The Trouble with LA Union Station (UPDATED)

One aspect of the HSR project that we have so far paid little attention to on this blog is how the new service will be integrated with the existing Los Angeles Union Station. This terminal station with its iconic waiting room was built on a spur off the main line along the Los Angeles river before the war and is today a multimodal hub served by Amtrak, Metrolink, two Metro subway lines, Metro Gold Line light rail and multiple buses, including the FlyAway to LAX.

Union Station waiting room:


View from street level:


Aerial view:


Note the ramp for two light rail run-through tracks under construction for the Metro Gold Line Eastside extension. Separately, FRA published the final EIR/EIS for four heavy rail run-through tracks back in 2005. These would veer east to join up with the BNSF main line along the west bank of the Los Angeles river. These tracks would primarily be used by Amtrak Pacific Surfliner and presuambly, modified Metrolink lines.

Rumor has it CHSRA plans to add a second level of tracks dedicated to HSR, stacked on top of the existing ones. H/t to Michael for this video edit:



This would have the advantage of linking HSR directly to growing network of local and regional transit services in the LA basin, east into the Inland Empire and south into Orange County and to San Diego. Unfortunately, it would also have severe disadvantages:

1. The HSR level would itself be a terminus station without run-through tracks. Trains between San Francisco/Sacramento and Anaheim-Irvine/San Diego would have to reverse direction, as would trains between Anaheim-Irvine and San Diego.
   
2. Diesel trains serving a covered grade level would create an air quality problem for passengers and staff. This will become less severe if and when Amtrak and Metrolink receive funds to switch to Tier 4 locomotives, but dirty legacy locomotives will probably remain in service through a long transition period. Significant forced ventilation may be needed mitigate the issue in the interim.
   
3. Without an additional mezzanine level, pedestrian flow capacity could be severely restricted at the stub end. HSR trains can be 1320's feet (~400m) long and support over 1000 seats with bi-level cars.
   
4. Construction of a second story capable of supporting multiple HSR trains weighing 400-600 metric tons each will cause significant disruption to passengers of the existing heavy rail services. Along with the ramp for the approach tracks, this will also be rather expensive.
   

It may therefore make sense to consider an alternative involving the construction of a new Alameda Station, located about half a mile north of Union Station. A large area there is currently being undeveloped being developed as a State Historical Park as it contains archeological artifacts (h/t to bafg).

In theory, it could support an at-grade station plus rail yard (e.g. for high-speed cargo trains at night) plus a number of transit-oriented commercial buildings. The new station would be linked to Union Station via the existing Metro Gold Line, supplemented by a new courtesy Metro Black Shuttle funded by a small surcharge on HSR tickets to and from Los Angeles. This would leverage the Gold Line tracks and Chinatown station but use new, private single-track stub spurs at either end. These stub tracks would have platforms to either side, one for level boarding and the other for level alighting, to facilitate rapid turnaround. The two drivers sitting in the cabs at either end would alternate to secure high service frequency. At peak times, two Black Shuttle trains would be in service, otherwise just one. Their schedule would have to be integrated with that of the Gold Line.

The following map shows the location of the HSR station with its 10 platforms tracks and access connectors. These would permit run-through service north-to-south, north-to-north and south-to-south. Also note that HSR tracks would have to cross legacy tracks in one location. This can be implemented at grade with appropriate signaling to ensure FRA-mandated time separation in mixed traffic situations.

UPDATE: an alternate location next to the Los Angeles river east of Union Station is now also indicated on the map. This would avoid the loss of the aforementioned State Historical Park. See also UPDATE 2 at the end of this post.


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Legend:

• blue = section of proposed HSR tracks for non-compliant bullet trains
  
• red = section of legacy + run-through tracks for FRA-compliant trains
  
• yellow = section Metro Gold Line + Eastside extension
  
• black = proposed Metro Black Shuttle
  
• pink = alternate station location, connection via unmanned people mover
  

To illustrate the concept, 10 HSR tracks are shown at the station. It would be possible implement fewer HSR tracks and add some run-through tracks and platforms for FRA-compliant trains (e.g. Amtrak Pacific Surfliner) instead. This option is not shown on the map. Neither is the option of transit-oriented office tower development north-east and south of the new station.

Prior to station construction, a section of N Alameda street would need to be moved underground. Along with N Spring, Sotello and N Main Streets, this would afford vehicle access to the main station hall located east of the tracks. This corner of the station footprint could itself be a high-rise with office suites or a business hotel/conference center on the upper floors. There is room for an adjoining bus terminal.

The mezzanine level above the tracks would provide generous pedestrian flow capacity, with multiple descents to each island and side platform plus paths to the Black Shuttle and Gold Line stations. Optionally, the mezzanine could house a shopping mall. If desired, one or more levels of for-fee public parking could be implemented on top of this, accessible from N Broadway via a flyover at the north end of the station.

The loss of the existing public park at what would become Alameda Station could be compensated by adding a green roof park to the structure, supported by recycled water. This could include bleacher structures for open-air concerts and/or al fresco restaurants. For reference, here's a picture of the "living roof" on top of the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco:



UPDATE 2: In response to comments from bafg and others regarding the State Historical Park, I've fleshed out the alternative of a new East Terminal for Union Station featuring ten run-through HSR tracks at grade, i.e. underneath E Ceasar E Chavez Ave next to the river. The HSR terminal would be connected to the main terminal via a short unmanned people mover running above street level. The new terminal has a mezzanine level, but only north of the people mover station. A green roof would still be useful in that it eliminates an air conditioning requirement.

Optionally, the Metro subway lines could be extended one stop to provide direct service to the new terminal.

Note that in this alternative, the diesel tracks have been relocated to near where the road begins to rise to bridge level. It may be necessary to create a slight dip for them to achieve adequate vertical clearance. Doing it this way minimizes the number of grade crossings between legacy and HSR tracks. The large building north-west of Keller Street need not be torn down.


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UPDATE 3: If CHSRA is forced to use the I-10 median for the Inland Empire/San Diego spur in phase II because UPRR refuses to offer its ROW, then the plan to build run-through tracks for HSR at the existing Union Station terminal would run into problems. A modified version of my original proposal that skirts the new State Historical Park would solve that. The northern approach tracks would run on an aerial structure above N Spring St, with a transparent sound wall to avoid impacting visitors to the park. The mezzanine at the station would then be at street level, the platforms above severely curved. I'm not entirely sure of the vertical configuration of the existing tracks in the "throat" into Union Station, but perhaps the ones for HSR could run above them to separate grades and avoid capacity constraints. Note that the Metrolink San Bernardino line already runs along in the I-10 median between the 716 Junction and El Monte. Also note that an HSR station in the I-10 median at Ontario airport would require an additional people mover to be of much use.


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CHSRA Board Meeting December 2008

Peter Nelson attended the California High Speed Rail Authority Board Meeting in San José on Wednesday and filed this report. The agenda is here and Peter has organized his report according to each item. Scroll down for some media files - an MP3 of the CHSRA lobbyist's report on federal funding prospects, and a PPT of the Work Program. My comments are in italics. Lots to chew over here!

