Backlash Grows Against Unprecedented, Uninformed LAO Attack on HSR
The Legislative Analyst’s Office clearly hoped that their attack on the California high speed rail project would prove decisive and lead the legislature to follow the disreputable path taken by Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and New Jersey in rejecting federal passenger rail funds.
That’s not going to happen. Instead, a backlash is growing against the LAO’s report. In particular, criticism is mounting of the LAO’s shocking and unusual decision to intervene in a policy debate, especially one that voters have already settled.
Here’s a sampling of the reaction against the LAO (and there’s more on the way, including our own op-eds):
Assemblymember Cathleen Galgiani blasted the LAO’s lack of expertise and their desire to handicap the project:
Last year, I asked the Legislative Analyst Office whether they had consulted with anyone who has had experience in building a high-speed train system. The answer to this question was no.
This year’s report fails to provide us with any detail about the extensive process the Federal Rail Administration already went through to arrive at this decision. If the LAO had talked to the FRA, they’d know that the FRA has sought peer review from countries that have built profitable systems, and that those reviews have been considered all along during California’s planning process.
It’s a very serious problem that the LAO is not only producing studies on the HSR project without having done any of this crucial background work, but that they are calling for the project to be gutted as well. The legislature and, ultimately, the people of California rely on the LAO to provide informed and impartial analysis. We knew their analysis was quite partial – against the project. We now know it was uninformed as well.
Galgiani continues:
So as far as I am concerned, the LAO report is just an opinion, issued without a full knowledge and understanding of what it takes to plan and build a high-speed train system and the level of information that can reasonably be expected at this early stage of our project.
We should be asking these global builders of profitable systems whether they are confident that California is on the right track for building high-speed rail in a feasible way, and the answer will be yes.
That’s a reasonable thing to ask, isn’t it? After all, if the companies that have the most experience in HSR think our project is on the right track, shouldn’t that matter more than a bunch of uninformed project skeptics who have never taken the time to understand how HSR works? After all, Siemens USA and many others have shown their support for the project.
Galgiani concludes:
The LAO report also suggests that the Legislature not approve bond funds or stimulus money for consultants on the project.
My response to this suggestion: There will always be some who will continue to slam the California High-Speed Rail Authority in the knees with a baseball bat and then ask them why they can’t run any faster.
Can’t put it any better than that.
At Fox and Hounds Daily, a conservative publication, John Wildermuth rises to the project’s defense. Wildermuth, who had been a reporter on the California politics beat for the San Francisco Chronicle for many years, saw immediately what the LAO was up to:
You want to kill a project like high-speed rail? Just let the Green Eyeshade Brigade start working on it.
On Tuesday, Mac Taylor and his Legislative Analyst’s Office put out a report that treated the 15-year-old effort to tie the state together with a 200-plus mph train as something nasty that needed to be wiped off his shoe.
Ouch. Wildermuth goes on to list some of the problems with the LAO’s report, including its “passing mention” of the project’s benefits, and defends the concept and the plan, reminding readers that voters backed the project for good reasons:
I don’t think so. Regular Californians dream bigger than the accountants, analysts, politicians and, yes, even pundits. In the past, the state’s leaders have put their mark on California with highways, dams, roads, water systems, bridges, universities and other gee-whiz projects that were a risk when they were first conceived.
But Californians have always been risk takers and people more interested in hearing how something new can get done than in being told why it’s impossible.
Japan, France and other countries have shown high-speed rail isn’t impossible. It shouldn’t be impossible in California, either.
People like Wildermuth are the ones that the LAO and other HSR opponents need to flip over to their side. But that’s not happening. Wildermuth saw right through the LAO’s game, and wasn’t moved by it at all.
Fresno mayor Ashley Swearengin took issue with the report as well:
“I think, with anything, there are a couple of valid points, but there are some conclusions in this report that are absolutely unfounded,” Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin said.
The mayor said the report’s conclusions — which call for significant legislative intervention — feel political in nature.
Among her biggest concerns are taking the decision on which segment to build first from the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority and giving it to the state Legislature.
“Can you imagine our state Legislature being responsible for that kind of decision when they can’t even make run-of-the-mill decisions like balancing the budget?” Swearengin asked. “It would entirely be political, and would not be based on the effectiveness of the trains or the overall project.”
Ultimately, she said, it would end up being a parochial project limited to the Los Angeles region and the Bay Area.
Yep. That’s exactly what Senators Alan Lowenthal and Joe Simitian seem to want. Gut the project, take the money for their pet commuter rail projects, and screw the overall project goal of connecting SF to LA. Mayor Swearengin’s response is strong and solid, showing that Fresno won’t go down without a fight.
She was joined by the Fresno Bee, which agreed with Mayor Swearengin that the project should not become a political football as the LAO seems to want:
But the LAO report appeared to be more of a thinly veiled excuse to kill the high-speed rail project than sincere recommendations to improve the 800-mile system. We expected much more out of the LAO’s office than a political document to undermine the project….
High-speed rail must pencil out and its business plan must be viable. Those questions rightly need to be asked, and the High Speed Rail Authority must be able to answer them and justify the project. But turning this project into a political fight does not serve the transportation needs of Californians.
I think that’s a reasonable conclusion. I would be the first in line to welcome an LAO report that was genuinely interested in helping the project succeed by pointing out things it could improve, and suggesting constructive ways it could do so. Instead the LAO took the opportunity to attack the entire project itself, even though voters already said they wanted it. When major newspapers are calling out the LAO for making a “political” intervention, you know the LAO is in trouble.
CALPIRG, which has done a lot of work on behalf of the project over the years, added its own statement attacking the LAO report:
If we want to resign ourselves to a California without high-speed rail, that requires us to depend on congested freeways to get around and that requires even more expensive freeway and airport construction to meet growing transportation needs, then the legislature should follow the advice of the Legislative Analyst’s Office and refuse to fund high-speed rail planning this year.
But if we are going to build this high-speed train between Los Angeles and San Francisco, we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work in the Central Valley, not delay construction further…
We recommend that the legislature and governor focus on that oversight, rather than reexamining the decision that has already been made to start construction in the Central Valley. Starting construction elsewhere only makes sense if we abandon the vision of connecting high-speed rail between northern and southern California.
CALPIRG points out what the LAO merely glanced at: high speed rail is about California’s future, and about avoiding the cost of doing nothing.
Over at the Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark mounts a strong defense of the decision to start construction in the Central Valley, which the LAO ignorantly criticized:
The stretch through the Central Valley — along which trains will travel at 220 mph — is the crucial investment for a fast train system in the state. By allowing trains to accelerate to extremely fast speeds not possible within metropolitan areas, the system can produce true time savings over automobile and air alternatives.* Without the Central Valley link, the network would simply be a series of improved commuter lines.
