speed 49 mph
* HSR: 30 minutes - max speed 125 mph (a.k.a "half speed") - average speed 94 mph

HSR at "half speed" is still nearly twice as fast as the Baby Bullet.

Clem also points out that it's impractical to have "half speed HSR" trains run on just the two existing tracks - you can't mix speeds quite like that, especially given the heavy usage already on those tracks. The overall impact on a trip from LA to SF - the entire point of HSR, let's remember - would be significant:

Accounting for transfer time in San Jose, the effective speed of the Baby Bullet ride would approach three times slower than a single-seat HSR peninsula ride. The overall trip from LA to SF would increase from 2:38 to 3:15, an increase of about one quarter. If we compromise that much on the peninsula, why even bother with 220 mph in the central valley? Indeed why bother with high speed rail at all?

Which is is of course the entire point of the NIMBY objections from the usual suspects on the Peninsula. Folks like Martin Engel never accepted the public verdict - or even that of their own communities - which voted strongly for Proposition 1A, knowing full well that it involved sending HSR trains along new tracks up the Peninsula. Others on the Peninsula are grasping at straws by suggesting that HSR be held up just for their own personal interests - basically trying to impose a slow order on the entire system.

In an email, Alon Levy wonders if there's a strategic way to deal with this objection:

Anthony Perl's book New Departures (http://books.google.com/books?id=-B5NgROwk9wC - look for page 26) writes that the TGV had many detractors in the French government who thought it was an "unaffordable boondoggle." In response, the SNCF met them halfway: it only built the first LGV two thirds of the way from Paris to Lyon, and routed the line on the traditional line at lower speed for the remaining third. On the one hand initial costs were kept down, but on the other travelers could see for themselves the difference between full high-speed operation and rapid rail. As the SNCF had predicted, this created political pressure to finish the full LGV to Lyon, and then to extend it to other cities.

I wonder whether this solution is applicable to California, if cost concerns and pressure from Peninsula NIMBYs is too much. The high-speed track would initially run only from LA to SJ, with the trains sharing tracks with Caltrain to SF. It would reduce speed remarkably and make HSR less competitive initially, but not critically; it would at the same time showcase the difference between baby bullets and real bullets. It would require FRA waivers, but as far as I can tell so will the ultimate goal of running HSR in the same ROW as Caltrain.

Do you think it'd be an acceptable compromise if political or financial realities started to sour?

In this case Levy is suggesting calling the NIMBY bluff, using the slower speeds on the Peninsula segment as leverage public outrage at the situation to mobilize the political will to push through HSR all the way to San Francisco at a later date, especially if cost issues necessitate some sort of less-than-complete solution.

It's an interesting concept but I am not convinced it can work. California's record at filling in gaps in the transportation network is not promising. Although I oppose this project, the 710 freeway gap in Southern California has been a missing link in the system for nearly 40 years. NIMBYs in South Pasadena have had a great deal of success blocking its completion (they also helped influence the design of the Metro Gold Line in a less than ideal way, slowing the trains through that city's portion of the route). The cost of the Peninsula route isn't likely to drop anytime soon, and once NIMBY attitudes spread, they have a tendency to get entrenched - the same homeowners stay in their same locations, dominating local politics on the issues. Nobody wants to piss off such a united bloc, so the infrastructure project gets a lower priority.

Another concern is that a non-HSR solution along the Peninsula could sap public confidence in the system itself. It's already too easy for folks to blithely dismiss any government project as inherently doomed to failure, and to cast trains as terminally slow and inefficient. If, after having promised the public a true high speed train from LA to SF - not from LA to SJ - and we can't deliver it, then that may cause a loss of political support, not an increase.

It seems to me the best move is to build on the momentum of November 2008 and rally the public against the small-minded NIMBY interests on the Peninsula who want to block the high speed rail project. HSR, even on the Peninsula, provides jobs, sustainable transportation, a cleaner environment, and less carbon emissions. Californians are not going to allow a small group of people to block that effort. Certainly those who live near the tracks need to be treated fairly, but they do not and should not have the power to compromise this project.