Peter's report:

1-2, closed doors.

3. Approve Oct. Meeting Minutes - I noticed that at the meeting "Frank Guzzo from Siemens presented an overview of Siemens' progress in high-speed train technology." This sounds like it would have been an interesting presentation, but unfortunately the Authority does not seem to video tape their own meetings. It would be nice if they had something like SFGTV, where every single SF meeting is recorded and placed online. [Robert: Yes, this would be a very good way to encourage citizen engagement and continue to promote a culture of openness at the Authority.]

4. Something about compensation for meetings, I didn't listen.

5. Member's Reports - this was most of the patting themselves on the back. Really nothing of substance. There were also a bunch of people like the San Jose mayor and a Silicon Valley Leadership Group representative that gave generic reports / congratulations.

6. Executive Director's Report. This was the start of any actual substance.

• They decided they will produce an annual report to the legislature with the past year's progress. Very good idea, and kinda cool that they brought it up on their own without being told to do so. I assume like the other major filings this will appear online (after a few weeks delay).
  
  
• BNSF has indicated that they are open to negotiation and sharing of their Right of Way, unlike most other companies that own track.
  
  
• The executive director is in the process of negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding with Caltrain defining both sides rights/responsibilities. This is so that the shared Caltrain corridor is developed in a coherent fashion by a single joint entity. Along with Caltrain, it was explicitly mentioned that this would involve also talking with the Transbay Joint Powers Association to get to the Transbay Terminal. So despite the media reports, the Transbay Terminal is still their plan. [Robert: Yes, this was indeed always the plan. As we reported last month there are some turf wars going on between CHSRA and the TJPA, some of it over legitimate issues. But conversations continue to happen, which is very good.]
  
  
• The FRA has given a Record of Decision signing off on the SF/Bay Area EIR.
  
  
• All future meetings will be on the 1st Thursday of the month in Sacramento, so this looks to be the only meeting I'll be attending. [Robert: That's probably a sensible cost-savings move, although it would be good to have a few meetings in other locales around the state each year. I'm going to try and make as many of these meetings as possible. Yay for the Capitol Corridor!]

7. Cooperative Agreement with Caltrans. There was some argument about this agreement. The idea was basically to utilize some of their expertise in RoW acquisition and construction inspection, by contracting the work to them. One board member was quite against giving anything to Caltrans that could be done by a private firm, basically anything related to construction. The main concern though was if Caltrans could actually meet reasonable schedules to expedite the work. It was decided that the executive director would negotiate a contract with Caltrans and then bring it back to the board for approval.

8. Federal funding. Most of the meat managed to be within a single 5 minute presentation by one Mark Kadish, the CHSRA's lobbyist in Washington DC (used to be Dianne Feinstein's Chief of Staff). Click here for an MP3 of his presentation. He mentions a number of different funding sources that are being looked into:

• The Amtrak re-authorization bill with $1.5 billion in it.
  
  
• The new HSR bill Kerry introduced with billions in it.
  
  
• The economic stimulus package everyone is expecting to come into Washington with Obama that will be mostly transit related. Initial wording of the stimulus though is for things that can turn dirt within 180 days, which we are nowhere close to. He mentioned this horizon might be expanded, and they're looking to see if there's anything useful that could be done so quickly (I can't think of anything). [Robert: We'll see about this. There is a lot of momentum and support for a broader stimulus, especially given the likelihood that this recession is going to last a while. Still, this Congress is not known for its grasp of policy or forward thinking, so we will have to work hard to ensure HSR gets stimulus money.]
  
  
• Doing this as an annual appropriation is not realistic, we need to build it into the baseline.
  
  
• Build a coalition for a national program, not a 1-state HSR program. Need to get other states closer to the the CA level in both planning and funding. This will help us get the funding we want, by helping others.

[Robert: As you can hear in the clip, Kadish believes that striking while the iron is hot and ensuring that HSR is part of a stimulus package is key to getting this funded. This site will be part of a grassroots effort come January to ensure that happens.]

There also was a lot of talk about getting more early private investment and reviewing the state of the private investment workings, especially since Lehman Brothers is no more due to going bankrupt. Conclusion was to have a report at the next meeting.

9. Work Program update. Unfortunately this was the point that they broke for lunch and I left. Before leaving I managed to snag the PPT that was going to be presented, and it looks like it would have been an interesting update. Without any notes the PPT by itself is somewhat limited in usefulness, but I've attached it anyway. [Thanks for getting it Peter!]

So ends Peter's report.

Going In Depth on the Peninsula

You may have noticed a new addition to the blogroll at right - the Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog. It's a fantastic site run by Clem, who lives on the Peninsula and is an expert on the Caltrain (and now HSR corridor). His blog provides some very detailed discussions of the HSR route between SF and San José and focuses on what needs to be done to build HSR the right way.

His posts offer some of the most informative commentary on the Peninsula segment that I've seen. For example, his San Bruno post pointed out a significant issue that will have to be addressed to make HSR trains run effectively:

One important consequence of this history is that San Bruno is left with one of the sharpest curves on the peninsula, where the cutoff formerly diverged from the old main line. The radius of the curve is 1800 feet (550 meters), giving it a maximum safe speed of about 70 mph (115 km/h). Caltrain has a speed limit of 60 mph at this location. Slowing down a high speed train from a peninsula cruise speed of 125 mph (200 km/h) to take the existing San Bruno curve would cost more than a minute, or over half a percent of the entire SF to LA running time. Considering how much investment is being made to shave seconds off run times for the entire system, a 1-minute penalty in San Bruno for a single curve should raise some red flags at the CHSRA.

Consider the "San Bruno Curve" a significant obstacle to HSR on the peninsula.

His Millbrae post from yesterday offers some excellent thoughts on how the flaws of the BART project mean that the Millbrae station is going to have to be significantly reengineered for HSR and Caltrain to be effective:

Plans for the Millbrae HSR station, described in the CHSRA's environmental impact documents, call for four tracks to pass through, with two outside platforms.

Unfortunately, the incompetent design of the existing Millbrae station (opened in 2003 and billed as the largest multi-model station west of the Mississippi) has squandered much of the space available within the Caltrain right of way. Massive support columns for the expansive station mezzanine have been placed right where you'd want to run extra tracks, and a third platform track at the south end of the station (presumptuously built to terminate some Caltrain services, assuming everyone would want to ride BART into San Francisco) sits unused, with no possibility of continuing north through the station. The photo at right, taken in 2000 during construction, illustrates how a forest of concrete pillars now constrains the right of way.

The total lack of foresight in this design is breathtaking.

To make room for four tracks, the existing southbound platform and part of the mezzanine that it supports (including the ill-placed pillars) will have to be demolished and rebuilt a few dozen feet further to the west.

Clem is determined to make sure that HSR is built the right way along the Peninsula:

Let's finish on a positive note: to avoid becoming the boondoggle that proposition 1A opponents fear, the HSR project needs to be designed under the watchful eye of an independent panel of experts with local knowledge, and especially some TEETH to bite back at the agencies and contractors as required to keep them attuned to the public interest. Whether the provisions attached to Proposition 1A will provide for this remains to be seen.