Freemark gets at the heart of the issue, which the LAO avoided in their zeal to undermine the voter-approved project: the federal funding system for HSR is deeply flawed. He argues, correctly, that the federal government ought to be using a full-funding grant agreement approach. Congress has not given the executive branch that authority, which has created the current uncertainty around federal funding. That absolutely has to be addressed, and HSR supporters are acutely aware of that. But Freemark goes on to point out that even in the absence of such a process, the LAO is wrong to call for the project to be ended:
The LAO report effectively suggests that the project be put on hold pending the answers to these questions. If California cannot be sure that it can fund the entire system, the logic goes, perhaps it should not be building the central stretch. But abandoning the work the state has done so far, or just delaying the program in hope of more definite policies in the years ahead, is a recipe for giving up on the project altogether. Today, California has momentum on its project — a supportive governor and billions of dollars in the bank amassed just over the past two years — so in the face of confusion in Washington, it at least has a chance to move forward. If the state relaxed its grip now, would it be able to keep going?
Finally, Californians For High Speed Rail had its own critical response to the LAO report (which I helped write):
“Rather than trying to help the project, the LAO recommendations would jeopardize almost $4 billion in Federal funding,” said Daniel Krause, Executive Director of CA4HSR. “Asking the Federal government to change where construction begins at this late juncture, when U.S. Department of Transportation has clearly stated their intent that funds go to the Central Valley, is just not realistic. Most major transportation projects, including the Interstate system and I-5 here in California, started construction in less challenging areas like the Central Valley.”…
Brian Stanke, Chairman of CA4HSR added, “We have serious questions about the LAO’s judgment on this matter. The real risk to the economy is to slow down the high-speed project and risk almost $4 billion in Federal funding. We are appalled that the LAO would recommend any actions that would threaten a project that will provide thousands of jobs at a time when jobs are desperately needed in California.”
The LAO appears to have hoped that its biased and uninformed attack would cause a collapse in support for the HSR project. It’s done the opposite. Not only are supporters rallying to the project’s defense, but others in the media who might be swayed by the LAO report are seeing right through it and rejecting its biased conclusions.
Ultimately, the LAO itself may be the real loser here. It spent decades building up a a reputation for credible, impartial analysis. Their attacks on the HSR project, especially given how uninformed those attacks are, have begun to undermine that hard-earned reputation. The LAO is a good idea and under Elizabeth Hill and others provided an invaluable service. It’s a shame to see Mac Taylor throw that away in the pursuit of his own agenda.
Tha’ts what this project needs. It needs some backing to start pushing back against all those special interest groups.
YesonHSR Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
Yes about time.. this project is constantly badmouthed by the same group of people over and over.. just watch the movies videos that Morris posts and we’ll see the two senators especially Lowenthal going on and on about the money acting like he’s some rookie and doesn’t know how the federal government works.. then you have the same four or five people trotting up every hearing with the same stupid comments ie TRAC /TRANSDEF/a rotating group of NIMBYS from the peninsula.. so the real issue is are high speed rail backers going to let a small group people destroy this project with the media’s help of over sensationalizing everything?? Our are we going to fight back harder? A second key issue that everybody needs work on backing high-speed rail ,and that includes everybody in the California government is to start immediately getting the federal government to commit to building this project ..that alone will kill many of the naysaying fear factors
“Last year, I asked the Legislative Analyst Office whether they had consulted with anyone who has had experience in building a high-speed train system. The answer to this question was no.”
Even if they did, there could be a potential conflict of interest. Those who have expertise are probably companies that want to bid on our system. They aren’t going to tell you not to build it.
I wonder if it would be more productive to consult retired professionals with high speed rail experience. But are retired people necessarily unbiased?
Paulus Magnus Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
The first generation of them might be. Afterwards it would turn into the same problem we have up in DC and the military, with those making regulations and procurement decisions retiring to take jobs as high income lobbyists.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:14 am
They don’t have to follow whatever the HSR experts say – but those experts could help inform the analysis. The point is that the LAO has *no* expertise at all in HSR, and didn’t seek any out. They’re flying blind.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 11:06 am
Now there’s the pot calling the kettle black.
The LAO first needs new leadership. Then they can start to rebuild trust.
ARRA, American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funding is not a block grant. There are rigid requirements, reporting and milestones that must be met. The VP of the USA, a HSR fanatic, oversees the funding.
The LAO’s report is oblivious to the reality of the funding and requirements. There is not a snowflake’s chance in hell the DOT can alter the rules and reprogram money.
CA is the ONLY HSR project. Allowing fragmentation or a Caltrans takeover would take the President’s showcase project and tear it apart. It would also invite those who rejcted HSR to ask for the funding back.
LAO report is an amateurish, ill-planned attempt to play big league politics. If you take a shot at something – be sure you take it out. They failed.
YesonHSR Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
The project is way too far long to do all this drastic reprogramming alteration before the 2012 deadline were about 11 months away from opening bids .. this would probally be impossible to reprogram it to even just the San Joaquin route and 110 mph thru the Valley so we could at least keep the 2.5 billion ARRA… NO the money would be taken back and would be just amazing stupidity to let it go even overshadowing Florida and Ohio combined.
joe Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 8:53 pm
Time is important BUT once selected, CA can’t change the proposal. Yes you are right – the money would be taken back to avoid a political firestorm from other States.
My point is the ARR Act mandates a rigid project – and is not a happy go lucky block grant. We could change the project within the spending time frame and be rejected for relevancy and lack of competitiveness with other rejected offers.
I’ve seen this tactic used at Univ. where a professor gets a big grant and some other faculty run to the Dean asking for a piece of the funding for their ideas. Those Deans who give into the urge don’t see much future funding.
Elizabeth Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
People,
I find it incredible that a group of people who mostly believe in reality based policy instantly assume that the LAO MUST be biased. There can’t possibly be anything real in their concerns.
This is not a group with any particular agenda. This is a group who gets to sit down with policymakers and ask questions on a regular basis.
Clearly, they are getting quite concerned about what they are hearing or not hearing.
Don’t you think you should ask more questions before instantly shooting the messenger?
joe Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Yes, how can we reprogram ARRA money? I’m all ears.
Donk Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Of course they have some real concerns, do you think we are fools? Everybody is concerned that there will not be enough funding to finish the project and I am sure that many people here share many of the basic concerns with the LAO report. But we can live with many of these concerns. Yes, there is some risk in this project. But because this project is so important to the future of this state, I don’t have a problem with crossing some of these bridges as we get there.
And are you too blind to see that their recommendations are not reality based? What kind of rational, informed person would ask that they renegotiate the ARRA funds? This type of recommendation completely undermines their credibility.
Risenmessiah Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:06 am
That hasn’t stopped you from doing the same to the Authority, Liz.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:16 am
Those of us who have criticized the LAO have done so on a substantive basis. Their charges generally lack merit, and their policy prescriptions are both inappropriate AND flawed.
The LAO has lost a lot of credibility with this report. And not just with us advocates. I’ve heard from legislators who are saying the same thing.
VBobier Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Agreed, What can be done about the current LAO leadership? I would hope fired or at the very least forced to resign, It would be nice If the LAO leadership served at the pleasure of the Governor. This project is important for the Future of California & USA, As California’s greatest treasure is the example We set for the rest of the Nation, Naysayers be damned, Probably too much to hope for the LAO leadership to be fired or made to resign, maybe censure? I’m glad most didn’t buy into their garbage.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:17 am
It’s good that the LAO serves at the pleasure of the legislature and not the governor, because the legislature should have some good analysis. The problem is when some legislators (or as seems to have happened in this case, their staff) go to the LAO and ask them to intervene on their behalf to boost their position with other legislators in order to overturn a public vote.
