Two Very Different Op-Eds

This week the debate over high speed rail - which, bizarrely, we're still having even after California voters approved Prop 1A a year ago - returns to the opinion pages of two of California's most prominent newspapers. Two op-eds examine the project and reach very different conclusions about the project's value to the state. First up is Daniel Curtin, president of the California Conference of Carpenters, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle:

California voters know we must change to meet the environmental challenges we face. They realize that every passenger who travels these sleek trains will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that auto or air travel would have spewed into the atmosphere. They know that 800 miles of high-speed rail will reduce congestion between urban centers and encourage low-polluting urban in-fill development....

On high-speed rail, California leads the nation and San Francisco leads the state. An intermodal transit station, the Transbay Transit Center, is ready to break ground. Some 8,000 construction jobs will be directly created by the project and tens of thousands of jobs will be generated from the economic activity, according to plan documents. In a state with more than 12 percent unemployment and a city with just more than 10 percent of its workforce out of work, this will provide a desperately needed economic stimulus...

Just as the New Deal-inspired Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge served as an economic bridge from the Great Depression to a prosperous future, so will the Transbay Transit Center and high-speed rail be our generation's transportation corridor from economic adversity to a greener, more prosperous future.

There are two ways one can read this op-ed, and they are not mutually exclusive. The first is as a call to support the economic stimulus value of high speed rail. In this deep recession, where California's unemployment rate is higher than it's been for 60 years, we can use any job we can get. Especially 8,000 construction jobs on just the TBT alone.

And that takes us to the second reading of the op-ed, which is as an argument for the Transbay Terminal project as being a fundamental piece of the high speed rail project. Quentin Kopp is still pushing alternatives to the current location of the TBT train box, and we keep hearing rumors that Kopp doesn't want the TBT to happen at all (rumors which he has denied to me). As the decision on HSR stimulus funds nears, it makes sense for TBT supporters to push out op-eds like this extolling the virtues of the project, including the badly needed jobs it would create.

Not everyone things jobs are important in a state experiencing at least a 12.2% unemployment rate. Dan Walters, who writes on state politics at the Sacramento Bee, writes today that we should "take bullet train claims with a grain of salt". As you'll see, it's Walters' column that requires the salt:

Ironically – or perhaps prophetically – the California High Speed Rail Authority's Web site bolsters the economic viability of a proposed statewide bullet train system by quoting an official of Lehman Brothers....

If nothing else, the fact that the rail authority is still quoting defunct and disgraced Lehman Brothers about financing the bullet train should make us skeptical that the system will materialize during the lifetime of any Californian now breathing, or that it would generate all the economic and social wonderfulness its advocates are claiming.

This is a ridiculous and misleading line of attack. If Lehman Brothers had collapsed because of its work supporting high speed rail, then Walters might have a point. But it didn't. As Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times explained yesterday, Lehman's collapse was due to a CEO, Dick Fuld, who wasn't skilled at negotiating these kind of deals, and due to the Bush Administration's willingness to let Lehman fail.

None of that undermines the work Lehman staff did on high speed rail. Specifically, Lehman told the CHSRA that the project could "leverage significant private participation." There is every reason to believe this is still the case. Global money still seeks a safe return on investment, and as the CHSRA found in 2008 when they solicited statements of interest, at least 40 companies showed their desire to participate in the project.

The case for private investment remains solid. Every HSR route around the world has generated an operating profit. As oil prices rise, ridership will as well, as SNCF argued last month. Obviously the exact amount of money CHSRA can expect from the private sector will depend on credit and economic conditions, but it is still reasonable and plausible to expect that some investment will materialize.

Walters doesn't stop there:

Such skepticism is especially warranted now that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other promoters, having persuaded voters to pass a $9.95 billion bond issue that California can ill afford, are asking the Obama administration for half of the federal money set aside for high-speed rail – nearly $5 billion.

Even if the feds come through with that kind of dough, which is highly unlikely, it would be less than half of the federal funds that California needs. It would also fall well short of the $40 billion or more it would take to link San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and points in between with 200-mph trains.

This is just plain wrong. The White House has repeatedly said California will receive a large share of the HSR stimulus funds. It is entirely possible we will indeed receive nearly $5 billion from the feds. Even $3 billion would be a substantial sum.

Does it fall well short of the $40 billion total to build both phase 1 and 2 of the project? (Note how Walters throws in the Sacramento and SD extensions, which will not be built until about 2030, to make HSR seem more costly.) Yes. And that's why President Obama and the Congress are looking at long-term funding of HSR. Right now there is the battle over the $4 billion in HSR funding for 2010 going on in the US Senate. The stalled Transportation Bill is likely to include a permanent HSR funding solution once it is finally passed and signed. Walters doesn't give the reader any of this information, which makes it obvious that CA is quite likely to get the federal money it needs to build the project.

Schwarzenegger et al. are asserting that private investors would put up about half of the total cost. They also contend that the system could operate at a profit without subsidies, based on rosy ridership assumptions.

Well, if that's what Arnold is claiming, Arnold is indeed wrong. I've never heard CHSRA suggest private investors would contribute more than 25% of the cost.

As to operating at a profit, here again Walters is simply wrong. The Acela generates operating surpluses, as do all other HSR projects around the world. And of course, neither California's freeways nor its airports operate at a profit without subsidies (and in fact, freeways aren't expected to operate at a profit, period).

Then there are the assumed economic benefits that would accrue. Building the system obviously would create some direct design and construction jobs and at least some ongoing jobs for operation. But the rail authority has bootstrapped that direct benefit into upward of a half-million additional jobs that would be created, it's said, simply by the economic activity generated by having a new transportation system in place.