I fully agree, and that's where these HSR blogs become so valuable. We have a lot of people here who are supportive of the concept and who understand the technical issues involved. WE can provide the oversight and public pressure to ensure that HSR becomes the success we all know it can and must be for our state.

When I started this blog back in March it was primarily to fill a void - there were a few sites that had HSR content but they weren't being updated often, and weren't providing the ongoing information and insight that was needed to ensure that Prop 1A would pass. I like to think this blog filled that need and will continue to do so over the next months and years. But if we're going to build this the right way, we need local writers and activists to get involved. Kudos to Clem for stepping up on the Peninsula.

Yes, California, We Can Build It By 2018

Steve Hymon, who runs the Bottleneck Blog for the LA Times, expressed some skepticism about whether the SF-LA line will be open by 2018, as a Daily Cal article reported. Hymon writes:

Not to be a grumpy bear on this -- I know there's a lot of people that want to see the trains up and running -- but I think the odds of the system running in a decade are long. First, there's the little issue of coming up with the $33 billion that the California High-Speed Rail Authority says the project will cost (and some people say that's a low-ball estimate). The bond passed by California voters earlier this month was only for $9.95 billion.

"Some people say" is pretty poor journalism, first of all - those "some people" are the thoroughly discredited Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Association.

Second, if you're going to base skepticism over project delivery on funding, shouldn't you mention the John Kerry HSR funding proposal? Or Obama's $500 billion economic stimulus? Funding isn't certain but it sure looks likely. Skepticism is fine, but readers are still owed informed and complete reporting. He continues:

And then there's this: Look at how long it takes just to build a few miles of light rail. Take, for example, the Expo Line, which is planned to run from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, a distance of some 15 miles. Construction began in 2006 and the first 8.6 miles may be done by 2010, with the remainder by 2015. That's nine years to build 15 miles of light rail, versus a decade to build 400-plus miles of 220 mph rail.

This claim doesn't seem to reflect some factors about the high speed rail project that separate it from something like the Expo Line. First, the Expo Line's phased construction is partly due to funding issues faced by the MTA. Measure R, combined with a federal stimulus, could accelerate the delivery of the final phase. Second, the Expo Line involves building entirely new tracks through an urban center. HSR doesn't. It will involve grade separations and new tracks, but those will come next to existing rail corridors. And the bulk of the route will be built outside urban areas.

More importantly, the 2018 date is not some random number. The California High Speed Rail Authority's 2008 Business Plan explains that it will take 8 years to complete final design and construction. The timetable laid out in that document uses 2012-2020 as the timeline, but Quentin Kopp has recently suggested that the Program Level EIR/EIS process and preliminary engineering could be complete by July 2010 - in which case, the 2018 target date is entirely appropriate.

Sure, the CHSRA might not make that target date. But the way Hymon reported this claim made it sound like 2018 was pie-in-the-sky boosterism, when in fact it's sourced and reasonable.

Do you really think high-speed rail can happen that quickly? Making big promises is a good way to get the public excited. It's also a good way to make them cynical when those promises fail to materialize.

The same is true of the media, which frequently makes readers and citizens cynical about government programs or passenger rail projects by casting them in an unfair light. The Metro Gold Line Extension is being delivered on-time and on-budget even though it involves a tunnel under East LA. Seattle's Central Link light rail project is going to be delivered on-time and on-budget even though it too involves a significant tunnel (under Beacon Hill) and creating a light rail ROW in the middle of a busy urban street (Martin Luther King Way).

Even on a blog, I'd prefer that members of the media focus on reporting the facts in a complete and fair manner, instead of trying to push one's own skepticism.

2008 Business Plan Published

As promised the California High Speed Rail Authority has published the 2008 Business Plan. Remember, this would have been ready in time for the election had Republicans like Roy Ashburn not blocked passage of the state budget for three months.

The plan itself is primarily an update of construction costs and ridership estimates. The overall cost of SF-Anaheim is pegged at $33 billion, of which $12 billion to $16 billion will come from the federal government. It's worth noting not all of that is going to be in the form of cash, but much will be in the form of low interest bonds that the feds will float - Obama has for example proposed a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that could help provide construction cost support to high speed rail here.

The plan also anticipates that the ridership and operating surpluses are at their best when HSR fares are 50% of airfares on the LA-SF route. Some HSR deniers might scoff at the likelihood of that happening given possible cost increases - but consider that airfares will be rising over the next ten years, likely at a much faster rate than HSR fares will climb due to inflation. The airline crisis hasn't gone away.

The updated business plan also notes that if there are problems in getting funding to build the entire system, the urban segments can likely pay for themselves. Of course I have often railed against the possibility of turning HSR into a glorified commuter rail, and strongly believe that the first items that ought to be constructed are the tracks through the mountains - Pacheco Pass and the Tehachapis - which are the current choke points for intrastate passenger rail. In any event this is one of the issues we will need to monitor very closely over the coming months and years.

Of course, the HSR deniers are still out in force, getting their misleading quotes into the newspapers. Today's SF Chronicle article on the business plan is a good example, giving leading HSR denier Jon Coupal, of the Howard Jarvis Association, the chance to spew his truthiness:

Critics said they were disappointed by the plan released Friday, saying it lacked the necessary detail.

"We waited three months for this?" said Jon Coupal, spokesman for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which opposed Prop. 1A. "I will say it's very pretty and has nice photographs. But as a business plan to present to venture capitalists to convince them to invest, it falls far short."

This from the guy whose organization's business plan involves bankrupting our state? I find it amazing that anyone in the media sees him as a credible source when it comes to government spending and balancing out the numbers.

Let's also be clear - the HSR deniers will claim that everything "lacks the necessary detail" up to the day the first passengers board the trains. If Coupal wants to see informed discussion about the details instead of misinformation intended to kill the project he would do well to click on our comments, where the details are given very intense discussion.

The business plan update provides the necessary information for our state to move forward on the project voters endorsed on Tuesday. At this point HSR deniers are trying to undermine the project - if they want to be useful, then join us in the comments and show how we can improve it. We all want the best possible HSR system for our state. It's time for Californians to come together and make it happen.

Next Steps

Now that we have won the fight for Proposition 1A, we need to start thinking about our next steps. This blog isn't going anywhere - I founded it in March to promote the project. Of necessity it became a pro-Prop 1A site (and before that we spent a lot of time on AB 3034), but Tuesday's victory does not mean we're going to close up shop. Far from it.

Prop 1A was the beginning. To ensure that we follow through and build this project - and build it right - an independent, grassroots movement is going to be needed. The HSR deniers have been defeated but they aren't likely to go away, and will continue to try and kill this project through other means.

Over the next few months and even years, here are some of the issues we will be focusing on to ensure that our SUPERTRAIN gets built right. Can't wait to share a bottle of champagne or three with all of you on the first train, but we still have a lot of work to do to get there.