You would correctly infer from my name that I harbor a strong bias towards building a Los Angeles to Anaheim or a Los Angeles to Anywhere leg as the first CHSR segment. Be that as it may, I forego my parochial interests in favor of building the (relatively) flat, straight and NIMBY free segment through the (relatively) economically devastated Central Valley as our first stage towards a state-wide HSR system. I ain’t going to bite on the LAO’s lure.
Joey Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Honestly, though, I think LA-Palmdale-Bakersfield would be the most useful segment to begin with, in terms of ridership. And this is coming from someone in NorCal.
Donk Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Right, I think many of us agree with this. But fortunately, we are not dumb enough to recommend that we renegotiate the terms of the ARRA funds, put it in the bank for 5 years, and then spend it on the LA-Bakersfield segment.
Joey Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:02 pm
Admittedly, we will just have to live with a lot of the mistakes that the Authority made early in the process (in this case, which EIRs to focus on).
evfanatic Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:11 am
I was suprised by the criticism of the LAO suggestion to prioritize the LA to Anaheim line vs. the Central Valley line.
In fact, per the HSRA’s own projections, the LA/Anaheim segment will be the first to function in Jan 2018. Why not move it ahead to get it completed before that date to prove the viability of HSR?
Also, why will the the Bakersfield-Merced segment not be operational until 12/2018 if construction commences in 2012? If the argument is to build something that’s easy to showcase those 220mph trains, why isn’t this scheduled for operation until 7+ years from now.
How is it possible, BTW, that it will take 7 years to do this 100+ mile segment when the entire transcontinental RR was built in just 6 years? Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad
As the LAO report says, since the Feds have such a big stake in making HSR work, and since only Cal. is working on genuine HSR, they are extremely likely to change the rules and OK a different segment to begin work.
Here are the HSRA timelines.
Los Angeles – Anaheim: Jan 2018
Los Angeles – Palmdale: Jun 2019
Palmdale – Bakersfield: Jun 2019
Bakersfield – Merced: Dec 2018
Merced – San Jose: Sep 2019
San Jose – San Fran: Mar 2019
Sacramento – Merced: Mar 2020
Los Angeles – San Diego: Mar 2021
Altamont – Dec. 2020
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:17 am
So do many other HSR supporters based in SoCal and the Bay Area. I commend you for that attitude. Too bad it’s not shared by Simitian and Lowenthal.
A possible argument for sticking to the plan to start in The Valley: For April, ridership on the San Joaquins took a big jump—Up 18% from last year to over 99,000. Ticket revenue was up even more—23%.
Just as in 2008, it seems that when gas prices hit $4.00 per gallon, the love affair with the car starts to cool.
In a “worst case scenario” 6 or 7 years from now we might have operable high speed rail tracks from Merced to Bakersfield with construction of the rest of the system proceeding slowly due to a
shortage of funds. But we may well have gas prices much higher than now—resulting in skyrocketing ridership on the souped-up San Joaquins, ridership that would strengthen the “independent utility” argument for the initial San Joaquin Valley segment.
Joey Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
100k riders a year really isn’t that much though. It amounts to less than three hundred riders pre day. Regardless of “independent utility,” high-speed infrastructure in the Central Valley will be vastly underutilized until there is justification to actually run high-speed trains on it (i.e. until one or both of the mountain crossings are built).
John Burrows Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:13 pm
100k riders per month
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 4:42 pm
And what average trip length? I’d expect that the passenger miles per month would be a lot more than a local rail system with a similar “ridership”.
Wad Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:25 pm
It’s 100,000 riders a month. Most San Joaquin trains can manage more than 300 riders per trip. NARP had San Joaquins’ 2009 annual ridership at 911,900. The year before, it was 929,000.
Joey Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:35 pm
My mistake. Still not a lot though. The entire line gets the typical daily ridership of a suburban BART station.
Wad Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:44 pm
Think about this: The San Joaquins serve the fifth busiest passenger rail corridor in the U.S. California is also home to two other corridors in the top five of the U.S.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 11:19 am
What to think about that? About billions wasted and negligable results?
It seems like excellent evidence to pack up Amtrak and all the associated state olde tyme steam train type “railroading” and call it a day.
Beyond pathetic. Way, way, WAY beyond pathetic. At some point you have to acknowledge that the model of shovelling money into a black hole of obsolescence isn’t perhaps the wisest course of action.
Brian Stanke Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Thank you Richard, for making clear your true feelings about passenger rail service in the U.S. clear: that we should GIVE UP and PACK UP.
Well CA4HSR, myself, and millions of other Californians disagree. We don’t see it as a choice of do it as “Richard the omniscient” demands or give up. Instead we push for and support as good a service as we can get, even if not ideal.
I know a lot of people that put their backs into moving us out of the brain-dead and destructive transportation and land use policies that has been imposed over the last 80 years. I don’t see you attacking wasteful highway expansions like I-5 in San Diego, or the economic and environmental insanity of minimum parking mandates. No, I just see you attacking real world attempts at building real rail infrastructure of ANY kind.
Help to build something good, it is a lot more rewarding in the end.
Alon Levy Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Not ideal? Dude, the super-special premium fast trains from New York to Boston have a slightly higher average speed than 130 km/h diesel trains on curvy single track in Hokkaido. That’s what you get for settling for “as good a service as we can get,” as if there’s a divine commandment to respect present-day institutional inertia.
Brian Stanke Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
How did a discussion on the California High Speed Rail Blog about Californians For High Rail’s activism around getting CA HSR built, and designed well, suddenly morphing into my full endorsement of bad Amtrak decision on the NEC year’s/decades before CA4HSR even existed?
Richard hates every rail project in the state and wants CA4HSR, Rail PAC, CalPIRG and the rest to “pack up Amtrak … and call it a day.” I wasn’t there when Amtrak mis designed Acela, but so what? They screwed up. Do you get involved making the next HSR project A) possible and happen, and B) be better designed? Or do you get spew bitternes and hate at every real rail project in the country?
Prop 1A insures we will get REAL HSR, as long as we make sure that it actually gets built. But we need to fight every step of the way to get it built.
Joey Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Thing is, I’m not seeing an overabundance of making sure it’s designed well.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Designed well is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.
Joey Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Sure, but there are a lot of issues that I have heard little disagreement on between people who actually discuss them. And let’s just say that plenty of those issues are north of Redwood City.
Brian Stanke Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Joey, go to http://www.ca4hsr.org and read the various letters we have written to the CAHSRA, Caltrain, and the FRA regarding Redwood City and north. Unlike others we do not do big media controverseies (“OMG 100 foot Aerials of Doom will destroy 10,00 homes in PA!”) when we push good design and policy ideas. But we do bring results.
If you want to help make more media noise about our recommendations you are more than welcome to join and help.
Joey Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
I’ve read most of the letters. It’s a start, but it’s nowhere near pushing the Authority to really make changes to their decision-making. Are you guys just afraid to criticize them at all?
