Western Rail Alliance Proposes HSR Routes, Including LA-Phoenix

Over the last year or so, since the passage of Prop 1A and the election of a high speed rail-friendly president, there has been a surge of interest in high speed rail across the country, and new organizations and consortiums have come together to propose new projects - as well as to revive ones that had been left for dead (looking at you, Florida).

One of these groups is the "Western Rail Alliance," a semi-official group that includes land-use planners from Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. Late last week this group unveiled their list of proposed routes, one of which includes California:

The idea, in a nutshell, is that planners in each state can best negotiate rail routes within their cities and have the expertise to find funding to develop high-speed rail between those cities. The current participants in the alliance are the local RTC [in Clark County, NV], the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County in Reno, the Maricopa Council of Governments in Phoenix, the Utah Transit Authority in Salt Lake City and the Denver Council of Governments. The organizations also have made overtures to the Mid-Region Council of Governments in Albuquerque, but it has not signed on to the alliance yet.

They also have made contact with planning organizations in Tucson and Boise as potential future members.

Right now, the alliance is working toward turning itself into a legal non-profit organization. It also will move toward expanding membership to include prospective suppliers and service providers that could be a part of the effort to build high-speed rail in the Southwest.

Recently, Skancke made the first public presentation about the alliance, speaking to a lunch meeting of the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce.

At that session, Skancke outlined the first five routes the alliance will focus on: between Los Angeles and Phoenix; between Las Vegas and Phoenix; between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City; between Salt Lake City and Denver; and between Salt Lake City and Reno.

Now, before you all run off to the comments to criticize this, let's be clear: these routes aren't going to be built anytime soon. They don't appear on the USDOT HSR map, nor are they likely to anytime soon. This certainly isn't going to get funded in any official way, aside from very preliminary studies, for many years.

And that's as it should be. Of these five routes, only LA-Phoenix made it onto The Transport Politic's Interstate Rail Network proposal (in the last of four phases). There are many higher priority corridors that should come before these five.

Yet that shouldn't cause us to dismiss the concept out of hand. My interest in high speed rail isn't specific to California, although this blog is. I quite strongly believe this country should invest in building a national HSR network, proceeding first along the highest priority corridors and over the next 2-3 decades, filling in the gaps so that by 2040 or so, there would be a much improved passenger rail network that could get one from coast to coast faster than you can today. Doesn't mean you'd have a 220mph bullet train going from SF to NY, but one could stitch together a network of long-distance trains that could have faster and more reliable travel times than Amtrak's current routes.

In any case, it can't hurt to take an evening and consider what the Western Rail Alliance is proposing. LA-Phoenix could be a very valuable route for California, depending on the alignment. Any LA-PHX train would include stops in San Bernardino and Palm Springs, reaching a part of the state with a growing population. The train could follow Interstate 10 east toward Phoenix over a relatively easy alignment, with only the climb out of the Coachella Valley posing engineering challenges. Or it could continue southeast to the Imperial Valley, which sports the highest unemployment rate of any California county at 30%, hit Yuma, and then find a path back into Phoenix. This route would be less direct and therefore more costly and with a higher travel time, but there's pretty much nothing between Indio and Buckeye along the I-10 route, so it's worth at least a study.

Las Vegas-Phoenix is already witnessing a major transportation project, the Hoover Dam Bypass, scheduled for completion next year. Aside from Kingman and Wickenburg, this route would also be running through mostly empty land.

Las Vegas-Salt Lake City has the benefit of serving more actual settlements between its two endpoints, including the rapidly growing Utah city of St. George, along with several towns scattered along Interstate 15 before the Wasatch Range metropolis at Provo (and giving a boost to cities just beyond the urban edge, like Nephi). Salt Lake City-Reno would also connect some smaller towns, such as Wendover, Elko, and Battle Mountain, but would otherwise be passing through completely empty land. Would be interesting to see how fast you could crank up the trainsets over the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The most intriguing, and almost certainly the most difficult, is a proposed Salt Lake City-Denver HSR route. Perhaps this one will appeal to the people who think the Grapevine should have been the alignment for the SF-LA route. If you think the Grapevine is easy for HSR, you're gonna love the Rocky Mountains!

An earlier Las Vegas Sun article examined one subset of the SLC-Denver route, the I-70 Coalition which has been proposing passenger rail as a solution to the traffic problems through the Rockies on Interstate 70, especially from Denver to the ski resorts in winter. There's been some discussion of maglev for this corridor, but no firm plans as of yet.

As a relatively young person, I might actually live to see some of these projects get built. As China pours hundreds of billions of dollars into their HSR system as an economic stimulus measure, it's not silly to start thinking on a nationwide scale for HSR. Perhaps none of these corridors are yet deserving of federal money, which for now needs to go to the higher priority corridors. But if the western states wanted to start planning these routes, and were willing to start funding it themselves, I wouldn't object. Better we start thinking about this now, instead of continuing to delude ourselves into thinking the status quo is tenable.

Sunday Open Thread

by Rafael

• Shortly before USDOT is due to decide how to allocate the $9.5 billion Congress has already approved for HSR nationwide in two separate bills, a new America2050 study analyzes and ranks 27,000 city pairs to determine Where HSR Works Best. Its recommendation: priority should be given to upgrading speeds in the NEC, upgrading the Chicago-Minneapolis/St. Louis/Detroit routes and, to building the first "express HSR" route in the country between SF and LA/Anaheim. Note that the study did not factor in cost, it only looked at transportation benefits.
  
  
• The Transport Politic discusses SNCF's 1000-page response to USDOT's RFEI on HSR projects nationwide. The state-owned French railway zeroes in on opportunities for express HSR at up to 220mph in California, Florida, Texas and the Midwest. It refers to these as "HST 220". Note the complete absence of the NEC in SNCF's response and, the subtle differences relative to the phasing map America2050 has produced.
  
  UPDATE: the California HST 220 document is now online (24.5MB, h/t to commenter Alon Levy)
  
  
• CA State Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (D-SF) and Speaker Karen Bass are lobbying for ARRA funds for California. In her meeting with Joel Szabat, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Transportation, he hinted that the state might get as much as $4 billion for its HSR starter line. The decision will ultimately be up to his boss, Secr. Ray LaHood.
  
  
• Las Vegas-Anaheim maglev project to get $45 million for environmental studies on the Nevada section after all. Supporters cite lack of commitment to onward connection from Victorville in DesertXPress proposal.
  
  
• USDOT credit council recommends granting a $171 million TIFIA loan to help build the SF Transbay Terminal Center. This will cover 14% of the phase I capital investment. Estimates for total cost including the DTX tunnel and train box are now at $4 billion.

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HEADS UP: CHSRA is hosting three Alternatives Analysis Open House meetings for SF peninsula.

San Carlos, Wed Sep 30, 6:00-8:00 pm
SamTrans Auditorium
1250 San Carlos Avenue

Sunnyvale, Fri Oct 9, 6:00‐8:00 pm
Sunnyvale Recreation Center (Ballroom)
550 E. Remington Drive

San Francisco, Tue Oct 13, 6:00‐8:00 pm
Milton Marks Conference Center
455 Golden Gate Avenue – Lower Level
San Diego A/B/C Rooms

Vegas Maglev Supporters Strike Back

On the heels of months of favorable publicity for the DesertXpress steel-wheel HSR project, crystallized by Senator Harry Reid's shift of support away from maglev and toward DesertXpress, the backers of the SoCal-Vegas maglev project have countered with a op-ed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal by Richann Bender, executive director of the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, criticizing DesertXpress's claims and arguing that maglev hasn't been given a fair shake:

Construction on the first segment of the maglev train -- the fastest train in the world -- can begin in 2010 and would be built entirely in Nevada by hard-working Nevadans.

The backers of the high-speed, conventional-rail DesertXpress would like to "reprogram" this guaranteed $45 million away from Nevada, and instead expect us all to just wait five years for their privately owned train to nowhere to get taxpayer-backed loans. This is not in the best near-term or long-term interests of Nevada jobs or Nevada's economy.

Bender isn't starting off on a good note. The op-ed suggests that the maglev project is really about connecting Las Vegas to a proposed airport site at Primm (along the CA/NV border), undermining the claimed benefits of a train to bring people from Southern California to Las Vegas.

Worse in my mind is Bender's embrace of the deeply misleading anti-rail frame of a "train to nowhere." In fact, it was the Vegas maglev project that led Congressional Republicans to adopt that term during the February debate over the stimulus. While I can understand Bender's desire to undermine the rival DesertXpress project, employing this kind of framing is a monumentally stupid move, for it will merely fuel its usage - which will come back and bite the maglev project, especially when they go to Congress looking for more funding. I don't like to use the disparaging "gadgetbahn" term that is sometimes used to attack maglev, partly because I don't like using phrases and frames that are designed to serve an anti-rail agenda.