1. Defend High Speed Rail. California isn't the first state to approve a high speed rail project. In 1991 Texas gave a franchise to a consortium to build an HSR system linking the "triangle" (Houston-DFW-San Antonio), only to see the project canceled in 1994 after heavy lobbying by Southwest Airlines. In 2000 Florida voters approved an HSR project concept but in 2004 under Jeb Bush's leadership they killed the project.

The same thing could happen here. The HSR deniers showed their willingness to distort facts and even lie to try and kill HSR. They had some powerful allies in the state legislature. Roy Ashburn may be on his way out, but we cannot rest on our laurels. Defending the high speed rail project and ensuring that the will of the voters is respected must be our top priority. Especially over the next few months and years when hard decisions will have to be made about financing, engineering, and other aspects of the project.

2. Secure Federal Funding. If we're going to build this we need to make sure that the promises of federal support materialize. As I have consistently argued, we have every reason to believe that they will, especially now that we have an HSR White House in the form of President Barack Obama and VP Joe Biden. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein came to California last week to stump for Prop 1A and now we need to ensure they hold up their end of the deal. (Note: just after I posted this I saw that Dianne Feinstein is planning to direct money our way out of a recent $1.5 billion HSR starter bill approved in Congress earlier this year.)

We'll need to get started on this in January 2009 and lobby the Congress and the White House to provide funding to the California High Speed Rail project. Once we put steel in the ground the HSR deniers are going to have an extremely difficult time killing the project.

3. Watchdog the Implementation Process. There are a lot of decisions made about this project in the next few years that will be essential to its overall success, from technology to engineering to routing. Some station locations have yet to be finalized, and some cities are still debating how the tracks will be laid. We have a lot of very smart, very experienced people here on the blog familiar with trains and high speed projects. We can and we will watch over the entire HSR process to make sure the best system is built and operated for the benefit of all Californians.

4. Fight the Lawsuits. As rafael has correctly reminded us, big projects like this attract lawsuits like moths to a flame. These lawsuits can delay construction and drive up the costs. We will have to provide some public pushback against frivolous lawsuits, such as those already filed. We're not a legal team, of course, but lawsuits on big public works projects are as much about politics and PR as they are about the courtroom.

5. Communicate With the Public. For all of the above to succeed we will need to keep the public informed. The HSR deniers have shown themselves to be skilled at flooding the media with misinformation, playing on Californians' unfamiliarity with large-scale passenger rail projects. Our task is to counter that by providing accurate information to the public as best we can. We'll continue to ramp up our media outreach, including op-eds and LTEs. Our communications work hasn't ended with Prop 1A's passage, not by a longshot.

6. Boost Other Passenger Rail. For HSR to be a success in California it will need to be integrated effectively with other passenger rail systems, whether it's commuter rail like Caltrain and Metrolink, urban rail like VTA light rail and LA Metro Rail, or other intercity rail like Amtrak California. We can and should support those projects.

We should also work to ensure that as much of that $950 million in Prop 1A gets delivered to non-HSR passenger rail as quickly as possible. This will boost public support for HSR and for passenger rail itself, especially if we can provide service where none or little currently exists. Here I am specifically thinking of the proposed Coast Daylight service between SF and LA via the Coast route (Salinas, SLO, Santa Barbara). Projects like that which are ready to go pending funding can help boost ridership and familiarity with intercity rail, thereby solidifying public support for HSR as well.

7. Improve the Blog. I started this site on Blogger in March because I am primarily a writer and a strategist, not a web designer. I needed something quick and simple. This blog has been functional enough, but sometimes not as robust as needed. I'd especially like to make folks have to pick a username before posting, be able to provide "there's more" (some of my posts can get kinda long) and track IPs. Plus CMS like WordPress or Textpattern can provide better layout, design, readability.

The one drawback is this website already has a badass SEO (search engine optimization). We're #2 on a Google search for "california high speed rail" and #5 for "high speed rail". Going to a unique URL will cause us to lose that temporarily, but I'm sure we can find a way to rebuild it.

The one thing I can't improve is the quality of discussion. You guys are the best. When I started the site I figured it would basically be an annex of Calitics and maybe get some comments of its own. But the site has come into its own. Now we have many excellent commenters and, as I've come to discover in the last few days, a lot of readers around the state and in the transit community.

Progressive organizing is only as good as the quality of the interactions within the movement. This site is nothing without you all. I look forward to continuing to support, build, and eventually ride California High Speed Rail with you.

What's Going to Happen in the State Senate?

In the comments on yesterday's post rafael, one of HSR's strongest and most knowledgeable supporters, gave a list of changes to AB 3034 and the overall project that the State Senate is likely to consider. It's a good guide to how the politics may play out over the next week and I wanted to give my commentary on the specific details.

- an explicit phasing policy that prioritizes bottleneck sections that must enable high growth in freight and/or commuter rail in addition to separate tracks for HSR. In practice, that means the Caltrain and LOSSAN corridors.

I fear rafael is right that the State Senate is going to suggest this. To me this is gutting the HSR project as it delays the intercity aspect of HSR indefinitely. Faster service on the Caltrain and LOSSAN corridors would be valuable, but it should not come at the expense of the overall concept of giving Californians an affordable and sustainable alternative to driving and flying between north and south while also providing for commuters as well.

- priority for LA-San Diego over crossing Tehachapi Pass, based on ridership considerations. One option would be to switch from an SF-LA starter line to two shorter ones in Northern and Southern California, respectively. See this map for details.

I also think we are likely to see this - but we shouldn't. Someone has to take the lead in funding a Tehachapi Pass crossing. It is likely to remain the "missing link" for quite some time, unfunded and seemingly without priority, unless we step up now to ensure it gets built. This goes to the core of my objection to the commuter HSR-first strategy - it doesn't help us make the necessary leap. Californians already understand the role of trains in commuting, but what we really need is intercity rail capacity. That's the harder project to build, but also the one that can transform the state the most dramatically.

Further, the State Senate report acknowledged that commuter trips will only be 30% of the overall ridership, and that the LA-SF route offered the most lucrative revenues. If the State Senate suggests deemphasizing LA-SF, they cannot credibly use ridership as justification for doing so.

- an external engineering review of construction feasibility and SF-LA line haul time estimates for Altamont Pass variation 9 (excl. spur to Oakland), separately for San Jose Diridon and Santa Clara/SJC station options. Target date: ASAP

rafael has been arguing for a few weeks now that Altamont option 9 - which goes through San Jose but not across the bay - should be reconsidered. I'm willing to see the results of such a study, even though I continue to believe what's most important is resolving Altamont vs. Pacheco and sticking with one or the other. It's becoming like the Obama vs. Hillary thing - strong cases can be made for either one, but eventually we have to choose and focus on the bigger picture, in this case getting the bonds passed.

- updated cost estimates for all sections of the network, including especially the sections down to San Diego and up to Sacramento (the latter separately for Altamont only, Pacheco only and Pacheco+overlay options). Target date: October 2008.

