The LA Weekly's Ridiculous Fear-Mongering

The LA Weekly used to be one of the truly great newspapers in California. Founded during the late 1960s, it quickly earned a reputation as both an independent as well as an informative, investigative paper that by the 1970s and 1980s had become a must-read for anyone who wanted to know anything about Southern California politics. They kept up this reputation into the 21st century. But it has been lost, particularly after a merger with the New Times corporation. New Times' approach to "journalism" is to throw bombs and make wild accusations based on scanty evidence. It's a hollow shell of the standards the LA Weekly had been known for. Former editor Marc Cooper charted the paper's sad decline, and Harold Meyerson, a leading progressive writer, has long since left its pages.

That is crucial background for an examination of a sensationalistic and ridiculous article the LA Weekly published regarding high speed rail this week. The criticisms of the paper's appalling decline in journalistic standards aren't my own, and they predate the article. It's unfortunate that HSR is this week's target of shoddy and misleading "journalism," but, here we are.

The article is essentially a grab bag of attacks on high speed rail, none of which are new, few of which make sense. It includes a rehash of the LA River "controversy" that the LA Times already covered (it used to be the case that the Times followed the Weekly, not the other way around). Let's take some of the more egregious parts of the article:

“They need to work in partnership with us rather than shoving stuff down our throats,” says environmentalist Melanie Winter.

Winter is part of a diverse set of environmental advocates, community leaders, elected officials and taxpayer watchdogs who are banding together in the hopes of changing the direction of the rail authority.

The article doesn't say who these people are, exactly, making the group seem larger than it is. And Winter doesn't explain her concerns - instead the quote is designed to make HSR look like the bad guy, instead of the environmentally-friendly form of mass transit, well-integrated with the community and supported by a majority of Californians that it actually is.

The rail authority’s members have little, if any, connection to actual California voters, who polls say are sick of partisan politics. In fact 20 percent of California voters are now registered as “decline to state” political independents. Meanwhile the rail authority board is almost entirely made up of Democratic and Republican operatives and partisans appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger and the Legislature.

OK, this is just absurd. 80% of Californians are registered Republicans or Democrats, and most of those DTS voters consistently cast ballots for Dems. In fact, the members have quite a lot of connection to actual CA voters, if we're going to use this ridiculous metric, since 80 is larger than 20. Moreover, they are all duly appointed and confirmed by the elected representatives of the people of the state - apparently the Weekly has forgotten how representative government works.

Ironically, right after they say the board is illegitimate because it is stacked with Dems and Republicans (as is the state of California!) they write this about the CHSRA's former chairman:

Retired judge Quentin L. Kopp is one of the powerful board’s few politically independent members.

Which of course totally invalidates their earlier point. But there it is, in print, bizarrely enough.

Five years ago, ANG Newspapers published an explosive investigation by Sean Holstege, reporting on a meeting led by Democratic politico Willie Brown and attended by Katz, Diridon and Morshed, at which Brown advised a roomful of engineering and construction firms that to win contracts to build California’s bullet train they first had to pony up $1 million in fees for Katz and other political consultants. According to the story, the consultants would then pull strings in the Legislature, aimed at getting a bullet train plan on the ballot. The controversy died, but several insiders present at that May 11, 2004, meeting with the big firms hold posts on the rail board.

What does this accusation have to do with the present? Did Katz win a contract? Is Willie Brown still involved with HSR? And since HSR didn't go to the ballot until 2008, did this meeting have any relevance whatsoever to the present situation? The only reason this is mentioned is the desire of the authors to throw every possible accusation at HSR to set up their article, regardless of whether the accusation has merit or relevance.

Few California voters knew this back story last November, when they approved a vaguely worded, $10 million bond measure to begin construction of high-speed rail. The details were fuzzy on where, exactly, the tracks would go, what they would look like, and whether property might be seized.

Um, no. The bond measure was not "vaguely worded," it instead specified a very specific corridor as laid out in a very explicitly and not-vague EIR document approved by the board last summer. The details were clear on where exactly the tracks would go, though in some places the tracks could go in a number of places.

One emerging dispute involves a proposal to build the rail line down the middle of I-5. Some activists say the idea makes sense, especially when the alternative would be to run the rail lines through communities and parkland, in some cases cleaving them in half. But state officials seem to have dismissed the I-5 route long before real hearings even took place.

“There hasn’t been a rigorous study of that alternative,” says Damon Nagami, a staff attorney with the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an organization of high-powered lawyers working with communities affected by potential routes. “We don’t understand why the rail authority wants to eliminate this option at this very early stage.”

If that's NRDC's position, they are fools. It's unclear where on I-5 they're referring to, but it doesn't much matter. Nobody lives along I-5 in the San Joaquin Valley, so it makes no sense to put the train there. The trains should go where the people are. If you're talking about I-5 in the LA metro area, that's a truly idiotic plan that should never be given the light of day. It would not only produce much less riders, and might not be feasible given the curves of I-5 in the San Fernando Valley, but the cost would be astronomical and it would have a far greater impact on homes and communities than would following the rail corridors as currently planned. The I-5 alternative should be eliminated because it is senseless and stupid.

Another debate is over downtown’s historic Union Station. The rail authority seems bent on making Union Station the hub for multiple lines that would meet there. But residents of mostly Latino, mostly working-class Lincoln Heights, Cypress Park and Glassell Park worry that trains will tear up their communities.

Nagami says he’s pressuring the state to consider building an annex near Union Station to serve as the high-speed hub. “We’re getting the sense the rail authority has its chosen route and is going to push for that,” adds Nagami, whose organization helped to successfully sue the state eight years ago, when it tried to sell empty land near Union Station to an unpopular developer. “The whole point of an environmental-impact review is to carefully examine a range of options.”

