It’s kind of telling that Baner’s stated objective is not ensuring he gets our economy back on track, not ensuring that people get jobs, but to make sure that Obama loses his re-election bid.

Talk about effed up priorities.

The high speed rail project will be in good hands …

A cursory examination of PBQD’s record of past fraud in cost and ridership predictions has lead to contractual termination and permanent disqualification?

GIF/DB-Netz/JR-E/W/C have taken over?

Caltrain’s Bob “systematic mendacity” Doty has been put out to pasture — permanently?

Quentin Kopp and Rod Diridon have Left to Pursue Other Interests?

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority has been dissolved?

An adult has been put in charge who has even heard of the phrases “cost benefit”, “value engineering”, “phasing”, “peer comparison”, “best practices” or “designing other than for highest contractor profit”?

Do tell. This is all wonderful news if true! Imagine: the dream fulfilled after all these decades: CHSR in good hands, finally!

Rep. John Mica said he wants to “refocus on several projects that could be a success, particularly in the Northeast corridor, which was almost totally neglected by the administration. We’ll revisit all of those projects.”

Mica suggested possibly scaling back the Florida project to a line that runs between the Orlando airport and theme parks and tourist destinations in the Orlando area. Such a route would have “tremendous potential for actually making money,” he said.

Such a route would no longer be intercity rail so changing the current ARRA funding is just retorical bullshit.

62% definitely or probably would use high speed rail for leisure or business travel according to Consumer Travel Survey Questions on High-Speed Rail conducted by Synovate for the American Public Transportation Association The survey among 24,711 U.S. adults in late spring shows continuing widespread support for high-speed rail in the United States.

From:

http://www.constructiondigital.com/sectors/civil-engineering/republican-house-set-slash-spending-rail-and-infrastructure

Republican House Set to Slash Spending for Rail and Infrastructure
………..
However, Boehner’s not a fan of livable communities or public transportation. He’s made it known that he and his party would block funding towards high speed rail. In fact, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has already set this ball in motion. High speed rail, already utilized in Europe and Japan, is considered the future of transportation and would improve commuter times on the east coast and in central commuter rail hubs nationwide. With more people, particularly the younger generation, moving to cities and preferring trains to automobiles, this may prove to be a giant kick to our own groins.

I’m more concerned about net neutrality. All of the congressmen who supported it are gone now. Coming soon: basic Internet for $50. Get YouTube for $20 more!

There’s a new site,
http://highspeedboondoggle.com/.
And a youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/highspeedboondoggle. The videos look professionally done. I think this is the work of the Reason Foundation.

I would be happy with more conventional trains, and trolleys, too.

I’m an auditor for the State of West Virginia, and I had to travel today from Martinsburg to Keyser, a city west of Cumberland, Md. A trip to Keyser is just under 100 miles, and takes just about two hours in good weather.

The weather was good today, and the trip to Keyser went normally. The fun started with the audit itself. Most of it worked out OK, but as occasionally happens, there were a couple of anomolies that needed fixing, including the detective work to find out why they were happening. Part of the problem was that this audit was supposed to be done at the office of the accountant, but the accountant didn’t have quite everything I needed, which meant setting up a visit to the business itself; it is to the owners’ credit that I was able to go out on a practically last minute notice to obtain the missing information. This still took time, though, and I also had to advise the business owner of how to avoid some of the trouble they had gotten into, and how to work with us to get them out of the trouble they now have. It’s a good thing to do; some other members of the audit staff essentially say, “This is what you did, we need a check to cover it.”

