US Senate HSR Vote To Come Today?

Back in July the US House of Representatives approved $4 billion for HSR for FY 2010 - that's in addition to the $8 billion in the February stimulus. And as I reported a few days later, a Senate panel cut that number to just $1.2 billion.

The Midwest HSR Association, which has been impressively upping its activist game this year, believes that a final, full Senate vote could come as soon as today. They have put together an action page allowing you to email your Senators to support matching the full $4 billion appropriated in the House.

This would be a perfect opportunity for Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to step up and show leadership for California high speed rail by ensuring there's as much federal money available as possible.

And it's especially important that we get this money this year, as it looks a transportation bill may not happen this year. That bill is where a true commitment to long-term funding for HSR can emerge. Already the right-wingers are launching a broad campaign to try and gut HSR funding. Our activism is important to ensure they don't succeed.

The Play To Block HSR Stimulus Funds

The California High Speed Rail Authority held its monthly meeting today, and included a project phasing workshop after the regular meeting, part of Chairman Curt Pringle's efforts to provide more opportunities for the public to get involved with providing feedback on the planning process. One of the outcomes of today's meeting was that the Authority is becoming more assertive in providing management and oversight:

Under the leadership of newly elected board chairman, Curt Pringle, the Authority created three standing committees:

* Executive Administrative Committee: Chairman Curt Pringle, Judge Quentin Kopp, Director Fran Florez
* Operations Committee: Directors Richard Katz, Rod Diridon, Jr. and Russ Burns
* Finance: Directors Tom Umberg, David Crane and Lynn Schenk...

Additional organizational transparency measures include maintaining and keeping current the California High-Speed Rail Authority Web site, posting all applications and other required documentation....

Discussed proposal for development of new “investment grade” ridership and revenue forecasts to assist in attracting public-private partnerships.

All of which is quite welcome.

The board apparently also discussed fast-tracking certain deadlines to enable more stimulus funding to arrive in California. It's hard to figure out exactly what this refers to - the article from ABC/7 in LA is written at something resembling a 6th grade level and is maddeningly vague. But whatever was discussed and decided, it was enough to provoke some of the usual suspects into their usual outrage:

"The biggest danger is that citizens don't get heard, alternatives don't get considered. They don't want to study any route alternatives. And to me, that's absolutely wrong when you're doing a $40 billion project," said Richard Tolmach, California Rail Foundation....

"You can't short-cut the process on a high-speed train. You end up with a mess," said Tolmach.

Tolmach is not being truthful here - the CHSRA spent 11 years studying route alternatives. He's just unhappy they didn't pick his preferred route.

More significant than Tolmach's desire to study the project until 2049 is his implication that stimulus funds are less important than building the project his way. This is a completely crazy approach, jeopardizing the entire HSR project and the federal funds it needs to be built over a relatively minor spat over a routing choice.

Tolmach is joined in working to undermine the HSR stimulus funds by the Planning and Conversation League, which last month sent this rather extraordinary letter to a bunch of state legislative leaders:

PCL Letter Re Budget Bill

The key section is quoted below:

Lastly, we would like to rebut several false claims made recently by the Authority. First, the Authority has made the claim that forcing them to do a thorough review of the Bay Area segment will cost the state Stimulus funding. This is not true. Work on the San Francisco to San Jose segment, beyond electrification of the existing tracks and work on the Transbay Terminal, will not qualify for stimulus funding since the environmental review is not currently scheduled to be done in time, even without a complete review of alternate alignments.

But that's not a widely shared point of view, particularly about the Transbay Terminal's eligibility for stimulus funds. However it is designed, the train box needs to be part of the TBT project from the start, and stimulus funds are part of how that will occur. PCL is willing to jeopardize that because of their desire to place a small piece of the project - the Altamont alignment - over the project as a whole.

PCL is also willing to make threats and pass it off as self-fulfilling prophecy, writing in the letter that unless the CHSRA does exactly what PCL wants, there will be more lawsuits, costing the state money. PCL claims that if CHSRA caves to their demands, the state will "save money in the long run" but it's unclear how a lawsuit would match the multibillion dollar HSR stimulus PCL is willing to risk here.

I've often stated my thoughts on Altamont vs. Pacheco: each has their pros and cons, but the decision has been made to route the long-distance trains over Pacheco, the high speed commuter trains over Altamont, and that it's time to accept it and move on for the sake of the entire HSR project.

By threatening HSR stimulus funds, groups like the PCL are showing that the HSR project as a whole isn't relevant to their work. There's no reason the CHSRA, the state legislature, the governor, or the people California should listen to such financially reckless thinking.

Ryan Avent Demolishes Ed Glaeser's Attack on HSR

Harvard economist Ed Glaeser posted the second in his HSR evaluation series for the New York Times' Economix Blog yesterday. There are several problems with his study, particularly his choice of Dallas-Houston as his example to assess HSR costs. Matthew Yglesias criticized this pick as being unrepresentative and not even being part of the official USDOT HSR route map. I wouldn't hang my hat on that latter factor to undermine Glaeser, since the USDOT HSR map will be updated this fall, and will likely include Dallas-Houston, which is part of the "Texas T-Bone" HSR project.

But is Dallas-Houston a representative corridor? Ryan Avent, writing at Streetsblog Capitol Hill, argues it isn't:

Why would he choose this corridor to examine? Why not begin with the most natural place to construct true HSR -- the Northeastern Corridor -- or the state moving fastest toward building its own true HSR network -- California?

Well, Glaeser was able to use Dallas' low share of commuters taking transit to knock the corridor's estimated ridership down by half. Transit's share of commuting in Los Angeles is nearly three times that in Dallas. In San Francisco, transit's share, at 32.2 percent, is more than seven times larger than in Dallas. Presumably this difference had something to do with his choice.

The Texas T-Bone scored pretty low on The Transport Politic's assessment of US HSR routes. Obviously Glaeser has not picked a representative sample. But Avent argues Glaeser's approach is more fundamentally flawed because of how his metrics work:

This is a bad beginning for Glaeser, but it actually gets worse. He presents a formula for determining whether the direct benefits of rail are worth the costs:

Number of Riders times (Benefit per Rider minus Variable Costs per Rider) minus Fixed Costs.

That seems simple, does it not? Perhaps a little oversimplified? But it must be so, says Glaeser:

I’m simplifying, but a formula needs to be simple if interested parties can seriously debate the numbers, and the only way that America is going to get to the right answer on public investments is if numbers trump rhetoric.

But it matters which numbers we're considering, and omission of important variables that planning experts take seriously is not the way to conduct this debate.

The simple fact is that Glaeser's stripped-down formula obscures far more than it reveals. Again, as I mentioned at the beginning, I am hesitant to judge this series a mere one part in, but the way he has begun here is simply irresponsible.

What are his long-term assumptions? How quickly does he think the population of the Dallas and Houston metropolitan areas will grow? What will that population growth do to the number of people living within easy reach of a train station? How will that population growth interact with planned expansions of local transit systems?

How sensitive are his projections of changes in oil prices? Do they take into account the effect of changing demographics on demand for various kinds of housing and transportation?

In short, Glaeser has left an enormous amount of stuff out of his calculations, exactly as I predicted he would. Avent makes the point Morris Brown expected me to make about the cost of doing nothing:

And that brings us to a final point (which, again, Glaeser may ultimately address): What is the proposed alternative?

Is it doing nothing? Then at what point does the rising cost of congestion justify construction of something? Let's say an alternative is new airport capacity; well, how do the costs and benefits there work out, and how does that math change with oil at $150 per barrel?

Or perhaps an alternative is new highway capacity. Can we see a cost-benefit analysis for that, and how that varies with oil prices, congestion levels, and so on? If we assume that drivers will need to pay the full maintenance cost of the highway network already constructed via a user fee (and currently they're coming up well short), what does that do to expected demand for rail?