First Peninsula HSR Scoping Meeting

Last night the first of the Peninsula HSR scoping meetings was held at SamTrans headquarters in San Carlos. The Palo Alto Weekly has a mostly decent story - once you get beyond the completely inaccurate lede:

The state agency charged with building a high-speed rail system between San Francisco and Los Angeles has yet to convince Peninsula residents about the merits of having electric trains zip through their communities at 125 mph.

But on Thursday, officials from the California High-Speed Rail Authority took a step toward quelling area fears with the first of three "scoping sessions" this month on what should be included in an environment-impact study on the 800-mile project.

That phrase "yet to convince Peninsula residents" lacks merit, as it is directly challenged by the election returns of November 4 which clearly show Prop 1A passing by a wide margin in San Mateo County - 61% yes to 39% no. Since the population of San Mateo County is overwhelmingly located within a few miles of the HSR route, this strikes me as clear evidence that Peninsula residents are convinced of "the merits of having electric trains zip through their communities at 125 mph." Especially when you consider the high profile the issue had on the Peninsula throughout 2008 - voters in San Mateo County well understood what they were getting themselves into.

The ridiculous lede of the article's author, Gennady Sheyner, is further belied by the rest of the article, which describes a fairly uneventful meeting. The following points stood out to me as the most newsworthy:

Some audience members asked whether Palo Alto or Redwood City will end up with a high-speed rail station. Palo Alto city staff is evaluating potential impacts of a high-speed rail station downtown and the city has not come out with an official stance.

The question over which city would join Millbrae as a stopping point between San Francisco and San Jose probably won't be answered for at least a year. The authority is in the "amoeba phase" of putting together its environmental impact report (EIR) for the project. The authority expects to work on the analysis and engineering for the San Francisco-to-San Jose segment until 2011.

I think it's safe to say that the final answer to this question will be determined by a combination of the engineering studies and local support. If Palo Alto comes out strongly against a station and Redwood City is supportive, then the CHSRA will likely find a way to make Redwood City work. If the reverse, then Palo Alto. The ideal situation is that both communities support a station and the engineering and planning work alone determines it on its merits. But that's not likely to happen - politics will play a role in the outcome, primarily the politics in each city.

Quentin L. Kopp, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said 28 private companies, including Goldman Sachs, had previously expressed interest in investing in the project.

But he said it's not clear what effect the worsening economy would have on private contributions.

Kopp said the authority's consultant and management group are now reaching out to potential investors to gauge their current level of interest.

I would be surprised if firm answers are received at this time. The economic crisis is starting to dramatically and rapidly worsen and within months we will be in a global Depression. Once that happens things will actually start to shake out and we can get a clearer picture of which companies can participate. It may take until 2010 to get some firm answers on private participation.

Palo Alto City Councilmember Yoriko Kishimoto attended the meeting and asked authority officials about potential parking facilities at the proposed stations. Kopp said the agency has yet to resolve that question, though the answers may lie with the host cities.

"I think in the end it will probably be up to each city," Kopp said. "We may make a recommendation, but I don't personally believe in usurping local authority."

This is a very smart statement by Kopp. It is something that needs to be worked out with each host city, although I think the bias needs to be against providing a lot of parking. Some, but not too much, with the details to be worked out by planners who emphasize sustainability and transit accessibility. It goes without saying Kopp's reply is the diplomatic one, and leaves the question in Palo Alto's lap, where it probably belongs - let them hammer out the question of whether they want to encourage driving or not.

The comments section of the article includes some questions from Palo Alto residents about the impact to the community in terms of HSR's footprint - how many houses may be taken, what about parks and schools along the route? Definitely questions that should and will be answered as the project engineering continues. One resident wonders why they don't just put HSR down the middle of Highway 101, which aside from being a stupid idea in its own right misses the point of HSR on the Peninsula - to help upgrade Caltrain's service capacity as well as connect HSR from San José to San Francisco.