First off, Union Station is going to be the hub because it already is the hub of the LA mass transit system. It would be truly insane to not have trains stop there, with easy transfers to Metro Rail, buses, and Amtrak California and Metrolink trains. The trains won't "tear up their communities" since they'll follow existing ROW and corridors. This is NOT the Century Freeway, despite the LA Weekly's sensationalistic desire to paint HSR as such.

The range of options have already been carefully examined in previous EIRs, and the current program EIR will carefully examine the specific details of bringing trains to and from Union Station.

Perhaps the most emotional and complex issue is the fate of the Los Angeles River. The river has long been both a target for jokes (“L.A. has a river? You mean the giant half-pipe where they filmed Terminator?) and the object of a slow but concerted revitalization effort, which some fear will be quashed by a train route touted on some maps.

Since 2001, California has spent roughly $100 million developing parks along the river, and many of those newly green areas could be ruined by the bullet train.

“This project, if it’s done wrong, will undo years and years of work, on top of the millions of dollars that have been invested,” says Sean Woods, in charge of L.A. parks for the California State Parks department. Though employed by the state, Woods is part of the coalition fighting to make sure L.A. isn’t steamrolled.

LA isn't going to be "steamrolled," as Woods should know. The city of LA's River Revitalization Plan makes clear that the river will continue to be a railroad corridor, and specifically mentioned HSR as part of it. Further, CHSRA is well aware of the desire to connect the riverfront park to the neighborhood, which is why it plans to use the HSR project as an opportunity to achieve that, as this video makes extremely clear. Apparently some people haven't gotten the message:

“Rail has been the barrier to access to the river,” says L.A. River activist Joe Linton, who writes the “Creek Freak” blog. “For eight miles in the downtown area there are tracks along the river. The high-speed rail can either make that a worse barrier or it can make that less of a barrier.”

The plan apparently favored by political types who dominate the rail authority would make that barrier worse. Linton says the inviting green areas now envisioned could mutate into an industrialized backyard for a supertrain. “Those were huge struggles that resulted in parkland for communities that absolutely needed it,” Linton says.

First, the tracks along the river - whether north or south of Union Station - aren't going anywhere. Anyone who thinks they are is out of their mind. Those tracks have been there for a century and will be there for at least one more. Further, as the video makes abundantly clear, HSR will make it less of a barrier.

Of course, the LA Weekly doesn't anywhere mention the CHSRA's video, their plans, their scoping process. Nor does it even appear they tried to reach CHSRA for comment, the way a normal journalist would. Instead they plowed right ahead with their hit piece. Shameful.

Two Very Different Op-Eds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walters doesn't stop there:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HSR on the Radio in SF Tonight

Tonight at 7PM on KALW 91.7 in San Francisco, City Visions will cover the high speed rail debate. As described in the announcement:

The vision of a high-speed rail link between Northern and Southern California is exciting, with fast, modern trains zipping people between San Francisco and Los Angeles in just over two hours. But controversy over route, ridership and cash is following the project. The state, with little money to spend on infrastructure, has just applied for massive federal funding. But some still call the project a fantasy for the well-off that shouldn’t take priority over more basic rail solutions.

Join host Lauren Melzter as she talks with:
-Samer Madanat, Director, Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley
-Brian Stanke, Director of Californians for High-Speed Rail
-Richard Tolmach, President of the California Rail Foundation

Brian Stanke will be carrying the HSR torch for us tonight. As you all probably know, Richard Tolmach is a leading HSR denier and will be using the show to disseminate his misleading statements about the project.

You can see some of his claims in the most recent issue of Cal Rail News, which he edits. Pages 5 and 6 are full of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about HSR "invading neighborhoods" and claiming, against the evidence, that the trains will run at 200mph through "cities."

Perhaps it might be useful in advance of the show to help debunk Tolmach's claims in the comments?

If you want to participate in the show, the call-in number is (415) 841-4134, or you can email the show: feedback@cityvisionsradio.com.

CHSRA To Re-Bid Communications Contract

California High Speed Rail Authority Chairman Curt Pringle has announced that the communications contract that caused some significant controversy last week when it was announced Mercury would be the winners is going to be rebid:

The California High Speed Rail Authority is scrapping a staff recommendation from last week that a firm with connections to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should receive a $9 million, five-year public relations contract, according to a memo sent today by Board Chairman Curt Pringle.

The authority will re-advertise the contract and start its selection process from scratch, Pringle said in the memo. He expects that staff will provide a formal recommendation with more transparency as soon as November.

This is exactly what I predicted would happen last week. The full memo from Pringle:

California’s high-speed train project ought to be an example of a government project done right – and that means being 100 percent open and transparent with Californians every step of the way.

In seeking out a new statewide communications and outreach contractor, the Authority followed the proper RFP procedures and made an objective recommendation. However, we realize we could have been more transparent about the process in order to more openly display that objectivity and strict adherence to state procurement procedures.

Therefore, following discussions with and recommendation from Executive Director Morshed and Deputy Director Barker, the Authority will re-advertise the solicitation and re-conduct the RFP process for this important contract in a way that more openly displays our procedures and sets a precedent for transparency in the awarding of government contracts.

Reaching out to the public as broadly as possible and ensuring access to information about the proposed high-speed train system is critical to the success of this project. I expect that a formal recommendation will be brought before the Board as soon as the November meeting.

Curt

CHSRA's critics won't be swayed by this, but this is an honest letter that admits a mistake and sets out how they're going to put it right. The Sacramento Bee article linked above added that the more transparent process used for the re-bid may reach out beyond the CHSRA:

Rail Authority Deputy Director Jeffrey Barker, one of the three staff panelists and a Schwarzenegger aide until Sept. 1, said the authority will use a larger review panel, possibly selected by a third party. Barker also said the authority will provide more information on its criteria for review.

That "third party" will be interesting. USDOT? Governor Schwarzenegger? Department of General Services? Of more importance will be the criteria for review, which enables the public to see the metrics by which bids are judged.