The "economic activity" claim is a projection subject to quite a lot of change up or down in the future, but it IS based on legitimate studies. Further, it is based on the proven concept that mass transit creates a Green Dividend - economic activity generated through the reallocation of money previously spent on oil. It may not be as high as 450,000. But at this rate, in a state facing high unemployment for many years to come, even something that falls 50% of that goal is still well worth building.

Grandiosely, authority board member Rod Diridon Sr. of San Jose contends that the project "will generate 600,000 construction-related jobs … and another 450,000 transportation-related permanent jobs, providing a long-term stimulus to the California economy."

The claim appears to be way overblown. But even if true, it would represent a tiny portion of California's economy decades hence. There are about 18 million Californians in the work force now. In 2030, when the bullet train is projected to become operational, 450,000 permanent jobs would represent less than 2 percent of needed employment – if, indeed, they ever appear.

Walters doesn't give any evidence or explanation as to why the claim is "way overblown" - meaning Walters' own statement is baseless. But even if he were right, does he really believe California can afford to pass on even 2% of needed employment? Walters is writing as if it were 1998, when the economy was booming and jobs were plentiful. Here in 2009, it's clear that we are not in a position to turn down jobs like this, especially when the estimates run into the hundreds of thousands for both short-term and long-term employment.

Ultimately Dan Walters shows himself to once again be a leading apostle of the notion that the California of the 20th century, dependent on sprawl and oil, is somehow still a viable basis for economic prosperity here in the 21st century. To believe that, you have to believe that the current recession either isn't happening, or is an acceptable cost of doing business. Most Californians don't see it that way. That's why they approved the high speed rail project, and that's why it's going to get built.

California's going to get those jobs, whether Dan Walters wants them or not.

LA Times: Put CA First In Line for HSR Stimulus Funds

There seems to be a growing consensus that when it comes to doling out federal HSR stimulus money, California should get the lion's share. Earlier this summer The Business Insider suggested CA get "all" the HSR funds, arguing that if the money was spread too thin, nothing would actually get built and we thus wouldn't have much to show for the stimulus spending, whereas giving it "all" to California would help produce an actual bullet train.

Now the state's largest newspaper has joined in the "give it to California" chorus, with this editorial in today's LA Times:

Last November, voters passed a bond measure(2008) approving $9.95 billion to fund a high-speed train line from San Diego to Sacramento. They couldn't have known it then, but the timing was fortuitous. Months later, as part of the stimulus package, Congress dedicated $8 billion to pay for high-speed rail projects across the country. California is the only state where voters have already approved funding for a bullet train, and it has the most state-of-the-art proposal, with the most planning work completed, in the nation. Because the funding is meant to stimulate the economy as quickly as possible, officials at the Federal Railroad Administration are expected to give priority to applicants that can start hammering rail spikes soon. So when the California High-Speed Rail Authority submitted its application on Friday, it had powerful arguments on its side.

First off, I am really pleased to see the Times connecting the Yes vote on Prop 1A to economic stimulus. This blog repeatedly framed Prop 1A in precisely those terms last fall, and it is one of the chief reasons for building high speed rail. While we can and should debate the best way to build that train, we cannot let ourselves forget the broader context - an economy in tatters, with even former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, chief architect of the wrecked economy, predicting 10% unemployment before much longer. California desperately needs jobs, and HSR is a damn good way to provide it.

The Times goes on:

The authority is applying for $4.7 billion of the $8-billion federal pot, yet there will be heavy political pressure to spread the money across a broad geographical region rather than giving so much to a single state. Even so, there are strong reasons to award California an outsized share.

It is undeniably parochial for The Times to argue that Washington should send tax money to California for a project that would boost the local economy. But nobody has to take our word that the Golden State should be first in line. In addition to the timing considerations, there is the important matter of ridership -- for the rail program to be successful, it should focus on projects that can move the most people. America 2050, a Washington-based public planning think tank, studied regions with the highest potential ridership for high-speed rail, ranking them by city pairs (routes between two cities). A line connecting New York and Washington was ranked the highest, but three of the top 10 city pairs would be connected by California's bullet train, including L.A. to San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose. If federal officials want the most bang for their stimulus buck, they should look west.

Actually, I don't think it is parochial at all. California is 1/10th of the nation's population, and is responsible for 13% of its GDP. We are a major part of the national, even the global economy. If California does not have an economic recovery, neither will the nation as a whole.

And one reason for California's crisis is, as the Observer noted in a long article today, a fatal dependence on sprawl. For California to have a truly lasting economy recovery, we will need to provide transportation solutions that encourage urban density, reduce dependence on oil, and provide a Green Dividend (economic growth through reallocation of money previously spent on oil).

In short, if the US is going to have economic growth in the coming decade, California must have growth and recovery. And if California is going to have growth and recovery, California needs to build high speed rail to reshape the way we move people around, and how we pay for doing so.

So if anything, the LA Times editorial, while generally excellent and welcome, is actually understating the case. California ought to expect to get much of the federal HSR stimulus - not just for our own sake, but for the nation's sake as well.

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.

Quentin Kopp: HSR is "Organic Green"

Responding to a silly Examiner editorial espousing neo-Hooverite claims about the high speed rail project, former CHSRA chairman Quentin Kopp has an op-ed today defending the HSR project against claims it is "pork":

The latest editorial suggests that federal stimulus dollars to the high-speed rail project are attributable to backroom, smoke-filled dealings with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Such leaps of logic would be silly and worth a chuckle or two if not so dangerous in misinforming California residents. On the contrary, federal stimulus dollars will provide needed impetus to our dreary economy. Moreover, California is in the pole position for those critical dollars thanks to decades of vital work by the California High-Speed Rail Authority....

