Peter Reply:
June 4th, 2011 at 8:12 pm

I’m pretty sure that Galgiani is not trying to kill the project. Sen. Lowenthal is, though.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 9:47 am

the question is whether it gets the project properly staffed ~ since the CHSRA is not folded up, it would keep its staffing, and the new department gets up to ten new employees serving at the pleasure of the department director ~ and as far as I can tell, none of the ‘one from column A, one from column B’ sabotage of the Senate Bill. The right ten people added to the project could be a substantial help.

VBobier Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 8:05 am

Hopefully not, Hopefully the CA Senate could just pass AB145 and let SB517 die, Someone ask that SB517 be tabled.

Jack Reply:
June 4th, 2011 at 8:46 pm

Wow do they sell tickets for that soaking @ 0:13. lol!

Miles Bader Reply:
June 4th, 2011 at 9:24 pm

Hahahaha… the Reason Foundation doesn’t think HSR is “right for America”!

In further surprise news, neither do their auto-, oil-, and airline-industry sponsors!

What is right for America, according to Robert Poole and the R.F.? “Well, after lengthy deliberation, we’ve come to the conclusion that FREAKIN’ GIGANTIC SUPERHIGHWAYS, VAST PARKING LOTS, AND 25-LANE LOCAL ROADS BLASTING THROUGH EVERY INCH OF THE LANDSCAPE SHOULD DO THE TRICK. ALSO, SUVS ARE SYNONYMOUS WITH LIBERTY AND FREEDOM! OIL OIL OIL OIL!”

And you can quote him on that.

VBobier Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 9:50 am

I’m thinking of writing Trains, But then I have the time to do so.

Here’s what I’m thinking of writing to the editor:

Very recently a person by the name of Robert Poole who is from the Reason Foundation and is Anti-HSR and by extension Anti-Trains, has a letter to the editor in Trains saying “he doesn’t think HSR is right for America, and says he believes this even though he is a rail enthusiast,”

Well I’m a Trains enthusiast and I was a Model Railroader for for a few years until I had to give It up and sold off My HO rolling stock, As I’m now disabled, Now I think HSR is an excellent fit for America, Amtrak Ridership is up as is the Price of Gasoline and that isn’t going down very far and people like riding on the rails, HSR is profitable in many countries where It is run at, Sure the light rail that feeds HSR might or might not be subsidized, But so are our Freeways through Gas Taxes and the income taxes people pay to the Federal Government & State Governments, As Freeways have never been required to run at a profit, Unlike the Toll road in Orange County California SR73 which according to the OC Register is operating at a loss and needs extra time to pay off Its debt, yet reason likes privatized monopolistic behemoths that take up enormous amounts of land along their path, Where as HSR generally takes up a lot less land. Just listen to the Major Oil Companies, they’ve said that all the easy oil has been drilled for already and now their going after oil/gas locked in shale and sandstone or that is located in areas offshore in Brazil that were considered unprofitable are now profitable as the price of oil is at or near $100 a barrel. Remember the vast Right Wing Conspiracy? That’s Koch Industries, They control several oil pipelines, refineries, paper products and an unconfirmed backer of the Tea Party and of the Far Right loonies of the Republican Party who want to hurt Grandma and the Disabled through the Ryan plan. The Republican Party of today is not the Republican Party of when My Dad was alive as It’s been infected by crazies who think Privatizing this or that is good and that doing an actual cost benefit analysis is bad. CA voted for HSR in 2008 and reelected Pro-HSR Governor Jerry Brown to a 3rd Term in 2010, a Majority of Californians are for HSR and rail transit in general(look at the ridership levels for the Blue line and the Green line in LA County, They are exceeding all expectations), As HSR is less expensive than widening a freeway or building a new freeway from scratch. Some want to stop construction in the Central Valley of CA and redirect the construction to the Peninsula and to LA County in the mistaken belief that HSR should first be built there and not in the middle of nowhere and the Central Valley is not nowhere, Problem is if this were done California would have only gold plated Light Rail as the speeds would not likely exceed 125-150mph due to existing structures and row(land, which is expensive today in urban areas) not being able to be made straight enough for high speeds above 150mph, The Central Valley is the only place where 220mph+ speeds can be done and more importantly is that people in the Central Valley except for a farmer or two wants HSR as the CV has a population of about 4 million people currently and is expected to grow in the coming years, Plus widening SR99 and/or I5 will not help and would buy more land from Farmers and from People in the CV than HSR would. Also the CV would serve as the Test Track to verify that any TGV like train set would be able to do the required speeds and do the trip from SF to LA in 2:40(Hrs:Min) or less depending on the speed, As right now the TGV in France has set the record for fast trains, As It’s 574.8kph – 357.16mph, as is found on YouTube.com, Surely with a High Speed Train nearly this fast airlines like Southwest can switch to longer routes that are more profitable as air routes within California are barely in the black and so Southwest Airlines is an HSR supporter. I’d rather have money spent on HSR instead of trying to build more expensive freeways that only feed our oil habit that fuels the middle east and that to say nothing of increasing our defense budget beyond the cold wars levels which are no longer sustainable, As a huge military has never been cheap, That’s why the US military after WWII downsized Itself as It was very expensive. Also the Military reason for Freeways doesn’t exist anymore as planes like the C-5 Galaxy has made rapid deployment of Main Battle Tanks like the M1-A1 Abrams Tank very possible. People do ride Passenger Trains, Just look and ride on Amtrak in California, My Sister in Law and Her two Daughters said Amtrak wasn’t empty of people and had ridden on HSR in the UK and in France and they were not empty either, plus the ride on HSR was smooth and so they are all Pro-HSR and yes their Republicans who have ridden on what the Far Right says is an empty train, Even in Spain HSR is profitable as HSR is in Germany and France. In fact You might look up some information of the following blog: http://www.cahsrblog.com/ and other informed sources like the: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/ and http://www.railwayage.com/ for more accurate info than the Anti-HSR Reason troglodytes use.