Ultimately this is something of a tempest in a teapot. Most PR firms are basically alike, especially in the relatively small world of California politics. All of them are politically well connected. And the communications strategy isn't quite the same as the all-important decisions about construction contracts, picking someone to supply the trains, and selecting an operator.

This may well be a good learning moment for the CHSRA. When those more important decisions are made, it will be to the CHSRA's benefit to use a very public process to make those decisions. That may or may not have been the plan all along, but this controversy is teaching them how to approach contract decisions the right way.

So we will see what happens in November!

All Trains Considered

This afternoon I can be heard on your local NPR affiliate, or right now at this link, interviewed on All Things Considered as part of their series on high speed rail. I was preceded by a story about the Chicago Hub HSR plan, and I talked about comparisons between HSR plans in the US and those in Europe and China.

I've done my share of TV and radio and have learned to live with the fact that they usually never give you enough time to discuss the issues in any real depth. And this was no exception. We didn't really get into the details of why the US is proposing the kind of patchwork plans we are, how we've neglected HSR and passenger rail for decades, etc. We did discuss how we sink billions into roads and freeways and how that cost is higher than the cost of building an HSR network, but that was cut from the final broadcast.

Would have loved to give my "Spain's success shows CA HSR will work" spiel, but no time for that either.

Still, I thought it went well, and I was pleased to have had the opportunity.

So feel free to praise or bury me in the comments. And enjoy your Labor Day weekend.

CHSRA's New Pitchmen?

UPDATE 2: Shane Goldmacher explains what went down:

Several rail board members demanded more information about the selection process and the winning bid, calling the staff panel’s report inadequate and saying they might want to hear presentations from the runners-up.

“The staff report and recommendation here wouldn’t be adequate in kindergarten,” said Richard Katz, a board member.

Jeffery Barker, a member of the staff panel and deputy director at the California High Speed Rail Authority, said Mercury’s bid scored 91, the runner-up 90.

Commissioner Lynn Schenk said that was “awfully close – within the margin of error of subjectivity.” And she raised questions about the “formal and informal, professional and other relationship with members of the selection team” and Mercury.

A vote was postponed until the rail board’s October meeting.

I'm all for more time to examine the advantages and disadvantages of the two bids. My guess is this will eventually be rebid with a different oversight and decision process.

UPDATE: As I predicted, this contract was anything but a done deal. Shane Goldmacher reports the CHSRA board voted to postpone the vote on awarding the contract.

Back to the original post...

A little while back the California High Speed Rail Authority announced it was putting out for bid a $9 million contract to handle its communications - everything from designing the form (but NOT the content) of the next Business Plan to public outreach to local communities along the proposed HSR line. Kris Deutschmann of KDC Communications had been leading the communications, along with several other project assistants. I have had very good interactions with Kris and those other assistants. But with the passage of Prop 1A the CHSRA saw the need to ramp up its communications strategy, and invited bidders. KDC bid, as did many others, mostly the usual suspects of California political communications. Yesterday, we learned that the winner was Mercury Public Affairs.

Needless to say, this has raised a few eyebrows.

Mercury Public Affairs has some heavy hitters. Adam Mendelsohn is a partner - he used to be Arnold Schwarzenegger's strategist. Steve Schmidt is a partner too - he managed Arnold's 2006 campaign for reelection (and the "senior campaign strategist" for the McCain 2008 campaign). Not all of their partners are Republicans - one is Fabian Núñez, Democratic Speaker of the Assembly from 2004 to 2008.

The choice of Mercury for this contract by a subcommittee of the CHSRA board (the full board will vote on the choice at today's meeting in Sacramento) is being seen by some as a potential "payback" that might raise "ethical" issues. Shane Goldmacher at the LA Times - one of the state's best political reporters - examines this in his article on the contract:

Two members of the staff panel are former Mendelsohn colleagues.

Ethics watchdogs raised questions about the appearance of favoritism.

"You can't help but raise your eyebrows," said Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause.

"We are seeing a revolving door of legislators and former state officials and state employees going from public service to private PR firms . . . and pulling on all the personal relationships that they've developed to build up their business."

Kathay Feng, who I know and respect as a colleague, is not wrong to point out the revolving door of state officials and employees. And the personal relationships do count for a lot.

However, in the world of Sacramento communications consultants, virtually everyone has a political relationship:

One member of the staff panel, Jeffrey Barker, previously served as associate and deputy communications director in the governor's office, working daily with Mendelsohn. Barker, who began working for the rail commission in August, also worked with Schmidt....

Barker, now deputy director of the California High Speed Rail Authority, said the panel followed a "regimented process" and that there was no conflict of interest.

"We evaluated these proposals based strictly on communications and outreach abilities," he said.

Barker said he and Bowman "knew members of every single [public-relations] team that came in," not just those at Mercury.

So while my Calitics co-blogger Brian Leubitz reads this as having "that whiff of a payback", I don't think that's exactly right. Virtually anyone picked for this contract would be subject to the same charges.

And yet I don't think it is coincidental that Mercury won the contract. It's not a matter of payback but of political logic. The CHSRA's new chairman is Curt Pringle. He's a Republican, mayor of Anaheim, and close to the governor. Another one of Arnold's key point people on the CHSRA board is David Crane, who I wrote about at Calitics in 2007 (before I started this blog).

From what I am given to understand, Pringle and Crane are charting a more assertive course for the CHSRA in leading the HSR project to completion. They are apparently doing so with the support and engagement of the governor's office, which may see HSR as a "legacy project" for a governor with 18 months left in office.

As anyone who is familiar with my writing at Calitics knows, I am not a fan of this governor. His legacy is going to be a state in ruins, a California dream turned into a nightmare. He has usually chosen to play a governor on TV, but has notoriously neglected the details of behind-the-scenes governance. Further, he spent most of his term in office trying to gut the CHSRA's funding, and delayed the Prop 1A bond not once but twice - it was originally to go before voters in November 2004, and again in November 2006. As it turned out, the delay to November 2008 may have ultimately worked in our favor, but that's no thanks to Arnold. History will not be kind to him, nor should it be.