HSR denier Martin Engel has decided that having lost the battle over HSR itself, a tunnel in Menlo Park/Atherton is his new white whale:

CHSRA against tunnels? Not really. They do want a tunnel between S.Tomas Expressway and the Diridon Station. Rafael has pointed this out for us already....

Even though Kopp, in his royal declarations, has denied bond issue funding for the 1.5 mile tunnel to the Transbay Terminal, we all know that it will happen regardless. So, they don’t oppose tunnels and therefore, given that this new rail system will be in business for another 145 years, it should be underground. Not because of NIMBYs like us, but because every major city has its intercity rail systems and commuter subways underground. San Francisco will. The Peninsula should. Major rail systems have no business running down the middle of high-density, high population cities. In 75 years, that's what the Peninsula will be.

By this logic, Martin, the entire system should be built underground whenever it is in or near a major metro area. It is not in fact the case that every major city has its intercity and commuter rail systems underground; there are numerous European examples where this simply is not the case.

Engel clearly does not care about the overall project, since paying for a tunnel on the mid-Peninsula would be a colossal and unnecessary waste of money for the CHSRA, which needs to, you know, build the entire line from SF to LA. Just as in the battle over Prop 1A, now in the discussion over the tunnel Engel believes that the entire state of California's budgetary and transportation policies should be oriented to give him exactly what he wants as a property owner near a rail line that was built a century before he even acquired the property.

Martin Engel may never admit this, but Menlo Park and Atherton should: unless they plan to pay for it themselves there is no chance whatsoever that an HSR tunnel will be built through their communities. None. And maybe that's the point here - Engel is merely trying to whip up public controversy in hopes of derailing the project (his term, not ours). A shame, really - Peninsula residents should come to their own conclusions about the project, instead of catering to a single individual.

The next meetings will be held:

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.m.

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.

Silly Fearmongering on the Peninsula

In today's San Mateo County Times John Horgan paints a ridiculous picture of an HSR project doomed to destroy Peninsula communities. Of course, since this is the same guy who confused Colma and Bayview I suppose we should take his brand of HSR denial with a grain of salt. Still, he's not likely alone in his opinion, and any opportunity to explain how HSR will benefit the Peninsula is worth taking.

Horgan writes:

THERE is a fresh sense of urgency in some San Mateo County communities as plans for high-speed electrified rail along the Peninsula proceed faster than originally anticipated.

Passage of Proposition 1A last November, which provides an infusion of nearly $10 billion to get the project rolling, was just the start. Now, it appears entirely possible that the federal government, which is printing money faster than anyone can spend it to counter a very tough recession, will inject more billions into California, some of it for transportation infrastructure....

The deadline for local comments, concerns and suggestions regarding these efforts is now less than six weeks away.

OMG doom! They're coming to bulldoze your communities tomorrow!!1!!1

Well, nevermind the fact that HSR construction won't begin until 2010 at the earliest, and even then it'll be focused on the test track in the Central Valley. Construction on the Peninsula is several years away at best. We keep hoping here that Obama will include HSR in the stimulus, but that's not a sure thing, and regardless of how the Obama Administration goes about fulfilling its HSR promises, federal money isn't going to accelerate the CHSRA's timetables.

That didn't stop Horgan from trying to create some sense of crisis, and so he goes on:

There is already considerable worry in places such as Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame, portions of San Mateo and other hamlets that the new system will dramatically alter their small-town ambiance by widening the rail corridor, walling it off (thus dividing communities in half), exercising eminent domain and installing unsightly overhead electric wires.

They may not have much choice. The high-speed rail poobahs, in concert with the state of California, have a great deal of authority to forge ahead, regardless of cries of outrage from individual municipalities impacted by what's ahead.

Horgan's revisionism here is hilarious. The rail corridor was there before most of those cities were. (And funny how he uses the term "hamlet" to describe one of California's most highly urbanized corridors.) The "small town ambience" is a modern-day fiction, existing only because of the decline of freight traffic along the route and the desire of some residents to pretend they're in rural New England as opposed to urban California.