I would suggest absolutely no later than October 1 for delivery of these estimates - which are certainly necessary. Ballots go in the mail in early October and we're going to need to have coverage of the estimates turned around pretty quickly.

- a prospectus aimed at investors, itemizing not only the many benefits and business opportunities but also known project risks. These include but are not limited to tunneling, ridership projections, the FRA waiver for running off-the-shelf European/Asian equipment and, land acquisition in urban/suburban areas and at stations. The prospectus should also quantify the opportunity cost of failing to construct HSR, itemized for each phase of construction. Target publication date: early October 2008 - CA voters should be considered investors, it's important to set realistic expectations.

I really, really like this. Especially quantifying the cost of NOT building HSR. The State Senate failed dramatically by not asking or even seeming to understand that question, but Californians deserve to make a fully informed choice. Only a comparison of the cost of building HSR and the cost of not building it allows that kind of informed choice to be made.

- explicitly tasking CHSRA with planning railroad operations, especially tools for optimizing the express/local mix and, processes and technologies for handling emergency situations involving both HSR and other railroad operators.

- formally tasking a separate organization responsible for day-to-day quality assurance of CHSRA research and decision-making, especially with regard to major expenditures such as finalizing the network structure and San Mateo county station, choosing trainset vendors and especially, awarding construction contracts.

These are good practices that an amended AB 3034 ought to embrace.

- spelling out the consequences of the outcome of the ballot initiative for CHSRA and HSR in California. If it's now or never, voters must be told as much.

Absolutely. This is an opportunity that isn't going to come back around again, and we're not going to get any federal money for HSR unless we take the first step. By voting against the bond Californians would be voting to shackle the state to soaring gas prices and an airline industry in crisis.

Needless to say, CHSRA will need sufficient funds to do all this extra work at such short notice in addition to actively marketing the project to investors. Any amendment by the State Senate should ensure it doesn't run out of money before the November ballot.

An excellent point. If CHSRA is being tasked with additional projects they will need the money to properly deliver these studies and updates. Otherwise the State Senate is setting them up to fail.

I would close by saying that any alteration of the construction plan - if LA-SF is to be abandoned as the first phase - MUST, absolutely must, ensure that the north-south link will be built. The State Senate cannot change this project into commuter rail alone. It needs to keep in mind the need to connect north and south without missing links. It needs to keep in mind the need to provide a truly statewide alternative to oil, which only intercity HSR can offer.

What else should the State Senate include in an amended AB 3034?

Union Pacific's HSR Games

According to an article the LA Times just put up on their website, Union Pacific Railroad is balking at sharing its right of way with high speed trains. For context, the CHSRA plan has always involved building HSR-specific tracks alongside existing rails currently owned by UP, to minimize environmental impacts and disruption to existing urban development. So this has the potential to be a serious problem:

Officials at Union Pacific railroad recently told the California High Speed Rail Authority that they have safety and operational concerns about running a bullet train close to lumbering freight trains.

"Just look at what happened in L.A. a few years ago," said Scott Moore, a Union Pacific vice president, citing the 2005 crash of a Metrolink passenger train that killed 11 and hampered rail operations.

"Those accidents happen."

This rationale is flatly ridiculous. As UP well knows, the accident referred to is the subject of an ongoing trial of Juan Manuel Alvarez who tried to commit suicide by parking his truck on the Metrolink tracks near Glendale. He did this on an at-grade crossing, which will be eliminated as part of the HSR project. And as is the case around the world, the HSR tracks will be fenced off from the public, making it difficult for a similar accident to occur. In fact, accidents of any kind are very rare on HSR systems, and it is very uncommon for HSR trains to hit passenger vehicles.

Further, I know of no specific problems where HSR trains have ever had an issue sharing tracks with any other trains - and I find it interesting that UP had to cite the 2005 Metrolink crash, since they couldn't come up with any actual issues of HSR and freight running in close proximity. Trains commonly share multiple tracks next to each other without any problems.

So we have to ask what UP is really up to with this statement. I believe they are holding out for more money. They've done it before - several years ago Santa Cruz County resolved to purchase the branch line from Pajaro to Davenport, running through Santa Cruz and paralleling Highway 1, from UP. The negotiations dragged on for years as UP tried to overstate the value of the line and get the county to assume responsibility for all repairs of tracks and bridges - and when the county balked, UP threatened to refuse to sell the line. UP's statement may well be a ploy for more money, some role in operations or profits from HSR, or other assurances from CHSRA and the state.

And of course, UP had no objection to - and has benefited greatly from - government-funded projects such as the Alameda Corridor. For them to turn around and try and screw HSR is inconsistent at best. The state and federal governments should play hardball with UP over this - if they continue to drag their feet on negotiating with CHSRA, then perhaps UP doesn't need the Alameda Corridor East, or the Colton flyover, or continued deregulation of the industry.

Some want to believe this is a crisis for HSR. If UP holds firm in its refusal to share ROW, there's always eminent domain, but that would involve a long and drawn-out court process. If the CHSRA has to abandon the ROW-sharing plan, then they'll need to completely redo the environmental impact reports, which could add 3-5 years to the construction time on the project.

That would be inconvenient, but it is long past time for us to get started on HSR. Gas prices and global warming have finally given urgency to HSR, and that should in turn give the public and their representatives the clarity of vision and sense of purpose to ensure that UP doesn't hijack the project for their own concerns. State and federal political leaders need to ramp up the pressure on UP - and we need to do the same. High speed rail is too important for one company - even Union Pacific - to block. We can find ways to assuage their concerns while staying on track to get the high speed rail system approved and under construction by 2010.

The Growing Concern over AB 3034

AB 3034, the bill that makes some changes to the November HSR bond, sailed through the Assembly today on a 57-0 60-3 vote. Apparently Mike Villines got the message. The bill heads toward the Senate, where I am told it will be taken up in about two to three weeks.

But there is growing concern among HSR supporters about this bill - specifically, the provision that eliminates the rule that LA-SF had to be built first and replacing it with a nebulous "competitive bidding" process where HSR bond funds will instead go to those portions of the proposed route that can leverage the most funding. Although it's not clear how this might work in practice, it runs a very high risk of leaving us with an HSR system that is built with a missing link in the Central Valley, defeating the main purpose and selling point of the system - that it will connect the state's two largest metro areas, providing an alternative to the collapsing airlines system and the impact of soaring fuel prices.

This blog advocates a clearly planned phase approach, where LA-SF is the first route constructed and opened, but where extensions to SD and Sacramento are guaranteed, not merely promised, as Phase II. This would give Californians the confidence that the system will not only be built as planned, but built to its fullest potential. The ridership projections, and therefore the financial promises, all hinge upon a system that completely connects LA and SF. To compromise that connection, to sever the LA-SF link, is to compromise the entire project.

Unfortunately there is a risk of that happening. For example, this is from today's Fresno Bee:

As envisioned, the rail line would eventually run from San Diego to as far north as Sacramento, with trains reaching top speeds of more than 200 mph. Under the bill, route segments that draw the most financial support from local governments and private and federal sources would get top priority.