Even if you accept the numbers that Glaeser uses (and one shouldn't automatically do so), you're left with almost nothing -- an amateurish, back-of-the-envelope analysis for a corridor that's not even part of the current Obama administration plan. What is this supposed to prove, exactly?

As is typical with conservative economists, HSR is treated as if it will exist in a vacuum, unrelated to any other changes in transportation, land use, oil prices, carbon taxes, population growth, or other costs.

I'm with Avent on this - Glaeser's metrics don't hold up. I'm curious to see part three, but I am not any less doubtful than I was after part one.

Will the New York Times Provide A Fair HSR Assessment?

The Economix Blog at the New York Times is launching a multi-part series on high speed rail, beginning with this post by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. As a general rule I tend to dismiss any analysis of passenger rail that thinks a Simpsons episode has any role to play in the assessment (but then I did live through the endless and ultimately self-defeating debate over the Seattle monorail project, so perhaps I'm biased). But Glaeser has a high-profile soapbox to make his assessment, and as he is promising a fair analysis, it's worth taking this seriously.

Glaseser's basic approach can be gleaned from the following quotes:

I would be delighted to share the president’s optimism about high-speed rail, but if benefits do not exceed the costs, then America will just be living through a real-life version of “Marge vs. the Monorail,” where the residents of the Simpsons’ Springfield were foolishly infatuated with a snazzy rail project oversold in song by Phil Hartman’s character.

Economics doesn’t have any inherent opinion on trains, but it does strongly suggest the value of cost-benefit analysis, which may be the best tool ever created for evaluating public investments.

Already Glaeser is off to a bad start. By framing HSR as presidential optimism bordering on hucksterism and demanding a "cost-benefit analysis" he is assuming HSR is guilty until proven otherwise. HSR is cast as an unproven, almost mythical concept. Nowhere in this introductory post does Glaeser mention other HSR systems around the world, all of which generate operating surpluses and have successfully met their ridership goals (although it usually takes several years to reach that point).

In fact, as Glaeser lays out his methodology for the series, it seems that the numerous other HSR projects aren't going to put in an appearance at all:

I will spend the next three blog posts on the major costs and benefits of high-speed rail. The costs include up-front construction and operating costs. The benefits include direct benefits to riders, indirect benefits include reductions in carbon emissions and traffic congestion, and any indirect aid that rail gives to local economies and to national economic recovery.

I'm not quite sure how a credible analysis can be given without looking at the experience of other HSR projects around the world. But even if we were to limit our study to the US - flawed methodology, but let's play along - Glaeser's metrics leave quite a lot out.

Glaeser is likely going to assume that the cost of doing nothing is zero, as he gives no indication that the construction and operating costs will be compared to the construction and operating costs of new freeway lanes and new airport terminals and runways that will be needed to handle future traffic. We spent virtually all of 2008 on this blog reminding people that the cost of doing nothing is NOT zero - that any assessment of HSR's costs must be done in the context of the costs of alternatives.

This is almost never done for passenger rail, let alone HSR. The default assumption, even among academics (and especially among economists) is that the cost of not building passenger rail is always zero. Rail projects are usually framed as a new, novel, and probably unnecessary cost. It gets held to standards and metrics no other form of transportation is ever held to, especially automobile transportation, whose costs are not only far from zero, but are far higher than the cost of HSR.

The list of benefits of HSR also seems unusually limited. Glaeser doesn't include the savings on oil consumption, or the financial benefits of reduced pollution. He does plan to mention "indirect" benefits, hopefully to be measured along the lines of the green dividend, but he apparently isn't going to examine the benefits of greater urban density that HSR will encourage.

Granted, this first post is like the introduction of a dissertation - doesn't really offer much in the way of hard analysis. But what analysis is advanced here isn't exactly encouraging:

The up-front costs of rail are primarily the cash outlays, and these are perhaps easiest to quantify. The Government Accountability Office’s summary of building costs in Europe range from $37 million to $53 million a mile. The Japanese lines cost from $82 million to $143 million a mile. (Higher costs in Japan reflect difficult earthquake-prone terrain and expensive land.) Cost estimates in the United States range from $22 million a mile, for a Victorville, Calif., to Las Vegas route, to $132 million a mile for connecting Baltimore and Washington.

These figures are all debatable, but anyone who thinks that the G.A.O. got it wrong needs to come up with alternative figures that are equally plausible. As such, the cost of a 240-mile line, like the one that could connect Dallas and Houston, would probably run about $12 billion, but it could be as cheap as $6 billion or as expensive as $24 billion, and these are the numbers that we have most confidence about.

Actually, what is most in need is a clear definition of what makes a cost estimate "plausible." We need to see the logic and methodology behind an estimate. Land, labor, materials, etc - these costs can be estimated, and even though the estimates sometimes vary, there should always be a measurable reason for the variation - different assumptions about how land values will change in coming years, etc.

One reason I am so persistently critical of the "omg California HSR will cost $80 billion" claims are that those estimates are never explained. They're numbers pulled out of thin air. If someone sat down and looked at every single expenditure, questioned the assumptions, gave their own estimates for those expenditures, explained the reason for giving a different estimate on each piece, and then totaled it up and said "hmm this is higher than predicted" then that analysis would be quite welcome.

Unfortunately there's just something about passenger rail that seems to make some people think that it's perfectly fine to just pull numbers out of thin air and pass them off as if they are reasonable and credible. I don't know if that's Glaeser's plan, but what he's offered here isn't exactly encouraging.

So we will watch the next posts in the series (to be published once a week) with interest, but with skepticism. It's hard to shake the feeling that we're playing with a stacked deck on this one.

House Approves $4 Billion for HSR

Congress is moving full steam ahead on HSR funding:

Yesterday, the House approved a $123.1 billion transportation and housing bill for fiscal-year 2010.

The measure would provide $4 billion for high-speed rail (HSR), $3 billion more than the Obama Administration had sought in the next fiscal year for HSR and intercity passenger rail. The bill also would appropriate $1.5 billion for Amtrak — in line with the national intercity passenger railroad’s current funding and the Administration’s request — and $150 million for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

The Senate has yet to begin addressing its version of the spending bill. The House and Senate eventually will have to reconcile any differences between their bills before a measure is presented to President Obama.

Not all of that $4 billion goes straight to HSR projects, as Reuters points out:

The spending bill passed by the House actually sets out $4 billion for high-speed rail, but Democratic officials expect to transfer half of that total to a national infrastructure bank that would give grants and make loans for large-scale transportation projects, another Obama priority.

All of this is a good start, but the big question - how to pay for a long-term project to build out a national high speed rail system - remains up in the air. Republicans are adamantly opposed to any new tax, and the Obama Administration is not exactly in a mood to go around raising lots of taxes (the health care tax increases will be a big enough battle).

Now Is The Perfect Time To Build A Railroad

What do the Golden Gate Bridge, Shasta Dam, and the Central Valley Water Project have in common? They are all products of the Great Depression. At a time when both California and the federal government were strapped for cash and suffering the effects of a major economic downturn, government decided to use infrastructure projects to provide economic recovery in both the short and the long term. Each project continues to provide economic activity 70 years later. Each has paid for itself many times over.

Last fall we spent a lot of time on this blog debunking the New Hoovers who claimed that now was the wrong time to build high speed rail - that despite the clearly successful model of the big 1930s infrastructure projects, California should embrace austerity and follow a different path, even in spite of the need and economic benefit of high speed trains. Here in the summer of 2009 we find that this attitude persists. However, as the enormous scale of the recession has become undeniable, the New Hoovers have had to find another reason to argue against infrastructure projects. As Dan Walters shows in the Sacramento Bee today, the state budget mess is providing the new excuse for New Hooverism:

Is this the time to launch construction of a high-speed railroad line between Northern and Southern California that will cost at least $40 billion, much of it from bonds to be repaid from a state budget that's already gushing red ink?