Bender lists some other claimed advantages of maglev - it's faster; it's a success in Shanghai; and:

Maglev is also greener than traditional forms of ground and air transportation, and unlike DesertXpress, it complies with all state and local land use and environmental regulations.

I would be curious to see substantiation of this claim. Obviously it's difficult to provide in-depth evidence in a short newspaper op-ed, but that kind of charge does need supporting evidence.

The heart of the op-ed are three points designed to raise fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the DesertXpress project: lack of connectivity to SoCal urban centers, costs, and public funding. First up is the issue of the route:

The maglev project also addresses the primary reason for constructing a high-speed rail system: congestion on Interstate 15 throughout the region, connecting Las Vegas to the heart of the population and business centers in the Southern California Basin.

DesertXpress' proposed ending of Victorville, Calif., falls well outside of congested highway areas.

This isn't a fair criticism for two reasons. Number one is that ending at Victorville actually does include many of the primary congested highway areas on the trip to Vegas - where Interstate 15 narrows north of Victorville is where most of the traffic delays on the trip to Vegas commence. So a terminus of Victorville would do much to avoid most of the worst congestion, even if the rest of the journey into the SoCal metroplex won't yet be covered by DesertXpress.

But that journey could well be completed if DesertXpress built an extension westward across mostly empty desert to link up with the California HSR project at Palmdale. This has been discussed by the two projects, and while it would be fair to criticize this as being no guarantee at all of a future connection, neither is it right to exclude that possibility.

Next up is cost:

Second, maglev costs about the same as traditional high-speed, steel-wheel-on-rail trains. DesertXpress supporters have repeatedly cited a nonexistent $40 billion price tag as a reason for not building the maglev project. A March 2009 Government Accountability Office report lists the true estimated cost of the Las Vegas to Anaheim maglev project as $12.1 billion.

In fact, the Federal Railroad Administration also estimates the cost of traditional high-speed, steel-wheel-on-rail trains at $30 million to $50 million per mile, which would mean DesertXpress could cost up to $9 billion for the Las Vegas-to-Victorville route (far more than the $4 billion reported on the organization's Web site). If you put the two projects side by side, this puts maglev in the same cost per mile range.

There's been a lot of debate about the FRA's cost estimates. Certainly any project built in the desert between Victorville and Vegas would be on the low end of those estimates (once you go from Victorville into the SoCal megalopolis those costs will rise significantly). But maglev's history on costs is just not favorable. Consider the fate of Munich's maglev:

Plans to build a magnetic levitation train from the center of Munich to the airport were trashed on Thursday after construction costs almost doubled from €1.85 billion ($2.90 billion US) to €3.4 billion ($5.33 billion US). This is a major disappointment to Siemens, the company who exported the maglev to Shanghai, China, but cannot build a commercial maglev system within its home country.

And the Shanghai maglev has had ridership problems - running trains that are 80% empty, unable to recoup any part of the enormous construction costs.

Part of the problem in Shanghai was that the maglev system route isn't ideal - it doesn't connect the highly traveled corridors. This would seem to be a problem with the proposed Vegas maglev route. As noted above, the initial segment would run from Primm to Vegas - not exactly a high-traffic route. If/when a new airport is built there to relieve McCarran, then perhaps there will be high ridership on this maglev route. But without firm plans to build the entire line from Vegas to Anaheim, it is still much too likely that the costs on this first segment will balloon and kill the rest of the route, leaving Nevada with something of a white elephant.

Finally there is the issue of public funding:

Third, and perhaps most important, from the beginning maglev has made clear that it intends to use a combination of both private capital and government funding. To date, no high-speed rail project in the United States has been constructed solely with private capital.

This didn't stop DesertXpress from actively selling the idea of a privately funded train. In fact, advocates of DesertXpress have for years cited the "private" element as one of the primary reasons their project deserves support.

As recently reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, however, their focus has now shifted to seeking taxpayer funded federal loans to cover the majority of financing for the project.

I never thought it was good or beneficial that DesertXpress made a virtue of being privately funded, given the extreme unlikelihood that they would be able to keep that promise. That being said, the reason Bender mentioned this is to sow doubt about DesertXpress's claims and plans. There's nothing wrong with seeking federal funding for HSR or maglev, but the mere fact that DesertXpress has shifted its plans doesn't imply any inherent problem with their project.

It's a typical line of attack for critics of passenger rail - anytime the details change, they use that change as supposed evidence that the project is not viable, is being mismanaged, should not be trusted, etc. As with the "train to nowhere" frame, Bender is playing with fire here, especially since the op-ed hasn't offered any actual reasons or explanation as to why DesertXpress made the shift.

It's a shift that makes sense. It's become much more difficult to raise billions in private capital for anything, as banks hoard their funds and as the recession continues to deepen. That's not the same as being impossible to raise those funds, and private investors are much more willing to get involved with something that has federal financial involvement, as will the California HSR project. A good project with sound management will change parts of their plan when conditions warrant, instead of plowing ahead with an obsolete model. DesertXpress's shift is in itself not a bad thing, and shouldn't be taken as such.

I can understand why the Vegas maglev project feels the need to strike back at the DesertXpress project, which has all the momentum these days. Maglev backers have a much tougher case to make, particularly on the cost angle, and they are in very real danger of seeing their project fall apart. I'm all for a close comparison of the two plans to link California to Nevada, and all for criticism when the evidence supports it.

But Richann Bender and the Vegas maglev project haven't made that case here. Instead they have used anti-rail arguments to undermine a rival without offering solid evidence to back up their claims. It's an unfortunate and desperate move that isn't necessary and isn't welcome.

USDOT Announces HSR "Pre-Applications"

by Robert Cruickshank

California has some competition - 39 competitors, if you're counting by state. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood made that statement at a press conference in Las Vegas yesterday:

On Monday Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that 40 states had submitted 270 high-speed rail pre-applications seeking to qualify for stimulus money.

A total of $93 billion has been preliminarily requested. The Transport Politic offers a great overview of the state applications. California represents $22.3 billion of that total:

Caltrans met the Friday deadline to submit preliminary applications for $22.3 billion in passenger and high-speed rail projects in three main corridors: San Francisco-San Jose (which includes improvements to San Francisco's Transbay Terminal), Los Angeles-Anaheim and the Central Valley.

Many of these applications were for "regional" multi-state projects, such as the New England and the Midwest.

Nevada also submitted a multi-billion request, entirely for the maglev project:

Neil Cummings, president of the American Magline Group, the private consortium of firms that would develop the maglev line, said the commission proposed building the first, 40-mile segment between Las Vegas and Primm. The cost would be $1.6 billion.

The group also submitted a second application to the Transportation Department for planning money to continue developing the line to Anaheim.

DesertXpress, for its part, didn't put in an application for HSR stimulus funds, but intends to make use of the planned national infrastructure bank program to finance up to 70% of the estimated $5 billion cost, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

I confess I would be surprised if maglev got much money out of this. Ray LaHood has previously said that California and Florida are in the lead for HSR funds, and although that doesn't guarantee a thing, we've always anticipated CA could get as much as $3-$4 billion of the HSR stimulus funds.

As far as I can tell that should remain the case. The Midwestern application has its issues, including what Ray LaHood has described as a lack of leadership. New England's application is interesting but as they already have the Acela, one might expect USDOT to spread the money around a bit.

We'll find out later this fall what the USDOT's final decision is.

PS: Apologies for the spotty posting of late. I came down with the flu while in LA last weekend, and I'm only just now coming out of the worst of it.

SoCal to Vegas to Become Official Federal HSR Corridor Today

This image is about to get a makeover:



That's the map of the USDOT HSR corridors. One corridor that's not there is Los Angeles to Las Vegas. That is changing today:

The U.S. Transportation secretary will announce today the designation of a federal high-speed-rail corridor between Las Vegas and Southern California, a major assist that enables the long-imagined train route to compete for $8 billion in economic recovery funding and other federal support, the Las Vegas Sun has learned.

The announcement comes as two proposed fast trains are vying to connect Las Vegas and Southern California, a race that has intensified since President Barack Obama unleashed an unprecedented investment in high-speed rail as part of the stimulus bill approved by Congress.

It is unclear whether today’s announcement will favor one of the competing projects over the other. However, the federal designation improves the chances that a train will be developed between the two regions by opening the door to federal aid. Analysts think only one train system will be built.