Alon Levy Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 12:45 am
Richard hates every transportation project in the state, regardless of whether it’s transit or not. I think what set him off for good was the Bay Bridge replacement disaster, in which he had advocated for more transit (namely, making the bridge rail-ready) but was ignored by bureaucrats when it mattered.
If you want to actually push for better-designed projects, there’s always a via media. Not everyone who uses terms like Diridon Intergalactic is a categorical rail hater, and especially now that Diridon’s out it’s fine to write to the authority insisting on downscaling the station and engaging in other cost-effective designs. It’s a bad idea to be like Thomas Friedman and other boosters and paper over problems until after they’re solved internally, by the likes of van Ark.
Spokker Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 2:34 am
Abolish the FRA.
Wad Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 1:41 am
Richard, I also think spending billions just to spite you is its own reward.
You’ve established yourself as a hater. It’s in your nature and/or temperament. You’ve established yourself with the volume of comments on this post.
I’ve read many of them and see them much in the same way as film critics see a Michael Bay movie: to paraphrase Shakespeare, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.
Do you honestly think that if CHSRA, BART, MTC, the state or anyone else who reads your bulletin board jeremiads would do right by you, you’d be a different person and possibly be happy?
The world will still be the same place. If a much-loathed project still had the political or popular will to be completed, it will be completed. If not, the project would be shut down. Ultimately, we’d have to move on or life moves on without us.
Yet you will be a hater regardless of the outcome. If you don’t get your way, you’ll pour so much water in the face of success you’ll cause a drought. If you do get your way, the world gets nothing and all you get is a Nelson Muntz “ha-ha” moment.
I don’t need to win you over. I’ll just leave you trapped in the box you made for yourself.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 4:52 am
Thank you, Wad, for saying something that I have been too diplomatic to say.
I think it is sad, though; Richard has worked to make rail worth something (he apparently faces great frustration that he was not listened to on important elements in BART), and he knows how good Pullmans can be (he has ridden them over Donner in a blizzard in pre-Amtrak days). He knows what we can be–I’m just sorry he pours out his poison here.
He should be among friends here; instead, he has made himself a laughing stock, as you noted.
Simply sad, simply wasteful, simply a wasted life for Richard–that’s all.
Joey Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 11:46 am
Richard tried constructive advocacy once. Bureaucratic incompetence triumphed repeatedly. I think it’s understandable that he’s bitter.
Winston Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
A commuter rail system where the average trip is 10 miles or so is different than an intercity one where the average trip is over 200 miles.
Joey Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 12:34 am
Certainly. But that doesn’t make the San Joaquín’s ridership any more impressive.
joe Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:21 am
…because the ticket prices for a light rail ride is the same as a HSR intercity trip.
Joey Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 6:27 am
1) That’s actually not true
2) Do compare the San Joaquín to some non-american intercity rail lines. By international standards, it’s ridership is typical of a branch line serving a few very small exurbs, not a mainline connecting several cities of 100k to well over a million.
Winston Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:06 am
Given that it runs a whopping 6 trains per day and that it averages 53 MPH and you’ll see why ridership is low. To really get decent ridership you need to be quicker than driving or less expensive than the marginal cost of driving. The San Joaquin as it stands is neither. If they move it to the new track and use the 125MPH equipment that they’re buying they can get up to around 62MPH, which should boost ridership.
Elizabeth Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:55 am
Worth $6 billion of infrastructure? Worth the emissions from x tons of concrete and steel?
joe Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:25 am
I’m sorry Elizabeth, worth is determined compared to what alternative?
Doing nothing isn’t an option. The choices and trades are with more cars/highways, more planes or adding rail. Energy efficiency and non-petro transpiration alternatives favor rail.
You know that your city is very sensitive to traffic growth and relies on rail and alternative commute programs to keep traffic and air pollution down. That’s how they protect your family’s health and quality of life.
Do Moms in the central valley not deserve similar consideration for their health or is the plan to add cars and choke the central valley with pollution as we drive through their cities to LA/SF?
Would you want El Camno turned into a highway? More cars routed off 101 to side streets to reduce congestion? I would not.
Why not develop non-oil based alternatives so the children of these less wealthy communities do not need to fight future wars for oil?
Daniel Krause Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:51 am
Yes the investment is worth it if you can look beyond the immediate future. The tracks must be built anyway to get from SF-LA for the entire project to be completed. This much is obvious. To argue that it isn’t worth by isolating the benefits to the short-term view is very common mistake.
Peter Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:56 am
It’s not a mistake. The term mistake infers that there was some error involved.
In fact, it’s intended to spread FUD.
Joey Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:04 am
Okay, but my original point still stands. High-speed infrastructure in the Central Valley will be all but vacant until there are actual high-speed trains to run.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:54 am
Yes Joey, an excellent demonstration of the efficiency of steel rail and steel wheel versus asphalt: with a likely 8tpd to 12tpd given current ridership of the current service and therefore likely improved ridership if 50 minutes is cut off of Merced to Bakersfield, the corridor under that “HSR temporarily collapsed, will take five to ten years to put back together” scenario that you are discussing is effectively empty by comparison to what its transport capacity will be when an HSR system is completed …
… and yet, its still the prudent thing to do to build that corridor and have that capacity, even if the worst case scenario does happen and there is a temporary suspension of the HSR project.
Winston Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:06 am
@Elizabeth:
There is no realistic HSR scenario for California that does not involve running trains through the Central Valley. We have federal funding to pay for it, so we may as well build it now and get some use out of it until the connection to L.A. is made. Construction costs are running especially low right now and it will likely never be cheaper to build. I say get the CV section done now and focus on building a connection between the CV and LA.
Joey Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Point being, we have to live with this, but better solutions were available earlier in the process. If the Authority had pushed through the LA-Palmdale-Bakersfield EIR rather than the Central Valley EIRs, that segment could generate decent ridership and perhaps even justify buying some trainsets by itself.
Nathanael Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Frankly, I’ve been following this, and the San Fernando Valley-Bakersfield EIR has been progressivng as fast as it reasonably can. It’s a *complicated* one, you know. They have been working on it in parallel with everything else and it actually got detailed ROW-level analysis started well in advance of San Francisco-San Jose, San Jose-Gilroy, Pacheco, Altamont, San Fernando Valley-Los Angeles, or even Bakersfield-Fresno. It’s just significantly tougher.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:14 am
Given that the $6b in infrastructure is always available to be extended into an electric intercity transport system that is less expensive than the road based alternatives … the question is whether it is worth five to ten years worth of debt service on $6bn and ten to twenty years front-loading the emissions.
And for the ridership that the San Joaquin would get if you ran Merced to Bakersfield at up to 125mph … yeah, it seems highly likely to be worth that.
If the LAO was serious about “just thinking this is the time to think about this” ~ a claim that CARRD would subject to ridicule if it came from CHSRA, but which it accepts in blind faith since it is part of a attack on the HSR project ~ it would take peak oil seriously as part of the mix of risks that California faces, rather than blithely assuming it away.
Spokker Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 2:38 am
Is $6 billion the figure for the plan with aerials or the new plan with aerials limited as humanly possible?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:38 am
….300 riders per trip….