Yes, say its fervent advocates, contending that a bullet train, similar to those in Europe and Japan, will reduce air and auto congestion, reduce greenhouse gases and generate many billions of dollars in economic benefits.

Walters doesn't give his opponents or HSR much credit. He ignores the effect of those "many billions of dollars in economic benefits" - does he think that the state of California or its budget can afford to turn down the jobs and tax dollars that come from the HSR project? Construction workers' pay is taxed, as is their spending. HSR saves travelers time and money, creating a Green Dividend that fuels economic growth through the savings that sustainable mass transportation creates.

Instead he seems to be arguing from an embrace of misery. His preferred solution to the economic crisis appears to be lowered horizons and mass suffering. To Walters, the budget crisis means that all plans and projects that would spend money must be shelved. Presumably they'll await economic recovery, but that recovery will not occur without those infrastructure projects. Since the phrase "economic recovery" appears to be banned in Sacramento, among both politicians and the media that cover them, it isn't surprising that Walters embraces misery for misery's sake. Suffering and pain will somehow produce recovery - that's the neo-Hooverite model that Walters espouses in his column.

Most of Walters' column is devoted to rather weak attacks on the HSR project that suggest he is simply not very familiar with the key details of the project:

Bullet train advocates have been touting California as qualifying for a significant portion of the $8 billion set aside in federal stimulus money for transit because of the bond issue.

Recently, however, the feds decided to place the Los Angeles-Las Vegas high-speed route promoted by Nevada interests, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in the California system. It raises the specter that huge sums would be spent to make it easier for Californians to spend money in Las Vegas casinos.

In fact, the LA-Vegas HSR project does not appear eligible for HSR stimulus money. Nevada's application for stimulus funds was limited to $1 billion to study maglev from Primm to the Las Vegas Strip, a project that Senator Reid no longer supports. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has repeatedly stated the SF-LA HSR route is the most likely to receive HSR stimulus funds.

The criticism continues, however, questioning both whether a high-speed rail system makes transportation and economic sense and the route adopted by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, especially running trains over the unpopulated Pacheco Pass between San Jose and the Central Valley....Meanwhile, opposition to the Pacheco Pass route appears to be growing because it would mean routing trains down the bucolic San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose. The alternative would be to run trains over the Altamont Pass along Interstate 580 into the Stockton-Tracy area, a more heavily traveled commuter corridor.

But since the alternative route, over Altamont Pass, would have bypassed San Jose entirely, the Pacheco route actually has far more people living along it than Altamont. The fact that nobody lives in the Pacheco Pass itself is actually an argument FOR that alignment, as it means fewer stops for a train whose purpose is to whisk travelers from the Bay Area to Southern California in the shortest amount of time possible. If the goal was to design a commuter railroad, then Altamont would indeed be a preferable choice - which is exactly why the California High Speed Rail Authority plans to develop Altamont as a high speed corridor.

Environmental activists in Palo Alto are complaining about the impact on their city and, somewhat mysteriously, language appeared in still-pending revisions to the 2009-10 state budget that makes allocation of $139 million in high-speed rail planning funds contingent on "alternative alignments" being considered. Advocates of the Pacheco Pass route consider that to be a poison pill and will try to get it removed before a final budget is enacted, if that ever occurs.

Peninsula NIMBYs are a nuisance to the project, and are putting their own personal aesthetic values in alliance with neo-Hooverism in order to block economic recovery. Their opposition is unsurprising and annoying, but it's not a reason to doubt the economic value of the project.

While $9 billion of the voter-approved bond issue is to be used for the system, if and when it is ever built, the remaining $995 million can be spent on local mass transit systems on the assumption that they will improve access to high-speed rail.

There is a suspicion among those who chart the erratic course taken by the bullet train project that when push comes to shove, its only tangible fruit will be those local projects.

Only someone who has paid just passing attention to the HSR project would consider its course "erratic" - the CHSRA is well along the path of finalizing environmental documents, determining the project-level design, and has already built working relationships with the leading HSR experts around the world. Winning voter support for the project AND the $10 billion in bonds it needs to get started was no small accomplishment. And with President Barack Obama and most of the Congress on board, HSR is far from a pipe dream. It is a real plan with a bright and viable future.

But it's understandable why those who have chosen to deny the future would choose to deny the value and viability of the HSR project. For people like Dan Walters, the state's economic and budget crisis means we must lower our horizons and suffer until somehow, apparently through magic, we have economic recovery. For the rest of us, who believe economic recovery is desirable and that it can be produced through infrastructure as it was 70 years ago, the high speed rail project is a necessary part of the project to rebuild California. It's a shame Dan Walters, who has spoken so insightfully in other venues about the need to rebuild California's broken political system, chooses to eschew vision and planning in favor of a morose neo-Hooverism.

Our predecessors did not listen to that kind of talk when planning the Golden Gate Bridge or the Central Valley Project. Nor should we.

Congress Likely To Delay Transportation Bill To 2011

The US Congress is getting a reputation as the place where good ideas go to die. Although currently held by the Democratic Party, the real power lies with center-right Democrats who are generally skittish about significant change, and certainly wary of either spending money, finding new revenues for programs, or both.

We can see this in the health care and the climate change bill - but we can also see it in the discussion of the reauthorization of the Transportation Bill, due in 2009. In the House, Jim Oberstar has been pushing to produce a bill that would better fund public transit and shift the government's priorities away from roads and sprawl. Transportation for America has an analysis of his efforts here - it's a mixed bag so far.

But the most contentious aspect of all is the matter of how to fund the federal government's transportation obligations. The US highway trust fund has been on the verge of insolvency for a while now, dating back to the early Bush Administration. When then-Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta proposed a gas tax increase to fix the problem, President George W. Bush said no, as Mineta recounted earlier this month:

In 2001, knowing the next highway reauthorization was set for 2003, we developed a six-year funding mechanism that called for a 2-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase in the first year, a 2-cent-a-gallon increase in the third year, and another 2-cent-a-gallon increase in the fifth year. As I recall, that would have been a $330 billion proposal and left us with a $7 billion unobligated trust fund balance after six years. We went to the Oval Office, and after we went through the entire presentation, President Bush takes a marker, circles the gas tax increases, and says, "Norm, I don't want any of those tax increases. Get those out."

So we went back and put a CPI inflator on the gas tax in the fifth year. Keep in mind that the gas tax had not been raised since 1993. We returned to the Oval Office, went through the presentation, and afterward President Bush said, "Norm, that's a tax increase. Get that out."

Bush may be gone, but his attitude now dominates a Democratic Congress. As Yonah Freemark noted over at The Transport Politic, there is no consensus on how to fund transportation, and Barbara Boxer suggests the most likely outcome is an 18-month extension of the existing transportation bill, which would push the issue out to beyond the 2010 midterm elections. To Freemark, the problem is that Congress isn't willing to face up to the revenue problem:

More importantly, no one in Congress is being frank about raising revenues to support transportation. Mr. Oberstar’s bill left the funding sections blank, and Mr. LaHood has been openly lobbying against any increase in the gas tax. Ms. Boxer’s comments today reaffirmed her opposition to the same and expressed her unwillingness to support a VMT system, which she called “too intrusive.” No one on the invited panel at the hearing provided serious alternatives to those two funding sources, nor did any senator, though everyone seems convinced that a major program expansion is necessary. Funds from the climate change bill, which might incorporate a carbon cap-and-trade system, may come into play, but those dollars are far off and uncommitted for now.

Mr. Oberstar has been adamant in his desire to push forward the next transportation bill now, but this hearing made clear that the Senate is not going to play along. Ms. Boxer is chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, and her position will effectively block Mr. Oberstar’s bill even if that legislation passes in the House. Without the support of the White House, Mr. Oberstar is loosing ground. His inability to pinpoint a stable funding source is similarly problematic.