DesertXpress has not as of yet planned to seek federal aid. I suspect that will have to change. Vegas is in the middle of a severe downturn, which means there's going to be much less private money available to fund it. The maglev is still alive, although with Sen. Harry Reid having switched his support to DesertXpress, I don't see the maglev plan lasting a whole lot longer. Some of its remaining backers include Bellagio CEO Bruce Aguilera, but the Bellagio and the other Vegas resorts are going to have their hands full riding out the recession.

I expect DesertXpress to be the "last project standing" along the Vegas HSR corridor. Whether it gets built, of course, is another matter entirely.

Harry Reid Abandons Maglev for DesertXpress

Some VERY welcome news from the LA Times:

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader and an ardent supporter of high speed rail systems, said today he no longer favors construction of a maglev -- or magnetic levitation -- train between Anaheim and Las Vegas.

Instead, the Nevada Democrat said he now favors a conventional high speed train between Victorville and Las Vegas -- a privately funded venture that is farther along in the planning process and cheaper to build than the maglev proposal, which has been studied for almost three decades.

“I”ve been working on this for 30 years," Reid said. "We’ve gotten nowhere. Maglev projects have been abandoned around the world. It’s time to stop talking and start doing something.”

One year ago today I posted one of my first criticisms of the maglev project, and in the 12 months since I have frequently called for Reid to abandon the maglev project and throw his considerable backing behind the much more realistic DesertXpress steel-wheel HSR proposal - which the Senate Majority Leader has finally done. Reid cited financial reasons for his decision:

Citing a recent Government Accountability Office study, Reid said he had lost confidence in the maglev project, which the report stated could cost up to $40 billion -- far more than originally estimated.

“Maglev is not a priority for me anymore,” Reid said. “We need to get people moving. The I-15 is not working.”

After the Republicans hammered him for asking for HSR stimulus funds for the train, Reid had a lot of incentive to drop the insanely expensive maglev plan. Now he is well-positioned to direct some (although probably not more than "some") HSR funds to the DesertXpress project.

This doesn't mean the maglev project is completely dead. It's just mostly dead. The Southern California Association of Governments still backs maglev, but I am doubtful how long that'll last. With Harry Reid switching to DesertXpress that means the Nevada political establishment will as well. And SCAG will be left alone in backing a maglev project with 20 years of history but no future at all.

The US needs a rail modernization project, not a great leap forward into the technologically and financially unknown. Until we've got steel wheel HSR up and functioning on the key corridors in the USA, maglev is going to have to remain a dream.

Can DesertXpress Break Ground Next Year?

That's what their execs are saying:

Construction crews could begin work on a proposed high-speed rail line to Las Vegas as early as next year, executives with the company behind the project said.

"The strong need for the project is clear and obvious," said Andrew Mack, vice president of Las Vegas-based DesertXpress Enterprises.

The devil is in the details of course. DesertXpress sees their financial plan as using ticket revenues to pay the costs of both construction and operation:

DesertXpress reports that construction and other start-up costs will total $3.5 to $4 billion. and that the line could be built in four years. The midpoint fare price is projected to be about $50.

If that pencils out, then this would be a pretty damn ideal solution. The $4 billion question is "will Southern Californians drive to Victorville and hop a train to Vegas?" and DesertXpress is confident that their ridership studies prove the answer is "yes." For everyone's sake I hope they are correct. My gut says they are - the ability to avoid the massive traffic jams on Interstate 15 on holiday weekends like this would be compelling. People would like the ability to relax on the trains, maybe get some work done as they approach their Vegas vacation, etc.

DesertXpress is also thinking ahead:

If DesertXpress happens, Mack said the most logical city to expand to would be Palmdale, where he said the train could link to the proposed California High Speed Rail system...

Victorville mayor pro tem Tom Rothschild, a Desert XPress supporter, said a high-speed rail line can be built in the near future. He thinks Maglev, which uses magnetic force to levitate and propel trains, is not yet practical.

"Maglev is great, don't mistake me. I think it's the greatest technology for the next half of this century," Rothschild said.

That being said, maglev still has support from Nevada politicians:

Yet for some reason maglev in the U.S. has yet to be widely embraced. It can be understood why this is the case in Europe, given its intricate, interconnected network of traditional and high-speed passenger trains with maximum speeds of 180 mph. In this country, however, we have the advantage of starting fresh.

We can paint the high-speed rail picture any way we want to. And, given the lack of a preexisting passenger rail infrastructure and great distances between U.S. cities (especially in the West and Midwest), the advantages of safe, environmentally responsible and state-of-the-art 300-mph maglev technology should be obvious.

The California-Nevada Interstate Maglev Project, which our administrations helped spearhead through local public-private partnerships, is one such effort that deserves the nation’s support.

I'm no expert on Nevada politics, so I don't quite know what influence former governors Kenny Guinn and Bob Miller still have in the state. But combined with Senator Harry Reid's big push for maglev, it suggests that while DesertXpress seems to be the more financially and technically viable solution, maglev still has the key political support.

Which is a ridiculous situation. Maglev isn't going to get built on the LA-Vegas corridor. *If* the US were to ever embrace maglev I cannot imagine it would happen on that low-population, low-importance corridor. I could see it happening in the midwest or on the Acela route. Not here.

The sooner Nevada's political leadership can line up behind the DesertXpress plan, the better we will be.

Tough Decisions Loom for Vegas HSR

In the wake of the recent scoping meetings for the DesertXpress plan, the Las Vegas Sun has offered a interesting overview of the status of Vegas HSR plans. Despite the silly "train wreck!" framing (really? are LV Sun editors the first people to ever think of that for a story on passenger rail?!) the article actually does a decent job of laying out some of the issues the scoping process has revealed.

Although the skeptics have good reason to question whether passengers would make the drive to Victorville to board a train, it is the best place to put a train station when you’re on a budget as DesertXpress is.

The developers are no dummies. They know it would make more sense to take the train line into the Los Angeles Basin. But the cost of taking the line down Cajon Pass is as steep as the highway grade and the company is content to finance the route to Victorville and expand to L.A. later.

The draft environmental impact statement has independent ridership studies that say Southern Californians would drive to Victorville to board a train to Las Vegas. The independent analysis was ordered because they, too, were skeptical about that.

I can't say I am terribly familiar with this independent analysis. Given the long travel times that can be experienced on Interstate 15 during the weekends, a high speed train would be a compelling option even if you had to park at Victorville. DesertXpress's logic that once the train is open and ridership grows, there'll be money and interest to connect it to the LA basin strikes me as sound. The article didn't mention the possibility of a cheap and easy extension of the DesertXpress route westward to the California HSR station at Palmdale, but that would pretty easily solve the problem of how to get people to the DesertXpress trains.

Meanwhile, there’s the maglev. The technology is in use in China and American Magline Group, a Los Angeles-based company, wants to introduce it to Americans between two of the nation’s greatest tourism destinations, Las Vegas and Disneyland in Anaheim.

Because millions of people visit Las Vegas and Disneyland every year, they would be able to see tomorrow’s train transportation today.

That’s one of the reasons there’s even a conversation about using federal stimulus money to move the project forward.

Because there’s possible government money involved, maglev developers aren’t as concerned about costs and are making plans to take the line all the way to Los Angeles.

But the maglev environmental impact statement is running behind the DesertXpress proposal. A meeting similar to the one that took place last week probably won’t occur for at least a year. By then, DesertXpress could have permission to move ahead with design and construction.

The maglev and DesertXpress technologies aren’t compatible, but they both want to use the same right-of-way.

I will go out on a limb - a low, thick, sturdy limb - and predict that the maglev proposal will be dead as a doornail by summer 2010. The costs are absurd. The federal government will not be in a mood to fund it, especially since no maglev project has ever been successful on this scale. If there's any chance that spending on the maglev could negatively impact federal funds for the SF-LA train, maglev will be tossed out the window quicker than you can blink. Further, DesertXpress will be closer to a shovel-ready position. Not even Harry Reid, one of the most incompetent majority leaders in the history of the Senate, will be able to save maglev by that time.

At which point another competitor to DesertXpress will make its voice heard: the airlines:

Count on the airline lobby to oppose federal funding for high-speed train transportation. Funding for a next-generation air traffic control system is so far behind that some wags are calling it a “now-gen” instead of a “next-gen” system. Airline lobbyists resent that tax money is being considered for trains when a satellite-based air traffic control system that would make air travel safer and more efficient languishes.

A US Airways executive recently asked me about the public sentiment for high-speed trains between Southern California and Las Vegas and when I told him there seemed to be some renewed interest, he told me the airlines would probably put up a fight.

He added that US Airways in particular would fight a Las Vegas-Los Angeles train because his company flies that route. The company wouldn’t mind so much if high-speed rail were considered between Dallas and Houston (where rival Southwest carries most of the air traffic) or Chicago and New York (where competitors American, Delta and JetBlue battle for market share).