The provision could potentially delay some Valley segments -- if nonstate financial support does not materialize. But Mehdi Morshed, executive director of the High Speed Rail Authority, said the Valley remains a top priority because the wide-open region is the only place where trains can reach top speeds.

"We cannot do 220-mile [an hour] service or test the 220-mile-an-hour train .... without building a significant section in the Central Valley," he said.

Galgiani's bill drew support from San Joaquin Valley leaders because it increases the likelihood that a Valley-to-Sacramento route will be included in the first phase.

Since few "local governments" can front the necessary money for this, especially in the Valley, that term seems to me to refer to mass transit agencies, such as Caltrain, VTA, Metrolink, LACMTA, and others.

Nobody can argue that this blog hasn't been aware of this problem - it was in fact the subject of the very first post back in March - but at the same time we missed a chance to amend the bill in the Assembly. We will now need to focus on getting the Senate to fix the bill and ensure that HSR is not built in pieces - and we will also focus on getting some information out of the CHSRA and legislative leaders about their commitment to building true HSR and not glorified commuter rail in a few unconnected parts of the state.

Friday afternoon is a bad time to try and get info out of Sacramento - but it also gives us two wide-open days to organize. Anyone interested in helping put some activism together to help ensure the integrity of the HSR system, send an email to my last name at gmail dot com.

AB 3034

Over at the Facebook group I've been seeing some questions about what exactly AB 3034 is and what it would do for HSR. It's a good question and so I thought I'd provide a brief overview here.

AB 3034 is Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani's bill to make some changes to the bond proposal that will go before voters in November. If AB 3034 fails the HSR vote will still take place but will likely lack support from the Sierra Club and Arnold Schwarzenegger, for reasons discussed below. In fact, AB 3034 is designed to win their support, as well as the support of folks along the ACE corridor (which Galgiani represents).

Some of the specific things AB 3034 will do:

• Prevent construction of a station between Gilroy and Merced - i.e. no Los Banos station, appeasing the Sierra Club which did not want to open that region up to further sprawl. Of course, no Los Banos station was ever proposed by the CHSRA. Actually, one was - see comments.



• Makes the HSR bond money and possible federal funds available to any portion of the line, and would eliminate the requirement to build LA-SF first. In the very first post on this blog I was deeply critical of eliminating the LA-SF first requirement, and it is my hope this can be stripped in an amendment. Galgiani's goal here is to appease folks along the Altamont corridor, as well as in Sacramento and San Diego, by holding out the possibility that they might get funded sooner than intended.



• In determining which sections will get funded first, the CHSRA is to "give priority to those segments requiring the smallest amount of bond funds as a percentage of the total construction cost and consider the utility of that segment for other passenger rail services." I still worry about this undermining the connectivity of LA-SF, which is really the reason for building HSR.

I get the sense that this bill is Galgiani's way of giving the Altamont alignment people an opportunity to get funding and service upgrades that they believe they missed out on when the CHSRA chose the Pacheco alignment. I'm all for upgrading the Altamont corridor, and I never much cared which alignment was chosen. But I think it would be an extremely bad idea to help Altamont at the cost of the LA-SF portion, which really does need to be prioritized first in construction of the system.

So is AB 3034 a good idea? That all depends on the politics. If this is the only way we can get the HSR bonds passed this fall, then I might be able to swallow it and fight another day to get LA-SF built first. But if this isn't necessary to get the HSR bonds done, or if we can firmly eliminate the Los Banos station another way (and therefore keep the Sierra Club happy) without risking the core of the system, then AB 3034 may not be such a great idea.

Carbon Neutral Rail

The BayRail Alliance is hosting a talk this Thursday on Carbon Neutral Rail Service in Mountain View. David Dearborn is a San José native who has worked out a tentative plan to power Caltrain entirely by solar power. Presumably the technology and practice of the system can be applied to high speed rail as well - perhaps mixed with wind power, which the California High Speed Rail Authority has been promoting in its advertisements. Already there are plans to include some form of "hybrid" technology by which the HSR trains would restore power to the grid when braking, but to maximize the environmental and climate benefits of HSR it would be ideal to have the system entirely powered by renewables.

I won't be able to attend the meeting, but I recommend it and the BayRail Alliance to you all; hopefully someone can go and report back to us. Also, as you may have noticed, I'm not an expert on the engineering and tech aspects of HSR - but feel free to use this as an open thread to discuss such things.

UPDATE In the comments another Robert points out that the CHSRA is in fact studying ways to make the system carbon neutral:

The California High-Speed Rail Authority Board yesterday authorized a study to determine the feasibility of achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions for the power needs of the 700-mile electric high-speed train system. The study, timed to be completed by June of this year, will focus on costs, potential location of facilities and partnerships with utilities for on-site production of clean energy sources.

"The proposed route of the system intersects with many of the state's best location for wind, solar and geothermal facilities," said Quentin Kopp, chairman of the Authority. "High-speed trains will help California meet the goals set out by the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; using new clean energy technologies to power the system will be an added bonus and establish California as a leader in reducing global warming while developing renewable energy sources."

The Oakland Tribune Gets HSR Wrong

It's one thing when a conservative columnist like Dan Walters or Sen. Jim Battin makes an ill-informed attack on high speed rail. But when the Oakland Tribune does the same thing in a Sunday editorial, it can be frustrating. One would hope that a newspaper's editorial staff would take more care to get their facts straight, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Instead they have attacked the HSR plan based on some very deeply flawed assumptions - at times it reads like the editorial was cribbed from some HSR denial site.

These arguments resonate with many Californians who envision a fast, comfortable and affordable train trip from the Bay Area to Los Angeles or San Diego. That is why even after two failed attempts to get a bullet train bond measure on the statewide ballot, a third attempt is being made this year.

In 2004 and again in 2006, efforts to place a $10 billion high-speed rail bond on the ballot failed. This time around, the measure is gaining support in part because of the prospect of some private funding and federal money.

Here at the outset the editorial is misleading readers. They make it sound like HSR is a failure because it didn't make it to the ballot in 2004 or 2006, ostensibly because of lack of public support. The truth is that the bonds didn't go on the ballot because Arnold Schwarzenegger did not want the HSR bonds to compete with his own bond plans in both years. That's a crucial piece of information that the editorial doesn't offer.

However, a bullet-train system with 700 miles of track faces the same obstacles today that it always has: excessive capital costs and no guarantees that there will be enough riders to pay for huge operating expenses.

Unfortunately, as we will see, these "excessive capital costs" are speculative and not placed in any context, and the ridership numbers are questioned whereas massive subsidies for airlines and freeways are not even mentioned.

In an attempt to overcome these obstacles, proponents of a high-speed intercity rail system have come up with sunny projections of 42 million rides a year, net operating profits and fares lower than those of airlines.

We are not nearly as optimistic about the viability of bullet trains.

It would be useful to let readers know that every HSR line in the world generates net operating profits with fares comparable to or lower than those of airlines on the same route. Acela is not a true HSR line, but it has taken over 40% of the market share from airlines on the Northeast Corridor.