What hasn’t been suggested, but that which I will continue to bring up, is a simple abandonment of the idea that transportation must be sponsored by its “users.” We are all beneficiaries of a strong transportation network, and filling the Trust Fund mostly with general fund sources is a viable and long-term solution that would require none of the shenanigans that currently deteriorate efforts to raise the gas tax or impose a VMT. Whether now or in 18 months, we’re going to need something better than today’s non-proposals from Ms. Boxer.

I wholly agree with these statements, and it is certainly time to provide general fund support for transportation projects. Infrastructure, especially mass transit infrastructure including high speed rail, is at the center of this nation's economic recovery effort and our 21st century prosperity. Unfortunately, Congress seems to have totally abandoned any interest in economic recovery or long-term planning, and is instead dominated by obsolete 20th century concerns about the politics of taxes and user fees.

Barbara Boxer's reluctance to propose revenue solutions, and her desire to kick the can down the curb, is part of a growing trend in her approach to policymaking that is much more risk-averse and centrist than we are used to seeing from the more liberal of our two senators. Facing re-election in 2010, Boxer appears to have concluded that she needs to play to an assumed political center, seeking bipartisanship (with James Inhofe? ha!) and avoiding anything resembling a tax increase for fear of how it would play with California voters.

These concerns are misplaced. Californians have shown they will support raising revenue for sustainable transportation solutions, as the November 2008 election made clear. Not just in the passage of Prop 1A, which after all was a bond, but in the passage of outright sales tax increases in Los Angeles, Santa Clara, Marin and Sonoma counties. Those counties have nearly 15 million residents, and over 67% of voters in those counties supported the concept Yonah Freemark described above, of asking everyone to subsidize mass transit, not just those who use it.

Boxer's unwillingness to lead is sadly being matched by President Barack Obama. Over the first six months of the Obama Administration a disturbing trend has made itself clear. Obama likes to talk a big game, and will make public statements promising a new era, broad reform, and an embrace of policy change. He then leaves all the details up to Congress, refusing to get involved in the nitty gritty of the negotiations. As a result Congress's natural tendency to either do nothing or do the wrong thing is asserted, and we get outcomes like an 18-month postponement.

How this affects HSR is unclear. High speed rail will be a part of the new Transportation Bill. How it will be funded remains totally unclear. Obama wants to see a long-term HSR program come out of Congress, but as with so many other aspects of his agenda, Obama is going to have to learn that if he wants Congress to do something, he is going to have to force the issue and make it happen himself.

Until Obama does, the US Congress will remain a graveyard for common sense and smart, proven, effective policy.

Questions for Senator Alan Lowenthal

I have to admit that after reading Senator Alan Lowenthal´s op-ed I am unconvinced that he has actually answered the charges leveled in the original ModBee editorial. And I remain convinced that the evidence shows Sen. Lowenthal does not support the HSR project that a majority of Californians approved in November 2008.

If he wants to ensure transparency and responsibility in how the funds are used, he can do that without messing with how the funds are allocated - including but not limited to the Central Valley maintenance hub.

These are separate matters. But Sen. Lowenthal has chosen to conflate the two, using concerns about "fiscal responsibility" as his cover to gut the system as he has always intended to do.

Since June 2008 this blog has tracked Sen. Lowenthal´s desire to gut the HSR system by turning it into a method to fund merely incremental commuter rail improvements in the Bay Area and SoCal. Nothing in Sen. Lowenthal´s apologia disproves that conclusion about his intentions.

Sen. Lowenthal has shown himself to be quite willing to distort the situation and leave out relevant facts to make the CHSRA look bad. This includes his refusal to mention in the op-ed that the 2008 Business Plan was delayed because of the 2008 state budget crisis, which left the CHSRA without the funds to pay for the business plan.

The report from the Legislative Analysts Office that Sen. Lowenthal requested earlier this year provides further evidence of his desire to cut the Central Valley out from the overall project.

Using "fiscal responsibility" to attack HSR is an old game, as we have also tracked at this blog for quite some time. It is distressing to see Sen. Lowenthal playing that game in order to undermine the HSR project. If Sen. Lowenthal wanted to truly and effectively defend himself, he would answer the following questions (I will give him space on this blog to do so, and will post his replies unedited):

1. Does he support the HSR project as approved by voters in November 2008 - which specified a 220mph train to connect SF to Anaheim via the Central Valley?

2. Will he refuse to be a party to any efforts to tear the HSR system into pieces?

3. Will he admit that the 2008 Business Plan would have been produced on-time had he and his fellow Senators approved the state budget by the constitutionally mandated deadline of June 30?

4. Will he apply his "fiscal responsibility" goals to the Peninsula portion of the project, namely the efforts by a small group of NIMBYs to force the CHSRA to build an tunnel that will cost many more billions of dollars than the business plans currently anticipate for both the Peninsula section and the project as a whole?

5. Will he promise the people of California that his efforts to ensure "fiscal responsiblity" will not jeopardize the state´s chances at winning billions in federal stimulus funding this year for the HSR project?

6. Will he commit to lobbying Congress to pass a Transportation Bill that fully funds the HSR Strategic Plan, and will he acknowledge that this would be sufficient to fully fund the HSR project as laid out in Prop 1A?

We await the Senator´s response.

Tuesday Open Thread

by Rafael

Should CHSRA push back against powerful state legislators like Sen. Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) on plans for a central maintenance hub and test track in the Central Valley or, focus on making sure it can keep paying its consultants in FY 2009-2010 (i.e. live to fight another day)?

Unsurprisingly, the Merced Sun-Star takes a dim view of the Senator's efforts to postpone construction in the Central Valley in favor of projects (e.g. grade separations) in the tail sections of the starter line. Can FRA be expected to draft the rules required for operation at 220mph without a suitable test track? Can CHSRA pre-qualify a shortlist of HSR trainset and technology vendors without one?

Special Elections Have Consequences

by Rafael

Future HSR feeder services cut back, raise fares

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that Caltrain will raise fares and cut service:

The board took no action on the $99.4 million budget plan Thursday - that will come later this month or early next month - but voted unanimously to declare a fiscal emergency. That move allows the transit agency to bypass state environmental reviews and enact service cuts and fare hikes at an accelerated pace.

The decision follows similar ones by BART, SF Muni and AC Transit in the East Bay. Squeezed by cuts in the state budget, reduced commuter ridership and lower sales tax revenues at the county level, all of these bureaucrats essentially have no choice but to increase revenue and/or cut services to plug rapidly expanding holes in their respective budgets.

Down south, Metrolink is also raising fares, but LA Metro will maintain both fares and service levels in FY2010. Indeed, it boasts of service enhancements, even as it cuts expenses by $130 million and taps into reserves. Note that many of these "enhancements" are actually cuts in selected bus routes.

NCTD also intends to maintain both service levels and (most) fares in the coming fiscal year, having already implemented cuts and fare hikes in the current one. MTS in San Diego has passed a framework budget but warns of further cuts to come as it fills in the details.

The mixed picture suggests that Southern California, long considered a bastion of the automobile, now actually has a mass transit network in better fiscal health than the Bay Area. However, the reprieve will only be temporary if the recession last longer than expected.

Special elections have consequences

Amtrak California aka Caltrans' Division of Rail is funded by the state of California, which is all but bankrupt. Since voters rejected a delicate compromise in a complex package of propositions put to them last month, chances are subsidies for the Pacific Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, San Joaquin may well be slashed severely in coming weeks as lawmakers in Sacramento figure out how to balance their budget through cuts alone. Unfortunately, while service cuts and/or fare increases are required at multiple levels in the short term, they also set in motion a vicious circle of ever-decreasing ridership and ever-greater traffic on the state's highways. That's exactly the opposite of what is required for a sustainable recovery and population/economic growth in the long term.