The end result was that I didn’t get to leave Keyser until well after 4:00 in the afternoon. It starts getting dark here at this time of the year at about 5:00, and the return trip wound up being over US Route 50 between Keyser and Winchester, Va. This route is mentioned in William Least Heat Moon’s book, “Blue Highways.” One of the things that stands out in his description of the route; he mentions that half the time he seemed to be looking out the side windows to see where he was going because of the severe curvature. (He also mentioned being in a snowstorm that also featured lightning and thunder–rare, but not unheard of here, but apparently a new and frightening experience for him.) This section of the route is not as extreme as what Moon described (which is between Keyser and Grafton, which is also a rough stretch on the B&O), but it can still be challenging, especially in the dark. It does not help matters that my night vision is not what it used to be, particularly in regard to recovery from glare. I was on the edge of the seat for three-quarters of the trip, essentially from Romney to home. Much of this was keeping on the lookout for deer. Those animals aren’t really that large, nothing like a moose or a cow, but they are big enough and sturdy enough to really tear up a car; I should know, I’ve hit more than a couple, always at night, and at this time of the year. Between other drivers you don’t entirely trust, blinding headlight glare, and keeping an eye out for those deer, I was pretty frazzled out by the time I got home.

And I live here; this is something we deal with here.

In the past, I might not have had to make this trip by car. I could have taken a train that would have also carried mail, express, and other people. A taxi or possibly a bus service would have taken me to the places I needed to go. I wouldn’t have had to face that long drive in the dark on curves, with poor eyesight, headlight glare, stiff knees, and the threat of crazy mating-season deer.

We have discussed other reasons for rail service on this forum before, not all of which was HSR, but which did include regional, transit, commuter, and conventional intercity service. The arguments are familiar: we want alternatives to traffic congestion; to long uncomfortable drives, including ones with children in the car; to paying tribute to oil companies, oil kings, oil dictators, and so on; to living with the threat of those oil kings and dictators, and to the threat of peak oil itself; to spending our time driving when we could be working or relaxing. We have challenged the naysayers for alternatives, and their alternatives just don’t look too good for what we think we’ll eventually need. In short, we have a good case, but. . .

It continues to puzzle me why the Democratic party didn’t make more of this during the recent election campaign. We can easily inform people of the threat of peak oil, we can argue that there are financial problems caused by the road system being underpriced (and the effects are not limited to roads, but to the money that must be diverted from schools and other services), we can argue that the American “Happy Motoring utopia” (although I would not use that particular wording) is a security threat that requires our men to go to the Middle East to die. We can argue for the comfort and the potential for multi-tasking on the train, we can argue for better safety and reduced environmental impact, we can argue that this would help create jobs while building something useful that is also a key component of energy security. The technology is not limited to big cities, as our own history, which included narrow gauge, interurbans, granger branches, and locals would suggest. Yet we got almost nothing at all on this subject from the Democrats during this campaign.

Why was this so?

When will the Republican Party learn that the US needs good infrastructure to succeed economically in the 21st century? In Europe even conservative parties support high speed rail and public transportation, because they know that it is needed to make their countries business-friendly. This is true even though they may oppose a lot of other government spending (e.g. David Cameron’s Conservatives are making big budget cuts to pretty much every part of the budget, but they are largely sparing infrastructure spending e.g. High Speed Two and Crossrail). In contrast the US Republican Party seems to have been taken over in recent years by far-right teabagger types who are ideologically opposed to government spending on infrastructure.

San Jose Mercury…

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16516571?nclick_check=1

…….The most ominous message for backers of California’s ambitious plan to run bullet trains from Southern California to San Francisco came out of Washington on Wednesday. The Associated Press reported that the Republican in line to head the House Transportation Committee wants to re-examine $10 billion in federal grants for high-speed train service, one of President Barack Obama’s signature programs.

Mica….

He said the Northeast is probably the only region in the United States with a population density great enough to financially support a high-speed rail network

……..

“It’s going to continue to be a challenge for us to get federal funding until we get that ongoing federal commitment,” rail authority spokeswoman Rachel Wall said Wednesday.

Maybe some reality starting to set in at the Authority…

Not sure where to pose this question..
What is being done to counter the fear mongering lies and misinformation being put out by the anti-rail NIMBYS? Meanwhile, their lies go on and on unchecked by the truth, and more and more people (and cities) are succumbed by these lies. For example on Sunday Nov. 7, 2010, they plan to hold a huge anti-HSR rally here in Burlingame, why are not the pro HSR folks out there to spread the actual truth?