Don’t politicize high-speed rail and lambaste it in some overarching dissatisfaction with the U.S. stimulus bill. “Track to Nowhere” may be an easy, sophomoric chant, to which millions more will chant back, “Build, baby, build.” Construction of a high-speed train system constitutes the premiere opportunity for California to lift itself into the 21st century. I’ll put my faith in independent residents of California who understand the benefits of high-speed rail, not as a partisan policy position but as a nonpartisan solution for our state’s stressed transportation system.

Kopp is right to put his faith there, in the same voters who were bombarded with right-wing distortions and lies about HSR in 2008 and still voted to approve HSR and $10 billion in bonds. Voters understand very well the need for economic recovery, for sustainable transportation, for high speed trains. Republican, right-wing claims that this is "pork" have gained hardly any traction at all with the public. But kudos to Kopp for pushing back against the nonsense anyway.

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.

San Jose Mercury News: Take Out The "HSR Killer"

Silicon Valley's main newspaper doesn't mince words in its attack on the legislature's moronic attack on high speed rail:

Innocently or not, a poison pill for California's high-speed rail project has been slipped into the state budget. Lawmakers have to remove it before a budget is signed into law, or else the project approved by voters will suffer a possibly irreversible setback. At a minimum, it's likely to cost the Bay Area more than $1 billion in federal stimulus dollars expected for the project.

The budget appropriation includes a sentence, apparently inserted by clueless staff members, that calls for further study of different routes through the Bay Area. But all the routes, including the environmentally devastating Altamont Pass option, were thoroughly studied and argued at public hearings. This led to the selection a year ago of the Caltrain route through San Jose and the Peninsula to San Francisco. Some Peninsula residents don't want the trains, but it's not for lack of study.

Redoing the work would set the project back a year or more and squander the federal dollars, which will be contingent on a 2012 groundbreaking. The lack of legislative support for the current plan implied by the study requirement could be another crippling blow in future quests for funding.

If it's true that "clueless staff members" inserted the provision then there should be no debate about removing it. Of course, the provision fails on its merits, as we have thoroughly discussed in the comments to yesterday's post. As the Mercury News noted, there were exhaustive hearings and debates on the HSR route. Altamont advocates had years to argue their case. They did an admirable job of it, and the CHSRA decided on something else. Those advocates can either accept the decision and work to ensure HSR gets built, or they can undermine the HSR project and cost the state billions of dollars just because they didn't get their way.

Similarly, Peninsula NIMBYs who want the CHSRA to waste even more time and money studying the flawed and unworkable 280 or 101 alignment aren't advancing a legitimate technical case, but are trying to undo 11 years of studies merely because they don't like the outcome. CHSRA studies laid out the reasoning for rejecting 280 and 101, but nothing's going to be good enough for these NIMBYs.

Let's hope the Legislature does the right thing and takes this costly and reckless provision out of the budget.

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.

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...

Why We Need A Greener Stimulus

The Merced Sun-Star editorialized today for a greener, more sustainable economic stimulus, offering some excellent reasons for using this economic crisis as an opportunity to finally move beyond the now-failed policies of automobile dependence:

Environmentalists must understand that roads, bridges and highways are going to be an important part of our transportation infrastructure for a long time to come. We have neglected that infrastructure to the point of real danger, and that must be urgently addressed.

But proponents of the conventional wisdom in transportation must also recognize that we cannot build our way out of congestion and air quality problems by simply adding more freeway lanes.

That contributes to urban sprawl, with its attendant environmental damage, and does nothing to reduce our dependence on imports of foreign oil. Also, transit and rail systems are often less expensive to build than more highways to carry similar capacity.

One thing is clear: The time has passed for the heavy emphasis on roads and highway now enshrined in federal policy.

That dependence on foreign oil, the legacy of the decision to rely on cars alone as the means to provide mobility in America rather than a balanced approach of cars, trains, buses, bikes and feet, is a major reason for our economic crisis. If Barack Obama, Congress, and other policymakers want to get this country back on its feet and to avoid a repeat of the current meltdown, they need to ensure that more of the proposed stimulus goes to mass transit and not to fulfill state DOT highway dreams.

Obama didn't help when he said that the stimulus should fund projects ready to turn dirt within six months - the need for speed is there, but he should have given himself more flexibility to include using the stimulus for transit. Even so, Jim Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, is working to increase the share of transit funding in the overall stimulus plan.

Some of that stimulus should go to high speed rail, of course, and even if our project gets federal funding in a later appropriation outside the immediate stimulus, even $50 million to pay for planning and engineering work would demonstrate a commitment to a sustainable transportation policy. Plus, planners and engineers need jobs too!

The details of the stimulus are still being worked out, and public pressure can help produce a better, greener, more transit-friendly stimulus. Transportation For America is running a campaign to pressure Congress to do exactly that. Sign the petition and let Congress know that we need to provide a big boost to mass transit - and let them know that HSR should be a part of that stimulus.

They're STILL Trying to Kill HSR

Back during the campaign the Media News Group were among the most die-hard HSR deniers. Their editorials were usually full of misinformation but that didn't stop them from crusading against a badly needed piece of 21st century infrastructure.

So it comes as no surprise that they're still trying to kill high speed rail, Prop 1A's passage be damned, as seen in Monday's editorial. And as usual they're not above lying to make their case.

California's high-speed rail boondoggle is a case in point. True, voters did back a $9.95 billion bond measure to provide seed money for the $44 billion project. But there is no good reason for the federal government to toss in more money for a highly flawed adventure.

There is no real business plan for the rail system. There are no realistic estimates of ridership, operating costs, capital outlays or total financing.

No business plan?! The new business plan has been available for weeks, including the voluminous source documentation. It includes ridership estimates, operating costs, and financing estimates. But hey, what are a few facts when you have some lies to tell your readers?

We suspect that there is no accurate estimate of the total cost of the rail system. If it is like other big state construction projects, the cost could be way higher than the current $44 billion estimate.