And yet the California HSR project is in desperate need of political leadership. As a separate Authority, the day-to-day management of the project isn't in the hands of legislators or a department of the executive branch that reports to the governor. This is intended as a good thing - authorities have more ability to cut through red tape and get things done, at least in theory, without political meddling or micromanaging.

The downside is that the independence of authorities like the CHSRA means that politicians don't feel they have the same stake in the project as they might otherwise have. This is a particular problem in our term-limited legislature, which aside from a handful of folks like Fiona Ma and Cathleen Galgiani hasn't seemed to give a fuck about the project, except when Senator Alan Lowenthal ramps up another effort to gut the project and turn HSR into glorified and disconnected commuter rail.

Without strong political leadership the CHSRA has started to get bogged down in places, particularly on the Peninsula. Good leadership, and a stronger communications strategy, would have pushed back much harder against the Peninsula NIMBYs, calling them out as anti-environment nutjobs who put their own deluded notions of aesthetic value above safety, economic recovery, and the fight against global warming - all while doing more intensive outreach to reasonable Peninsula residents who generally like the idea of HSR but want to ensure it'll get built in a good way. And with a broken legislature almost totally unable to shepherd projects to completion - but having just enough power to kill good ideas and strangle worthy projects - it was obvious that the CHSRA needed some more robust communications and better political connections.

So in Mercury they'd get both. Adam Mendelsohn, Steve Schmidt and Fabian Núñez would be contracted to help sell HSR to the public. And it has to be said that Arnold Schwarzenegger did a pretty good job of promoting HSR last year whenever he spoke on the subject. I can see the logic to this.

All this being said, this is by no means a done deal. The board has to vote on the contract today and expect to see some "no" votes. There is clearly a power shift going on at the CHSRA, and those that did some of the hard work to keep the project alive and get it approved by the voters might not necessarily be pleased to see a governor that hadn't exactly been HSR's best friend suddenly want to take over. I can't blame them for feeling that way.

My own view is this: the CHSRA clearly needed to shift its approach now that it has the bond money, now that it has federal support, and now that it has to face some real and difficult battles at the project level. If Arnold, Mercury, Pringle, and their team have a sensible plan to navigate HSR through those waters, then I am willing to join up and support them for the sake of getting this built (which as everyone knows has always been my top priority on this blog).

Of course, I'll continue to watch them closely, and offer criticism where necessary. This blog has never been a rah-rah cheerleader for the CHSRA and we're not about to start doing that now.

Media News Group Launches Another Anti-HSR Editorial Attack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WaPo Joins The HSR Stupidity

Robert J. Samuelson is one of the more right-wing writers at the Washington Post. His previous columns have proposed privatizing Medicare, for example, just to give you a picture of who we are dealing with. And like Ed Glaeser and Ed Morris before him, he has decided to bring a right-wing frame to his attack on high speed rail in today's Washington Post.

The column turns on two basic arguments. The first is that somehow HSR will not pencil out. The fact that every HSR system in the world covers its operating costs is lost on Samuelson, who passes off as fact Glaeser's bad math that we've already debunked. Perhaps expecting HSR supporters to respond with the fact that European and Asian HSR systems cover their expenses through fares, Samuelson then tries to argue the USA is different:

What works in Europe and Asia won't in the United States. Even abroad, passenger trains are subsidized. But the subsidies are more justifiable because geography and energy policies differ.

Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it's 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile. Trains can't pick up most people where they live and work and take them to where they want to go. Cars can.

As Bianca pointed out in the comments to yesterday's post, however, California HSR will have a much higher density than the figures Samuelson provided above:

Okay, I pulled the numbers from the US Census site (linked above.) Note these are numbers based on the year 2000, so current numbers are likely higher.

San Francisco County – 9,999
San Mateo County- 1,575
Santa Clara County- 1,303
Merced County- 109.2
Fresno County- 143.1
Tulare County- 76.3
Kern County- 81.3
Los Angeles County 2,344.1
Orange County- 3,607.5

average: 2,138 persons per square mile over nine counties served by HSR.

This is just for the San Francisco to Irvine section, but I think we can safely lay density to rest as an argument.

It is true that the Central Valley cities have smaller densities. But one of the purposes of HSR is to spur that density by providing HSR stations in city centers that can serve as magnets for transit-oriented development. Even with that in mind, the average density of the CAHSR route from SF to Anaheim is significantly higher than the numbers Samuelson provides. It blows his entire argument out of the water.

But as James Carville once said, "when your opponent is drowning, throw him an anvil." We can go further and show that the European nation most closely resembling California - Spain - has had dramatic success with HSR. Bruce McF made that point at Daily Kos today, and Matt Melzer made it here in July 2008 using the following charts:







That last chart in particular is of immense value in discussing American HSR plans. Spain was not the stereotypical European nation that already had a large share of its population using trains. Spain, like California, was primarily dependent on cars and planes to get around the nation. And yet it is Spain that has had the most dramatic success with HSR in the last 20 years.

Samuelson also made another point above, that trains don't work as well as cars because they don't give you door to door service. There are two flaws with this. First, a high speed train from SF to LA is still faster than driving, getting you from point A to point B in about half the time. Sure, you have to drive to a train station, but the HSR stations in both the Bay Area and SoCal will be centrally located.

That leads to the next point that Samuelson almost totally ignores. Yes, as he says, beyond 400 or 500 miles high speed trains don't compete well with planes. But most US HSR plans, including California's, fall into the sweet spot. SF to LA via HSR will be a 432-mile journey. Madrid to Barcelona is about 385 miles. And that corridor, once the world's busiest air corridor, high speed trains have had a smashing success, grabbing 40% of the market share in just its first year of operation.

It should be quite clear that Samuelson's attack on HSR is not based on evidence at all. Rather, as Dean Baker points out, it seems based solely on hatred of trains. Weak stuff indeed.

