California Representatives Join Call for Redirecting HSR Money
Earlier this week Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger both wrote letters to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood calling for any HSR money given up by other states to be redirected to California. Today they were joined by 22 members of California’s House delegation:
The letter was signed by the three co-chairs of the California High-Speed Rail Caucus: Laura Richardson, Zoe Lofgren, and Jim Costa, as well as John Garamendi, George Miller, Dennis Cardoza, Mike Honda, Jerry McNerney, Loretta Sanchez, Doris Matsui, Adam Schiff, Jane Harman, Howard Berman, Barbara Lee, Linda Sanchez, Bob Filner, Brad Sherman, Pete Stark, Lynn Woolsey, Sam Farr, Mike Thompson and Joe Baca. No Republicans signed the letter, but I wouldn’t take that as a sign they necessarily oppose this move or oppose HSR overall.
It’s good to see such widespread support for California’s HSR project. I hope Wisconsin and Ohio keep their HSR money, but if they don’t, it should be redirected to California, where we can put it to immediate use.
in a word:
good.
in a word:
good.
This guy keeps sending out emails asking to save Wisconsin rail. Who cares? Wisconsin? Divert the money to the NEC. God damn if I wanted rail I wouldn’t move to Wisconsin.
BruceMcF Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
To turn around most quickly, it would have to be an existing application that did not make the cut or was not fully funded. If they set up a new application round, that’ll be months lost, maybe half a year, on evaluating the new round of applications. If they use existing applications, they can ask which applicants still stand behind their applications, use the assessment they already made, and just hand it out to the next in line.
Of course, if that included the Wolverine line, and the funding to the Wolverine line was suspiciously close to the amount of money that Ohio turned its back on, that would be brilliant: Ann Arbor getting the money that Columbus decided to do without.
Alan F Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
There were no shortage of applications for the $8 billion of HSIPR stimulus funds. If LaHood and the FRA can go back to the original applications, they have a long list of projects they can pick from. The complete list of ARRA HSIPR applications, whether they were forwarded for technical evaluation (which I would expect was a criteria for being considered in the initial internal review rounds), and which were selected for funding can be found at the DOT website at http://www.fra.dot.gov/rpd/Downloads/hsiprapplist.pdf. New parlor game: make your own picks for $1.2 billion of funds.
Peter Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
$4 million for 10 escalators in DC? No wonder Mica is bitching about HSR money being spread too thinly…
YesonHSR Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 7:17 am
Yes and this is where the “pork” lables about HSR are spread because the true purpose is for lines to have 110mph service and it should not be going to things like above or the recent grant of 200million to California for a number of passenger rail items ..thou needed are not an actul item for CAHSR to beging service
Alan F Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 7:30 am
The $4.3 million to replace the escalators at Union station in DC is among the most questionable awards in the HSIPR stimulus grants. I take those escalators on a regular basis.; usually working fine. The really odd part is that Union Station and the parking garage is owned by US DOT and operated by Union Station Redevelopment Corp which I gather is mostly owned by Amtrak. Is FRA as an agency of US DOT in effect granting an award to itself? Second, what do the replacing the escalators have to do with HSIPR improvements for the NEC? The escalators should have been covered by other sources, not HSIPR funds. Oh well, maybe they needed to find money to replace them and this was a way to include DC in the stimulus grants. Although the much more important Long Bridge (across the Potomac) replacement PE study was also funded.
Nathanael Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 12:13 am
I wish I had a way to automatically cross-check that list against the list of projects which got funding in the “regular budget” round of HSR money, and the projects which got TIGER funding, and the projects which got TIGER II funding, and the projects which got other funding. A lot of the ones which weren’t funded by ARRA originally have subsequently been funded, so it’s harder for me to play the “what should get the money” game when I keep picking things which got money in later rounds…. :-)
Nathanael Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 12:15 am
Also, there’s gobloads of “approved” track 2 projects which overlap “not approved” track 1 projects, meaning that the track 1 projects are totally irrelevant (being funded in track 2)….
Alan F Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 7:44 am
The list of grants for the Tiger, Tiger II, and HSIPR FY10 are available on the FTA and FRA websites. Since they are sorted by state with short project descriptions, should be able to figure most of which of the original stimulus application got at least some funding in the FY10 awards. An equivalent list to the stimulus HSIPR table for the FY10 HSIPR applications showing all the applications, not just those awarded funds, would be useful, but I don’t see one on the FRA website. Don’t know whether LaHood could consider the FY10 applications for the re-allocation of the returned stimulus money or, whether if he wants to do it quickly, he can only consider the original applications (but with knowledge who got what in the FY10 awards).