First, there is the high and growing estimated cost of a 700-mile system. The $10 billion bond money would be only a start. Two years ago, the estimated cost of the system was $34 billion. Today it is $40 billion. How much more will it be by the time it is up and running a dozen years from now?

Here again the editorial authors leave out a crucial piece of information: inflation and the declining dollar. The increased cost is directly due to those factors. And as long as the dollar continues to decline in value, yes, the capital cost will rise.

If past estimates of the cost of major construction projects are any indication, a 700-mile, high-speed rail system could cost $60 billion, $70 billion or more even in today's dollars.

Did the Oakland Tribune suggest we not build the East Span of the Bay Bridge even though the cost soared from an original estimate of $200 million to over $1.5 billion? Of course not. Freeway subsidies are never questioned by the media. Nor is the cost of HSR ever placed in context. If HSR is not built, what will the cost be of expanding airports and freeways to match the same demand? The last numbers we saw on that were $80 billion - so HSR is a net savings to the state.

More importantly, what is the energy and climate cost of not building HSR? Cheap oil is on its way out, and its disappearance has in the last week alone claimed four airlines and put the rest in serious financial straits. And this is before peak oil has made its full impact felt on the US. Further, we can expect there to be significant carbon fees added onto air travel in the next 10 years, either through an outright carbon tax or through a cap-and-trade system that will still likely be passed onto consumers.

If we do nothing and not build HSR, the costs of maintaining an oil-based transportation system are likely to surpass $40 billion very quickly.

Ridership projections also seem to be excessively sanguine. Supporters of the rail system estimate it would have 42 million rides per year. That's about 115,000 per day. To accommodate that many riders, there would have to be 100 20-car trains running every day between Northern and Southern California. That is a lot of expensive equipment to maintain, not to mention 700 miles of special track, numerous stations and a large work force.

There would have to be one north-bound train every 15 minutes for 121/2hours seven days a week and an equal number of southbound trains. The logistics of operating such a massive system are daunting.

This sounds almost exactly like Martin Engel's claims, and they don't hold up. A significant portion of that ridership will come from regional commuters. Even if the ridership isn't 42 million per year - say it is 35 million - it would still be worth the economic and sustainable value of building the system.

And of course the equipment will have to be maintained. That creates green jobs - or has the Oakland Tribune suddenly decided economic growth is a bad thing? The logistics are far from daunting, as they have been solved for quite a long time by the Asian and European HSR systems.

The fact is there is no way anyone can accurately predict how many people will choose to use the train instead of driving or flying.

Driving is cheaper if two or more people are in a car, and air travel will still be considerably faster, especially if the Transportation Safety Administration decides to screen rail travelers the same as airline passengers.

Ridership on Amtrak California lines is soaring thanks to high gas prices and the reliability of trains. Add speed and frequency of service to that and it makes sense that ridership will skyrocket on HSR.

Especially because, as the above selection makes clear, the editorial says absolutely nothing about soaring gas prices and declining supplies. There is simply no way that driving will be cheaper than HSR in 10 years even with two or more people in a car. Gas prices are not going to stop at $4/gal, and by 2018 we will be feeling the supply shortages that peak oil will produce.

If peak oil is a myth and if gas retreats from $4/gal, then we will see even more people flock to the state's freeways, clogging them and making a trip from LA to SF take even longer than it does now. Even in that case HSR will be needed to meet the anticipated need.

If ridership is substantially below estimates, either fares will have to be much higher than for airplane tickets or, as seems likely, the state will have to heavily subsidize the rail system with taxpayer money.

BART, which has a ridership of more than twice that of the highest estimates of high-speed rail, still posts a large operating loss despite having among the highest rail transit fares in the nation.

There is little chance that the suggested fares of three-fourths of air fares would cover operating costs even if ridership approached estimates, which also is highly unlikely.

Airplane tickets are already heavily subsidized - but you wouldn't know it from reading this editorial. Subsidies aren't bad - they're a perfectly acceptable method of promoting economic growth. Otherwise the Oakland Tribune is arguing that BART shouldn't have been built. I'd love to see them take that position openly - nobody in the East Bay would take it seriously.

But perhaps the best reason East Bay residents should be especially wary of supporting bullet trains is the route adopted by the states High-Speed Rail Authority.

Instead of building the rail line in the East Bay, where there are 2.6 million people in growing Alameda and Contra Costa counties, the train will run from San Francisco, down the Peninsula, an area of about 1.5 million people that is not growing fast.

This is a legitimate area of concern for East Bay residents. But at the same time, it's not exactly difficult for them to reach the Transbay Terminal (a 20-40 minute BART ride) or San José Diridon Station (a 30-40 minute Capitol Corridor ride). HSR should and will link to the East Bay someday, but they will immediately benefit from this system's construction even if it doesn't enter Alameda County.

There are much better ways to spend $40 billion or more on transportation such as highways, metropolitan transit and airport expansion. That's the reality that should bring state leaders to their senses and derail the fantasy of a costly bullet train system in California.

Huh? It's better to spend $80 billion on transportation that is going to be obsolete in a decade than to invest in a clean and sustainable system that will last the century? Where exactly will airport expansion happen? The Oakland Tribune should explain how exactly OAK and SFO can expand (into the bay?), or why we should spend billions on new highways that Californians won't be able to afford to use in a few years.

The only fantasy here is that we live in a perpetual 1996 of low oil prices and limitless expansion opportunities for airports and freeways. Here in 2008 it is already clear for numerous reasons - economic, energy, climate - that we need to develop alternative transportation systems. The Oakland Tribune doesn't understand any of that, and their attack on HSR reflects their almost total lack of understanding of the project and the context in which it will be built. Hopefully Californians will show a better understanding of our state's needs.

Dan Walters Needs Our Help

Dan Walters is one of the leading opinion writers in California today. His conservative commentary has filled the pages of the Sacramento Bee for over three decades, and he's regularly syndicated in other local papers across the state. So when he devotes a column to high speed rail it's worth our attention.

Especially when he shows a total lack of understanding of the reasons to build it.

So Dan Walters needs our help in grasping why this project is so necessary to California's future.

After describing some of the very real issues with the overall funding plan, he devotes the second half of his column to an attack on high speed rail:

The most romantic bullet train vision is the lightning-fast trip from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco. But how many people really want to make that trip each day, and would it represent a marked improvement over the very frequent air travel now available?

I can anecdotally provide him with about two dozen names of CDP convention attendees who expressed the desire for a high speed train to connect San José to their homes in SoCal. But we can answer this charge much better by explaining why HSR will be not just an attractive - but necessary - transportation option.

First, attractiveness. We dealt with that last week when discussing the 5% increase in Acela market share on the Northeast Corridor. Acela isn't even a true high speed rail system - ours would provide double the speed. LA-SF is one of the busiest air corridors in the country, and if a flawed high speedish train can take nearly half the market share from airlines there, it should suggest it'll work here two.