What "other big state construction projects" are these? Of course the editorial doesn't name them, because facts just get in the way - inconvenient truths don't make for good attacks on rail, I guess.

The real motivation for the editorial is to try and deny HSR any federal stimulus money, or any federal money at all:

Perhaps the board is beginning to understand that private investment in a project with no business plan or chance of turning a profit is not likely anytime soon. So why not get in line for a chunk of stimulus money?

Let's hope those handing out tens of billions of dollars of federal taxpayer funds have more common sense than supporters of the high-speed rail system.

California could use stimulus funds in the form of public works financing. But there are other far more worthy projects, such as the BART extension to Santa Clara County.

Private investors remain interested but we must be realistic - the financial and credit crisis is crippling ALL investment activity across the economy no matter what the project, so an increased level of federal support is now necessary. That crisis isn't going to last forever and when it eases high speed rail will be one of the most attractive investments in the country, ensuring long-term returns while providing economic growth through sustainable mass transit.

Media News Group would like to pit HSR and BART against each other but they work best in concert - what better way to ensure high ridership on the San José extension than to have BART meet the HSR line at Diridon Station, ensuring that East Bay travelers have the best possible connection to the HSR line and the rest of the state (short of having an actual HSR route themselves, of course)?

This editorial, for all its misinformation, is a good reminder that we will have to work hard in 2009 to ensure that we get our federal funding. HSR deniers may still be casting about for ways to stay relevant but I can assure that before long, they'll have their sights firmly fixed on Congress.

False Consciousness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Rest for the Victorious

We've been rightly celebrating our victory on high speed rail and Prop 1A all week. But already there are reminders that the fight is by no means over, and that the HSR deniers who were rejected by the voters on Tuesday are regrouping in their effort to kill high speed rail.

One of them is the Contra Costa Times, which distinguished itself during the campaign by writing one of the most ridiculous anti-HSR editorials of the season. Today they have published an editorial calling on the state to delay the sale of Prop 1A bonds. This editorial is an excellent example of the strategy and framing that the HSR deniers will use to try and overturn our victory on Tuesday.

California has a huge budget deficit and a record high bonded indebtedness, which would increase by nearly $10 billion if the rail bonds are sold.

This state has far more pressing transportation needs, such as highway construction and maintenance, better metropolitan rail and bus service, and retrofitting bridges and overpasses.

Just because voters have authorized the sale of high-speed rail bonds does not require the state to sell them. At the very least a credible business plan and commitment of matching private and federal funds should be obtained before any Prop. 1A bonds are sold.

As usual the editorialists at the Contra Costa Times don't read the newspapers - if they did they'd know that federal money is on the way (unless they think Dianne Feinstein will be powerless in a Democratic Congress and with a Democratic President). The California High Speed Rail Authority has received letters of interest from over 40 private companies.

But what's really significant about this editorial is the way they set up their next line of attack. They trot out nearly every one of the zombie lies that have circulated about HSR - won't get enough riders, sure to soar in cost, not something that meets the state's transportation needs - and attached it to a political strategy of delaying the bond sale.

This flies in the face of economic reality. Numerous economists have called for the infrastructure bond sales to be accelerated in order to provide jobs and economic stimulus that the state badly needs. In particular, the $950 million in Prop 1A earmarked for non-HSR passenger rail ought to be sold immediately to provide increased passenger rail service. Gas prices will start to rise again in the spring, putting the screws to an already weak economy. Improved passenger rail provides jobs and cheaper commutes, putting more money in consumers' already stretched wallets.

Of course, it has always been the plan to spend Prop 1A money in concert with private and federal funds as they are secured. The Contra Costa Times again demonstrates its ignorance of just how this project will work when they frame it as a budget-busting boondoggle without plan or method. Unfortunately that has always been the M.O. of the HSR deniers, and this editorial should serve as a reminder that they haven't gone away, and will continue to try and derail this project at every opportunity.

Christian Science Monitor Endorses Prop 1A

Normally I might not give this its own post, but the editorial from the Christian Science Monitor on Prop 1A has some really good points that deserve a wider airing:

Yearly ridership is predicted at 88 million to 117 million passengers by 2030.

How can that be if last year only 26 million people rode the national rail network, Amtrak? Part of the answer lies in the state's expected population boom. But also, travelers gravitate to high-quality, affordable transport. Last year, ridership jumped 20 percent for the Acela, Amtrak's only fast train (but not as fast as trains around the world).

Opponents also say the north-south ride will take more like 3-1/2 hours, because no bullet trains operate at the plan's projected speed of up to 220 m.p.h. But Japan and France are testing prototypes capable of such speeds. And so what if the estimate is off? Downtown-to-downtown transport that's also independent of much bad weather and gate delays has its advantages.

Excellent points, all. Projected ridership can be easily attained and the claims about speed and timing don't hold water - or even if they did don't undermine the value and attractiveness of the system.

Finally, naysayers warn the construction price will nearly double, and that the trains will operate on a regular deficit. True, research shows rail projects around the world bust construction budgets by an average 45 percent. But the rail authority's plan spreads the build-out expense and risk between the state, federal government, and private investors. And while governments do subsidize rail systems the world over, bullet trains are proven moneymakers...

This is not a credit-card shopping spree on Rodeo Drive. It is an investment in reduced greenhouse gases, in less foreign oil, in less congestion, and in more jobs – for commerce is built on transport.

Couldn't agree more.

Zombie Lies

I had hoped we'd dealt with this when it popped up at Daily Kos yesterday - the commenters there gave it a thorough smackdown - but unfortunately it's appeared across the blogosphere today, helped by the credulous and fundamentally uninformed Kevin Drum (I still don't understand why Mother Jones would hire a moderate to blog for them) who reproduced "it" on his site today.