Of course, this being the federal government, quickly could mean 6 to 8 months after Walker & Kasich are sworn in and then sign documents shutting down the projects.
I hope they choke on this: GOP governors: Deep budget cuts are coming
I think this is going more than a little overboard for what is probably going to be only $1.2 billion and only $400 million if Walker in Wisconsin waffles his way out of giving up $810 million. Cuomo in NY and Illinois have also made public overtures for some of the money.
LaHood, by the way, was in North Carolina, apparently dropping hints that NC may be line for some of the returned funds. See http://www.wsoctv.com/news/25829291/detail.html. NC has already done pretty well for the Raleigh to Charlotte leg of the SE HrSR. It it is the DC to Richmond VA and Richmond to Raleigh NC portions that need a lot more funding.
California has already done very well in getting a large chunk of the $10.5 billion of HSIPR funding. While the CA HSR project is a vital project to get real HSR going here in the US, operational service is 10 years away. The returned funds, IMHO, would be better spent on furthering the Chicago-St Louis, Chicago-Detroit corridors with some smaller amounts for projects on the Empire (NY), Keystone (PA), New Haven to Springfield, VA and NC corridors.
If California wants to get real federal funding to support the CA HSR project going forward, the state elected officials should be fighting for $4 or $5 billion of annual HSIPR funding in Congress. The California congressional delegation is not exactly small. Team up with IL & various rail friendly mid-West representatives & Senators, the Mid-Atlantic and New England states. Pretty big block of votes.
YesonHSR Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Thou I would of course welcome it if it does go eleswhere it needs to go to an already funded ARRA project to help finish it. CHI-STL-DET would be my choice as 1.2 would go alongway and the the hard reality is Mica may not send any money to these projects in the Trasportation bill
YesonHSR Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 7:57 am
The sad truth is that if our own Senator(Boxer) and the President had not delayed the transportaion bill we would have that funding now secured. Their woory about it affecting the midterms could not have turned out any worse..loss of the House and the loss of Oberstar..
Is there a link to the original document around, rather than relying on people jumping through Scribd’s hoops?
Maybe LaHood and Obama will give into the will of John Mica and program the additional funds to CA and the NEC. They are already caving in to the Republicans’ demands on other issues. Why not this one? If they preemptively reprogram these funds for “true high speed rail” systems that Mica alluded to, the Reps will have less to criticize them on…
Nathanael Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 12:29 am
Of course, the Republicans will simply come up with some other criticism, like “They’re sending all the money to blue states!”. You can’t win with those people.
OT: Thanksgiving travel, most ever in recent history not flying
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-thanksgiving-travel-1118-20101118,0,6542053.story
*Imagine if travelers had a third choice, on a speedy HSR train with no worries about inclement weather.
Spokker Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Inclement weather causes trouble in the NEC every year.
swing hanger Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
I dunno about the NEC, but here in northern Japan, where the snowfall is some of the heaviest in world at this latitude, delays are minimal, though they do occur sometimes. Much more reliable (and safer) than either flying or driving.
rafael Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 5:12 am
The present generation of Eurostar trains features conventional air cooling for motors, power electronics and transformers. The chaos last Christmas was caused by snow so fine the intake filters were unable to keep it from accumulating in nooks and crannies of the spaces containing the power electronics, especially on the trailing power cars. Inside the Channel Tunnel, ambient temperatures are well above freezing. This caused the trapped snow to melt, shorting out the entire electrical system, including the OCS. After stranded passengers on stricken trains were rescued and finer filters fitted, Eurostar resumed regular operations. I expect they’ve learned their lesson.
Note that the issue here wasn’t so much the amount of snow but the small size of the crystals. Nevertheless, I hope future designs for passenger trains and freight locomotives destined to run through long tunnels in cold winter climates will rely on liquid coolant, which JR East’s new E5 fleet already features. Air is forced through wide ducts containing radiators, slung underneath the high platform chassis of these EMU cars. The hollow heat sinks for the power semiconductors and other components of the liquid coolant subsystem are reliably sealed – a non-trivial design challenge.
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Alstom says everything is sealed in the AGV to keep out the dust attracted by the powerful rare-earth magnets. By the way, 97% of rare earths are currently imported from China, which makes it the world’s sole supplier.