I would caution taking this statement too broadly. Southwest no longer opposes a Texas HSR project, and no airline has raised an objection to the SF-LA project. In fact, as we chronicled extensively here last year, the big airlines are looking to get out of some of the short-haul routes. US Airways could fight a Vegas HSR line, but they're not exactly one of the most beloved or profitable airlines, so I'm not sure that their opposition alone is going to sink this.

If DesertXpress does become the primary candidate for Vegas HSR, which I think it will, then it would be a positive development for the SF-LA HSR project. It would create demand in Southern California for getting the SF-LA project done, especially to Palmdale, in order to link up with DesertXpress.

Barstow Bypass?

by Robert Cruickshank

One of the, shall we say, "interesting" features of the Draft EIS for the DesertXpress HSR project is a lack of a station in Barstow. As revealed at Wednesday night's scoping meeting in Barstow, this has locals rather upset:

During a public comment session in Barstow Wednesday night on a proposed high-speed rail line that would run from Victorville to Las Vegas, city officials and residents remained critical of the project’s lack of plans for a stop in Barstow and the potential for the route to encroach on development in the city’s industrial park....

Barstow’s City Council unanimously voted at a special meeting Tuesday to approve written comments that criticize the environmental document for failing to analyze placement of a station or maintenance facility in Barstow. The comments also highlighted the potential impacts on development from a proposed route that would cross diagonally through the Barstow Industrial Park.

The article explains some of the back-and-forth between Barstow and DesertXpress - DX claims the city didn't get in touch with them until too late in the EIS process; Barstow claims DX had heard their concerns but never followed up on them.

As pretty much the only major settlement between the edge of the SoCal megalopolis (in this case, Victorville) and Vegas, Barstow probably deserves a stop. It could add riders from the Central Valley and the SF Bay Area - if I were driving to Vegas and had an option of parking in Barstow and riding a train the rest of the way I'd probably take it, and I suspect many others would as well.

Not everyone in Barstow is sure about the HSR concept, however:

Other commenters questioned whether the train project would be viable and whether it would really relieve congestion on Interstate 15, when people would still need to drive up the Cajon Pass from the Los Angeles Basin in order to board the train in Victorville.
“(Californians) love their cars, and they’re not going to let them go to come to Victorville to go to Vegas,” said Barstow resident Carmen Hernandez, who also sits on the city’s Planning Commission.

Ah, the "Californians love their cars" canard. Whenever a viable alternative has been given to them - subways, light rail, commuter rail - Californians have proven over and over again that they will take it. California's "love affair" with the automobile more closely resembles an arranged marriage. I love driving through Big Sur as much as the next person, but give me a train to SF or LA or Vegas any day over driving there.

I also wonder if Hernandez and others are concerned about the impact of a train on Barstow businesses. Barstow has always existed as a waystation for travelers. First for the transcontinental railroads, and then for folks driving to Vegas. Most of the city budget comes from sales taxes on traveler spending.

Still, if Vegas HSR is going to happen, it'll be on the DesertXpress model, and Barstow would do well to get in on the action. DX should include a study of a Barstow stop, and the city should unite around the steel-wheel HSR solution and quit daydreaming of a maglev train that is NEVER going to be built.

DesertXpress EIS and Public Meetings

by Robert Cruickshank

DesertXpress, the company that proposes to build high speed rail from Victorville to Las Vegas, has a Draft EIS ready on their project, and are scheduling some public meetings this week to discuss it (details below). From the DesertXpress press release:

Operating at speeds of up to 150 mph on exclusive tracks along Interstate 15, DesertXpress trains will make the 180-mile trip between Las Vegas and Victorville, California in an hour and twenty minutes. According to the EIS, DesertXpress is forecasted to carry over 10 million people per year by 2015 and over 16 million people by 2030. Ultimately, the system will have a capacity of more than 60 million people per year....

"The project is estimated to reduce up to 360 million pounds of CO2 emissions in the Interstate 15 corridor by greatly reducing automobile travel and replacing it with energy-efficient mass transportation in one of America's most congested transportation corridors," Rogich said.

They believe they can break ground "early next year", which strikes me as a tad bit ambitious. DesertXpress is also aggressively (and in my opinion correctly) pushing back against the concept of building a maglev train on the LA-LV corridor, citing a study for the SoCal Logistics Rail Authority that suggests maglev's costs are going to be too high to afford:

"Maglev has been a thirty-year study of a system that only operates in one other area in the world, which is Shanghai. And we believe the reason it hasn't been further developed in other parts of the world is that according to the BSL Study, the latest cost estimates by public authorities in Germany and the United States put the cost of construction for a Maglev line in the range of $60 million to $199 million per mile - which would bring the cost of the proposed 260-mile Maglev line to US $16 billion to $52 billion - making it the most costly transportation project in U.S. history. On the other hand, the DesertXpress project is estimated to cost from $3.5 to $4 billion, and high speed rail lines are a proven commodity and are successfully operating all over Europe and other parts of the world," said Rogich.

There will be three public meetings this week on the DesertXpress EIS:

Tonight: Las Vegas
5:30-8:00 pm
Hampton Inn Tropicana
4975 Dean Martin Drive

Tomorrow (Wednesday): Barstow
5:30-8:00 pm
Ramada Inn
1511 East Main Street

Thursday: Victorville
5:30-8:00 pm
Green Tree Golf Course Club House
14144 Green Tree Boulevard

Of course, ANY Vegas HSR project, no matter the details, is going to run into opposition from Congressional Republicans who like to use the proposal to criticize federal stimulus spending and trains more broadly. But as the Huffington Post reports, that criticism is usually hypocritical:

While the stimulus was being debated in January, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor called a group of reporters into his office to outline the GOP's objections. As we filed in, we walked past a giant poster ridiculing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for allegedly pushing for high-speed rail connecting Disneyland and Las Vegas.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Cantor called that project an example of "waste and pork-barrel spending."

Yet one man's pork is another man's prudent investment in transit -- and sometimes the same man's.

Asked about high-speed rail at a recent local event in Virginia, Cantor was all thumbs up. "If there is one thing that I think all of us here on both sides of the political aisle from all parts of the region agree with, it's that we need to do all we can to promote jobs here in the Richmond area," Cantor said of the high-speed rail.

One can hope that Senator Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party today will provide a 60 vote majority for HSR funding and render moot idiotic claims like Cantor's.

Is Vegas HSR Out of the Obama HSR Stimulus Derby?

When President Obama announced his HSR Strategic Plan last week, the USDOT report that accompanied the announcement included this map of HSR corridors, based on the 2001 map:



One route you don't see on that map is LA to Las Vegas. Does that mean the project, which right-wingers tried to generate controversy around back in February, is ineligible for the HSR stimulus money? That's the topic examined in an article in the Barstow Desert Dispatch:

The Obama administration’s strategic plan for spending the $8 billion in stimulus funding allotted to high-speed rail projects makes no mention of a proposed rail line from Anaheim to Las Vegas that would stop in Barstow.

Project proponents are still hopeful that some of the funds may come their way.

The plan released Thursday by President Barack Obama and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood lists 10 designated high-speed rail corridors where projects are eligible to receive funding, none of which include the Anaheim to Las Vegas route.

So does this mean that the map shown above really will determine HSR funding priorities? Well...maybe not:

Lori Irving, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Department of Transportation, said projects that are not located in the existing corridors may still be eligible to compete for some of the stimulus funds.

And the backers of the maglev train are optimistic:

Bruce Aguilera, chair of the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, which is tasked with moving the Anaheim to Las Vegas train project forward, stated via email that the project proponents still plan to file a request for stimulus funds and expect to be eligible.

“We have a plan and (are) moving fast to have the first leg built during the president’s first term,” Aguilera wrote.

Of course, unless they suddenly abandoned the maglev plan in favor of Desert Xpress and are planning to break ground this afternoon, I'm having a hard time seeing how they'll have the first leg built by the end of 2012.

I wouldn't be surprised if the LA-Vegas corridor got some amount of startup funds, to complete environmental design work - perhaps as much as $100 million or more (but certainly no more than $500 million). But with so many other corridors also looking for funds, with a much more developed and realistic plan - and sorry folks, maglev on this scale really is gadgetbahn - I am hard pressed to see how Vegas HSR is going to get very much out of the USDOT process.

The more I look at this, the more I think that if Vegas HSR is going to happen, the state of Nevada is going to have to take the lead in stepping up to fund a big chunk of it. If Obama is somehow able to create a stable funding source for HSR then that could put Vegas HSR in the pipeline - but it could also take 20 more years to bring it to fruition. If Vegas interests (that would be the casinos) want it to happen sooner, they'll need Nevada to help accelerate the timeline.