"It" is an email being peddled by the daughter of James Mills offering criticism of Prop 1A. Mills is another one of these "rail supporters" who are offering truthiness and outright lies to try and convince people Prop 1A is a bad idea. To the uninformed masses - which unfortunately include some bloggers - anyone who claims to have rail credentials apparently is given the benefit of the doubt when we who actually understand rail policy know that James Mills, Richard Tolmach, Wendell Cox, and Joseph Vranich are fundamentally anti-rail.

Mills and Tolmach co-authored an HSR denier op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month. I gave it the usual thorough deconstruction here on the blog when it appeared, although I focused my fire on Tolmach, since I'd never heard of James Mills. Now Mills' daughter is circulating Mills' own arguments to the bloggers, and some of the more gullible bloggers, like Kevin Drum, have taken the bait. As a result Ezra Klein and now Atrios are discussing its contents.

So, time to try and kill the Zombie Lies.

The email starts like this:

I am passing on an analysis of California's Prop 1A ballot initiative from one of the leading experts and advocates of mass transit in the state of California, James Mills.

Mills' daughter writes:

I'd like to suggest you vote "No" on Proposition 1A, the "Safe Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act," on the basis of the following insider, expert information: my dad says it's a bad idea.

My father, James Mills, spent his entire career in the California state legislature (1961-1983) working to promote public transportation in the state. He was President pro Tem of the Senate for a decade. He was chairman of the Amtrak board under president Carter. Since retiring he has worked as a consultant on transit issues, and in the 1990's he served on the High Speed Rail Commission for the State of California . My dad is hard-core in favor of rail. If he says a proposal to fund a rail project is no good, then that proposal has to be a real turkey.

Notice the sleight of hand here. James Mills is not a well-known figure even in California political circles. His specific policy positions are completely unknown. But just like the notoriously anti-transit Wendell Cox, and the equally anti-rail Joseph Vranich, Mills trades on a 30-year old association with Amtrak to try and gain credibility when he passes on flawed HSR denials. The last sentence is designed to solidify the assumed expertise of Mills, but to me it just sets off alarm bells.

Which are justified when we read the specific objections:

1. Prop 1A raises about ten billion dollars in a bond issue. This is a down-payment on a project which was estimated in 2006 to cost 45 billion dollars but will probably cost more if it is ever built. Remaining funding will be sought from the federal government (10-15 billion) and private investors (15-20 billion).

Notice that, as always, no specific reason is given as to "probably cost more". It is blind speculation. No specific figure of cost overruns is given either. Lacking those details or underlying explanations this claim lacks credibility. Rail projects around the country, including LA's Metro Gold Line extension, have been delivered on time and on budget in recent years.

Further, and this is ironic, that $45 billion is the figure for the ENTIRE system - which in point #5 Mills claims is unplanned.

2. The federal government has never invested any amount even close to $10 billlion in a transit project.

The federal government had never spent $700 billion on a bank bailout either. Before 1971 they'd never operated passenger trains. Before 1956 they'd never spent hundreds of billions on freeways. Shall we go on?

But we have better evidence. John Kerry and Johnny Isakson are working on a bill to provide about $10 billion for HSR projects around the nation. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden are strong supporters of HSR and want to fund it.

3. If private investment were found, the bill says that investors would make money NOT from a the profit of the transit system, but from a percentage of ticket sales. In other words, the profit of investors is guaranteed, regardless of the operating costs of the system. The Legislative Analyst estimates that the OPERATING AND MAINTENANCE COSTS of the system will be one billion per year -- the State of California will cover any deficit not covered by ticket sales. It is rare for a public transit system to run in the black: normally, not all costs of the system will be covered from the fare box.

This is a bit misleading. As I understand it from what Rod Diridon explained today, those same investors also have to satisfy their own bond to the state/CHSRA and a "franchise fee" to the same. That's quite a bit different than saying "their profit is guaranteed" - a misleading statement designed to imply that California is going to be left holding the bag while private investors light cigars with our money.

This claim also misleads Californians on the Legislative Analyst's estimate - she has said the $1 billion figure is a worst-case scenario.

And of course, it is not rare for high speed rail systems to run in the black. In fact, they ALL run in the black. Every last one. In France the TGVs are so profitable they subsidize other slower rail services. SNCF had so much money they actually gave some to the French treasury earlier this year.

4. Premises on projected ridership are false. The only high-speed rail system in the US is Amtrak's "Acela" service between NY-Washington and NY-Boston. This system is well established and serves large population centers with excellent public transportation tie-ins to feed it such as subways, and they carry 3 million riders a year. The French have the best high-speed rail system in the world, and their busiest line is Paris to Lyon, again large cities with major subway systems, and it carries perhaps 15 million riders a year. In contrast, proponents of Prop 1A rely on a projection of 100 million riders per year between Los Angeles and San Francisco, a figure provided by a paid consultant that happened to be Lehman Brothers. This projection of patronage is a fantasy.

This paragraph is full of outright lies. Yes, lies.

First, Acela is not true HSR and is much slower than our system will be. Anyone trying to compare the Acela to CA HSR either does not understand Acela or is deliberately misleading readers. It does not speak very well of James Mills' vaunted "rail knowledge."

Second, these arguments about ridership come directly from the oil company funded Reason Foundation. It is a libertarian lies being passed off as fact. Those ridership claims - specifically about Paris-Lyon - are complete nonsense. We thoroughly debunked the "not enough riders" claim last month. The key portion of our mythbusting:

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

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

On to the fifth and final lie, which is the most ridiculous of them all:

5. Promises of future extension to Sacramento, Orange County and San Diego are empty in that no concrete plan of any kind is offered other than the unrealistic plan for a Los Angeles-San Francisco line.