The litany of horrific things the HSR project will do to these communities is interesting in what it leaves out - an end to diesel pollution, an end to loud train whistles, an end to deadly collisions between train and automobile and train and man.

Peninsula residents will benefit greatly from those amenities as well as the HSR service itself. No wonder cities like Menlo Park, far from expressing "outrage", voted for Prop 1A as did San Mateo County as a whole. The margins were not close.

There's lots to consider. Take the sensitive matter of placing the rails underground, much as BART has done south of Daly City and Colma.

One high-speed rail honcho has warned privately that going underground will be a doubtful and quite expensive alternative here.

"It would cost three times as much (as a surface option)," he said recently. "If the cities want it underground, they are going to have to pay for it themselves."

Lots of luck. But the guy is probably speaking a frank and depressing truth, or at least something close to it.

Finding a fiscal mechanism for miles worth of a pricey underground approach seems like something of a long shot at this point. But you never know.

Maybe the feds can print even more lucre. Hey, why not? What's another trillion among friends? Hope springs eternal.

Anyone who thinks the federal government would pay for undergrounding the HSR/Caltrain route through the Peninsula is out of their mind. The cities most certainly will have to pay for it themselves, as Berkeley did with BART - and as you might say San Mateo County did with BART, as the cost of undergrounding the line south of Colma was one reason among many for the ongoing cost to the county of the SFO extension.

Besides, there's no better way to cause problems for federal HSR funding than to give HSR deniers the notion that the money is going to help rich folks near Stanford have their own Big Dig. Even if that wouldn't properly describe the project, such nuances escape our opponents.

If these cities want to preserve their late 20th century version of "small town ambience" rather than look to how European cities have built quite livable cities with HSR, or to how their own cities lived for nearly 150 years with a busy rail line, then let them pay for it themselves.

Republican Budget Stalemate Hurts HSR Project

At yesterday's CHSRA board meeting the effect of the state's budget crisis on HSR became clear - unless Republicans stop obstructing a budget solution, the Authority may have to suspend planning and design work, and terminate contracts with consultants and engineers whose accumulated expertise on our HSR project has become vital.

The California High Speed Rail Authority's budget for the current fiscal year, which ends in June, included $29 million from the sales of high-speed rail bonds authorized by voters in November. But because of the state budget crisis, the credit crisis and the poor market for bonds, the state treasurer has not sold any of the rail bonds.

That's left the rail authority without cash at a time when Californians are eager to see the 800-mile fast train system built. At an authority meeting Thursday, officials said they had halted payments on engineering and design contracts in progress and are holding off on awarding new contracts.

"Unfortunately, I have quite a backlog of bills that need to be paid, but no money to pay them," said Carrie Pourvahidi, deputy director for the authority.

The article is a bit misleading on this. The credit crisis and the poor market for bonds are part of the issue. But the state budget crisis is THE central issue. The crisis has led Treasurer Bill Lockyer to refuse to try and sell authorized bonds, and led the Pooled Money Investment Board to stop all infrastructure spending. To the extent that the market for California bonds isn't good because of the budget crisis, it's because the bond markets are concerned that the state may default on its debts.

And why is that a possibility? Because Republican politicians - from legislators to Arnold Schwarzenegger - continue to block a budget solution. I usually try to keep my more partisan comments to Calitics but we cannot escape the fact that it is Republican obstruction alone blocking a solution. Democrats have compromised far more than the media reports - agreeing to nearly $8 billion in spending cuts that have their labor allies VERY angry with them. Speaker Karen Bass agreed to most, but not all of Arnold's demands on cutting environmental and labor protections. But Arnold vetoed the Democrats' solution, and Republicans refuse to budge.

That won't stop HSR deniers from using this manufactured budget crisis to blame HSR. They've done it before - when the CHSRA wasn't funded as a result of the summer budget delay, pushing back the release of the 2008 Business Plan, HSR deniers said it was a sign the CHSRA was a flawed agency unfit to manage the project. It is likely we will see the HSR deniers use thus cash crunch story for the same purposes.