While media attention tends to focus on the individuals that did – or did not – get elected, I reckon that the passage of props 25 and 26 will eventually turn out to be even more important for the Golden State.

On the one hand, voters closed a legislative loophole that had allowed politicians to paper over the cracks in the budget by imposing additional fees on businesses rather than raise taxes, just because of the majorities required to pass such bills. Moreover, they repealed many of the new fees already imposed, presumably in the belief that the private sector will then be more likely to create more jobs, more profits and hence, a broader tax base.

On the other hand, voters reduced the majority required to pass a budget from 2/3 to 50% + 1. Voters expect to see a balanced budget passed on time. Given that prop 26 passed, this will only be possible in the next two years by cutting public services, i.e. pretty severe austerity measures. States are not permitted to formally engage in deficit spending, arguably an unwise clause during severe downturns. Expect liberal members of the Assembly and Senate and public sector unions to fight tooth and nail against unpopular service cuts. Nevertheless, both houses of the legislature plus the governor’s mansion are now in Democratic hands, so voters will blame Democrats if passing prop 25 fails to break the budget deadlock. The big question is whether GOP legislators will also be blamed if they reflexively oppose genuine and intelligent specific policy proposals to deliver the smaller government they’ve always advocated whenever Jerry Brown cannot cajole the liberal wing of the Democratic caucus to vote for them.

What does all this mean for the HSR program? The good news is that voters elected pro-HSR Jerry Brown as governor, passed prop 22 to protect operating subsidies for existing public transportation and, that there wasn’t even a proposition on the ballot to modify prop 1A(2008) in any way. The bad news is that Democrats may conclude that deferring actual bond appropriation on this massive capital project will carry a lower political cost than cutting existing public services and, because the GOP-led US House of Representatives will block additional federal HSR, especially for California, unless they can create some political capital for themselves in the process. However, as we all know, slowing down the project would not only fail to deliver the promised construction jobs in the short term, it would also burden its budget with additional years of inflation. Private investment will not be forthcoming until (well) after the EIS/EIR and any necessary eminent domain takings are completed.

Therefore, it would be both good policy and good politics for Jerry Brown to scale back the proposals for the starter line to curb total cost while retaining as much transportation value as possible. In particular, Dems should push back against self-serving “requirements” put forward by PBQD and essentially rubber-stamped by the CHSRA board. For example, while AB3034(2008) defined the maximum SF-LA line haul time as 2h40m, it did not require that this has to be feasible at any time on any day of the week.

For instance, it would be possible to make do with one or more weekday “lunch rocket” trains, primarily aimed at business travelers, during Caltrain’s and Metrolink’s off-peak periods. In concert with regulatory relief from FRA regarding mixed traffic between Fullerton and Sylmar and from CPUC on high platform at stations that freight trains run through, this could well lay the groundwork for sharing not only tracks but stations with HSR to reduce the cost and weaken environmental opposition to dedicated HSR tracks and platforms in those segments. Express trains would also be possible first thing in the morning and perhaps, last thing at night, as well as on the weekend.

However, the legacy services would also need to adapt their service models, last not least UPRR in the SF peninsula, possibly all the way to Point Lick (southern end of PCJPB property). Between LAUS and Fullerton, BNSF has a ROW wide enough for 4, in some places even 5 tracks side-by-side. Two of these could be dedicated to passenger trains, the rest to freight. Unlike the SF peninsula spur, the BNSF Transcon is a vital artery for moving freight between the LA/LB harbors and the vast interior of the lower 48. Fortunately, BNSF is willing to partner with CHSRA in a study of this concept.

Legacy passenger services (Caltrain, Amtrak PS, Metrolink’s OC and perhaps, Antelope Valley lines) would have to modify their weekday peak period stop patterns and transition to modern, lightweight, non-compliant multiple unit rolling stock featuring sufficiently high deceleration and acceleration plus level boarding. This would not lead to reduced service, indeed corridor-level PTC and traffic management would enable much higher total line capacity.

