Over at Wired’s Autopia blog, Chuck Squatriglia has an excellent takedown of Hoover Institution fellow Liam Julian’s HSR denier article that was excerpted in the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month. This blog offered our own criticism of Julian, but there’s plenty of room on this train for more folks to tear into misinformation, so Squatriglia’s post is most welcome:

Julian seems skeptical of private investment, but it is entirely plausible in California and elsewhere. Oliver Hauck, the CEO of Siemens Mobility USA, wrote in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed piece that the private sector is eager to invest in HSR. System operators in France and Japan are interested in contributing. The New York Times reports China, through a partnership with General Electric, is eager to help finance and build California’s HSR. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Spain and France also have expressed interest, according to the San Jose Mercury News….

There are legitimate questions to be raised about how high-speed rail will be traveled and how popular it will be, but to suggest it will “waste untold billions” and “the economics of high-speed rail do not work” ignores convincing evidence to the contrary.

Squatriglia was a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle before moving over to Wired. Unfortunately for Bay Area newspaper readers, Squatriglia’s old paper doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo, and continues to peddle HSR misinformation. On the same day Squatriglia posted his article, the Chronicle’s political columnists Phil Matier and Andrew Ross attacked HSR in their daily column:

Is it a high-speed rail ride to the future or a Bay Bridge boondoggle times 10? That’s what lawmakers are wondering as more and more questions arise about the plan to build a multibillion-dollar bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The more accurate question is “is there any merit to the claims of those who argue HSR will be a boondoggle? Are they deliberately ignoring the evidence showing HSR will work out just fine or are they just dense?”

Matier and Ross’s column is built around comments from State Senator and former Palo Alto mayor Joe Simitian designed to make it look like he shares the columnists’ skepticism:

“I’m all for high-speed rail, but I want it to be high-speed rail done right,” says state Sen. Joe Simitian.

Simitian has plenty of reasons to be concerned. Not only will the rail line go right through his Peninsula district, but also he chairs the Senate budget subcommittee that oversees the $9 billion in voter-approved bonds for the project.

But if you look at Simitian’s comments, he’s not saying anything different than he’s been saying since at least the January Palo Alto hearing – he wants HSR built, wants it built right, and wants clear answers to some of the outstanding questions.

Besides, “concerned” is such a vague word. Simitian may well have “concerns” but I’ve seen or heard nothing to indicate he is becoming a NIMBY or an HSR denier. He wants to be able to ensure the Authority can effectively and throughly answer the questions that have been raised, and judging by the revisions to the 2009 Business Plan he should be satisfied that the Authority is doing so. It would have been nice had Matier and Ross asked about that updated plan, but they didn’t.

In addition to worries about how many backyards will be torn up for the line, he and other key legislators are asking question’s about the High Speed Rail Authority’s business plan – which remains murky at best.

See, it would have been nice had Matier and Ross heard about the updated plan that was discussed and approved at last week’s board meeting. That would have produced an informative column. Instead we get this:

For example, no sooner had voters approved the bond package than the initial $33.6 billion price estimate jumped to $42.6 billion because the authority had failed to account for inflation. And that cost could climb even higher if the rail goes underground through the Peninsula, as many communities are now requesting.

This is true, but it’s being spun to make HSR look bad. As I’ve said before, there are those who claim any time any government plan’s details change, especially with regard to cost, that it’s somehow a sign of a problem or a boondoggle. Here that isn’t the case. The price estimate is actually exactly the same – it’s just a question of whether you measure it in 2009 dollars or in projected year of expenditure dollars, which are a guess. If inflation soars, it’ll cost a lot more than $42.6 billion. If deflation continues, it could well cost less. But here again, Matier and Ross prefer not to explain those facts, instead wanting to use the fact that the numbers are different to imply that the project really is flawed.

You can see this in their treatment of some other numbers:

Then there is the estimated ticket price for a trip from L.A. to San Francisco, which has jumped to $105 one way – making the line much less competitive with the price of an airline ticket.

Um, no. It would still be 83% of airfare, which is very competitive with the price of a ticket. Besides, as we’ve seen in Europe and Asia, the convenience of rail travel, especially compared to the miseries of air travel, is usually enough to lure travelers away from planes onto trains.

There are also questions being raised about the bullet train’s ridership projections.

For example, San Francisco is expected to have 24,100 bullet riders a day, a realistic number given the business ties between San Francisco and Los Angeles. But does anyone really think that the town of Gilroy will have 4,700 bullet train riders a day? Or that Redwood City will have 3,900, or Merced 5,300?