Robert Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 10:24 am
Rare earth magnets are not really “rare.” If I remember correctly, the US was self-sufficient in rare earth metals in the ’90s from mining operations in Mountain Pass, California (Inyo county). We mined over 30% of the world’s rare earth metals there. The only reason all of the rare earth metals nowadays are sourced from China is due to the cheaper labor and inexpensive minings costs from lack of environmental regulation. This is not to say that we are low on rare earth metals, just that it’s not cost effective currently to mine our supply.
Peter Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 10:26 am
And if China was to cut the amounts it supplies, it would suddenly become viable to mine them here again. We’d have shortfalls for a short time, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Victor Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Are Ya sure Mountain Pass, California is in Inyo County? Cause I know of only one Mountain Pass, California and It’s along the I-15 fwy in San Bernardino County in California.
Robert Reply:
November 20th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Sorry, yes — San Berandino County. I stand corrected.
Peter Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Ask Eurostar travelers what they think about inclement weather…
Spokker Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
I tried but they are too busy hanging out under the English Channel for a few hours.
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 3:26 am
It was the specifically English “wrong kind of snow”. Very thin snowflakes making it through the filters and then melting in the warmth of the tunnel. Alstom had earlier proposed a solution but Eurostar thought the expense unnecessary as the phenomenon was very unfrequent. An small economy that cost them millions.
The TGV has never had any problems in the Alps where there are long tunnels and heavier snowfalls than in England.
England also has an autumnal specialty: the wrong kind of leaves on third-rail suburban lines.
Trains are less affected than airports by flood rainfalls. Their speed may have to be reduced, but it’s nothing comparable to cancelled flights.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 4:43 am
The Pennsylvania Railroad had something similar happen in the 1950s. It was some sort of freak snow, a lot of it blowing around at just the height of a GG1′s air inlets for motor cooling air, and fine enough to get past the linen filters the road used. Crippled a lot of the GG1 fleet, due to motor flashovers (short circuits, expensive repair). Road started a retrofit with modified air inlets (not all GG1s got them), and a new waterproof varnish for the motors, supposedly they actually tested a motor immersed in a tank of water to check this out. No problems later. This was after the GG1s had been operating for close to 20 years.
thatbruce Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 10:15 am
The TGV has never had any problems in the Alps where there are long tunnels and heavier snowfalls than in England.
That’s not quite a fair comparison, as the snow that falls in the Alps has travelled further from the sea than the snow that falls in the seaside climes of southern England and northern France, and thus has had more time inside the clouds to form larger clumps. Which is a long way of saying that the filters that work perfectly fine dealing with large snowflakes in the Alps aren’t always going to work fine in dealing with occasional finer snow by the sea.
The particular set of conditions that rendered the Eurostar (and GG1s) inoperable aren’t likely to be reproduced on the CAHSR due to the shorter length of the tunnels (ie, less time for any collected snow to melt, just like in the Alps), and less exposure to climates where it does regularly snow.
Peter Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 10:20 am
Or we could simply figure out whether the snow that trains might experience in the Tehachapis are more similar to the snow in the Alps or near the Channel coast…
jimsf Reply:
November 20th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
I think the snow they will encounter between bakersfield and the san fernando valley will mostly be the usual generic california style. Basic powder and or wet heavy “sierra cement.” Nothing exotic.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 20th, 2010 at 9:04 am
Just a side note on the snow issue:
http://www.a1steam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=389:tornado-rescues-commuters-stranded-by-snow&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=123
http://www.pprune.org/jet-blast/399718-steam-train-rescues-commuters-last-night-london-victoria.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Peppercorn_Class_A1_60163_Tornado
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
The last thing to stop running are the trains, especially the subways. It doesn’t snow much in the subway and rarely gets below freezing.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Depends on where. NYCT keeps operating, but the DC Metro shuts down if there’s more snow than it’s used to.
Mad Park Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
… and no worries about being groped by TSA goons.
jimsf Reply:
November 20th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
For some reason I did not get scanned or groped at SFO this week. I was a little disappointed.