For example, a weekday peak period minimum headway of 2.5min for the SF peninsula plus a general speed limit of 90mph plus overtake tracks at Hillsdale and Redwood City only would permit up to 8 Caltrains per hour each way, each one implementing a different stop pattern with 9 intermediate stops between SF TTC and SJ Diridon – provided the rolling stock is capable of very high acceleration (i.e. longer but single-level EMUs) and dwell times can be reduced to 30s by level boarding. Travel time between these endpoints would be about 60 minutes, very close to today’s baby bullets. Service frequency at the busiest stations would be maintained and the commuter customer base expanded by increasing the frequency of direct service to SF, SJ and several major stations in-between at all the others.

On top of that, an integrated weekday peak period timetable would leave enough room for up to 8 HSR trains each making exactly 2 stops (dwell time ~60s) between SF TTC and SJ Diridon, with the latter an optional stop. However, there would be some constraints regarding exactly which HSR stop patterns would be compatible with the preceding and following Caltrain stop patterns.

Getting HSR and Caltrain to also harmonize platform heights would allow HSR trains to stop at any Caltrain station upgraded to sufficiently long platforms and pedestrian flow capacity via easements written into the ROW contract between CHSRA and PCJPB. In other words, there would be no need for any full HSR stations in the SF peninsula that would count towards the statewide 24-station limit spelled out AB3034(2008). Using a large number of weekday peak period HSR stop patterns in an 8tph scenario in the SF peninsula segment would result in e.g. 4tph at Millbrae/SFO, 2 at 4th & Townsend and 1tph each for San Mateo, Hillsdale, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View and Santa Clara. None of this would require dedicated HSR sidings or platforms or any large new multi-story car park, since most peninsula residents could catch a train to SoCal at a Caltrain station near enough to reach by Caltrain, bus, light rail, an affordable taxi ride or kiss+ride within a short time.

This plus with affordable reliable broadband internet access, would at least partially compensate for HSR ridership lost due to the ~20 minutes of additional travel time between SF and SJ during peak period. When commuters and business travelers can be productive en route, the old adage that time spent in transit equals time lost no longer holds true. In France and Belgium, the policy is that WiFi on board (where available) is included with first class fares. TGV passengers traveling on second class fares can purchase access by the hour in the Bistro car.

If we want Stanford and Palo Alto to remain the region’s focal point, all parties involved should work to make an HSR station near University Avenue a reality. This it the opinion of the Stanford Daily student newspaper editorial board. They talk about benefits to the University.

alternative locations cannot offer easy access to Stanford for students, tourists and professors. Redwood City and Mountain View cannot boast an attraction like Stanford, and neither city has as much difficulty bringing in workers as Stanford and Palo Alto.

They also cite 8 minute travel to San Francisco International Airport. I do not understand the statement about the current trip taking two trains.

This is a vast improvement over the current system, which requires two train rides, can take well over an hour and often confuses infrequent travelers.

So the fraudster Pringle can’t get the first segment running out of his own city: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/californias-first-high-speed-rail-may-run-through-central-valley.html.

Everyone be sure to email your support and thoughts. I sent today:

Senator Boxer,

Congratulations on your victory. It seems California remains as always, a bastion of common sense and optimism.

Please do not let the republicans gut the high speed rail program, or if they do, only let them gut the other states and give the remaining money to California.

It has always been California that leads the way out of recessions, leads the way in innovation, and leads a sometimes kicking, screaming nation, towards the future.

I know first hand as an Amtrak employee, San Francisco Ticket Office, how much Californians as well as domestic and international tourists love having rail options here. More, bigger, better and faster means more choices, for our very mobile state.

Thank you for your consideration and no matter what, do NOT let the republicans get away with anything. They must be stopped and all of you guys need to step up your game and smack them down and keep them down.

NO MORE PLAYING TIDDLYWINKS with the bastards.

Sincerely,

Jim …

Good luck with that Mr. Mica. John Boehner will make sure you don’t get any of that done.