Of course, California is hardly alone in its budget woes, but very few states require a 2/3 majority to pass a balanced budget. Considering its population now exceeds that of Canada, which requires just a simple majority, perhaps it's time to admit the obvious and amend the pertinent sections of the state constitution in 2010 such that the change is hard to reverse. You can either have high taxes and high-quality public services (e.g. dense transit networks at multiple distance scales) or, low taxes and few public services. The other permutations are simply not sustainable, there is no tooth fairy and also no prospect of reasonable compromise.

Having sole authority and responsibility for balancing the budget tends to concentrate the minds of politicians on both sides on drafting feasible, coherent multi-year policies instead of engaging in ideological trench warfare. In addition, there could well be a drop in the number of spending decisions taken via single-issue ballot propositions, especially expensive ones without a dedicated revenue stream. And yes, while I am in favor of California HSR, I do believe direct democracy was a bad way to get it off the ground. Such mega-projects ought to be proposed and promoted not by bureaucrats but by elected officials who are directly accountable to the people.

Turning a vicious circle into a virtuous one

Meanwhile, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is trying to plug a hole of his own in the federal highway trust fund. With healthcare and electricity infrastructure high on the President's domestic agenda, it is possible the next major transportation bill won't be passed before the 2010 midterm elections. For now, expect Congress to kick the can down the road, i.e. to take on more debt rather than raise federal fuel taxes, a concept that is widely perceived as politically impossible. Then again, so was electing an African-American POTUS a couple of years ago.

However, at some point, both the state of California and the Obama administration will have to reconcile their lofty ambitions of green energy and transportation systems with the hard reality that investments in such infrastructure will only pay off if perpetuating the status quo becomes prohibitively expensive for private businesses and consumers alike. No pain, no gain. Both should cut other taxes if and when they can, but they really need to ramp up those on petroleum-based fuels to gradually reduce total vehicle-miles traveled per capita, to partially shield consumers from oil price volatility and, to boost the utilization rates of fixed-cost transit infrastructure (incl. bicycle paths).

Ironically, sharply higher gas prices are also exactly what the domestic auto industry needs to increase profits per sale after it sheds excess unit volume capacity in the context of its present restructuring effort. GM in particular is risking the farm - soon to be your farm - on its expensive E-Flex architecture, essentially electric drive with an "emergency" generator to extend the range.

Meanwhile, HSR already has a proven track record of returning operating surpluses after an initial ramp-up period, overseas and even in the Acela corridor. There is every reason to believe it will thrive without annual subsidies and perhaps even cross-subsidize local and regional connecting transit operations. In the long run, HSR will prove a far superior investment to paving over ever more land with asphalt, precisely because it promotes an alternative to land development patterns that rely on cheap oil while creating additional new opportunities for the US manufacturing sector.

Keeping Perspective on HSR and State Budget

The failure of the budget propositions yesterday have led some to wonder how this will impact high speed rail. It's been discussed in the comments, and is mentioned in a George Will column. George Will has been on a kind of jihad against sustainable policy lately, with his silly attack on Portland and his dishonest misuse of data to undermine action on global warming. So it should be in that vein that we read this:

California’s voters are complicit in their state’s collapse.

They elect and re-elect the legislators off whom public employees unions batten. Also, voters have promiscuously used their state’s plebiscitary devices to control and fatten the budget. Last November, as the dark fiscal clouds lowered, they authorized $9.95 billion more in debt as a down payment on a perhaps $75 billion high-speed rail project linking San Francisco and Los Angeles — a delight California cannot afford.

As you can tell, facts and evidence no longer mean anything to Will - there is no basis for the claim that HSR will cost $75 billion. If "perhaps" is the only justification to toss out numbers, then I think HSR will "perhaps" cost $1.50. I mean, really. WTF.

Of course, Will's argument is deeper. He claims that HSR is unnecessary (a "delight") that we "can't afford" and its mere presence on the book as a partly-funded proposal is to him further sign of how California got into the crisis.

So, here we go again, with arguments that to me were decisively won by our side in 2008. I won't completely repeat myself - go read The Cost of Doing Nothing is Not Zero and Prop 1A and State Bond Debt for starters.

But, it is worth reminding ourselves of the key points:

• If we don't build HSR, that does NOT represent savings to the budget. HSR is itself savings. The cost of expanding airports and freeways to meet the expected future demand has been estimated to be anywhere from $80 to $160 billion. HSR can meet much of that demand for much less of the cost. Further, it does so by providing sustainable transportation, saving money to workers and businesses by liberating them from the vagaries of oil prices.



• HSR is absolutely necessary to economic recovery. Our budget mess isn't the product of overspending but of the worst economic crisis in 60 years. If it were up to folks like Will we'd still be in the Depression - massive public works projects like HSR provide short-term stimulus and long-term economic growth. The 100,000+ jobs the construction will create will pour money into the state's economy and into the state's treasury. On the converse, NOT doing public works like this will help create a downward spiral that will leave California in perpetual crisis.



• HSR does NOT come at the expense of any other budget line item. It's not a matter of firing teachers to build trains. This is because the money for HSR is going to come out of bonds and federal funds. Some might say that's disingenuous since we have to pay for the bonds somehow. But the point I would make is that HSR's costs are amortized over 30-40 years. Teachers need to be hired and paid now. Cutting HSR won't save other services (especially when the current amount of spending on HSR is barely $100 million, whereas the budget deficit is $25,100 million). The problems with the ongoing budget deficit have to be resolved through a mixture of new taxes and economic stimulus. Cutting stuff will actually make the problem worse.

It's not that we support HSR because we are train junkies. We support it because it is an essential part of our economic recovery and vital to providing long-term prosperity in the 21st century. We should not be surprised when the usual suspects and, yes, HSR deniers like George Will use the budget mess to try and push through their usual attack on government and on passenger rail. But we can and should push back against their nonsense.

So What's Happening With The Transportation Bill?

by Robert Cruickshank

As we've mentioned here before, the $8 billion HSR stimulus is just a first step toward a long-term solution of how to fund the development of a faster and more robust intercity passenger rail network in the US. The real money comes in the quintennial Transportation Bill, which is due for renewal this year. President Obama and many Congressional Democrats see that bill as the place where the nation's transportation priorities can finally change, away from massive subsidies to roads and starvation diets for rails. It's perfectly timed to take advantage of a popular new president who has majorities in both houses of Congress - rather than wage an election year battle or deal with a Congress controlled by the other party, Obama can work with allies to craft a new model of funding transportation.

Transportation advocacy groups and reformers are already at work proposing their agendas in an effort to seize the opportunity the Transportation Bill offers. One of the best comes from Transportation For America which yesterday offered The Route To Reform: Blueprint for a 21st Century Federal Transportation Program. The blueprint is an extensive and sensible proposal for decreasing our dependence on oil and cars and boosting rail and other non-motorized methods of transportation. Summarizing it in this post is almost impossible, but I'll pick out some of the best elements:

Performance Targets: Reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled by 16%; Triple walking, biking and public transportation usage; Reduce transportation-generated carbon dioxide levels by 40%; Reduce average household combined housing + transportation costs 25% (use 2000 as base year)

New Federal Transportation Structure: Comprised of four elements: National Transportation Priority Programs (including planning and maintenance backlog); Geographically-Tiered Multimodal Access Program (state, regional, and local); Programs to Complete the National Transportation System (intercity travel, green freight, and "projects of national significance); and Innovation Incentive Programs to boost sustainable and smart growth.

Possible New Revenue Sources: Sales Tax; Gas Tax; Oil Tax; Container and Customs Taxes.