That will eventually raise the issue of how much California wants to spend on Vegas HSR. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a long standoff between Caltrans and NDOT over widening Interstate 15 between Barstow and the state line. California did not want to spend money on that project which benefits an out-of-state interest, especially with so many other road projects around the state clamoring for money. Eventually NDOT agreed to help pay and the widening projects were undertaken.

With Vegas HSR, Nevada and the feds could reasonably argue that California should put up more of the money since the route would serve California residents for in-state trips (especially if they use a Cajon Pass routing - Victor Valley residents would have a way to commute to and from jobs in the LA Basin). I'm not sure that's a high priority HSR corridor for this state, and I would be wary at this time of committing California to funding Vegas HSR. Ideally we could revisit the matter around 2020. But Vegas' timeline is much more aggressive, and I am betting we'll see Nevada leaders pushing California for financial commitments much sooner.

Something to keep in mind.

Hooray For Victorville!?

Remember that whole Las-Vegas-to-Disneyland maglev concept that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev) is still pushing because it's supposedly "more Vegas"? While he's been making waves in Congress, private investors have quietly pursued an alternative based modern non-compliant multiple unit trains trains running on dedicated tracks. Diesel-electric option would run at a top speed of 125mph, whereas an electrified version could run at 150mph (top speed is currently limited by the lack of FRA rules, not the available technology). Note the faint overhead catenary in the above picture, with nary a pole in sight. Or a second track, for that matter, but perhaps that is only needed at one or more points along the route.

The big idea is to relieve congestion on I-15 and at McCarran airport in Las Vegas so folks in Southern California have an easier time getting to Las Vegas. The investors had become disillusioned with prospects for public funding for a fast a rail link. The hardest part is securing a viable ROW through Cajon Pass, which is heavily used by rail freight and includes a crossing of the San Andreas fault. Therefore, the current plan simply calls for the line to terminate at a giant new parking lot northeast of Victorville. Southern Californians would drive there, park and take the train the rest of the way.

This then is DesertXPress. FRA has announced the closing date for public comments on the draft EIR/EIS: May 22, 2009. Before then, there will be three more public hearings on the project.

1. Las Vegas Area
   Tuesday, April 28, 2009
   5:30 – 8:00 p.m.
   Hampton Inn Tropicana
   4975 Dean Martin Drive
   Las Vegas, NV 89118
   
   
2. Barstow Area
   Wednesday, April 29 2009
   5:30 – 8:00 p.m.
   Ramada Inn
   1511 East Main Street
   Barstow, CA 92311
   
   
3. Victorville Area
   Thursday, April 30 2009
   5:30 – 8:00 p.m.
   Green Tree Golf Course
   14144 Green Tree Boulevard
   Victorville, CA 92395

From the California point of view, there are a number of pluses and minuses here:

• PLUS: private companies are funding an HSR line (standard gauge steel wheels)
  
• PLUS: final nail in maglev coffin (at least on the California side)
  
• PLUS: congestion on I-15 should ease quite a bit
  
• PLUS: diesel trains require far less fuel than cars at the same occupancy rate
  
• NEUTRAL: SoCal-Las Vegas not part of federally designated California HSR corridor
  
• NEUTRAL: no stop in Barstow (limited water to support population growth)
  
• MINUS: project not integrated with California HSR
  
• MINUS: project not integrated with Pres. Obama's smart electrical grid
  
• MINUS: tracks (and OCS, if any) not designed for operation at 220mph
  
• MINUS: max. gradient 4.5% (vs. 3.5% for California system)
  
• MINUS: only limited relief for McCurran airport in Las Vegas
  
• MINUS: requires people to drive out to Victorville and park there
  

IMHO, there would be a lot of value in getting SoCal-Las Vegas included in the officially designated national HSR corridor for California as soon as possible. Sure, the Republicans would have a field day (for a day) but it's still the smartest thing to do.

First, it would establish that HSR out to Las Vegas shouldn't be a completely separate project, even if the tracks won't join up right away. That would give USDOT (i.e. Ray LaHood) some leverage to force integrated planning.

Second, the designation would make the tracks through the desert eligible for federal HSR dollars, which could fund the wider curves and tighter geometry tolerances required for future operation at 220mph. The DesertXPress sidesteps the thorny issue of the endangered Desert Tortoise by hewing close to I-15 east of Barstow. Nevertheless, some opposition from at least Indian gambling interests in California is likely, though siting the western terminus at Victorville makes the train less of a competitive threat.

Third, early electrification of the line would make a whole lot of sense if phase 2 of the project included a nearby HVDC power line to carry renewable electricity from the Mojave desert and Nevada to population centers in (Southern) California. But please, don't put a big solar farm and a relief airport next to one another.

Fourth, an early connection to the California network would do more to relieve McCarran airport, since 30% of its flights are to or from California cities that will be served by California HSR. At peak times, e.g. during major conventions, Las Vegas could leverage Palmdale as a relief airport, provided LAWA doesn't hobble it with a solar thermal plant right next to the runways. At 200mph cruise speed, travel time would be just over an hour. Fully leveraging California HSR and Palmdale airport would eliminate the need for a new Ivanpah Valley relief airport between Primm and Jean in Nevada, not far from the BrightSource's Ivanpah solar thermal power plant on the California side.

Sixth, project integration would permit both sides to pool both political clout in Congress and purchasing power.

The tricky part is figuring out how to integrate the projects. A spur off the SF-LA-Anaheim starter line at Mojave would make a lot of sense, but DesertXPress may not be interested in going anywhere but Victorville. A connector from there to the phase II spur between LA and San Diego is theoretically possible and would give San Bernardino an HSR station. We'll see.

Early electrification of the DesertXPress line would be excellent but it's something their web site has not previously mentioned. Note that CHSRA is currently planning its own, electrified test track in the Central Valley (part 1, part 2), which will become part of the starter line and spur to Sacramento.


View Larger Map

The Keys to the Magic Kingdom

One of the relatively late changes to the definition of the HSR starter line was the inclusion of the segment from LA Union Station to Anaheim ARTIC, OCTA's planned multimodal transit hub. Nothing wrong with that at all, after all Orange County is the second most populous in the state. Besides, OC needs the grade separations along BNSF's core "91" line to support future capacity growth for container freight out of the LA/LB harbors. A similar billion-dollar project is to improve grade crossings with UPRR's lines in the San Gabriel valley, dubbed Alameda Corridor East, is already underway. Grandiose plans for using fancy, unproven freight maglev technology to shuttle containers to a new Inland Port in Mira Loma appear to have bitten the dust and those for maglev to Vegas along with them.


Anaheim ARTIC on YouTube

The hoped-for quid pro quo for grade separation is that BNSF will offer CHSRA enough land to run dedicated tracks between Redondo Junction - the northern terminus of the successful Alameda Corridor - and Fullerton. To date, BNSF has been receptive to CHSRA overtures, but that was in the Central Valley. The company's ROW between Richmond harbor and Bakersfield is arguably not fully utilized, much of the alignment is single track.

The "91" line, named - this is Southern California for you - after the adjacent freeway through the Santa Ana river valley, is a whole different ball of wax. It is the only ROW out of California that BNSF actually owns outright. All its other routes out of the state depend on trackage rights on competitor UPRR's network. Up to a point, those could be restricted or canceled without falling foul of anti-trust laws. The price for the trackage rights is also subject to change.

Therefore, we should expect BNSF to take a much tougher line in negotiations regarding the sale of part of the "91" ROW. The Alameda corridor currently carries about freight 40 trains a day, but sooner or later that may double, even triple. With prescient investment in modern signaling, diligent track maintenance and professional operations, two track ought to be enough for BNSF to handle its share of that. But what if there is an accident or an earthquake. UPRR has multiple rights of way that it can use to re-route its trains. The companies may well have secured mutual emergency trackage rights on each other's lines. Still, BNSF risks putting itself at something of a competitive disadvantage if it sells part of its most precious asset in California. Once you give up a right of way, you never get it back. Not ever. BNSF may want to be a good corporate citizen and it knows that grade separation will reduce the risk of accident-related disruptions to its own service. But does that mean CHSRA will get to lay down tracks? We'll see.

Between Fullerton and the OC/SD county line near San Onofre, the right of way is owned by the Southern California Regional Railway Authority (SCRRA) which operates Metrolink. Amtrak Pacific Surfliner and some BNSF freight trains also use this alignment. BNSF owns the connector that runs north from Orange to the "91" line as well as the bit from National City to San Diego. The harbor down there is not a container terminal, it appears to be used for importing cars. All of these trains use FRA-compliant locomotives and rolling stock.