Subtract out the passengers who are going between stations that will have HSR service and you can fill a bus once a day. Increase ridership ten times and you fill a train twice a day. A short train. Faced with a choice between a train twice a day or a short shuttle bus ride, a bus that runs on a fairly frequent schedule, which choice do you think people will use?
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:55 am
The train at times that its there, the bus at times when its not.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:11 am
bus means that people who don’t want to arrange their schedule around the twice a day train aren’t on the train. Cuts ridership even more. Even if there isn’t a bus a twice a day train means people who don’t want to arrange their schedule around the twice a day train find other ways to the to the HSR station 30 miles away. If they have access to a car, drive and park in the cheap garage at the HSR station. If they don’t have a car, scam a ride, call a taxi….
….train comes through here twice a day. They’ve priced it so that it’s the same as driving to Rensselaer and paying for parking. If the twice a day train isn’t at times that are convenient for me I drive to Rensselaer and get on the train there. Only southbound. The train is so painfully slow northbound that taking the “local” Greyhound is faster. Which means northbound I drive.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
The two to four times a day of the local rail service would be scheduled to connect to the HSR trains that people in that area have a greater than average desire to connect with, in combination with local transport demand. And since the HSR is there, already providing the longer distance service, it can turn around and go back. So the, say, Corcoran / Hanford / Visalia|Visalia / Fresno return would certainly run more than twice a day, connecting to an all-stations HSR where it crosses the HSR corridor east of Hanford and connecting with an Express at Fresno.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Maintaining hundreds of miles of track that the DMU – singular – can run on in the Central Valley is going to cost how much? It can be replaced with a ten passenger shuttle bus to the nearest HSR station. One the runs every hour.
Joey Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
The existing tracks are primarily freight tracks, so that’s not really an issue. But unless traffic is a major problem, shuttle buses would provide a lot more flexibility for such low service levels.
thatbruce Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
To say nothing about scheduling around the freight RR.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
no, no, no, in foamer fantasy it has it’s own dedicated tracks so it can go 90 mph…
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Why would it be hundreds of miles? You wouldn’t run from Corcoran to Wasco, for instance.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Why wouldn’t be hundreds of miles? If Fumbuck gets DMU service why shouldn’t Utopia?
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:54 pm
On a uniform basis ~ ignoring difference between weekend and weekday ridership ~ ridership per weekday is 514 depart/arrive Hanford, 71 Corcoran, 48 Wasco, 47 Madero. They push Hanford up to 4th on the list, by only including San Joaquin boarding/alighting.
While its true that Kings County is talking about keeping the San
Joaquin: “If high speed rail between Los Angeles and the Bay Area is implemented, there would be a limited number of stations within the San Joaquin Valley. The continuation of the San Joaquins must be retained to continue to provide intercity rail service to the Kings County area.”
… whether under current or under 2018 conditions, I don’t see that Corcoran would push to keep Corcoran connected to Wasco, never mind anyone else … and connecting at Hanford-HSR would get to Bakersfield faster.
Even if they succeeded in getting a stay of execution for a parallel line of the San Joaquin, its ridership would collapse into local city pairs and connections to HSR services, and with few overlapping trips, the rationale for a longer route falls apart.
So, IOW, if both Fumbuck and Utopia are pushing for service, I expect they’ll both be pushing hardest to connect to their closer urban area and the closest HSR station, and not put much fight at all into the direct Fumbuck/Utopia connection.
As to the ability to state with confidence whether that fight in 2018 (or whenever) will be in vain, a strong chance, or something in between ~ I guess the ability to be confident about the intrinsically unknowable is a useful thing for internet discussion forums.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
And when you connect Fumbuck to the bright lights and excitement in Stockton and Utopia to the cosmopolitan hubbub in Bakersfield and Madera to Fresno you end up with hundreds of miles of railroad to serve dozens of people an hour.
Multiply those ridership numbers by ten, divide by 30 for comfortable airport shuttle type of vus and and how many buses a day do you need? Corcoran might need a 50 passenger bus. There’s alway the option of ten passenger Super Shuttle style service too. Instead of schlepping to the bus terminal downtown the Super Shuttle comes right to your door.
….call the station in Redwood City a Caltrain Express stop and finagle a station for Hanford.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
I’m confident that a one size fits all solution will fit some places better than others, which is why one size fits all solutions tends to shine better when addressed to stereotypes than when addressed to actual transport tasks.
First, when did I say anything about taking Hanford’s station away, even if Hanford doesn’t realize how badly they need it.
If you connect Madera to wherever you’d connect Madera to, and you connect Wasco to Bakersfield, and you connect Corcoran to Hanford-HSR … its evident that one of those three is not quite like the others. Its evident that a Corcoran – Hanford – Hanford-HSR – Visalia run would draw more people out of Corcoran than the present San Joaquin does.
Add on top that we don’t know is the actual 2020 gas prices are $5 or $10, nor whether the infrastructure drought of the last three decades persists or has broken, nor whether we will have started tackling our addiction to long haul diesel truck freight … and, indeed, what the rail regulatory regime will be … and picking between jitney vans, coaches, trolleybuses, tram-trains, more conventional DMU’s, or small sparkies is just an exercise in making assumptions about the future to fit your preconceptions.
However, we can be confident that unless the rail is quite a bit shabbier than the bus, that if given a choice between a train and a bus to connect to the HSR, people will pick the train when its available and the bus when the train is not available.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 9:27 am
Under current plans Hanford doesn’t have an HSR station. It would be the 26th or 27th station. James Dale could be elected President in 2016 too. Keep your MP3s of Slim Whitman handy. if he is.
If gas is ten dollars a gallon that is going to damp demand at the HSR station. It will increase demand for the bus to the HSR station. At ten dollars a gallon electric cars look quite good and people who have one will drive to the HSR station.
In a rational world if you multiply the current amount of riders by 10 you need hourly bus service to to handle the demand. On small buses.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 10:36 am
Its listed as “Potential King/Tulare” in the September 2010 Supplemental AA analysis, but its not 26th on the map.
“At ten dollars a gallon electric cars look quite good and people who have one will drive to the HSR station.” Fleet turnover is not instantaneous ~ and for the people squeezed out of the used car market by the inability to afford driving the used cars available, new highway capable electric vehicles are a lot further out of reach than neighborhood electric vehicles.
“In a rational world if you multiply the current amount of riders by 10 you need hourly bus service to to handle the demand. On small buses.” 71 times 10 is 710, which would be more than one busload during peak hours.
evfanatic Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:14 am
John, per the HSRA figures in my earlier comment, the Central Valley segment isn’t scheduled to operate until 12/2018. That’s 7 years from now and is their projection, not a worst case scenario. The LA-Anaheim is actually scheduled to begin 11 months earlier.
Nathanael Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
LA-Anaheim is going to be delayed. :-P
It takes a while to build the Central Valley section, test it, etc. So far it’s a lot further ahead on the environmental process than LA-Anaheim, though.
Spokker Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:37 pm
Haha LA-Anaheim was delayed big time. Basically the heads of OCTA and Metro slapped the CHSRA’s hands and said, “Nuh-uh.”
And it worked.