What I really like about the T4America proposal is it emphasizes performance targets that are set up to ensure the development of a passenger rail infrastructure in order to achieve goals we should all be embracing (Peninsula NIMBYs too): reducing dependence on oil, cutting carbon emissions, and saving people money. The whole plan looks quite sensible and workable to me.

Whether it will be incorporated in any way into the final transportation bill is another matter entirely. In the House we have a strong ally in Rep. James Oberstar, Democrat from Minnesota. Oberstar is determined to produce a bill that will boost transit funding, as reported by Infrastructurist:

• The outline calls for "transit equity." Right now the feds pay 80 percent of highway projects and 50 percent of transit projects. That would change.

• It would create DOT agencies focused on a "national strategic plan" and on "mega-projects."

• "DOT's 108 programs [will be consolidated] into four "major formula programs": critical asset preservation, highway safety improvement, surface transportation program, and congestion mitigation and air quality improvement."

• The document seems to call for more transparency with transportation data.

Oberstar has also said that the Transportation Bill has to fund from $400 to $500 billion worth of projects over the next 5 years. If either his approach or T4America's similar approach are successful, we could have a clear source identified for HSR projects. The funding may be explicitly earmarked for HSR or it might be set up to ensure HSR gets it through the program allocations and targets.

The House is likely to produce a very good bill. The Senate, not so much. As has become clear in 2009, the US Senate is where good and sensible ideas go to die. Controlled by right-leaning Democrats in the pocket of banks, large corporate donors, and who are otherwise in thrall to a 1990s-style "pro-business" neoliberal agenda, Senate Democrats are busily planning to water down health care reform, Obama's budget, and the Transportation Bill as well, just as they watered down the stimulus.

One of those who might want a less strong bill than the House is California's own Barbara Boxer. She's up for reelection next year and though she is widely seen as more liberal than Dianne Feinstein, apparently she is worried enough about former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina that Boxer is trying to not look quite as liberal as before, as this Reuters article suggests:

"What I think is very important is to index the gas tax to inflation, because, obviously the gas tax is falling behind," she said at the Reuters Infrastructure Summit. "I also don't want to increase the gas tax, but I want it to keep up."...

The Senate is also considering raising the tax on diesel, changing exemptions to the gas tax given to certain groups, taking a percentage of customs duties, relying on private finance, and charging drivers fees based on Vehicle Miles Traveled, she said.

The bill's authors, though, have rejected attaching a small device to cars to measure Vehicle Miles Traveled, Boxer said.

"We're looking at options. Are there ways for people to -- an honor system, when they register their vehicles -- just say, 'This is the miles I had last year, this is the miles I have this year,'?" she said.

Boxer is inconsistent here - she says she doesn't want the gas tax to rise but then wants to index it to inflation. The fact is that indexing means it will likely rise, although the increase would be somewhat more hidden. As to a VMT box, I'm not sure an honor system is necessary, but perhaps it could be as easy as a DMV staffer checking the odometer when you are up for your annual renewal? (Then again, that would increase pressure on the DMV staff, since currently in California you can renew by mail without having to visit a DMV office.)

Boxer's also uncertain about Oberstar's plan to give the states more flexibility:

Like Oberstar, Boxer wants to pass a transportation bill that emphasizes efficiency and consolidates the numerous transportation programs.

But she wants to maintain the same relationship between the federal government and states, whereas Oberstar is considering giving the states more discretion in spending.

An environmental leader in the U.S. Congress, Boxer said she was finding common ground with Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee that she chairs for reducing traffic and congestion.

That last part is simply absurd, and I'm disappointed in Boxer for saying it. The ranking Republican on that committee is Oklahoma's James Inhofe, a noted global warming denier and opponent of mass transit. Boxer should feel no need or desire whatsoever to work with Republicans, unless they are willing to accept the values that Oberstar and T4America, as well as President Obama are proposing.

Streetsblog SF articulates some more concerns about Boxer:

Any chance of reforming the transportation bill, which advocates are clamoring for, will require deft political maneuvering to mollify ranking committee member Senator James Inhofe.

Several sources said that Boxer's cooperation with Inhofe is simple math. The $312 billion baseline for transportation over six years is insufficient to meet state of good repair needs and set the country on a course for innovation. Minnesota Representative James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, has suggested $400-500 billion would be needed, while the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Organizations (AASHTO) and the American Public Transit Association (APTA) argue in their Bottom Line Report that at least $160 billion will be needed annually. In order get from $312 billion to $500 billion or better, Boxer will need to get approval for new revenue streams, which would require a filibuster-proof majority, something she might not get without Inhofe and other reluctant members on the committee.

Several interviewees also pointed to Senator Boxer's alliance with Inhofe on an amendment in the federal stimulus bill for an additional $50 billion in highway money as a bad sign.

"You have polar bears and glaciers on your website... then throw people back in their cars?" said one official who insisted on anonymity.

I'm used to watching DiFi like a hawk. Not so much with Boxer. The rest of the article notes some more discomfort with Boxer's positions, so I suspect we're going to have to target Boxer frequently this summer as the Transportation Bill works its way through the Senate.

That is, unless it gets pushed back to 2010 as Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia suggested yesterday:

But Sen Mark Warner (D, Va.) is now saying he’s “not sure” that the estimated $500 billion authorization will happen until next year. According to a story by Terry Kivlan in CongressDaily, Warner thinks that “Congress might have too many big-ticket items on its agenda this year to take on a transportation package.” Speaking at an infrastructure-focused conference hosted by the Departments of Transportation and the Department of Commerce, the senator remarked: “I’m not sure you are going to see a full transportation bill put out this year.”

He’s specifically worried about funding availability in light of the fact that revenue from the gas tax, which pays for highway and transit programs, is no longer sufficient to cover outlays. He called this the “elephant in the room” with respect to infrastructure funding.

In short, Warner is saying that he's scared about anything involving fiddling with the gas tax, and that the big bad Republicans might hit Dems on that after a big fight over health care and the budget. What Warner doesn't explain is how 2010 is any better a time to deal with the Transportation Bill, as it would be an election year.

This would be so much easier if the US Senate wasn't populated by the timid and the right-leaning. Unfortunately, we're going to have to deal with them if we want a good Transportation Bill and not something that mindlessly repeats the same flawed anti-transit policies of the past.

Quentin Kopp On Transbay Terminal

In response to yesterday morning's post on the Transbay Terminal Quentin Kopp, chairman of the California High Speed Rail Authority, called me up to chat about the project and to give his side of the story.

First, he said that there is no agreement yet on the Transbay Terminal capacity issue. The Steven T. Jones article in the Guardian shouldn't be taken to imply that any solutions have been reached. The notion of 8 trains an hour at TBT and 4 at 4th and King came from a meeting with MTC engineers, but again it's just a proposal. I asked Kopp what he thought the right solution should be and he said he needed to hear back from his engineers, and that might take up to 6 more months.

Second, Kopp explained from the CHSRA's perspective the debate over the Transbay Terminal solution. Two months ago engineers from the Transbay Joint Powers Agency, the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (Caltrain) and the CHSRA met to discuss the Transbay project. It was there that the engineers, without dissension, agreed that the existing design was inadequate to accommodate the 12 trains per hour that CHSRA requested.

And where did that 12 trains per hour figure come from? According to Kopp, it's based on the 2035 ridership projections in the 2008 study done by Cambridge Systematics.

Third, Kopp emphasized that the Transbay Terminal remains the CHSRA's preferred SF terminal, has been since 2006, and is of course written into Proposition 1A. Kopp does have financial concerns about the project - he quoted a cost figure of $2.8 billion. He believes that TJPA is moving too quickly on this and that CHSRA will be forced to commit some of its $9 billion HSR bond money to the project sooner than he'd prefer.