Yes, we do really believe that. Why do Matier and Ross think those figures are nonsense? Have they looked at the detailed ridership models and the assumptions and projections those models are based on? Do they remember the summer of 2008, or the five years of rising gas prices that preceded it, or the recent rise in gas prices that have some projecting $100/bbl by 2011?

As laid out on page 20 of the revised business plan makes clear, Gilroy and Merced have that projected ridership – for the year 2035 – largely due to “interregional” trips. For Merced that assumes it is the primary transfer point to points north (before Phase II is built). On page 17, dealing with Merced directly, they note that “interregional” trips include going to Fresno, and that when Phase II is built, daily boardings fall to 2,500.

For Gilroy, it assumes that it is the primary transfer point to Santa Cruz and Monterey. As a Monterey resident, I have every reason to believe that a LOT of people will definitely use Gilroy to access the HSR system and the rest of the state to get to/from Monterey. Airfares from Monterey to LA on short notice usually cost around $500 (if that cheap), and with a lot of tourist destinations here, it stands to reason that lots of folks will use Gilroy to get to the Monterey Bay area, especially when Monterey and Santa Cruz counties build out the planned passenger rail connections to Gilroy.

Besides, these projections are for 25 years in the future. If Matier and Ross assume the status quo will last that long, then perhaps they might have a point. But it won’t. 25 years from now, oil is going to be WAY too expensive for most people to afford to drive or fly for intrastate trips. There will likely be more than enough demand to reach the projected ridership numbers.

Matier and Ross move on to the “revenue guarantee” issue:

One of the biggest fears, however, is that the state will not be able to keep the explicit promise made to voters that they would not be on the hook if the finances fall short.

“Private-sector investors are going to want a guarantee,” Simitian said. “It’s hard to imagine how that guarantee will be provided.”

What Simitian is alluding to, but what Matier and Ross did not explain, is that Prop 1A apparently forbids the Authority from offering a revenue guarantee. However, it’s not clear that private sector investors need such a guarantee. Recall what Oliver Hauck of Siemens USA said in the Chronicle earlier this month:

Private companies, including rail technology suppliers like my own, are willing to accept some of the risk inherent in financing this major upgrade to the American transportation system.

Doesn’t sound to me like a revenue guarantee is all that necessary.

Then there is the route itself – which is already raising hackles in the South Bay and Peninsula, where a consortium of leaders from Palo Alto, Belmont, Menlo Park, Atherton and Burlingame is raising protests about a 120-mph bullet train racing past their backyards or on an overhead line that will split the communities.

The towns want the line dropped below street level.

That’s certainly an issue, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the HSR project. Instead it’s facing some of the challenges any major infrastructure project faces. The mere existence of NIMBYism, which exists almost any time anything new is proposed in these cities, does not at all reflect on the Authority itself.

Matier and Ross did get a quote from CHSRA board member Richard Katz that would seem to defend the Authority, but they use it to make the project look bad:

Richard Katz, who sits on the High Speed Rail Authority, admits the two business plans submitted so far need work, but said “you have to understand that for years the authority had only a skeletal staff working for voter approval.”

In other words, the authority was more involved with selling the concept of high-speed rail than the nuts and bolts of building it.

That’s not at all true, and that’s their spin on Katz’s quote. The staff was working to produce enough information on the project, and get the planning advanced far enough, for the public to make an informed decision. They did hardly any selling of the concept of HSR to the voters, since they lacked the staff. This blog came into being two years ago to fill that gap. Trust me, if the Authority was doing enough public outreach, I might never have started this site.

But even if the deal doesn’t pencil out for high-speed rail, Katz said the plan is being structured so that the voters’ $9 billion will be used to upgrade existing rail lines and routes. That way, he said, the money will be put to the public’s benefit whatever the outcome.

Simitian, however, isn’t ready to hop on board.

“Their argument is essentially, ‘Don’t worry, you will still get a half dozen improvements to existing rail,’ ” he said. “But the voters were told we are building a statewide system.”

Simitian is right. Californians did indeed vote for a statewide system, and rightly expect one to be built. Any improvements to existing rail are a byproduct of the HSR project, not the end goal in itself. HSR is indeed a rising tide that lifts other passenger trains, but that happens by building out a grade-separated infrastructure where track-sharing is either minimized or happens on HSR’s terms. It would be unfortunate if Katz sees HSR as a way to merely get funds for small-scale upgrades.

And it’s worth noting that here again, Matier and Ross spun Simitian’s quote to make the HSR project look bad, when in fact Simitian “isn’t ready to hop on board” with Katz’s idea that if all we get are smaller upgrades, we should be happy.

Unfortunately, Matier and Ross’s column is widely read around the Bay Area. Too bad it contains more of the same misinformation that is all too common in reporting on the HSR project. Readers deserve better from the Chronicle.