Second, necessity. Walters assumes that present conditions will last for some time to come. But nowhere in his column are the words peak oil mentioned. Nor does he discuss soaring gas prices. Both will make it difficult and unattractive to continue flying between the two halves of our state, causing either supply disruption or fare increases beyond the ability of most Californians to pay. Walters may not believe in peak oil, even though it is a fact. But the constant rise in oil prices is going to have to eliminate cheap fares sooner or later.

He goes on to try and undermine the CHSRA claims on air travel:

The High-Speed Rail Commission's environmental impact reports contain some underlying air travel projections that are very difficult to swallow. It would have us believe that air travel demand between Northern and Southern California would nearly double between 2000 and 2010.

That flies in the face of actual airport traffic figures and seems to conflict with another commission projection that in the absence of building the bullet train, air travel times would increase only fractionally between 2000 and 2020.

This passage essentially says nothing. Demand may well have increased, but traffic figures have not met demand. Airports are congested - witness LAX or OAK on a weekend. Most California airports lack the capacity to add slots - Orange County is limited to 14 gates, LAX expansion has languished for three decades, SFO and OAK physically cannot expand any further into the bay. If peak oil is not real, then that means our population really will continue to expand - and without new terminals and runways, and in the absence of airplane innovation (most airplane R&D goes to fuel economy, as supersonic transport appears to be a dead concept) air travel times cannot physically increase.

How about auto travel? The commission projects that driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco, seven hours in 1999, would take eight hours by 2020. But as anyone who makes long-distance drives through the state knows, Interstate 5 is very lightly used now, at least outside urban areas.

This is wrong on two points. First, Interstate 5 is NOT lightly used outside urban areas. Certainly not in the San Joaquin Valley. It is a very heavily used artery. I have on several occasions been stuck in traffic jams in the middle of nowhere in Fresno County on I-5, and on several occasions found it took nine hours to drive from OC to Berkeley.

Second, those urban areas continue to expand. When new development pops up further north on I-5 near Castaic, or in the Tracy area, that adds congestion that a long-distance commuter will encounter on their drive between LA and SF. There never used to be a regular traffic jam on 580 in Livermore, but it's a fact of life now. One used to be able to drive through the Santa Clarita area on the way to LA without encountering much traffic, but that is now difficult.

California's traffic congestion is an urban condition, and the most likely patrons of high-speed rail wouldn't be long-distance travelers but commuters – a poor use of expensive, sophisticated technology.

Again, this is simply not true. Interstate 15 between SoCal and Vegas is another example of a non-urban interstate that regularly sees massive traffic jams. And Walters' argument that most users would be commuters is itself flawed - either because it is flat wrong (ridership on Amtrak California's intercity trains has been steadily rising for years now) or because it doesn't take into account the attractiveness of a quicker commute.

That explains why the most ardent support for bullet train service is to be found in the Central Valley, which is poorly served by airlines and whose main artery, Highway 99, is highly congested with auto and truck traffic.

Bullet trains would make commuting to and from places like Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield easier. But wouldn't that merely encourage the sort of sprawl that we are supposed to be discouraging?

Sprawl is a product of land use laws and cheap oil. We're already losing the cheap oil, which itself is going to stop most sprawl in its tracks. As to land use practices, why should HSR be responsible for the lack of good smart growth planning in the Central Valley? The state ought to step in and subject all local land use planning decisions to AB 32 guidelines on carbon emissions, and localities need to improve farmland protection and infill development rules no matter what HSR's fate is.

Walters argued that:

even the most ardent advocates have yet to present a persuasive, fact-grounded rationale for spending so much borrowed money on an entirely new transportation system.

This blog is intended to be exactly that persuasive, fact-grounded rationale. HSR is necessary to our state's future.

Will High Speed Rail be Built in Pieces?

Ever since the California High Speed Rail plan was published in 2002, the proposed bond funding plan has always insisted that the first section to be opened would be the link between LA and SF. Although the full buildout would include lines to Sacramento and San Diego, LA-SF was rightly seen as the backbone of the system, providing a sustainable, reliable, and rapid transportation option linking the state's two main centers. As with European HSR lines, a successful first line generates political support, public enthusiasm, and financial resources to expand the network.

With that in mind I am a bit hesitant to embrace a proposal from Fiona Ma and Cathleen Galgani that would, according to an AP report:

allow the bonds to be used for all segments of the proposed 700-mile rail system. The bond's current language dedicates the money only for the proposed segment between the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas.

I think this is a bad idea, but first, some background.

Significantly, the bill not only has Arnold's backing, but was drafted by the administration's advisers and the California High Speed Rail Authority board of directors. Quentin Kopp, chair of the board, "said he had been told by Schwarzenegger's chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, that the Republican governor supports the bond proposal." Which is certainly welcome news after years of delayed votes (the plan was originally to have been voted on in 2004, and then in 2006).

Ma and CHSRA director Mehdi Morshed explained the new bill this way:

Ma and Mehdi Morshed, the rail board's executive director, said the bill could broaden public support for the bonds by allowing all areas served by the project to compete for money.

The bill would require the board to give top priority for bond funding to segments of the project that could attract the most federal, local government or private financing and that also could be used by other passenger trains.

What is happening here is the resolution to a months-old conflict between the rail board and the governor's office. Arnold had been trying to undermine the project by, as I explained at Calitics in June 2007, insisting that federal and private funding be secured first, *before* going to the ballot - even though that is ass-backward, as a state funding commitment is necessary for the feds and investors to commit. The Ma-Galgani proposal seems to satisfy Arnold's insistence on leveraged funding by privileging those portions of the route that can find it.

Further, it may satisfy a political need. Back in May 2007 I wrote about concerns that the LA-SF priority was going to lose votes in other parts of the state. I didn't buy that thinking then, or now, but it does appear to have combined with the desire to buy Arnold's support at whatever cost to produce this proposal.

And it's not a good proposal. The core selling point - the "killer app" if you will - of the high speed rail plan is that it offers an alternative to flying and driving between the Bay Area and Southern California. Instead of a hassle-filled, expensive, environmentally ruinous flight, or a long, expensive, unsustainable drive, Californians could hop a train in downtown SF and be in downtown LA in 2 1/2 hours.

As we enter the age of peak oil and global warming, perhaps our greatest transportation need as a state will be long-distance intercity service. We will not be able to fly and drive between the two great metropoles of our state for much longer.

But with this plan, it is precisely that portion - LA-SF - that is *least* likely to get bond funding. There are no other local services that can be leveraged, and federal funding is still uncertain (especially if noted train-hater John McCain wins the White House). What this proposal will produce is HSR along the Caltrain line from SF to San Jose, HSR along the Metrolink line from Santa Clarita to LA and Anaheim, and leave an enormous gap in between. A missing link that will hurt ridership and limit political support for the project, while the costs of filling the link continue to soar.

The Ma-Galgani plan is well-intentioned - but wrong. We need to instead make the case to Californians that our state cannot survive without HSR. Emphasize the environmental and sustainability benefits, as well as the convenience. A winning coalition is built not through gimmicks, but through showing people the underlying value of the system.