Arnold has proposed giving the CHSRA the funding they need:

On the other hand, the governor's early state budget proposal for the 2009-10 fiscal year includes $123.8 million for high-speed rail, just a half million dollars short of the agency's request.

But if he keeps blocking budget deals, this doesn't really matter. If consultants and engineers are let go, they may decide to take their expertise elsewhere in the country or in the world, and we will not easily replace them.

The big picture involves conservative anti-government ideologies. One reason the HSR deniers oppose the project is they refuse to accept that government can plan and implement this kind of project effectively, even though HSR has been successfully built by governments around the world. By starving government of revenue they are able to "prove" their case with a self-fulfilling prophecy. They opposed Prop 1A and HSR, so they starve the Authority of funds and then say "oh wow they can't manage money!"

California Republicans need to recall their Constitutional obligations to this state and provide it with a balanced budget that protects Constitutionally-guaranteed services - and respects the will of the millions of Californians who voted their endorsement of HSR by approving Prop 1A on November 4.

Two Quick Ones

Busy day, busy week. Winter break cannot come quickly enough. Two stories for your perusal:

1. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has approved the scoping plan for the implementation of the AB 32 carbon reduction goals. As we explained in June CARB sees high speed rail as an important part of their overall goal of reducing carbon emissions 30% by 2020. With the Obama Administration showing its commitment to global warming action this move is all the more important, reminding the state and the country of HSR's role in promoting renewable, carbon-neutral energy.

2. The Press-Enterprise looks at the debate over HSR routing in the Riverside-Perris area - should the I-215 corridor be used, or does the proposed Metrolink Perris Valley Line make this problematic or unnecessary? One problem is that the article is really unclear - it suggests that the discussion over the I-215 corridor is over a connection TO the HSR route and thus the $950 million in Prop 1A funds is at stake. But as the board-approved route map shows the plan is to run HSR itself along the Perris Valley/I-215 corridor. So either I'm missing something or the article is missing something.

Still, it is an opportunity to discuss the Inland Empire, which we've almost never discussed here - but should.

Who Supported Prop 1A?

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released a poll today that, among other subjects, asked voters why they voted as they did on Proposition 1A. The results are an interesting gauge of the reasons for public support for HSR, even if the questions are a bit general and lack the level of depth I'd prefer to see.

In an open-ended question, the top reason voters give for voting yes on the measure is their perception that high-speed rail is important to the future of California (37%). Those who voted yes also think high-speed rail will help fill California’s unmet transportation needs (16%), reduce traffic congestion (10%), and make travel more convenient (10%). Those who voted no are most likely to cite as reasons the state budget deficit or that the state cannot afford it (44%), or that the bond amount is too much (24%).

I'd like to see more detail on what they mean by "important to the future of California" - providing sustainable transit? Green jobs? Reduce carbon emissions? Save at the pump? Spur smart growth? Still, this result does indicate that our activism should continue to emphasize that HSR is important to our future - no matter which specific reason we give at any particular moment. I think we did a pretty good job of doing that during the campaign.

The poll did provide some information on other reasons for support, many of which revolve around improving the quality, speed, and convenience of transportation. It comes as no surprise that fiscal reasons played a big role in motivating the No voters. That should give us renewed purpose in ensuring that HSR is built as close to the budget estimates as possible, and that we are successful in getting federal funding.

The poll also showed some of the party splits:

Dems: 65% yes, 35% no
Reps: 34 y, 66 n
Independent: 52 y, 48 n

No surprise there. PPIC also attempted a generational breakdown, but given that 18-54 is so broad as to be meaningless, I'm not sure how much it tells us:

Age 18-54: 55 y, 45 n
55 and up: 49y, 51 n

The final margin of victory was 52.6% yes, 47.4% no, with almost exactly 625,000 votes separating the two. It's a significant margin of victory, but not a landslide either.