Finally, as Rafael noted in the comments to yesterday's post, it's a shame we're even having these discussions. California voters have made their decision - they want high speed trains. President Obama ran on a winning platform that included frequent and prominent references to high speed trains. Glaeser, Morris, O'Toole and Samuelson seem interested in using their prominent media platforms to try and reverse these outcomes. Yet they cannot do so on the evidence alone. They either have to structure their analysis in such a way that ignores the whole context and leaves a lot out, as Glaeser and Morris have done, or they have to ignore evidence entirely, as O'Toole and Samuelson have done.

One wonders when the NYT and WaPo will be publishing pro-HSR op-eds in their pages and on their blogs.

Sunday Morning

CBS's venerable Sunday Morning program took an in-depth look at California high speed rail today. The link takes you to the main online article, which is something of a transcript of the video segment. They include a background on earlier CBS News reports on high speed rail, from Walter Cronkite riding the Shinkansen in the 1960s to Charles Osgood on the TGV in 1990. Quentin Kopp gets face time, as does Phil Angelides. Overall it's very much a pro-HSR piece, with only one HSR critic getting just a tiny bit of screen time.

Until the video of their HSR segment is available, content yourselves with another excellent Sunday morning video.

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Addendum from Rafael: Here's the video of the CBS Sunday Morning story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keeping Perspective on HSR and State Budget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

Arnold Schwarzenegger on HSR; and an Unusual Poll

So, I don't quite know what to make of this poll, but I'll pass it along anyway. The San Francisco Examiner is reporting on a poll done by BW Research Partners. The poll is about HSR, but takes what I would consider something of an odd tack - asking if Californians would support HSR even if it meant limiting air travel to do so:

Would you support limiting flights to cities in California and having passengers use a high-speed-rail system to get to destinations in Central and Southern California?

Support: 56%
Oppose: 17%
Not Sure: 26%
No answer: 1%

Would you still support limiting flights if you knew that the high-speed rail would cost about the same as air travel, but would take 2½ hours to get to Southern California?

Yes: 79%
No: 8%
Not sure: 12%
No answer: 1%

The survey by BW Research Partnership, a public-opinion research firm, asked as many as 2,000 registered voters questions about how they would envision the future of the major airports in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

Umm...OK. I'm not quite sure that the issue is "limiting flights", since the experience of HSR on major corridors (Madrid-Barcelona, or London-Paris) is that the travel market shifts and flights decline as a response to changing ridership patterns and not to legislative mandates. I'm not aware of any efforts to officially limit flights in order to help build HSR, so I really don't know what generated this poll. Nor do I know who paid for it.

It is worth noting that HSR will be integrated with air travel in California - at SFO, SJC, potentially PMD (Palmdale) ONT and SAN. SFO's administrators welcome high speed trains, and we're seeing similar support emerge among San Diego airport planners.

Still, the poll does show that at least in the SF Bay Area, Californians strongly support HSR even if it were to be framed as undermining air travel.

Public support as shown in this poll (for whatever it's worth) is bolstered by support from leading American politicians, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, as expressed on Meet the Press yesterday morning:

Schwarzenegger was joined on the Sunday morning show by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, who are part of a bipartisan coalition of elected officials pushing for increased infrastructure investment.

"Look, everyone gets stuck in traffic. There is no reason why we should get stuck in traffic," Schwarzenegger said on the show.

More than once during the interview, the three elected officials spoke of high-speed rail.

"This country desperately needs to build a high-speed rail passenger system," Rendell said, adding that other infrastructure projects also were of vital importance.

You can see some of Arnold's remarks on this, including his desire to use public-private partnerships to fund this (but also willing to consider a higher gas tax), here:



Of course, Arnold tends to play a governor on TV but not off screen. He is notorious for playing up his leadership when the cameras roll, but for not being willing to assert leadership within government for important projects or bills. If Arnold wants HSR to be built, he could for example ensure that the CHSRA gets the $29.1 million it needs to continue operations, or help produce a solution to the Transbay Terminal mess, or help resolve the dispute on the Peninsula. That's more valuable at this point for the HSR project than going on Meet the Press yet again to show how awesome he us.

Why Does The Media Feed the Trolls?

If you went solely by this Mercury News article you might think Palo Alto is full of HSR deniers who are willing to put their ignorance of trains and their narrow conception of property values above the state's dire need to build mass transit alternatives in order to solve the economic, energy, and climate crises:

California High Speed Rail representatives posed a question to Palo Alto residents Thursday night: "How do we come through Palo Alto?"

"Quiet, and invisible," one resident answered, to applause.

That man's sentiments were echoed throughout a community meeting held by the High Speed Rail Authority at the Mitchell Park Community Center. About 250 residents attended Thursday's public information meeting, many speaking out against the potential of elevated trains running through their neighborhoods and saying they had been intentionally misled when they voted for high-speed rail last November.

If these people believe loud diesel trains that must blare a horn at every grade crossing will be quieter than grade-separated high speed trains, they are out of their minds.

But what really rankles is the claim of "intentionally misled." That's a lie and those making those claims should be called to task for willfully spreading misinformation. This blog has been discussing grade separations on the Peninsula for months. It was common knowledge that HSR would use the Caltrain route and that grade separations would be part of the process. Local media was full of reports on this. If these people weren't aware of that, it wasn't for a lack of information, and they cannot claim anyone "misled" them why they were just too lazy to pay attention.

The article goes further:

Some residents said that when they voted in support of high-speed rail,they didn't realize the train was intended to be above-ground. One man called the ballot measure a "conscious deception" that would bring a "corridor of blight down the entire Peninsula."

"I just assumed it was going to be underground, like everyone else," he said.

Really? You "assumed" something and so we're supposed to cater to your ignorant assumption even though there was no reason to maintain that assumption and widely available evidence to the contrary? No, I don't think so.