The SCRRA ROW in Orange County is quite narrow, really only wide enough for two tracks in most places. Widening it via eminent domain for the sake of laying down dedicated HSR tracks would be massively unpopular and ruinously expensive. The plan is therefore to seek FRA approval to operate mixed traffic, i.e. to add a limited number of non-compliant bullet trains to the mix via time separations guaranteed by signaling upgrades that prevent engineers from running red lights by accident. Top speed for this last stretch would be down to 79mph, but it's so short that presents no object. After last year's disaster at Chatsworth, HR 2095 mandated the installation of positive train control technology on busy rail corridor and those carrying hazardous materials by 2015.

The request for the mixed traffic exemption will be rolled into that for a "rule of special applicability" that CHSRA will anyhow need for its entire network. FRA currently has no rules at all for passenger train operations at speeds in excess of 150mph, nor any for the safe design and operation of 25kV AC overhead catenary systems. The agency had already begun to draft such rules for Florida HSR some years ago but they were shelved when Gov. Jeb Bush killed that project. They will soon be dusted off and completed, presumably many will be cribbed from the regulations Asian and European countries have already drawn up.

However, there's always a chance that one or more domestic - or at least North American - would-be HSR vendors will emerge. They might seek to gain a competitive advantage by getting FRA to draft rules that would force more established global players to modify their designs. That would be foolish from a safety/reliability/cost point of view, but protectionism-by-red-tape is one of the oldest games in town. Bureaucrats, too, love to draft special rules under the guise of "special conditions" that supposedly exist in the territory they are responsible for. In the US, some freight operators may well seek some regulatory overkill to push back against states that suddenly want to acquire part of their ROW, just so they can benefit from the federal largesse that is now being heaped - ok, spooned - onto high speed rail projects. Well-connected organizations that oppose HSR in principle, a particular project or impacts on their back yard might also try to lobby FRA, in the hope that this might kill or at least delay HSR implementations. We should be vigilant and push back against such selfish efforts.

The rules for California will set a national precedent for both true bullet trains running at well over 125mph on dedicated tracks and, for rapid rail below that speed, with freight and passenger trains each using the equipment best suited to their business model yet sharing a ROW and even tracks. Let's hope President Obama and Secr. of Transportation LaHood realize the importance of FRA's rulemaking on HSR in the years to come.

Clem Tillier over at the Caltrain-HSR compatibility blog has published the following diagram in his analysis of SF Peninsula Rail Traffic in 2030. It shows statewide train traffic on the HSR network, based on CHSRA's 2008 business plan. It does not include non-HSR trains that HSR will share track with in sections such as Fullerton-Anaheim.


Hi-Resolution Version

For Anaheim, CHSRA is apparently forecasting 2-3 trains in each direction per hour during a six-hour peak window. Of those, 60% would head up to the SF peninsula and 40% to Sacramento. There appear to be no plans to terminate trains in Los Angeles. Today, Metrolink's Orange county line between LA and Oceanside is served by up to 3 trains per hour each way during rush hour, but far fewer during the day. Amtrak Pacific Surfliner adds one more. If there were a 100% increase in legacy train operations by 2030, we'd still only be talking about 10-11 passenger trains running on the existing dual track alignment between Fullerton and Anaheim. That's a 6-minute headway, quite busy but not extremely so, provided that all trains run pretty much on time. I don't know how many freight trains run through Anaheim station today, let alone in 2030. That's a wildcard.

In a comment on the March 10 post entitled LA - San Diego: Quo Vadis?, yeson1a suggested that CHSRA might want to keep it simple and stupid (KISS): continue on to San Diego by staying on the 91 corridor from Fullerton through Corona and switching to the I-15 median there. This option has not been studied by CHSRA and would not be considered unless securing a ROW past Ontario airport proves impossible or too expensive. Yeson1a's alternative would leverage the investment already made for LA Union Station - Fullerton in phase I. A connector from Anaheim to Atwood would permit a capacity-defined subset of HSR trains to detour from the main line to Anaheim. If desired, some of the rest could stop at a no-frills auxiliary station in Fullerton. Norwalk/Santa Fe Springs would then only be served by some of the trains that make the detour into Anaheim. The route would probably feature and intermodal with Metrolink in Corona, with the option for a regular secondary station in Lake Elsinore, though Murietta would be fairly close by.


View Larger Map

The principal downside of this idea is that neither Ontario airport not Riverside are on the route. However, a possible phase II/III spur up to Las Vegas could give the downtown areas of Riverside, San Bernardino and Victorville HSR stations. Passengers hailing from Northern California would likely prefer a shorter spur off the starter line at Mojave. Perhaps both will end up getting built someday, with tracks joining up in Barstow. Such a full build-out would, however, require quite a bit of magic dust from the money fairy.

A Statement From Harry Reid's Office

NOTICE: The Blogger service temporarily acted up and failed to include the most recent post correctly on this blog's home page. Our apologies for any inconvenience.

UPDATE: MSNBC reports that both houses of Congress have now passed the conference version of the stimulus bill, it is now on its way to the President's desk. The Senate extended its voting hours to allow Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to return from his mother's funeral. His was the deciding 60th vote since Sen. Kennedy (D-MA), who is battling brain cancer, was too frail to risk a second trip to Washington.

Republican support came from Sen. Collins (R-ME), Sen. Snowe (R-ME) and Sen. Specter (R-PA) who broke ranks rather than drown the global economy in a bathtub. Fortunately, the brouhaha surrounding the $8 billion for HSR did not change their minds. Check out Rachel Maddow's interview with Ray LaHood on this topic.

Still, it would be nice if the courts in Minnesota finally confirmed Al Franken (D) as the winner of that extremely close Senate race. At least the court case is now turning in his favor.

---

The ink is not yet dry on the compromise version of the stimulus bill that was hashed out in conference. The House and Senate still have to give their final approval before the President can sign it on Monday. As we discussed yesterday, this final version boosted Amtrak and HSR capital projects funding while cutting that for brand-new transit systems.

Yesterday, an Associated Press report on the conference result included a paragraph that has sent the blogosphere into a tizzy:

"In late-stage talks, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pressed for $8 billion to construct high-speed rail lines, quadrupling the amount in the bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday.

Reid's office issued a statement noting that a proposed Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rail might get a big chunk of the money."

Predictably enough, the right wingnut faction of the Interwebs (e.g. Michelle Malkin) immediately decried this as a last-minute earmark. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't pay any attention to such partisan diatribes. However, the fate of the entire stimulus bill rests on the votes of just three Republican Senators. If any two of them were to get cold feet on Monday, using this fake controversy as an excuse, HSR funding could get cut just to save the rest of the bill.

Unfortunately, perception is reality, so we need to fix this misperception:

a) I was unable to find a copy of this alleged statement on Sen. Reid's official website. Perhaps it was just a verbal comment, but everyone else is simply referring to the wire service as their source.

b) The full text of the conference report on the bill contains the final passage related to High Speed Rail. Please refer to pp237 of the full text of Division A and p82 of the Joint Explanatory Statement for Division A.

The latter refers to HR 2095 (110th) as the basis of the High Speed Passenger Rail program. That bill was passed last November and included $1.5 billion for capital projects in corridors where passenger trains could reasonably be expected to reach speeds of at least 110mph (see Title V). It also specifically enumerated the eleven officially designated HSR corridors:


(click to expand image)

Evidently, Las Vegas to Southern California is currently not a designated corridor and therefore not eligible for any of the $8 billion reserved for HSR in the stimulus bill. However, existing laws give the Secretary of Transportation the authority to modify existing and designate new corridors.

c) Neither HR2095 (110th) nor the stimulus bill explicitly allocates HSR funding to any one corridor, whether designated or not. Instead, the bills spell out a process for DOT to make a decision based on competitive tenders. There is no earmark here.

d) The compromise version of the stimulus bill, formally "The American Recovery and Re-Investment Act of 2009", does raise the amount available for HSR projects to $8 billion, available through Sep 30, 2012. The generous timeframe reflects the fact that HSR is part of the re-investment aspect of the bill. It will have a stimulative effect right away in terms of planning, environmental reviews and preliminary engineering work. The California project involves the construction of brand-new tracks that will support true non-compliant bullet trains at speeds of up to 220mph. Certain other corridors, notably the NEC, may be able to break ground earlier if the officials responsible for them decide to make do with upgrades of existing alignments.

Nevertheless, it is quite incorrect to insinuate that any extra money for HSR was snuck into the bill at the last moment as part of some shady deal between Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi. Rather, the $8 billion figure came about as follows:

• $2 billion allocated to "Fixed Guideway Infrastructure" in the House version were targeted more narrowly at HSR in the Senate version.
  