Going forward we need to continue to emphasize how important HSR is to our state's future - and why that is the case. We also need to drill down to the local level - show why HSR is important to specific cities and regions. The coming campaign for federal funding will provide an opportunity to do exactly that, sustaining the public support demonstrated last month and ensuring that Californians continue to embrace their high speed future.

Thanksgiving Open Thread

According to the San Francisco Chronicle holiday travel was unusually light at SFO yesterday - the economic crisis keeping more folks at home? Perhaps people chose to drive to their in-state destinations but as anyone who has tried Interstate 5 around a holiday knows, the two lanes get backed up very fast. It once took me 10 hours to make it back to Berkeley from Santa Ana the day after Christmas on I-5 - nearly twice the usual travel time.

Obviously you know where I'm going with this. Ten years from now travelers won't have to choose between expensive airfares, costly and time-consuming car trips, or staying home for the holidays. High speed rail will provide a fast and affordable way to visit your family or friends. I can only imagine the TV reports from November 2018 - busy scenes at the Transbay Terminal, Diridon Station, LA Union Station.

Ten years from now high speed rail will become part of the fabric of everyday life in California. We'll wonder - rightly - how we ever got along without it.

And what am I thankful for? The 6,512,189 Californians who voted to make HSR a reality by passing Proposition 1A earlier this month.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving, everyone.

Fast Tracking Infrastructure Stimulus

Former LA Times reporter and author Bill Boyarsky writes in today's Times about the value of public works as economic stimulus - and the barriers to their swift completion. After mentioning the passage of Prop 1A and LA's Measure R, Boyarsky goes on to write:

The Depression projects were built in a hurry, driven by economic need. Will the new crop also be put on a fast track?...

In recent years, neighborhood organizations have fought many such projects and unrestricted development. They, along with environmental groups, have pushed politicians to adopt regulations to protect the environment. Some of their objections were valid. But over the years, great projects have been stopped or stalled.

These regulations are necessary to not just securing the public interest and environmental protection, but they also help ensure that projects get built in the best way possible. At least that's the intention. It's not the rules themselves that slow construction but the lack of bureaucratic funding to help the permit reviews get done quickly and thoroughly.

The best way to ensure this process is expedited - so that the stimulus effects of infrastructure like high speed rail arrive quickly when they're most needed - is to get up-front funding. Arnold Schwarzenegger's preference, to bypass environmental reviews for infrastructure stimulus, is neither sound nor necessary and would probably just delay projects as it makes lawsuits much more likely. But if agencies like the CHSRA were given adequate funding to finish all engineering and environmental reviews quickly, then actual construction could begin that much sooner.

Boyarsky also writes about the rise of NIMBYism. Obviously that is something which will impact the HSR project - already Atherton and Menlo Park have sued the CHSRA on essentially NIMBY grounds, even though Menlo Park voters actually supported Prop 1A. Prop 1A got a considerable margin of victory and the local rail proposals in the North Bay, Santa Clara County and LA County received over 2/3 support, all of which indicate that there is a massive amount of support in California for passenger rail infrastructure projects. That will help overcome NIMBY objections.

So will a clear explanation of the economic value and necessity of these projects. Californians want these projects built - why should a few objectors along the route hold it up indefinitely?

The stick has to be matched with a carrot, however. The CHSRA needs to start working as soon as possible with communities along the route to finalize design and hold public meetings to explain to the public what is going to happen and allow the public to provide their input. An open process that welcomes public involvement is by far the best way to ensure that public support for the project is sustained. It also has the political benefit of isolating the more stubborn NIMBYs.

Some decisions will not be easy - Menlo Park comes to mind. But the sooner a public process begins, the more likely it is that the process can proceed smoothly to completion, saving time and money. For that public process to be as effective as possible, the CHSRA is likely to need lead time and staffing support that a greater infrastructure stimulus package can provide.