Ten years ago the LAO came out with a report blasting funding for a 10th U.C. campus. Also during this same time Dan Walters came out with an article blasting a 10th campus in the central valley saying that there was no need for another U.C. campus and if it is built in the central valley no one will attend it anyway.
Fast forward 10 years later. U. C. Merced has over 5000 undergradaute students and over 1000 graduate students. In another 3 years U. C. Merced will be at 10,000 students and in 10 years they will be at 25,000 students. Currently, the campus graduate department is doing cutting edge stem cell research and the campus undergraduate applications actually have a waiting list of students who want to attend this new university.
If you build it they will come! People like LAO and Dan Walters would much rather fund another prison or build a freeway system than create something that is ground breaking and out of the box.
VBobier Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 10:44 pm
Yep, I couldn’t have said It better.
Donk Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:00 pm
Wasn’t there a lot of debate about where to build the campus, but it was given to Merced for political reasons? If Merced also gets the next leg of HSR and the maintenence facility, then they will be doing pretty well for themselves. Your politicians must really be eating their Wheaties.
Wad Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:07 pm
Merced County’s unemployment rate is 21.4%.
It’s not a coup by any means.
Donk Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Well if Merced County’s unemployment rate is 21.4%, then there are far too many people living in Merced County. They need to go somewhere else, not wait around for us to create jobs for them or for the next housing boom to happen. We don’t owe them anything.
joe Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:24 am
Yes. Why don’t these lazy unemployed move to places where there are jobs like …?
Donk Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:41 am
My point is that places like Merced have uncontrolled growth and then expect us to bail them out, using their failure as a reason to get more projects sent their way. Maybe UC Merced shouldn’t have been placed in Merced in the first place. Maybe it should have remained as farmland.
Risenmessiah Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:19 am
The fact is, the UC does have too many campuses. But the one they ought to close probably is Riverside. It is hardly selective and its encouraging population growth in the Inland Empire which might not be sustainable. But in order to balance the North and South, it’s much easier to open a new campus (politically) than close an existing one and then open a new one…..
Wad Reply:
May 15th, 2011 at 12:54 am
You can’t say for sure that Riverside is unnecessary. Over time, as the Inland Empire gains in population, and it will continue to do so, the students will fill up the campus.
Over time, UC Irvine and even San Diego were in the same boat, but they’ve become more prestigious and selective.
Who’s to say that won’t happen with a UC Merced? It might take decades, though.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:23 am
SO, you were expecting a political decision to be made for anti-political reasons?
There’s an argument for having the heavy maintenance facility near one of the forks of a double-Y corridor. Since the land is cheaper near the north fork than near the south fork (by LA-UnionStn), Merced has got a leg to stand on.
Of course, if advocates for one location both put together their best case and also work to bring political pressure to bear, and advocates for another location just put together their best case and hope, the first group is more likely to win. And of course, sometimes real turkeys get the nod because of political dealing.
But if the new UC campus works, after those who were arguing against it were saying that it was just a political prize and had no substantial merit … that does suggest that the people who were making the latter claim have blind spots in terms of evaluating whether or not a project will work.
Wad Reply:
May 12th, 2011 at 11:17 pm
The universities and high-speed rail go hand in hand.
Note how each Central Valley stop has a higher education institution — not bad for a relatively poor area. Bakersfield (CSU), Fresno (CSU and private Fresno Pacific), Merced (UC), Modesto (CSU in Turlock) and Stockton (a CSU satellite campus and University of the Pacific) have campuses.
This helps put the Central Valley, now a day trip from Northern and Southern California, to mere commuting distance. This will bring the areas closer together geographically and economically.
Higher education and access to metro areas will greatly benefit the Central Valley.
joe Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:26 am
CA businesses need manufacturing sites. Presently there are SV companies that setup shop near Portland, OR with corporate HQ and R&D in CA. It’s easier to fly to OR then drive to Fresno.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:24 am
Hanfield has a Uni? I never spotted that on Google maps.
datacruncher Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Tulare and Kings counties (Visalia/Hanford areas) represent the largest population MSAs in the state without a public university. They have been lobbying to be the site of a future CSU campus for a decade. HSR might provide an additional catalyst for a future campus as the state’s budget improves.
Wad Reply:
May 15th, 2011 at 1:14 am
Bruce, I left off Tulare and Kings counties off that list. They are in between CSU Bakersfield and CSU Fresno. I don’t know whether either campus has a satellite in those counties. (Stockton has a satellite of Cal State Stanislaus, but the more prominent school is the private Pacific).
Datacruncher says Tulare and Kings have been lobbying hard for a campus, and it wouldn’t be surprising if their efforts pay off. However, among the CSUs, Fresno and Bakersfield are among the lower tier local-need campuses.
Looking at the 2011-2012 CSU impacted majors/campuses report, Bakersfield and Fresno are in good shape. Fresno has impacted freshman and transfer admissions probably due to the budget crisis, but no impacted majors. Bakersfield has no impacts except for nursing, which is statewide.
There’s no need for a new campus until there’s more impaction.
Fullerton, San Diego, San Jose and San Luis Obispo are fully impacted campuses. San Diego and SLO have been for years. San Diego has CSU San Marcos as a pressure-reliever, and surprisingly, there’s a lot of room at San Francisco State and Hayward as the nearest SJSU pressure-relievers.
Alex M. Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Wait… The central valley is a day trip from Northern California? The central valley is northern California.
Peter Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:59 am
“northern California” is a very loose term. If you’re coming from the Bay Area or the Sacramento Area, it IS a day trip.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:18 am
I didn’t realize that. Wow. Good thing the LAO was properly ignored in that instance. Let’s hope this flawed report is ignored too.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 11:16 am
UC Merced was and is an environmental disaster.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Is there anything you aren’t bitter about, perchance?
Wildermuth hits a theme I’ve also noticed. While it opens the state up to ridicule (Californians being hippy-dippy dreamers too indolent and/or insolent to think about their actions), high-speed rail is one of those crazy dares that just happens to change the world.
I’ve wrote about it in another thread here and on the Urbanophile. I’ve said that California should change it’s motto from “Eureka” to “Why the Hell Not?”
One of the biggest visionary projects California undertook was the Master Plan for Higher Education. Pretty much the only argument proponents mustered was “It would be a good idea to give a college education to anyone who wanted one.” The soundest, most logical arguments were those of the opponents. They said it would be reckless because it was not only expensive, but it would also be foolish because there aren’t enough jobs to support everyone with a college education. A higher education was the walled garden of the elite, something only meant for the smartest alphas of society. Plus, the government taking a dive into higher education would debase the value of a degree and crowd out private institutions like USC and Stanford.
With about five decades into the Master Plan for Higher Education, is California better off with a massive higher education appartus in place?
California scored a tremendous economic advantage by building the schools when it was expensive frippery. The jobs did end up coming, and it turned out that the economy itself shifted to a point where a degree became even more valuable. California built out the schools in a time and place when most voters and taxpayers were part of the industrial economy and parents decided that they’d like their children to have better lives. The colleges helped California to transition to a changed economic landscape that no one had foreseen.
Democratization of education has helped lift more Californians into the middle classes and up.
The public universities are fine, too.