• $2.5 billion at the discretion of the Secr. of Transportation was increased to $5.5 billion in the Senate version and targeted more narrowly at HSR in conference.
  
• $0.5 bilion was added for each of Amtrak and HSR in conference, but the amount allocated to brand-new transit systems was cut by a greater amount.
  

Ergo, the bulk of the increase for HSR between the Senate and conference versions of the bill is a result of Congress making a policy decision rather than giving the administration a lot of leeway, given that there was too little time to spell out a fair arbitration process between highway, aviation and rail spending. Some may disagree with the preference for HSR, but there's nothing sinister about the process that led to this result.

Conclusion: the statement allegedly issued by Sen. Reid's office reflects a political ambition rather than legal reality.

Personally, I think HSR from Las Vegas to Southern California is an idea worth pursuing in the context of a broader, national review of the designated HSR corridors. The last one occurred in 2002 and FRA's map is out of date. However, any actual award of federal funds from any bill should IMHO come with the following strings attached:

1. Rather than create a brand-new one, Las Vegas should be added as a new destination within the existing California corridor. This would then be renamed e.g. the Cal-Nev corridor. In practice, that would boil down to operating steel wheels electric bullet trains instead of incompatible magnetic levitation technology. There is no need for any part of California to be served by more than one HSR system.
   
   
2. The simplest option would be a spur to Las Vegas via Barstow, originating near the town of Mojave. There would be no stops between Palmdale (or Bakersfield) and Las Vegas.
   
   A more complex alternative would be a line from LA Union Station to Las Vegas via Ontario airport and Cajon Pass, with a future spur to San Diego originating near Colton. In that case, it might make sense to modify the route from Bakersfield to Los Angeles to the I-5 corridor at Grapevine, bypassing Palmdale airport. However, that would require revisiting the geological and environmental reasons that led to a decision in favor of crossing the Garlock fault near Tehachapi.
   
   
3. Since roughly 1/3 of all flights into McCurran airport in Las Vegas originate in cities with or near stations on the future California HSR system, plans for the new Ivanpah Valley relief airport near Primm on the California-Nevada border would have to be shelved. If any relief is needed, either Palmdale or Ontario airport can provide it.
   
   
4. The investors behind the diesel-based DesertXpress project (the official website was down) should be invited to instead participate in a public-private partnership to build a cleaner and much faster electrified system. Parts of the environmental impact study already conducted may still be valid.
   
   
5. If either state requires it, the environmental impact study for any HSR service to Las Vegas should include a feasibility study for also constructing a high-voltage DC power distribution line above or else next to the section between Barstow and the Nevada border. West of Barstow, it should run through Cajon Pass irrespective of the HSR alignment. This infrastructure would be electrically separate from the HSR catenaries except at designated feeder substations. Its purpose would be to transport CO2-neutral electricity (e.g. wind, solar, geothermal, hydro) to population centers in both states.
   

Bullet trains carrying passengers and/or high-value cargo to and from Las Vegas would relieve traffic on I-15, but any such project would face stiff opposition from anti-gambling advocates as well as Indian gaming interests in California.

Arnold Schwarzenegger + Jim Gibbons = Maglev to Vegas?

So claims the Las Vegas Sun:

For over 20 years, boosters have dreamed of and lobbied for a train that could travel from Southern California to Las Vegas at 300 mph.

The proposed magnetic levitation train line linking Las Vegas and Anaheim, Calif. — attacked by critics as a multi-billion dollar pipe dream — has gained new life.

Near the bottom of a news release detailing Gov. Jim Gibbons’ meeting last month with President-elect Barack Obama was the announcement that Gibbons and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had agreed to move ahead with the high-speed train project.

“Arnold and I agreed to jointly work together on the project,” said Gibbons, who is planning to travel to Sacramento to talk with Schwarzenegger about it.

The train, Gibbons argues, should be a candidate for federal economic stimulus money.

The rest of the article goes on to discuss "pork" in the stimulus bill and how infrastructure stimulus should emphasize projects with lasting value. We agree, of course, and HSR is one of the best possible examples of infrastructure that provides both short-term stimulus and long-term economic value.

The question here is, does Harry Reid's maglev from Anaheim to Vegas count toward that goal? Maglev is a notorious form of vaporware on an intercity scale - the cost is enormous and no project to build intercity maglev has gotten off the drawing board. That hasn't stopped Reid from getting $45 million from Congress to study maglev to Vegas, even though a competing firm has a more realistic plan to build conventional steel-wheel HSR from Victorville to Vegas. Reid dismissed the Desert Xpress plan:

Reid has criticized that project because he doesn’t think people will drive from Los Angeles to Victorville and then board a train to Las Vegas.

What Reid apparently doesn't realize is that it's a mere 50 miles from Victorville to the planned HSR station at Palmdale Airport:



So wouldn't it make sense, Senator Reid, Governor Gibbons, and Governor Schwarzenegger, to link a Vegas HSR line to our existing HSR plan - using the Desert Xpress model, merely extended west across the flat Antelope Valley desert from Victorville to the Palmdale Airport station? That would solve the cost issue, provide a direct train connection from LA to Vegas, and even could help logroll both Nevada's and California's HSR needs into a single plan.

I have to confess I've never believed that HSR to Vegas is a particularly high priority for either California or the United States as a whole - there are other corridors that have a greater need for HSR. But if Nevada and their powerful Senator are bent on HSR to Vegas, let's do it the smart way, the right way, instead of wasting millions on a maglev train that will never get built.

HSR as Strategic Value

There's a fascinating op-ed in the Yomiuri Shimbun by Yoshiyuki Kasai, chairman of the Central Japan Railway Company, focusing on the strategic importance of HSR. Kasai makes a point I've been trying to push out here on the blog - that in the 21st century, a global economy is simply not competitive without something like high speed rail. Dependence on oil is the mounted cavalry of our time.

I don't agree with all that Kasai writes - he supports maglev, for example - but it's a useful read on how the global perspective is changing. Non-oil based infrastructure projects aren't just a way to move people. They're a sign of modernity, of a society that has both feet firmly planted in the 21st century, of a society that looks ahead to the strategic challenges of a new era and chooses to meet them sensibly, instead of choosing to foolishly cling to the delusional belief that the 20th century can continue.

Railway services are regaining importance in the 21st century as a high-speed means of transit amid the global recognition of energy security and environmental protection as the most pressing priorities for mankind in the new century

In the 19th century, European states regarded railway construction as a synonym for industrialization and expansion of imperial rule. In the United States, private companies, spearheading transcontinental railway construction, played the strategic role in opening up the frontier and, with state-sanctioned privileges, developed vast areas at their discretion. For its part, Japan joined the railway development race half a century later. By the end of the 19th century, 750,000 kilometers of railroad tracks had been laid around the world.

It may be hard for us to imagine, but the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Transcontinental Railroad were the moon shot and ICBM of their time. Before the cheap oil boom temporarily revolutionized transportation, nations understood that a vibrant rail infrastructure was essential for economic development. Today most nations now understand that HSR is similarly necessary for strategic advancement - witness the massive HSR program in Spain, or the continuing expansion of the French syste, or the project in places as diverse as Argentina, Morocco, Iran, and Vietnam. If California thinks they can remain globally competitive without a reliable method of moving people around the state that isn't dependent on sky-high oil prices they're insane.

Today, a short while after the beginning of the 21st century, high-speed railways are gaining a new dimension of strategic importance. Needless to say, high-speed railway operations that ensure safe, punctual and rapid mass transit have tremendous advantages in meeting 21st-century requirements, such as advanced energy consumption efficiency and the use of nuclear electric power and other clean energy sources.

Notice what Kasai points out as having "strategic importance" - safe, punctual, rapid mass transit. Advanced consumption efficiency, the use of clean energy sources. Nuclear is surely controversial, but California's wind and solar potential is among the most promising in the world. The CHSRA is expected to release its own study on renewable and carbon-neutral energy sources anytime now, and BART has embraced solar power. The strategic challenge of the 21st century is no longer to build enough aircraft carriers or freeways - it's whether we can build infrastructure that can keep a modern society functioning without being dependent on fossil fuels.

Many countries, including the United States, which has so far been less enthusiastic about high-speed railways, are showing interest in rapid transit development. Such a situation effectively means that Japan, which boasts a decisive edge over other countries in the fields of high-speed transit technology, expertise, installation and operations, now has a strategic card in its hand.