Boyarsky's article also describes the social and cultural impact of infrastructure projects during the Depression:

Historian Kevin Starr, in his book, "Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California," wrote of "the power of public works ... as therapy for a battered economy -- and symbol of shared identity and purpose ... millions experienced the healing symbolism of collective action in a time of great social crisis."...

And there should be some appreciation of the historical significance, even the majesty, of the task. During the Depression, the unemployed got real jobs building the schools, bridges, libraries, dams, highways, city halls and courthouses we use today. The water that supports Southern California was delivered through the labor of workers on Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Or, as Woody Guthrie wrote of another Depression-era dam on another river, Grand Coulee on the Columbia, "Your power is turning our darkness to dawn. So roll on, Columbia, roll on."

Guthrie was in the employ of the Bonneville Power Administration when he wrote Roll On Columbia, Roll On. Dorothea Lange was in the employ of the Farm Security Administration when she took her famous photos. The CHSRA has done something similar in 21st century media with the NC3D animations. I hope they will continue to appreciate the power of the visual image as the project unfolds.

I know we do. In early 2009 this blog will undertake a photo and video trip of Phase I of the HSR route from SF to Anaheim. The high speed rail project is going to be one of the most transformative projects this state has ever seen. We're going to ensure it gets the social and cultural profile it deserves, in addition to the political and financial support it requires.

Transbay Again

Steven T. Jones has a good article on the fight over the Transbay Terminal in today's San Francisco Bay Guardian, giving some important background details on how an all-too-familiar kind of San Francisco political spat is affecting the debate over who will fund the downtown rail extension into the Transbay Terminal.

First and foremost, the dispute is a financial dispute. As Jones writes of Quentin Kopp's basic attitude:

Kopp is more interested in stretching this $10 billion bond far enough to complete his project. So he’s bristling at efforts by the TJPA to ensure that it’s first in line for the money.

My initial take on this last week was that Kopp was trying to make it clear that the Prop 1A funds are no free for all, and Jones's article supports that interpretation. Kopp explained his reasoning in a letter he wrote to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority on November 13:

Your staff continually seek to insinuate the Transbay Joint Powers Authority in activity which pertains strictly to the consummation of the California High Speed Rail Project. Your October 17, 2008 staff report declares that the total cost ‘of [your project’s] rail component is $2.996 billion.’ It then represents that $2,349,000,000 must be obtained for your project. Please do not attempt to secure California High Speed Rail Project funds to defray the enormous costs of the 1.4 mile ‘downtown rail extension.’ Such effort will not be welcomed by me. Moreover, as far as I am concerned, and I will so state publicly, the California High Speed Rail Project can, as necessary, utilize the terminal at Fourth Street and Townsend Street in San Francisco effectively and efficiently, and at a cost less than the aforementioned cost of your moving it.

As most of us agreed when this subject came up last week, while Kopp is technically correct that HSR could utilize the 4th and King terminal, the Transbay Terminal is a vastly superior solution. Jones quotes several unnamed "sources in the transportation world" who reach the same conclusion. And as I pointed out, the CHSRA board unanimously endorsed the Transbay Terminal as the preferred San Francisco HSR terminus, Kopp included. The Transbay Terminal's consultants fully understand the importance of the downtown extension:

Adam Alberti from Singer and Associates, tells the Guardian that Kopp has his numbers wrong and that TJPA will only be seeking $700-$800 million in Prop. 1A funds for the extension (the rest would come from other sources), which is about the same amount as he said it would cost to renovate the Caltrain station to handle the millions of new passengers the trains would draw.

“The facility is being designed to be the northern terminus for high-speed rail,” Alberti told us. “Their business plan is predicated on it coming into Transbay Terminal.”

Translation: the TJPA feels confident that despite Kopp's bluster, the CHSRA cannot and will not abandon the downtown extension. Eyeball to eyeball, they're convinced Kopp will blink first.

Of course there's more to this dispute than just finances. Kopp is upset with the director of the TJPA, Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan and Singer and Associates:

The letter also mocked the expertise of “your executive director, staff or publicity agents,” something Kopp went even further with a few days later when the Chronicle’s Matier and Ross brought the private spat out into the public (although they didn’t reference the earlier letter, which even Singer and Associates didn’t know about until today).