Mills is just showing off his ignorance here. Prop 1A would fund a line from SF to Anaheim - which, last time I checked, was still in Orange County. SD and Sacramento plans are in existence in full detail and can be found at the California High Speed Rail Authority website.

It's worth closing by reminding people of the big picture here. High speed rail will create badly needed green jobs and economic stimulus while providing Californians with sustainable transportation that reduces dependence on oil and cuts carbon emissions. It is supported by virtually the entire California progressive community.

It is being opposed by the Howard Jarvis Association and the Reason Foundation. The former are the keepers of the right-wing flame here in California. The latter are a group of rabid anti-government nuts who are funded by oil companies and other leading right-wing foundations. They have been using an ignorant and pliant media to push out their "omg boondoggle not enough riders" nonsense over the last six weeks or so.

It would be a shame for folks in the blogosphere - folks who usually know better - than to repeat the high speed rail version of the "Obama is a Muslim" email.

Why Is Adrian Moore Lying in the LA Times?

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

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

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

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

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

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



• Eurostar Grabs Even More Passengers From Airlines



• Romance of Rail Jeopardizes Domestic Air Routes (Taiwan)

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





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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Little Less Conversation

Daniel Weintraub at the Sacramento Bee is hosting a "Sunday Conversation" on Prop 1A. The conversation consists of four articles - an HSR-skeptical article from Weintraub himself, an article from HSR denier Joseph Vranich and two from Californians who currently ride the passenger trains and who would welcome high speed rail. It's an interesting discussion, if rather incomplete.

Weintraub's article does not set a good tone, and is rather deeply biased against HSR. For example:

Will they risk $10 billion, which translates into $650 million a year in debt-service payments, on an unproven idea at a time of great personal, societal and governmental financial stress?

Weintraub does his readers a disservice to argue that HSR is an "unproven idea." That is simply untrue. It is a proven idea - he can look at France, Germany, Spain, Japan, China, and Taiwan to find HSR success stories. Many of these systems have been operating for a long time - for 45 years in Japan - so Weintraub is off base to claim it "unproven." Californians have been setting monthly records on intercity passenger trains for nearly two years, so he can't credibly argue intercity rail is an unproven idea either.

And even in good times, $650 million a year is not chump change. To put that number in perspective, consider that it is equivalent to 20 percent of what the taxpayers spend now on the California State University system, which has become a giant assimilator taking working-class kids, many of them from poor immigrant families, and turning them into successful players in an ever more technological economy.

Would a new train, even a futuristic one, really be a better investment than giving 70,000 more young adults a college education every year? That's the kind of choice that is buried in these single-issue ballot measures but rarely debated.

This is a deeply biased and misleading framing. $650 million a year is 6.5% of the annual budget of California prisons, but Weintraub didn't use that as the point of comparison. Instead he argues that California must choose between higher education or high speed trains, a clearly biased choice designed to make HSR look bad.

The state Legislative Analyst, a nonpartisan office, noted that California can afford Prop 1A - that the bond debt will not break our existing debt ceiling. Further, as a Sacramento-based political reporter Weintraub certainly knows that the problem with California's budget is a broken process where the 2/3 rule prevents the state from generating as much revenue as it needs to. Simply restoring the pre-1998 income tax brackets for the top earners, or restoring the Vehicle License Fee that averaged $150 per driver per year, would generate more than enough money to close our budget deficit, pay the debt service, and have enough left over to help more kids attend college.

Besides, "futuristic"? Huh? HSR is a standard, off-the-shelf technology that is actually rather prosaic in its day to day operations.

At the end of his column Weintraub mentions the jobs and economic stimulus that will be generated by Prop 1A, but this feels tacked on - especially as it directly challenges many of his earlier claims about the "opportunity cost" of HSR:

But voters seldom consider the trade-offs inherent in each such proposal, the opportunity cost of doing less of something else, such as higher education, that is not on the ballot.

The problem is that voters also don't often consider the tradeoffs of rejecting a badly needed piece of long-term infrastructure, partly because writers like Weintraub do not ever put it in that way. The stats on job creation Weintraub cited should have caused him to reconsider this "opportunity cost" point - how exactly is California going to have money to do anything if people are out of work, dependent on volatile oil prices, and if the state lacks the tax revenues that the jobs would create?

Further, Weintraub is assuming that the state cannot or will not generate new revenues to ensure that we can do all the things we need to do - pay for schools and health care AND generate new economic opportunities through projects like high speed rail. His framing is inherently Hooverite - that we should not turn to deficit spending in a time of economic crisis. One wonders if Weintraub would have supported the Golden Gate Bridge or the Shasta Dam were he writing for the Bee in the 1930s.

Perhaps the most egregious part of his article is his discussion of outside funding, which is just plain wrong:

More than two-thirds of the money to complete the project is supposed to come from sources still not identified. If that money never materializes, or comes up short, the taxpayers would some day be asked to step up with even more billions to finish the line, or risk stopping mid-project with the world's most expensive train to nowhere.

None of this is true. Much of the remainder of funds is to come from Congress. Weintraub's own paper ran an article quoting Rep. Doris Matsui as saying California is well positioned to receive some of the first Congressional HSR money. Senators John Kerry and Johnny Isakson are leading a bipartisan effort for HSR funding. Weintraub would have been on less biased ground had he said that the funding was not secured.

Additionally AB 3034 amended the ballot proposal to NOT leave the taxpayers on the hook. AB 3034 directly addressed and rendered moot Weintraub's worry about a train to nowhere, since the Prop 1A bond money cannot be used to build more than 50% of a track or a station. The Legislature is not stupid and they will simply not authorize money to be spent to build half a station - only when matching funds are secured will construction begin.