Japan has a right to brag here. A nation that is famously dependent on imported resources can boast a transportation system that is largely, if not totally, self-sustaining. France can make the same boast, as its power comes mostly from nuclear sources. Does California really believe it can keep up with just Southwest Airlines and Interstate 5?

Kasai argues that the US should follow the European model and use public funds to build the infrastructure while using HSR fare revenues to pay for the operating expenses. It would be an investment on par with those we made in the middle of the 20th century, when we built bridges, freeways and aqueducts with public money that were essential to California's dramatic late 20th century economic prosperity. If we wish our prosperity to continue we need to make a similar investment in our time - and HSR is that investment, as Kasai argues:

If a maglev train plan is adopted by the United States, Japan should consider exporting the best of its high-speed railway system to its ally. Now that high-speed railway transit is considered essential for the strategic needs of the 21st century, it is significant that Japanese technology could contribute to such a U.S. initiative as a key step to consolidating the alliance between the two countries.

How secure an alliance is can be determined not only by military cooperation, but also by multifaceted and collaborative relationships through the sharing of roles and interdependence in industrial fields.

That's how Kasai ends his article, and though we can substitute HSR for maglev, I really like how he closes. Global relationships in the 21st century will not be sustained by military cooperation, but by the "multifaceted and collaborative relationships" described here. America's longtime allies in Japan, France, and Germany have an enormous amount of technical skill and innovation to share with us - as well as capital. Perhaps it is time for an American Marshall Plan, where those nations we helped in the late 1940s can come and return the favor in the 2010s by providing the technical knowhow to help California join the 21st century and build high speed rail.

As with the original Marshall Plan, though, the benefits weren't given - you had to ask for them. President Truman didn't ride around Europe throwing dollar bills from the back of a truck, and nobody will do so today. If Californians don't pass Proposition 1 this year, they will be consigning themselves to permanent and fatal dependence on an obsolete model of fueling our economy. Friends around the world like Yoshiyuki Kasai want to help us help ourselves. Why would we say no?

Oooo! Shiny Maglev Toy!

One constant feature of HSR activism are the folks who don't think it's a good enough idea. These people turn up their noses at HSR as being too mainstream, too boring. No, what we really need is some gee-whiz technological solution that has never really been tried successfully on a large scale anywhere, but looks cool. Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is one of these - the Facebook HSR groups often get visited by these folks who try to convince us we're wasting our time with HSR and that PRT is going to solve all our problems.

Even more common than PRT acolytes are the maglev promoters. They like the idea of fast passenger trains but conventional HSR technology just isn't fast enough for them (I guess 200 mph trains are old hat to some). So they insist on exploring maglev technology - and for some it's maglev or nothing.

Maglev is an interesting concept, but notoriously difficult to construct, and a real budget-buster (the HSR deniers really should focus their attention on maglev, where they might actually have a point). Such was the fate of Munich's maglev project - intended to link central Munich to the airport, the project costs doubled and when the German government refused to increase its contribution, private backers pulled out. Shanghai's maglev line is experiencing ridership problems and China has chosen to use conventional HSR technology to connect Beijing to Tianjin (which is set to open on August 1).

But that doesn't stop the American media from fawning all over maglev. They've been doing it for as long as I can remember - it was in the late '80s or early '90s that the Southern California media was all over a proposal to link Anaheim to Vegas via maglev. The media loves nothing more than a neato piece of technology, which seems to explain MSNBC's maglev article:

Could America’s fastest train whisk us away from $4-a-gallon gas guzzlers?

Thanks to a $45 million infusion from a transportation bill signed by President Bush in early June, there could someday be a magnetic levitating train, or “maglev,” soaring from Disneyland to Las Vegas at a maximum speed of 310 mph — 180 mph on average.

After the research phase is complete in about three years, the private partnership behind the effort, American Magline Group, comes to its biggest crossroads: obtaining $12 billion in funding for construction.

The article goes on to discuss some of the pros and cons of maglev, selling it as a solution to high gas prices but concerned about the construction cost and the routing. But nowhere are the other HSR lines on the American drawing board - including ours here in California - discussed, even though they're much closer to reality.

And it's not like HSR lacks for technological interest. Assemblywoman Fiona Ma was on the record-setting Alstom TGV journey in 2007, reaching a top speed of 574 kmh, or 357 mph. The California system is planned to hit 220 mph, which would be the fastest train in North America by far.

It's unfortunate, though not surprising, that it's the shiny new toy that gets the media attention. Californians deserve to hear more information about high speed rail, especially realistic explanations about what it is, how it works, and how it has succeeded around the world. I guess we'll just have to do that on our own.

I'm not against PRT or maglev per se. But Americans need high speed rail to connect their cities, especially with the environmental and energy crises we face. HSR is a tried and true technology, and 220 mph isn't anything to sneeze at. Let's focus on the task at hand, and if folks want to continue researching and testing maglev, have at it - but it doesn't need to compete with HSR.

Reid Gets $45 Million for Maglev

The transportation bill was signed by President Bush last week and it included $45 million for Sen. Harry Reid's maglev project to link Vegas to Anaheim:

Derided by critics as pie in the sky, the train would use magnetic levitation technology to carry passengers from Disneyland to Las Vegas in well under two hours, traveling at speeds of up to 300 mph. It would be the first MagLev system in the U.S.

The money is the largest cash infusion in the project's nearly 20-year history. It will pay for environmental studies for the first leg of the project.

It doesn't make much sense for the US government to be proceeding with maglev studies. It's an extremely expensive and untested technology that isn't even necessary to provide high speed rail service on that corridor - off the shelf technology can accomplish speeds that would cut the drive from SoCal to Vegas in half (and cut it by 3/4 on the busy weekends).

Even a revival of Amtrak's Desert Wind train would be sensible. It was killed in 1997 due to "low ridership" during the cheap oil era but as Trains4America points out that rationale might not hold today.

Still, at least Reid took the lead in securing federal money for a Nevada-California HSR project, even if we here at the HSR blog believe it would be wiser to link a non-maglev HSR line to the California project at either Mojave or Palmdale Airport. Why haven't California's powerful senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, worked to provide similar federal funding for our project? Even $45 million for studies would not only help the CHSRA's work, but would be a signal that the Congress really will help pay for the cost of our HSR line. That would ease the "financial risk" concerns the State Senate and others have pointed out. Senators Boxer and Feinstein could also play a key role in brokering an agreement between Union Pacific and the CHSRA on ROW.

Once again political leadership is absent, seemingly blind to the crisis of high energy costs and unserious about providing affordable, sustainable alternatives.

Harry Reid Moves on Maglev to Vegas

Nevada Senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing the maglev from LA to Vegas plan, proposing a $45 million appropriation to conduct additional studies and planning for the project. Reid was down on the Desert Xpress plan and believes maglev is the solution to Southern Nevada's traffic woes:

“If it’s going to be really done in a big way, a Las Vegas way, the magnetic levitation would be the way to do it,” Reid said. “We could bring someone from L.A. to Las Vegas, and vice-versa, in less than an hour,” he said. “If we can get this done, it will be the showboat of the world.”

Reid scoffed at DeMint’s advocacy of a competing, private company’s plans for a regular train between Las Vegas and the Antelope Valley, in the desert some 85 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Reid questioned whether tourists would drive through the traffic of Los Angeles to Victorville to take a train the last 200 miles.

Unfortunately even $45 million is raising right-wing hackles - apparently it's perfectly legitimate to spend limitless amounts of money on an endless war, but god forbid we attempt to address our infrastructure needs. The current argument in the Senate is that the maglev money is "pork":

As the bill came to the Senate this week, Republican anti-earmark crusader Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina cried foul. DeMint said that the train was a speculative venture. “If we were asking members of the Senate to invest their own personal money in this project… none would reach for their wallet.”

President Bush signaled he is not pleased in what he sees as extra spending in the bill.

What we're seeing is an attack on efforts to do something about our transportation, energy, and environmental crisis in the name of fiscal conservatism. HSR opponents realize they won't win by attacking the system's merits, so they trot out "pork" and "subsidy" in hopes they can scare voters and Senators into opposing HSR on those grounds. They would prefer we did nothing and saved a few bucks today instead of spending some money now to save us from greater costs and problems in the future.

The irony is that much of the transportation system we use on a daily basis is the product of earmarks and subsidies. And the desire to hold down government spending will accomplish little other than the worsening of the transportation/energy/environmental crisis. By not spending money now, we will face a far higher cost down the line of dealing with peak oil, global warming, and collapsed infrastructure. It is an inherently short-term view that puts immediate savings over long-term investment - sacrifice the future for the sake of the present. Is $45 million really too much for the US Senate to handle? We spend that much in one second in Iraq. Surely it can be spent on America's own economic future.