This is problematic for Kopp because of the possibility of precedent-setting. As he explained it to me, if SF gets a $2.8 billion tunnel and train station, then many other stations and cities along the route will point to that and demand that similar amounts of money be spent on their own preferred station designs and grade separation solutions. Kopp is determined to bring the project in on-time and on-budget, and doesn't want the Transbay Terminal project to suck up an undue amount of the available money at the expense of the rest of the line.

Kopp also expressed dissatisfaction with the track layout, specifically the curves of the track from 4th and King to TBT, but the above issues seem to be at the heart of his and the CHSRA's concerns.

Infrastructurist Compares HSR Projects Around the World

Yonah Freemark, who runs the excellent The Transport Politic, also writes for Infrastructurist where earlier this week he posted a a great chart comparing HSR projects around the world, including our own:


(Click for full size image)

The chart compares our project to the Beijing-Shanghai HSR route, Argentina's TAVe, Israel's Tel Aviv-Jerusalem route, HSL Zuid from the Netherlands to Belgium and Paris, Lyon-Torino, and Saudi Arabia's HSR plan. Our cost per mile is third highest, but does much better than the shorter HSL Zuid line and is comparable with the Lyon-Torino line (whose high costs are likely due to Alpine tunneling).

It also shows a wide difference in what is actually considered as "high speed rail" - only our project, Argentina's, and China's will provide average speeds above 150 mph.

Ultimately this shows that California is actually getting a lot of bang for our buck. We're getting a much longer route than the higher cost trains in Europe. Sure, we're not looking at Chinese levels of cost, but then I don't think we will either want or would accept the labor standards and wages of China either.

CHSRA Gets Its $29.1 Million

As we discussed last month, the legislature's ongoing budget standoff put the California High Speed Rail Authority on the verge of shutting down its operations as it had run out of money to pay contractors and staff. This was an especially worrisome problem for two reasons: 1) the need to continue operations to position California to get HSR stimulus funds, and 2) the need to provide up-to-date information to concerned residents along the proposed route.

Last week the state had a successful sale of bonds, and yesterday the pooled money investment board gave CHSRA the $29.1 million it needed to keep working through the end of June:

California's financially strapped high-speed rail project has received an infusion of $29 million to get it back on track through the middle of the year...

That led most of the private consultants who were performing engineering and environmental reviews to stop working because they weren't being paid, said Mehdi Morshed, the rail board's executive director.

He said the treasurer's decision to issue commercial paper to provide the $29 million was "excellent news."

"We're finally back to work again," he said.

We're probably going to have to have this fight again in June, when the state tackles an $8 billion shortfall (which could be larger if the initiatives on the May 19 ballot fail). Let's hope that we see some true political leadership this time from Sacramento in support of this project.

Daniel Goldberg Reaches New Lows in HSR Denial

On Monday the Ventura County Star ran a good article on high speed rail. That prompted on Daniel Goldberg, who writes a blog for the VC Star's website, to write one of the silliest pieces of HSR denial I've ever seen. Even though it's absurd on its face, it's worth deconstructing these arguments which are likely to be with us for some time, especially as contentious debates over HSR implementation continue.

Goldberg starts with:

On Monday's front page there was an article about $8 billion in stimulus funds that might be allocated to high speed rail. My initial response was "why can't we stop wasting money?" The high speed rail debate has been going on for years, I think if it really was worth it, we would have dont it by now.

Obviously Goldberg has no clue about how major infrastructure projects are designed and permitted in this country, nor is he aware that we were supposed to vote on this in 2004 but Arnold Schwarzenegger insisted on delaying the vote for HSR bonds to 2006, and then to 2008.

Yes, building the fancy train set might create some jobs, but what about the long run.

Does he assume the train will vanish after 10 years? That it's got some sort of Mission: Impossible self-destruct system? In fact the HSR system will be a central part of California's long-term economic strategy, providing jobs and savings for decades to come. One estimate was that 450,000 jobs would be created by 2030 by the system - nothing to sneeze at.

Our state is already equipped with airports in every major city. And most minor cities also have small airports.

This is more of the usual "air travel means trains aren't necessary!" nonsense we usually see from HSR deniers, people who have probably never actually used some of these small airports. Many, like San Luis Obispo airport, are seeing declining passenger levels and carriers are abandoning the small airports in droves. Of course, peak oil means that the cost of flying will continue to rise - $49 fares from SF to LA will be a thing of the past in 2018.

Furthermore, let us not forget about our current rail system. Besides the Metrolink accident that occurred late last year, the current system works. Trains run daily all over the state and in an efficient manner. This brings me to the old saying, "If its not broken, don't fix it." Lets hope the wiseguys up in Sacramento subscribe to it.

Obviously Goldberg has never actually used a passenger train in California. They run daily, and are efficient given their enormous constraints. But they are wholly inadequate to the task of meeting California's overall transportation needs in the way they can and should. It shouldn't take 12 hours to get from SF to LA via train. It shouldn't even take an hour to get to LA from Santa Ana on a train. California's passenger trains, especially the intercity trains, have attracted a lot of riders and dedicated supporters, but I doubt any of them would say that the present situation is adequate or acceptable.

Especially given the need to boost non-oil based forms of travel, for environmental, economic, and energy reasons. But then I'm guessing Goldberg doesn't believe in global warming either.

He concludes his ill-informed rant:

Back to the $8 billion at hand. I am plenty sure it can be used for a better purpose. What about all those teachers who were just laid off or buying books for students. I imagine it would be better to invest the stimulus money into education rather than on infastructure, and especially for infastructure we DO NOT NEED.

And in the actual version, the "DO NOT NEED" is in a much bigger font than the rest of the text, as if we're too stupid to understand that's his point without being shouted at.

As to the issue of other needs, like schools - we've actually discussed that very issue before, back in May 2008, and ironically based off another ill-informed bit of HSR denial that ran in the Ventura County Star.

The points are still valid today. HSR isn't taking money from schools. The state contribution comes from general obligation bonds, paid out over 30 years at what's probably going to be an annual cost of around $600 million (and that's the higher end of the estimate). Our K-12 schools, however, face a $9 billion cut this year.

If you want to fix our schools, we need to raise taxes. There's no way around it.

But the issues go deeper. Why is California's budget in a mess? For 30 years now we have had a structural revenue shortfall - in other words, for the last 30 years we have not raised enough tax revenue to pay for our basic needs. The solution to this is NOT to turn to bonds - a structural problem needs a structural solution, and bond debt isn't such a solution.

Bonds are properly used to build long-term infrastructure. To pay for ongoing costs like education, we need more tax revenue.

Further, the economic crisis - what I believe to be a Depression, but what many are now calling the Great Recession - is sending tax revenues into the tank. That economic crisis is largely due to the effects of high oil prices on an economy based on sprawl and automobile commuting. If we want to recover from this crisis, grow the economy, generate new tax revenues, and pay for schools, then we need to get off of oil NOW. High speed rail helps get us there.

Unfortunately, HSR deniers refuse to acknowledge any of this, and that means they and their silly arguments will be with us for many years to come.

Fresno Bee: Fund the High Speed Rail Project

The looming cash crisis facing the California High Speed Rail Authority - which, I must repeat, is not the Authority's fault but instead the product of a flawed state budget process that has caught the CHSRA within its grasp - is the subject of a great Fresno Bee editorial today that calls on state lawmakers to find a solution and prevent the new national support for HSR from passing California:

The California High Speed Rail Authority is out of money, and may have to call a halt to all the planning efforts now under way. That could put the state at risk of losing out on federal funds in both the stimulus bill and the omnibus spending bill....

California is currently ahead of the rest of the states in planning its high-speed system. We're the only state whose voters have approved spending our own money on such a project, and the environmental and engineering studies required for the massive project are already well begun.

But that lead could evaporate quickly if California's efforts are stalled by money woes. Not a day passes without news of the enthusiasm that's rising in other states and regions to build high-speed systems -- the Midwest, the Northeast corridor, Texas, Florida.