"I am not going to pay $2.5 billion to move a track 1.4 miles," Kopp said in that article, going on to say Ayerdi-Kaplan "is annoying ... and she and her flacks need to stay out of our hair."

Jones thinks Kopp has a point:

Ayerdi-Kaplan has been inaccessible in recent years and has stumbled into unnecessary fights with the Mayor’s Office, members of the Board of Supervisors, and neighbors of the project. It’s also disconcerting that a public agency feels a need to hide behind one of the most expensive and controversial PR firms in the city. So there’s probably a bit more going on here than what Alberti labeled “a personality clash with Maria Ayerdi.”

Still, the downtown extension really is a key part of the HSR project's success. We want the best transportation system possible and while HSR could survive losing the Transbay Terminal, it is immeasurably strengthened by having it.

As I concluded the last time we discussed this, the missing link is leadership. Neither Kopp nor Ayerdi-Kaplan seem to be providing it, instead engaging in a turf war that doesn't do anyone any good. Both of them need to realize that they need each other to be successful. And it's likely going to take outside pressure to make that realization stick.

There are any number of people who could provide that leadership. A certain San Francisco mayor with gubernatorial ambitions in 2010, for example. Or Senator Dianne Feinstein, herself a possible candidate for governor, someone who has the heft and relationships to help resolve this situation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, yet another San Franciscan, would also be well positioned to help resolve this - especially if federal money can grease the wheels of a deal between the CHSRA and the TJPA.

We "alternative transportation geeks," as Jones calls us, have a lot at stake here. The Transbay Terminal downtown extension project is too important to all of us to fall victim to such rivalries. Kopp needs to tone down the rhetoric, Ayerdi-Kaplan needs to construct better working relationships with Transbay partner agencies, and leading California politicians need to provide some leadership and not allow these folks to tear the project apart through internecine warfare. And we HSR supporters need to let everyone know that the project, and not the personalities, are what matter most.

Florida's Cautionary Tale

California isn't the first state to get this far along on building a high speed rail project. Texas and Florida have been there before us, and both projects fell apart. In Texas Southwest Airlines and then-governor George W. Bush helped kill the project, which was already weak because the state hadn't offered any funding.

Florida had gotten much further along in the process, as the Lakeland Ledger reminisced yesterday:

Florida was working on establishing high-speed rail links when Gov. Jeb Bush was elected in 1998. But during his first two weeks in office, Bush killed the project. In 2000, Lakeland businessman C. C. "Doc" Dockery, also a former chairman of the Florida High-Speed Rail Commission, managed to gain 53 percent approval for a constitutional amendment that called for work to begin on a high-speed rail link by Nov. 1, 2003.

But in 2004, Bush and some supporters in the Legislature had the issue back on the ballot to repeal the law. That amendment passed with 64 percent support, although the High-Speed Rail Commission still remains in existence, but has been mostly inactive.

"Those trains would be up and running now," if Bush hadn't interfered, said Dockery last week. "It would have created a construction boom and a lot of jobs."

There is a key difference between California, Texas and Florida - we have a clearly-identified and secured state funding source. Neither Texas nor Florida had that, which made it easier for the Bush Brothers to kill high speed rail in those states.

That doesn't mean our own project is safe. We've already seen HSR deniers call for the bond sales to be delayed. You can be assured that the deniers, and some Republicans in Sacramento, will continue to resist this project by refusing to sell the bonds, refusing to spend the bond money, or throwing up other delays. And there will be those in Congress who will resist using federal money to help build our project. They didn't respect the will of the voters in Florida after 2000 - and they may not do the same here in California after 2008.

Florida's experience is a stark reminder of the need to be vigilant in protecting our victories on high speed rail. We'll continue to keep you informed about the political battles within California and in the Congress over HSR and let you know when and how to get involved to ensure that our high speed train gets built.