Ohio and Wisconsin did not really reject HSR. This is because they were not getting it anyway. Imagine if Californians were sold on very fast trains and shown pictures of TGVs, but then the money was spent on improvements for the Coast Starlight. You can make a case for upgrading conventional rail, but that is not how it is being sold. The project in Ohio was to restore service between Cleveland and Cinncinatti that would be over 2 1/2 hrs longer than driving. Surely over time there would be upgrades, but it would never be true hsr. The state would be stuck paying subsidies for this train for several years at this slow speed. It is in no way a down payment on true hsr, because that requires a whole new right of way. We in California might have reacted the same way. — As it is however, I hope the money is sent here.
Peter Reply:
November 18th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Or Ohioans will be stuck with subsidizing more roads instead.
YesonHSR Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 7:30 am
110mph should have been the rock bottom minimun for any ARRA funding .The 3C would have been a wonderful addition at 110mph and what a waste not to have passenger rail between 3 very close metro areas. I agree if Ohioans were told 110-125 MPH new trains were coming bet they would be happy..They should have got the 1.5Billion needed to really start it..thou the mindset of the POLS have a gas hose stuck in their back end
Kenb Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 9:34 pm
I agree, but at some point you have to blame the voters. In fairness, these canidates were up front as to where they stould on these rail projects before the election. If I lived in Ohio I would strongly support a train on that route, but would be concerned over beginning opperations at such a low speed. In Wisconsin however, I have less sympathy for those voters because the train from Madison to Chicago would be pretty decent at the start. I think they should put together a major proposal to build a true high speed train from Chicago to New York which includes Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburg. This could be the third project to start after Cali and the NEC.
Nathanael Reply:
November 22nd, 2010 at 12:46 am
I was planning to take that route to Madison, WI. It would have been a pretty good route.
The latest tactic of the Pennisula NIMBY’s: http://www.penipress.com/2010/11/19/historic-tree-stands-in-the-way-of-palo-alto-high-speed-rail/
The link on SFGate is getting a lot of comments, mostly in favor. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/inthepeninsula/detail?entry_id=77402
Well this sucks, $820 Billion in stimulus and the incoming republicans are trying to kill the $16 Billion for HSR.
“There is nearly $123 billion to fund infrastructure projects that hasn’t yet been paid out. But more than $106 billion of those funds have been “obligated,” meaning they are officially under contract. In some cases, agencies and businesses have begun incurring costs ahead of their reimbursement from Washington.
That just leaves up to $16 billion of infrastructure funds, most of which was set aside for a high-speed rail program and loan guarantees for renewable-energy projects. Much of that money for the grants and loan guarantees has been awarded, but contracts haven’t yet been signed.
The stimulus also authorized incentive payments for physicians to adopt electronic health records, with a cost of $17.5 billion, and registration for that doesn’t begin until January 2011.
Republicans are planning to start by going after the low-hanging fruit—the $16 billion in infrastructure money. The top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, Jerry Lewis of California, proposed legislation this week to rescind those funds, and said the Congressional Budget Office estimated he could block about $12 billion.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704756804575608762421904660.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond
YesonHSR Reply:
November 20th, 2010 at 7:46 am
I think thats why the valley segment will be chosen before the end(dec31) of the year. what can they really do? and someone from Cali..thou a right winger
This mostly pure posturing and grand standing on the part of the House Republicans. The Republicans will only control the House, the Senate will still have a Democratic majority and Obama is still the President. In order to rescind the funds, the Senate will have to pass the same bill and the White House will have to sign it. I’m sure some of the House Republican leadership will try to insert language into appropriations bills rescinding the yet unspent stimulus funds, but Reid and the Senate committee leaders won’t go along with it. And if they do, I expect Obama’s veto pen will be getting a work out in the next 2 years anyway.
Besides, by the time anything happens in the next House, a good chunk of the HSIPR funds are likely to be obligated anyway as the bidding, review, and contract award processes wrap up.
What is unfortunate is that the Senate did not pass the FY2011 Transportation bill before the election along the other FY11 funding bills. Much of the government is running on continuing resolutions at FY10 funding levels. The House did pass a Transportation bill with $1.4 billion for HSIPR, $400 million for Tiger, and $1.767b for Amtrak (it started out with $2.5b for HSIPR, but the Appropriations Committee trimmed it to put money towards highways). The pending Senate bill has $1b for HSIPR, $800m for Tiger, and $1.963b for Amtrak. Not nearly enough HSIPR money, but more than than we are likely to see next year. With so many legislative items on the agenda in the lame duck session, FY11 transportation funding is likely to be put off with continuing resolutions until the next Congress is seated – and the food fights really get started in Congress.