Robert – thanks for so thoroughly debunking these reports and providing so many examples of dissenting facts and opinions. You should win a Pulitzer for this – If the Bell reporting at the LA Times can win a Pulitzer, then so can this.
So, the Buffoons in State legislature hammer the LAO – because they DON’T LIKE the conclusions. But when LAO supported killing city’s economic development departments, the Leg thought they were insightful!
WHAT BS!!!
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_18052489
People like this really piss me off. This is the exact reason why nothing gets done in this country. The call to “slow it down”. This has been in planning for decades, delayed four years on the ballot and of course, new technology comes out every day. Unless we are waiting for something revolutionary, it is time to get started. Since trainsets won’t be purchased until later, we still have time. Time to fast track the project and railroad the NIMBYs, the LAO, and anyone standing in the way without a sufficient reason. This is for the future of California. I certainly do not want to pay $4 plus a gallon gas for as long as I can.
Robert never ceases to amuse. “LAO’s shocking and unusual decision to intervene in a policy debate”
Shocking! For a gov. office that “has been providing fiscal and policy advice to the Legislature for more than 70 years” how dare they intervene in a policy debate! What an unusual decision. Fishy. Must be a conspiracy. Thank you SO much for uncovering this for us. Baaaaa.
Educate yourself.
joe Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:30 am
“The office serves as “eyes and ears” for the Legislature to ensure that the executive branch is implementing legislative policy in a cost efficient and effective manner.”
IMPLEMENTING Legislative Policy vs Setting Policy.
Arthur Dent Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:51 am
In a COST EFFICIENT and EFFECTIVE MANNER.
joe Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 6:14 am
Yes, I too can’t find the word policy.
So the role is to assess the policy in place, assess the work plan – be the eyes and ears – not MOUTH.
It’s the old guide for a reviewer: you review the proposal you have, not the one you wish you had.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:28 am
Had they done that, there would be far less to criticize, and far more to applaud.
Whether or not to tell the Federal government they can stick their capital funding where the sun don’t shine unless California is free to pretend to spend it on HSR while really investing in local commuter rail projects … is not “how to implement HSR in a cost effective manner”, its, “if only the voters of California had been wiser, they would have voted down Prop1a(2008) and sent advocates back to the drawing board to come up with a plan that started by building commuter rail infrastructure and only added HSR later.”
VBobier Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:12 am
And that’s why the DOT in their vast collective wisdom, Said start in the Central Valley or nimby forces will make HSR into glorified gold plated transit, a semi-useful white elephant, Of course the naysayers said the same thing of light rail transit in Los Angeles and Its making a profit today and ridership is through the roof and is away above expectations, People like Rail, a lot, Just like I do. How come people are riding on the Rails and not in their Cars? Money mainly, Traffic does play a part and so does Freedom of movement…
But then the automobile is not an American Invention, It’s a Russian Invention as the wiki says, Where as the Train was invented in England by George Stephenson. What did America Invent? the Light Bulb and AC/DC Electricity…
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:20 am
Precisely. Their job is to ensure that HSR gets done effectively and efficiently. Their report proposes HSR not be done at all – or that it be done ineffectively and inefficiently. Rejecting the federal stimulus funds and virtually eliminating CHSRA funding is hardly effective or efficient.
morris brown Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:05 am
I wouldn’t care to characterize Robert’s writing here as amusing, but rather as showing his ignorance of the nature of the LAO and the prestige that it has had and will continue to have in Sacramento.
It is one issue to disagree with their conclusions, but to base his disagreement on statements like Galgiani’s “LAO’s lack of expertise”, is total nonsense.
If Robert thinks anyone of importance is going to take his attack seriously, he really is living in his own dream world. Similarly, Galgiani, a 2sd term Assemblywoman, coming out in such an attack is hardly going to be taken seriously either. One might wonder just how much damage she is doing to herself with comments like this as well as the press release last week, attacking Simitian, Eshoo and Gordon.
Donk Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:49 am
Why does prestige matter? The oversimplified conclusion I get from the LAO report is that they have a lot of really dumb ideas. What good is prestige when their recommendations are not even feasible?
These excessively dumb ideas either result from lack of expertise, bias, or just stupidity.
Risenmessiah Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:15 am
A large part of it is turnover, and the strength of their budget. Many of their employees get poached by agencies or legislative staff over time. Those jobs tend to pay more and offer a sense of stability. I’ve been doing what Thronson has been doing for a living (not at the LAO) for longer than he has (as an example) and the dude is older than I am. He’s doing his best, and Taylor has the distinct problem of asserting the office in a time when partisanship is very high. Everyone respected his predecessor on both sides of the aisle, and this is the dilemma they face over there.
Jack Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:16 am
Anyone that Bashes HSR automatically has prestige and credibility with Morris. If the LAO report was without fault you wouldn’t have intelligent people like Galgiani coming out against it.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:22 am
Simitian and Lowenthal are termed out next year. Jerry Brown is governor until the end of 2014, maybe until the end of 2018. Galgiani will wind up either in the State Senate or potentially in a statewide office. Other rising CA leaders strongly back HSR.
Once Simitian and Lowenthal are termed out, the project will have smoother sailing in the legislature, free from these NIMBY-enabling legislators who have never bought into the inherent goals or value of the HSR project.
YESonHSR Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Yes they are termed out in 2012..thou now is the time they can do great damage as being show.
Lowenthal is the worst..Simitian is being hounded by the Nimbys…who would have thought 2 Democrates would be trying to kill the project.
datacruncher Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 11:22 am
It disappoints me to see Democrats (the party that talks about Social and Economic Justice) trying to take money away from a region of the state that historically has received less per capita from the feds than the state as a whole.
The Congressional Research Service took a look a few years ago at per capita Federal Spending in the SJV. They included all Federal Spending for all programs including transportation, all forms of grants, procurement, ag/crop subsidies, social services, salaries and retirement checks, etc. The CRS numbers were:
FY2002 Per Capita Federal Spending
US – $6,650 per capita
Appalachia/TVA region – $6,031 per capita
California statewide – $5,878 per capita
San Joaquin Valley (8 counties) – $4,472 per capita
FY2003 Per Capita Federal Spending
US – $7,089 per capita
Appalachia/TVA region – $7,505 per capita
California statewide – $6,192 per capita
San Joaquin Valley (8 counties) – $4,645 per capita
http://www.greatvalley.org/pub_documents/2005_12_22_16_59_41_San_Joaquin_Valley_CRS_Report.pdf
California may be a donor state but that does not excuse any Democrat from treating the SJV as its colony (taking but giving nothing back) with a multi-billion dollar money grab that could generate jobs and economic change in the region.
YesonHSR Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 1:24 am
[This post removed for inappropriate language]
BruceMcF Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 10:48 am
Chill.
Arthur Dent Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 11:33 am
Check your bleat, Yes, you’re out of tune.
Clem Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 11:50 am
And the blog administrators allow this sort of immature behavior for which reason?!?
Brian Stanke Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Violations of the comment policy: http://www.cahsrblog.com/comments-policy/ are removed. The administrators are usually sleeping at 1:24 am and may not see a particular comment for many hours.