Of course the Bee also included an article from Joseph Vranich, the co-author of oil company-funded Reason Foundation's HSR study that was thoroughly debunked here a few weeks ago. His article offers little that is new and relies on the same discredited ideas as that flawed study.

Happily Weintraub did solicit articles from two California women who eagerly await high speed rail. Estelle Shiroma is a frequent rider on the Capitol Corridor and shared her reasons for wanting HSR:

High-speed rail could very easily replace airline trips when I travel within California. The advantages are numerous - no long waiting period to board, more comfortable surroundings, and ample work space not available on planes. Trains are also more accessible for the handicapped. As the baby boomers age, there will be many more seniors who will not be (or should not be) driving, and the train would provide a safer alternative.

Shelly Poticha is the president and CEO of Reconnecting America and offered her own thoughts on HSR's value:

If California's high-speed rail is anything like the Acela in the Northeast Corridor or the trains I've ridden in Italy and France, the cars will be clean, the seats comfortable, and good food will be available. I'll be able to look out the window at the landscape of our beautiful state and see the communities that define much of our history and support our economy. And, unlike air travel, I'll be able to plug in my computer and connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi or take a business call on my cell phone(in the cellphone-approved cars, of course)....

Ironically, I'm heading to Mississippi to speak to a group of 100 mayors who have joined the Southern High-Speed Rail Commission. They want to build high-speed rail from New Orleans to Atlanta and Houston to Mobile. Many see the rail investment as a huge economic boon: thousands of new jobs, revived towns and travel options for residents who have to commute from city to city. It looks like they are going to pull this off. Can California afford to be left behind?

HSR is a better way to travel, and Poticha does a good job of explaining not only that aspect of HSR's value to California, but reminds us of another aspect of the "opportunity cost" that Weintraub ignored - if we don't build it, other parts of the United States will. California will lose out on not only federal funding, but on the economic opportunities that high speed trains generate.

California cannot rest on its laurels and do nothing to secure a prosperous 21st century future, the way Weintraub and Vranich suggest. Instead we should follow the lead of Estelle Shiroma, Shelly Poticha, and the San Jose Mercury News and plan for our future. From the Merc's Yes on 1A editorial:

The proposal, years in the making, has been thoroughly vetted in public debate, particularly over the route. The High Speed Rail Authority made the right choices, coming up with a practical and visionary plan that will place San Jose and Silicon Valley at the heart of the Bay Area's economy. We recommend it.

Proposition 1A's $9.95 billion bond will cover about a quarter of the cost of the high-speed rail project. The source for the rest is not certain, although similar systems have found private investment, and a federal high-speed rail funding bill just signed by President Bush was drafted in part with this project in mind.

Still, there's no question it's expensive, and, with a recession looming, voters will be wary. But a down economy is exactly the time to invest in transportation and other infrastructure that will form the backbone of our future prosperity.

California cannot rely on the 20th century infrastructure to provide prosperity for much longer. Just as we rejected the advice of Herbert Hoover and his supporters in the 1930s and built the Golden Gate Bridge and Shasta Dam anyway, so too should we reject the claims of the New Hoovers and build high speed rail in California.

Fighting Back Against the New Hoovers

Not content with denying to Californians the numerous tangible benefits of high speed rail, Prop 1A opponents have retreated into a revival of Herbert Hoover's economic policy in order to try and defeat the most important project Californians have considered in nearly 50 years. Their argument is that in an economic crisis, we should turn to austerity instead of following the tried and true path of deficit spending on infrastructure that provides short-term job relief and long-term economic value.

For a couple weeks this blog has been doing yeoman's work in fighting back against this nonsense, one of the few voices directing Californians to learn from our past successes instead of repeating our mistakes.

No longer.

Today we have numerous articles and media outlets starting to push back against the New Hoovers. From newspaper editorial pages to leading economists there is a growing consensus that we must use deficit spending - in our case, bonds - to spur economic growth through infrastructure projects.

Even conservative observers and federal deficit hawks are seeing the need for deficit spending, as the conservative Washington Times reports:

Conservative Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan said the fears that short-term stimulus spending by governments will raise deficits miss the point. Even the $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan approved by the U.S. government — part of a more than $2 trillion international bailout of banks by governments around the world — does not change the equation.

"Maxims about debt that might be prudent for families can be the height of folly for government," he wrote.

British economist John Maynard Keynes is credited with the basic insight, arguing that the Great Depression was prolonged because Western governments insisted on balancing budgets, raising taxes and cutting spending at a time when private economic activity had ground to a halt.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan research group, said both candidates must put together a credible long-term plan to deal with the exploding deficit, but that the government should be priming the pump in the short term.

These conservatives are joined by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who writes in today's column:

And to provide that help, we’re going to have to put some prejudices aside. It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold....

All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long....

And this is also a good time to engage in some serious infrastructure spending, which the country badly needs in any case. The usual argument against public works as economic stimulus is that they take too long: by the time you get around to repairing that bridge and upgrading that rail line, the slump is over and the stimulus isn’t needed. Well, that argument has no force now, since the chances that this slump will be over anytime soon are virtually nil. So let’s get those projects rolling.

The growing unanimity of opinion on the need for deficit spending for infrastructure projects is striking. Krugman, MacGuineas and Brittan join leading economic figures like Nouriel Roubini and Lawrence Summers in calling for bold action to mitigate the deepening economic crisis.

They are joined today by the Fresno Bee editorial in favor of Prop 1A which clearly understands the need for infrastructure stimulus, and directly refutes some of the fiscal arguments against HSR:

Sadly, much opposition has come from people who say they like the idea of 220-mph trains zipping up and down the state, but don't think we can afford it right now, in a time of budget disaster and economic crisis.

That sounds prudent, even reasonable, but it ignores an important fact of American history: Many of our most important public works projects have come in times of deep economic distress -- and they have been crucial elements in our recovery in those times.