Many residents spoke of property values, and one man said he believed houses along the tracks are now "worthless," because no one living there could sell a house today with the potential of high-speed rail taking away a portion of the backyard.

I wonder if that "one man" was Martin Engel. Sure sounds like it. Can anyone living there sell a house with a loud diesel train running on the other side of the fence? If so, they can sell a house with fast electric trains. Further, there is little evidence to suggest that "backyards" will be taken in Palo Alto, where ample ROW already exists for the bulk of the route through the city.

Resident Hinda Sack, who lives about a half-block from the tracks and joked at the meeting about registering Palo Alto as an endangered species, said she had also attended a recent meeting in Santa Clara.

"It's very frustrating and very anxiety-provoking," she said, "because it really feels like there's some agenda that we can't really tap into."

Um, there is: it's called moving California into the 21st century by building trains that will help solve the economic, energy, and environmental crisis. If you were living under a rock when gas prices shot to $4.50, when Caltrain ridership soared, when global warming led to a severe statewide drought, and when California's unemployment rate hit 10.1%, then there isn't really much we can do for you.

Resident Bill Cutler said he lives across the street from the Caltrain tracks. He wasn't as concerned about the method used to build the train — whether it were above or underground, or used a different route — as long as the rail authority found a way to make it quiet and visually unobtrusive. He said the process hadn't had enough public input up until this point, and questioned how seriously the rail authority was listening to residents.

Gesturing toward the comment cards provided, he said, "I wonder where all these comments are going to go."

Well Bill, they go to the California High Speed Rail Authority staff in Sacramento, who look them over and assemble them as part of the final EIR/EIS. They actually get read. And Bill, the Authority held numerous public meetings in recent years and has frequently solicited public comments and input.

These folks quoted in the article certainly sound like they just fell off the turnip truck. But what I find more interesting is why they're even being given all this space in the Mercury News article - and without any actual reporting from the author. Nowhere does the reporter explain to readers that these residents' claims have little basis in fact. Instead Diana Samuels just passes it along without comment - as if they have validity, as if they represent the views of a city whose council endorsed Prop 1A last fall.

NIMBYs, as Dennis Lytton has pointed out:

*believe that everyone wants to take away their home values.

* they idealize the status quo or the recent past (they would tell me that they wished the crime would come back to Hollywood to stop development, for example).

* they believe even the smallest incremental, infinitesimal sacrifice by them for the greater good is too much.

But they are also a small minority that the media uses so that they can write articles that have a counter perspective when there really is no valid one.

The media needs to stop feeding the trolls. NIMBYs do not and cannot be allowed to have a veto over whether HSR gets built. It is good and right that all residents have their voices heard. But that's as far as it goes. If they want to be constructive and help make sure HSR gets built in an effective way for everyone, that's great. If they want to sit there and take potshots because they were too lazy to pay attention before, then that's absurd, and the local media should stop enabling their silliness.

Of Lawsuits, Tunnels, and Tall Trees

This Friday night brings our attention back to the Peninsula, where some of the first battles over HSR are being fought. First up is the frivolous lawsuit filed by Stuart Flashman, Menlo Park, Atherton, and others. Now they are claiming that the CHSRA ignored Menlo Park's letter about potential loss of property along the route:

The California High Speed Rail Authority ignored Menlo Park's comment letter that outlined how their proposed bullet trains would force Peninsula homeowners to lose their property, according to opening arguments filed Thursday in the city's lawsuit against the state....

The most significant claim in the brief was that the authority never received Menlo Park's comments that were made before the Pacheco Pass route was approved. State environmental law requires government bodies to review comments from cities and residents before a planning decision of this kind is made.

Now the fate of that specific comment letter is important, but let's not kid ourselves - it was never any secret that some in Menlo Park were worried about this. The "Derail HSR" crowd was based out of Menlo Park and those activists and the Menlo Park city council had been vocal about these worries. It is not credible to claim that the CHSRA was "never aware" of Menlo Park's concerns, as the lawsuit claims.

Further down the tracks, Palo Alto residents are falling in love with the tunnel:

On Tuesday, residents voiced two clear messages: They want a bigger say in the design process and they would much rather have a rail line that zips through tunnels than one that whooshes past over their heads on raised tracks, which some city officials are calling a "Berlin Wall" dividing Palo Alto.

It would be "the difference between blight and Park Avenue," Judith Wasserman, a member of the Palo Alto's Architectural Review Board, said of the tunnel-versus-elevated tracks alternative.

"If somehow the High-Speed Rail Authority decides to put it above ground anyway, is there recourse or do we all just have to lie down on the tracks?" Wasserman asked the crowd gathered in a Palo Alto Unified School District conference room at 25 Churchill Ave.

This is starting to get silly. "Berlin Wall"? Lying down on the tracks? Are they serious? Have they ever been to San Carlos, which doesn't exactly resemble East Berlin circa 1980? Neither is anyone talking about a concrete-sided structure; it can be landscaped to fit better with the surrounding community. I understand that Palo Alto wants to figure out how to best integrate HSR within their town, but statements like that just make them look ridiculous. They also make it more difficult to have a sensible and evidence-based discussion of how to design and build HSR. Those who refer to a "Berlin Wall" are showing that they see HSR as some kind of ruinous imposition designed to not only divide their community but take away their freedom. It's language intended to harden positions, and not come to sensible compromises or smart design solutions. (Besides, the people who risked and in some cases lost their lives crossing the Berlin Wall might object to this cheapening of their experiences.)

Nor does it help when some reporters make sensational claims that lack evidence, such as the Daily Post's argument that El Palo Alto would have to be chopped down to make way for HSR. Clem at the Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog debunked this claim:

Sounds pretty dire, but so far, nobody has suggested excavation near the tree, excepting a few Palo Alto residents who are advocating the entire railroad be buried in a tunnel. The great alarm over HSR impacts to El Palo Alto is out of proportion with the concrete piers poured in recent years near the tree for a bicycle bridge, and certainly overlooks the pressing need to replace the more than 100-year-old rail bridge over the San Francisquito Creek, regardless of HSR.