YesonHSR Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Oh for God’s sake.. I see the F. word numerous times on this blog.. Roberts Post about the peninsula legislators ended with a F you.. their numerous people on this blog insulting everybody else. At times I just can’t stand the NIMBYs and I’m tired of their little twisting lies and facts and sometimes get sick of being a politey poo to them on this board. . the standards should be for everyone
Joey Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
If you want do disagree with someone, do so with evidence and analysis. Not with baseless personal attacks.
Politics is about power – the thrust of this “report” is to chain the future of HSR to the state legislature. How dare we have an independent body running a $4 billion FED rail grant? Secondly, the “why not start at then ends argument” is clearly because that’s where most of the legislators reside. They want frickin’ billboards saying “High Speed Rail” brought to you by State Senator Blaa Blaa (in their district).
Now if this was $4 billion to build new prisons – then, I’m sure the Central Valley would be ideal!
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:30 am
Or nuclear power plants ~ “lets build them away from the coasts (and our constituents) ~ remember what trouble the Japanese had”.
Alex M. Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 10:04 am
Kinda like Rancho Seco…
Check out this hack job. http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/05/10/2383568/moment-of-truth-for-bullet-train.html
I wonder if the LAO simply resents interloping by the Feds, with FRA calling all the shots.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 11:03 am
I’ve seen that in some other LAO reports under Mac Taylor. Yet the LAO used to (until 2010) reject broad tax increases as a solution to the state budget deficit, so their criticism of federal rules on things like Medicare/Medicaid maintenance of effort rules was strange.
It’s one thing to say “gee, we wish the feds would turn the ARRA funds into block grants” (which was the same thing Chris Christie and Scott Walker asked for). It’s another to say “the feds will happily do that” (no they won’t) and “if not, we should just slow everything down” (also moronic, since it risks the jobs, funds, and project itself).
VBobier Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Which is exactly the type of subversive activity that their doing, The LAO leadership is acting as if they had performed a Coup against the legally elected government of the state of California and then they declared one of their number as the New Governor all of a sudden. But that’s My opinion.
Thankfully everyone else didn’t go along with these Morons pathetic idea.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 11:47 am
It’s not their job to resent ( or like ) anything.
Alon Levy Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
It’s not Walker and Scott’s job to buy astroturf from the Koch Brothers. So what?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Is the Koch Brothers or the Governor’s job to be nominally objective? If the Legislature is going to depend on the LAO for advice the advice has to be nominally objective. Otherwise why bother? Just have a clerical reprint stuff from Cato for the Republicans and Thinkprogress for the Democrats.
GoGregorio Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
It is a governor’s job to be objective in how he/she treats the people and businesses within the state.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Then it doesn’t matter who you elect. Why even bother with the position? Just have the department heads report to the legislature.
Nathanael Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
You’re actually getting at something important here.
The original concept was that someone needed to coordinate departments and that not all departments were large enough to have heads of their own — and the legislature wasn’t in session full time, and you needed someone who was there full time. So you had a “governor”.
In well-designed democracies, the equivalent of a governor (or at the federal level of the President) is the prime minister, a member of the legislature selected by the legislature. The legislature also has only one important house, making it possible to select a prime minister; if it’s bicameral, the equivalent of the Senate is weak and relatively powerless. This is called the “parliamentary system”.
One nice thing about it is that it makes it really easy to tell what politicians to blame for anything: it’s *always* the fault of the lower house of the legislature.
Of course, in truly modern parliamentary systems, they have proportional representation, which gets rid of the gerrymandering problem and eliminates two-party dominance.
Sigh….
BruceMcF Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:06 pm
There’s perhaps a bit of the Just So story here, as our first governors were, after all, appointed by the King. Also, not all parliamentary systems have weak houses of review ~ the balance of power in the Australian Senate, elected by proportional representation by state for overlapping six year terms, often determines how far a majority in the house of government can go in making fundamental reform.
And of course, under the supermajority rule on taxes, a Californian majority could always blame a minority for obstructionism while the minority blames the majority for not making proposals “it can support”.
Alon Levy Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 12:40 am
Not really… bicameralism is a correlate of federalism, which is not the same as majoritarianism. There are really two dimensions at work here – one stretching from a two-party majoritarian system to a multiparty system, and one stretching from unitary to federal government. Germany and Switzerland are both multiparty and federal, with relatively strong upper houses. Nothing as strong as the US Senate, but still we’re talking much more power than the House of Lords or similar unitary equivalents.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Australia being a Federal example, and the Senate elected six at a time to six year terms on a proportional basis from each state to form twelve senators per state on state basis, except for two at a time for single three year terms from the two territories.
Ireland and its Seanad Eireann as a quite weak house of review being a unitary example.
Alon Levy Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 9:24 pm
Yep – Australia is an example of two-party majoritarianism and federalism. So are the US and Canada. Although the Australian Senate is elected proportionally, the districts (states) have only six members elected at a time, which is too low to allow the full proportionality found in New Zealand or most of Continental Europe.
If anyone wonders, the reference here is Patterns of Democracy, by Arend Lijphart.
BruceMcF Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
Six is above the threshold for allowing the maintenance of third parties ~ indeed, just over the threshold, as there was substantially less third party representation when it was five per state.
As far as “full proportionality”, six members per seat is not extraordinarily low for multi-member constituencies, with “full proportionality” tending to be added with at large seats, but then offset by minimum thresholds. If we in the US had multi-member seats with, of course, each seat being a whole or part of a State, a maximum of six Congressmen per seat and districting for the minimum number of districts per state, we’d have a multi-party House of Representatives, but would need some form of automatic run-off voting to elect the Senators and President.
Alon Levy Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 10:43 pm
Actually, six is pretty low by Continental European standards. It allows some third parties to slip in, but not enough. The Australian Senate has 2.57 parties, vs. 2.53 in the British House of Commons; for comparison, the Swiss lower house has 4.76 and the Bundestag has 4.4.
Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno came out against the LAO report in the Central Valley Business Times article Congressman slams LAO report on high-speed rail.
morris brown Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 9:11 pm
Costa’s statement is such a surprise. After all his re-election was saved by the $700 million engineered for the project and granted by LaHood right at a critical time in his campaign effort.
YesonHSR Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 12:56 am
And your response is such a suprise…
The very important hearing by Senator Lowenthal’s Senate Select committee held on 5-11-2011 can be viewed at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUXcmS_ZI7g (2 hr 10 minutes)
Appearing were vanArk, Will Kempton (peer review), Bell (peer Review), Eric Thronson (LAO).
Huge number of issues discussed.
YesonHSR Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 12:57 am
And what did the whinney shumck cry about Brown??
Jack Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 9:40 am
Attendance at this was staggering…
Clem Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 10:40 pm
The most interesting statement made during this two-hour hearing is that it isn’t up to the CHSRA to necessarily produce an “investment grade” ridership study or business plan–that is the purview of investors, who given the sums involved will perform their own independent assessments in the regular process of due diligence. Even if the CHSRA produced the best ridership study and business plan that money could buy, investors would still toss it in the wastebasket and do their own.
political_incorrectness Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Wait a minute, they want a business plan and they say it cannot be “investment grade” yet there have been major corporations who are interested in the project?