In the meantime, some of the private contractors doing the engineering and environmental reviews in California have already stopped the work because they aren't getting paid. Most of the work of planning, designing and building the high-speed system will be done by private sector companies -- but they won't work for free, nor should they.

California's budget crisis is growing worse, and the US Senate's decision to tell the states to "drop dead" by cutting the state stabilization funds is a huge part of the problem. Still, $29.1 million is not an enormous amount of money and is a smart investment in enabling billions in federal money to come California's way.

State legislators and administrators must find a way to ensure the CHSRA has the money it needs to do its work. Otherwise we're going to see an emboldened NIMBY and HSR denier movement that will destroy high speed rail in the absence of the kind of information, charts, graphics, and public meetings that the CHSRA can offer.

Getting voters to approve Prop 1A was the easy part. Changing the underlying politics that frustrated passenger rail projects for over 40 years is the hard part. We have an opportunity to do that now. We cannot afford to let it pass us by.

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.

Obama's Budget Plan and HSR

President Barack Obama has released the basic outline of his FY 2010 budget plan (which would actually go into effect on October 1, 2009) and it includes $5 billion for HSR over 5 years - or, $1 billion a year. Obviously that's not going to be enough to build any HSR projects around the country, but would maybe possibly provide a few drops in the bucket. As Yonah at the Transport Politic notes, the proposal "doesn’t appear to mark sea change in vision for U.S. mobility" but is subject to change in Congress.

The budget fight may well resemble the stimulus battle in some key respects, as moderate Democrats and the small handful of sort-of-moderate Republicans could unite to try and pare back some of the more ambitious moves Obama is proposing, including the attack on 30 years of neoliberal economic policy signaled by Obama's plans to start going after wealth through taxation.

A key issue is whether the budget requires 50 votes or 60 votes to pass - the absurd and undemocratic filibuster rule was what caused the weakening of the stimulus plan (despite the $8 billion for HSR), and if the budget is subject to the same 60 vote requirement, then the end product is likely to be significantly weaker than what Obama is proposing here.

Ultimately the real transportation policy battle may come when the transportation bill comes up for reauthorization later this year. A Congressional commission is calling for a higher gas tax and ultimately a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax, and while the Obama Administration backed off Ray LaHood's suggestions along those lines earlier this week, I suspect that may have been because they weren't yet ready to go there. We will see what happens later in the year.

Finally, it's great to have seen a lot of pushback against Republican HSR lies this week. It helped that Bobby Jindal made himself look ridiculous with his "Disneyland ride" comments - what he's actually wound up doing is inoculating HSR against that kind of criticism by implying HSR deniers think like Jindal does. Sort of a Sarah Palin "I can see Russia from my house!" moment. With Obama's approval ratings through the roof, and his administration finally showing signs of wanting to chart a truly new course in American politics, that creates the conditions to both grow and consolidate public support for high speed rail. There's a lot of opportunity here, but we'll have to push it through.

Note: I usually don't mind thread drift in the comments, but for now I'd ask folks who want to discuss the Peninsula HSR plan to keep it in yesterday's post for the time being, until I post again on the topic, which will likely be this weekend.

LaHood: Expect More HSR Funds; MTC Funding Debate

UPDATE: As reported by the Transbay Blog the MTC is planning to apply for the Transbay Terminal train box funding to come out of the $8 billion HSR stimulus and not from the general transit stimulus funds. Debate continues over funding the BART to OAK - in addition to the Transbay Blog article (which opposes funding BART to OAK out of stimulus money) see more at Living in the O, TransForm, and the Calitics version of this post. The original post begins here:

Some great news out of the US Department of Transportation:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today emphasized the administration's long-term commitment to expanding high-speed rail service in "five or six regions" of the country, not just with the $8 billion provided in the economic stimulus package President Obama signed into law last week, but also "in subsequent years a very substantial effort." Meeting with reporters earlier today, LaHood said that for Obama building high-speed rail networks is, "if not his No. 1 priority, certainly at the top of his list. What the president is saying with the $8 billion is this is the start to help begin high-speed rail projects." He added that the administration "is committed to finding the dollars to not only get them started but to finishing them in at least five parts of the country," although he declined to elaborate on where these projects might ultimately be built.

One of my lingering concerns about the Obama Administration has been that they might be tempted to claim victory with the $8 billion in HSR funding added to the stimulus and not follow up on that money, which as we know merely pays for some initial costs. But what Ray LaHood is saying is that in fact, the $8 billion in HSR stimulus really is intended as a signal to America that Obama is truly serious about building HSR.

This couldn't be better news for us in California, where we have long known that at least $15 billion in federal aid, spread out over 10 years, will be needed to build the SF-LA line. Unfortunately the news is tempered by the fact that the Obama Administration's support for HSR did not extend to mass transit as a whole. Here in California the state has decided to zero out the State Transit Assistance account, costing local agencies over $500 million in funding. The federal stimulus isn't nearly enough to make up the difference. And as the San Jose Mercury News reports, that's setting up a situation where HSR may be pit against local transit agencies:

The MTC meeting Wednesday in Oakland could turn contentious, as the current plan calls for allocating $75 million to help build the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco, which would serve as the final stopping point for a high-speed rail line and Caltrain, [NOTE: in fact the MTC now plans to get the train box money from the $8 billion HSR stimulus - see update at top of the post] and $70 million to build a BART spur to Oakland International Airport. Those two projects alone would take 43 percent of the $340 million headed to the area in stimulus funds for local transit.

Some want money for those new two projects scrapped or reduced — and redirected to cover the cost of paying for day-to-day transit needs.

But MTC officials counter that building the Transbay Terminal now will save millions of dollars in later costs, and combined with the $8 billion in stimulus funds set aside for high-speed rail could accelerate that program. California is a leading candidate to capture much of that money because voters in the fall approved a $10 billion bond measure to begin work on the line, which will someday extend from San Diego to San Francisco and Sacramento.

"Given that California is the only state to pass a bond to build a new high-speed line, we think we might be able to do some double-dipping there," said MTC executive director Steve Heminger. "We are going to spend the stimulus money fast. I can guarantee that."

I support using that money for the Transbay Terminal, although I'm less certain about whether BART to OAK is all that necessary; the AirBART buses work pretty well (I used them on numerous occasions when I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley, although that was 10 years ago).

But I really hate it when HSR pitted against other forms of transit. I have said it before and I will say it again - HSR and other mass transit need each other to be successful. It should not and must not be an either/or choice. I don't blame the MTC for being stuck in this position - that blame lies in Sacramento and Washington DC. But we transit advocates need to not fall out along modal lines.

I'd like to propose a solution, one that I don't even know is possible under state law but makes a ton of sense to me. The nine-county SF Bay Area region should implement its own gas tax, which will solely be used to fund public transit. I haven't penciled out the numbers so I don't know exactly what the tax amount should be, but it should be indexed to the price of gas, and not a fixed cent number.

This money would initially be used to backfill the loss of STA funds, and allow the federal stimulus money to go to new transit infrastructure such as Transbay Terminal or BART to OAK. Ultimately the STA funds must be restored by a statewide gas tax increase, but it is much more politically possible to implement a gas tax in the Bay Area first than to try and get the Central Valley and the Southern California exurbs to buy into this (they can be brought on board later, once the 2/3 rule is eliminated).

It's very difficult for folks living in the nine counties to evade the tax, with the possible exception of Gilroy residents who might drive to Hollister to fill up. Most folks will simply pay the increase rather than drive far out of their way to get a cheaper gallon of gas.

I'm not sure if this option has been explored by the MTC and the member counties, but it ought to be. It's a sensible solution that would not only help spare transit agencies from "Armageddon" but would itself be a long overdue policy shift that would give a real boost to transit efforts in the SF Bay Area.