It's a ridiculous situation when people have to resort to sensationalism to try and get their point across. Unfortunately stories like "omg they're going to kill El Palo Alto!!!" have a nasty way of becoming zombie lies that everyone believes to be true despite the lack of evidence.

If Palo Alto residents want a tunnel so badly, they can pay for it. If they don't want to pay for it, then they should find ways to constructively pose suggestions to make the project a success. Too much of the NIMBY criticism of the HSR plan on the Peninsula is very thinly veiled HSR denial, as Martin Engel's prominent place in the debate shows. Peninsula residents have every right to make suggestions and proactively try to influence the HSR design and implementation. But they have no place trying to destroy a project California voters approved. HSR will be built and it will use the Caltrain corridor down the Peninsula. It's time the debate on the Peninsula became less hyperbolic and more constructive.

HSR Denial Alive And Well In San Diego

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America Speaks, Obama Acts

Note: Rafael wrote much of this post, and I've made some edits and additions. -Robert

There's an interesting article in the Politico today on President Barack Obama's central role in getting the $8 billion in HSR funds into the stimulus.

The article portrays the $8 billion for HSR in the stimulus bill as part of some dastardly backroom plot to force high speed rail down the throat of an unsuspecting and unwilling public. David Rogers also mentions the $1.5 billion already allocated in HR 2095 in the fall, but portrays it as a modest George W. Bush policy in comparison with Obama's alleged spending spree. In truth, Bush's hands were de facto tied by the fact that it was tacked onto an omnibus rail safety bill coming on the heels of the Chatsworth disaster, just before an election that put a lot of GOP seats in the House and Senate in play. HSR was something that was forced down his throat by a veto-proof bipartisan majority in both houses.

While it's true that there was little discussion of HSR as a new direction in transportation/energy/environmental policy in the national media both during and after the election campaign, the same is not true of California and possibly other parts of the country. Perhaps Rogers should look beyond the beltway from time to time.

Especially considering that the public strongly supports high speed rail. The Politico article makes it sound like Obama and Rahm Emanuel cut some kind of backroom deal for the HSR funding, that it was done merely to give Obama some sort of "signature project". But in fact, Obama was actually doing what the people asked him to do.

Back in January the Obama transition team put together the Citizens Briefing Book on Change.gov, allowing the public to vote for the policy proposals they liked best. High speed rail funding was one of the top vote-getters, and one of the very few to actually elicit a video response, in which Obama promised to fund HSR. Which he has now done. Our new president opened up his administration to the people, they told him what he wanted, and they did it. Imagine that!

Obama wasn't sneaking anything in at the last minute here - he was just following orders. Our orders.

The piece goes on to say the Obama will ask for an additional $1 billion (egads!) per year for HSR in the general budgets for the next five years. First off, he's got another election to contest in 2012 and so far, he's not spoken about any specific plans related to a possible second term. Second, Rogers may be confusing Amtrak grants with HSR capital projects. The sum he is in a tizzy about wouldn't be large enough to deliver HSR infrastructure in the 11 already designated corridors. For that, Congress would have to appropriate at least ten times as much annually for the next 20 years.

The $1b/year number appears at odds with Rogers' claim that the President has suddenly embraced HSR as a new signature issues because the new electricity grid and renewable electricity generation have supposedly failed to capture the public's imagination. Again, the beltway bubble appears to be a reality distortion field.

Rogers also incorrectly states that the HSR money came from narrowing the focus of a business tax break. In fact, it came from re-allocations and narrowing the focus of funding in the transportation section of the bill: the original House bill contained $30b for highways, $2b for fixed guideways and $1b at the discretion of the Secr. of Transportation, subject to a competitive bidding process. The Nadler amendment increased that latter number to $2.5b. The Senate's version allocated the $2b to a specific type of fixed guideway, namely HSR. It also moved $3b out of the highway budget and into the discretionary pot, increasing it to $5.5b. At the President's request, this potential slush fund was also allocated to a specific type of transportation spending, namely HSR. The remaining $500 million came from shifting funding for brand-new local transit services to HSR and Amtrak. If you add it all together, aggregate transportation spending was actually reduced to help make room for the AMT patch that the three GOP senators demanded. Math is hard.

More credibly, Rogers states that spending the money will take time and be complicated by freight rail operators that own most of the nation's existing railroad tracks. He seems blissfully unaware of the single biggest HSR project out there, the one in California, which actually involves laying hundreds of miles of brand-new, dedicated and electrified tracks. CHSRA made a shrewd political move in deciding to run the system on renewable electricity alone, because that makes the California system an even better fit for the President's policy objectives.

Note that railroad ROWs could even be critical to building the new, smart electricity grid (presumably based on HVDC trunk lines) and, that the railroads themselves could be (partially) electrified in the process. The technical hurdle is the minimum safe distance between high voltage (hundreds of kV) DC transmission lines (exposed or shielded and buried) and 25kV AC overhead catenaries, especially if both systems depend on electrical ground for the return path. Lightning arcs between the tow systems are another risk that would have to be reliably avoided.

That said, there are indeed serious ROW issues with legacy freight operators even in the California project, especially the sections of the preferred route that depend on UPRR's co-operation: SJ-Gilroy, Stockton-Fresno, Bakersfield-Palmdale (except Tehachapi Pass) and, Redondo Junction-Colton. The Fremont-Stockton section of the HSR overlay through Altamont Pass would also involve a UPRR ROW.

In the Central Valley, it's possible that CHSRA will be able to cut a deal with BNSF for Stockton-Fresno to overcome opposition by UPRR. The route section Fresno-Bakersfield, Palmdale-LA-Anaheim-Irvine (except for the run-through tracks at LA US) and Miramar-San Diego all depend on BNSF sharing its ROW anyhow, but that company is more willing to negotiate than UPRR.