Recall the Great Depression, when voters in the Bay Area passed bonds to build the Golden Gate and Bay bridges -- projects that lightened the impact of the Depression on that region and were critical to the postwar economic boom. Shasta Dam was built during the Depression, and remains a linchpin of the state's water system.

The closing paragraph of the editorial is a powerful, stirring statement that deserves to be quoted in full:

The high-speed rail project is immense, and that can be daunting. The current economic situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. In the past, Californians have risen to such challenges with vision and determination. Voting "yes" on Proposition 1A is a declaration that we still possess those qualities, and have not surrendered them to a timid faith in a status quo that is no longer sustainable.

I've never seen it put so well. The Fresno Bee clearly understands that our state's very future is at stake and that Californians should be able to meet that challenge just as we have done in the past.

And what about the arguments that the financial crisis makes this a bad time to float bonds? The Sacramento Bee reports "unprecedented demand" for California's short-term bonds:

California has secured commitments for nearly $4 billion in short-term loans thanks to unprecedented demand from individual investors Wednesday, averting a need for federal assistance and allaying fears of a cash shortage....

California secured orders for $3.92 billion in short-term bonds from individual investors Tuesday and Wednesday, 98 percent of its original $4 billion goal, according to state Treasurer Bill Lockyer....

This week's bond sale reassured state officials that traditional lending markets would suffice.

Translation: capital markets WANT state bonds. If we float Prop 1A bonds they will be quickly gobbled up by a hungry market desperate for a safe investment.

All the HSR deniers have left is what was at the core of their belief all along - opposition to passenger rail:

"This is like losing your job and then using your credit card to put in a new swimming pool to help provide work for others," said [Kris] Vosburgh [of the Howard Jarvis Association] of the jobs argument.

Have fun with that ridiculous "swimming pool" analogy in the comments...

SacBee Gets Bonds Wrong

A few days after editorializing against Prop 1A, the Sacramento Bee has committed themselves even more deeply to the argument that bonds are bad. Today's paper offers an article on bond funding that contains some major flaws, and provides an unbalanced and incomplete picture of the overall cost of Prop 1A to readers. The result is an article that could mislead readers about the basic facts of high speed rail and its impact on California.

The beginning sets the tone:

The dozen measures on California's Nov. 4 general election ballot would cost taxpayers – and their children and grandchildren – $78.9 billion over the next 30 years, a Bee analysis has found.

The entire article proceeds from this premise, which is unimaginably flawed. The article assumes that Californians will get nothing in return for this - that it's basically a money pit. Nowhere are the 160,000 construction jobs that Prop 1A will create discussed. Nowhere is discussed the income and sales taxes that high speed rail will generate. Nowhere discussed is the 12 million barrels of oil saved, or the 12 billion pounds of carbon emissions (which will either be taxed or subject to cap-and-trade costs before much longer).

Nowhere does the article discuss the cost of doing nothing - the article assumes it is zero. And as we know, the article assumes wrongly. The cost of expanding roads and airports to cover the same demand HSR will serve has been pegged at $80 billion. That's *four times* the cost of the bond even when interest costs are considered. The cost of upgrading Highway 99 alone is pegged at $6 billion.

Nowhere does the article discuss the Green Dividend - the savings that mass transit creates, money that can be reinvested elsewhere in the economy.

What the article does is provide merely half the story. If Prop 1A was merely a way to grab money from people and toss it to the four winds, perhaps the article would have a point. But if you are going to talk about costs - especially long-term costs - it is incumbent upon you as a journalist to provide a balanced equation. To weigh the bond cost against the tangible benefits of the project.

It is especially ironic because the article DOES describe that equation for Proposition 5, which would expand drug treatment programs:

But there is a fiscal flip side to the measure: If the rehab programs worked, they could drop California's prison costs by more than $1 billion annually, plus save more than $2.5 billion by reducing the need to build more prisons.

The same calculation must be made for Prop 1A. Otherwise the article does not do justice to its readers.

As Pete Stahl explains the cost of bonds to the general fund, as a percentage, typically declines over time as the general fund revenues increase due to inflation and population growth. This, too, is entirely absent from the article.

The article does go on to mention the political prospects of bonds at this time:

"I think with the way things are, many people are going to vote 'no' on almost everything," said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. "It's a bad time to be asking for money for anything."...

Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, has charted the success rate of California bond proposals since 1976.

In normal times, DiCamillo found, voters have approved a minimum of 68 percent of bond proposals.

During the economic recession of the early 1990s, however, it dropped to 23 percent.

"Voters have generally been receptive to debt financing," DiCamillo said, "but the immediacy of the current economic troubles, plus the presence of other high-cost initiatives on the ballot, may make it much more difficult to support them this time."

Stern and DiCamillo are probably right, and it seems clear that the prospects for Prop 1A are not as solid as they were a few months ago. The problem is that Californians have forgotten their own history. As we've been explaining here, bonds were used during the Great Depression to build some of California's cornerstone infrastructure projects, from the Golden Gate Bridge to Shasta Dam. Shasta Dam in particular provides ongoing benefits to Sacramento residents, from flood control to electricity to agriculture. The federal Bureau of Reclamation has estimated that Shasta Dam has provided over $300 billion in economic growth since it opened in the early 1940s.

So the Sacramento Bee is quite wrong to suggest that Prop 1A is going to cost me and my progeny billions of dollars. It is going to save billions of dollars and put more money in our pockets by providing sustainable, clean, non-oil based mass transportation for our state. It will provide immediate economic stimulus, which economists like Nouriel Roubini have been calling for as a necessary part of getting our country out of the serious economic and fiscal crisis we find ourselves in.

Californians deserve to hear about those aspects of bond funding. It's neither fair nor justifiable to only present half the story.