In any case, Obama's HSR move shows that he really is going to put his money where his mouth is - and that when the public demands sustainable transportation, our president will listen.

Who's Afraid of Harry Reid?

At least once a day I do a Google news search for california high speed rail and then just plain old high speed rail (I also get daily Google News alerts, which are also useful). In recent weeks the searches have rarely turned up new material and so sometimes, I admit it, I have to scrape for subjects to cover in a daily post.

Not today.

The Republican freakout over Harry Reid's statement that the $8 billion in HSR stimulus money might could maybe partly be used to help with a high speed train from LA to Las Vegas has caused the media to pay attention to high speed rail again. This is partly due to the media, the DC-based media in particular, still being willing to indulge Republican whining on virtually any subject. You'd think they'd notice how little the public is interested in hearing that whining, and how little credibility the Congressional Republicans have especially after freely spending under Bush and running the nation's economy into the ground.

But until the media catches up with reality, we're going to continue to have stories like this one where all a Republican politician has to do is claim there's a controversy and, suddenly, controversy actually exists:

"Tell me how spending $8 billion in this bill to have a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is going to help the construction worker in my district," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio complained as he and all his fellow Republicans voted against the stimulus. Republicans cited the rail project in accusing Democrats of breaking their word to keep the bill free of pet projects.

Let's be very clear on what is going on here. Boehner is trying to throw things against the wall in hopes something will stick. Unable to derail a stimulus bill that has wide public support, they've spent the last few weeks trying desperately to convince a skeptical public that the stimulus bill is laden with pork that will cause doom, DOOM, for generations to come.

It's also worth noting that Boehner is lying here. The bill does NOT include $8 billion for Vegas HSR, and as the LA Times properly notes, it doesn't earmark funds for ANY HSR project:

A Reid spokesman said the money was not being earmarked for any specific project but would be available on a competitive basis. "This was a major priority for President Obama, and Sen. Reid as a conferee supported it," said Jon Summers.

To Republican politicians like John Boehner, of course, passenger rail funding is pork. Inherently so. They oppose it on principle, and tend to repeat the discredited talking points of Wendell Cox and the Reason Foundation that rail is wasteful. Doesn't matter if it's HSR or light rail or streetcars or Amtrak - remember that a few weeks ago, Boehner and his fellow Republicans all voted to eliminate Amtrak funding from the stimulus. They failed, but it's a further sign that at least for the elected officials of the Republican Party, HSR denial is a way of life. As this week's vote showed, alongside California's passage of Prop 1A, the public does not support them on this.

So once we put aside the usual rantings of HSR deniers, what does this all really mean for California High Speed Rail - the SF-LA project we've been focused on here for nearly a year? The answer, as I explained to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, is that it is entirely good news.

Dug Begley's story explains that, in fact, the concept of a high speed train to Vegas is at least 20 years old, and that if this stimulus breathes life into it, that's probably a good thing:

But officials acknowledge after 20 years of talking about a bullet train across the desert, some residents are jaded about the possibilities. Robert Cruickshank, a high-speed rail proponent and creator of the California High Speed Rail Blog, said growing up in Orange County he heard for years how bullet trains were coming, but to no avail.

"The difference then is there was no funding," Cruickshank said.

To expand on this, as I did with the reporter over the phone yesterday (and I fully understand that he could only use snippets, and I am pleased with the snippets he used), the reason we haven't seen plans for HSR to Vegas materialize in those 20 years is that there was little political support for intercity passenger rail. Congress spent the 1990s taking a chainsaw to Amtrak, including canceling the Desert Wind in 1997. Until the United States was willing to embrace HSR spending, plans such as Vegas HSR would remain on the drawing board.

Now that situation has changed, and I believe that to be a good thing:

A line to Vegas could act as a nice complement to a north-south train, Cruickshank said, and has merit even though it's been a topic for 20 years with little to show for it.

"Anybody who's tried to go to Vegas on a weekend in traffic knows it would be welcome," he said.

Keep in mind the above, that the reason there's been "little to show for it" is that there's been no federal support for HSR spending until now. But the real point of this quote is to explain that if you propose it, they will come. Southern Californians would love to have this train. Complaints about the backups on Interstate 15 are commonplace among Californians, and if you could ensure folks had a way to get to Vegas that was fast and reliable, of course they'd take it. In Southern California, population 15 million, Vegas HSR is merely going to increase public support for high speed rail in general.

And the most important takeaway from all of this, by far, is that the events in Congress this week, combined with the results of the November election, indicate that both the American public and the majority in Congress along with the White House are strongly supportive of high speed rail. John Boehner is spitting into the wind here, demonstrating his irrelevance by trying to paint a popular concept as something illegitimate. The combination of voter support in California with political support in Congress means that when it comes to doling out the HSR stimulus money, California - and the SF-LA trunk route in particular - will be first in line:

Although an LA-to-Vegas line is not the priority in California, Cruickshank said it should not detract from efforts to build a high-speed line from San Diego to San Francisco.

In fact, much of the $8 billion could come to the West Coast.

"Only Los Angeles to San Francisco has any funding at all," he said. "This is the only high-speed rail in the nation that has a plan and any money behind it."

All Harry Reid has is a study. Vegas HSR, whatever it's value, is nowhere near the point of readiness that California HSR is, with completion of the environmental review and permitting process two years away at most. We have detailed engineering studies, a business plan, ridership estimates, and are now talking about final design details. No other HSR project in the country is at that point. And no other project in the country has that most precious of resources - a clearly identified and secured source of funding. The federal government loves nothing more than a local match.

Congress has shown that it strongly supports HSR funds. The people do as well. How much more in HSR funding we can get this year is dependent on a huge range of factors, but the $8 billion here is a huge signal that passenger rail's support in Congress is very strong. No amount of whining from the Republican minority will change that.

Fast Tracking Infrastructure Stimulus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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