http://taxdollars.ocregister.com/2011/04/27/73-tolls-to-be-extended-6-extra-years/81531/

Is this any good guys?

BruceMcF Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 11:15 am

there’s the US PIRG report, which cites French, Spanish, Japanese and US sources.

Emma Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 9:57 am

That’s the elephant in the room if you ask me. I still don’t get it. How are politicians able to amend a voter initiative when referendums are above Legislature?

BruceMcF Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 6:25 am

A quiet word from the Governor, ‘oh and BTW, I will veto it if it has this part in it’, could help to tilt the scales.

political_incorrectness Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 7:26 pm

I find it interesting that they say SB517 strengthens the authority. That does not make sense

BruceMcF Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 7:22 am

its reassuring that morris speaks out against it ~ I didn’t see anything wrong with the bill, but in these things, the devil is in the details. since morris wants the project to be halted at any cost, one would expect him to support any bill aimed at sabotaging the project

VBobier Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 7:48 am

Go suck an egg kitty.

Risenmessiah Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 7:56 am

Not exactly.

The way it works is that both Houses deliberately stack in legislation that they may assume will never become law as a way to deny other bills for consideration. So in this case: the House is going to force the Senate to hear AB 145. If they don’t, SB 517 is going to die unless Senate President Steinberg convinces both the Speaker and the Governor that it is crucial to getting Republican votes on a budget deal or something ground breaking like that.

The reason? Because the bills really merge something completely separate. They look like they are addressing the same thing, but they aren’t. The other problem is that Lowenthal’s attempt to redraw the Board is a complete overreach of his authority. The whole reason the Board is the way it is to make it independent of state politics and yet…. now that he got an answer he doesn’t like…..

Robert Cruickshank Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 3:31 pm

Good. If a compromise were acceptable to you, I would be worried.

joe Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 4:20 pm

Oh Morris;

The Authority is successful in gaining funding and anchoring the project in CA’s CV – that is why you oppose the organization as formulated.

They’re actually going to build the system and it’s going to run up the peninsula by 2020.

swing hanger Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 6:48 am

ahem, opinion piece, not an article.

D. P. Lubic Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 7:13 am

Some interesting things there, interesting because they are not there–no mention of the oil problem, no mention of problems for people who have trouble driving due to bad eyes or other things, no mention of how rotten driving is nowadays, no mention of the real cost of the road system–and the writer is a retired editor, means he is in the over-60, all car, all the time generation–

I was brought up to respect older people because they had been around longer and seen more–looks like some were and are pretty blind. . .

BruceMcF Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 7:15 am

And if that is the strongest argument they have against, its rather an an op-ed inadvertently showing why Gov. Scott was wrong to reject the funds: there is no strong evidence in support of the conclusion, just an echo chamber of citing previously debunked claims.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 8:49 am

Who died and gave the US a first-class air traffic network?

John Burrows Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 10:02 am

Do you think that Governor Scott will make it through his first term?

Spokker Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 4:52 pm

Even if he were right to do it, we wouldn’t know by now.

VBobier Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 9:06 pm

Old smelly tripe, which ought to be buried, preferably in the worlds deepest trench, the Mariannas Trench, where it can’t be seen or heard from ever again.

Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 9:03 am

You could just use the Air Line route, supposed to be 10 hours and 100mph back in 1905.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_–_New_York_Electric_Air_Line_Railroad

Jack Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 9:51 am

Wow, this guy. The VOTERS said we wanted HSR. One man, no matter what power he holds can’t stop the will of the people who spoke in favor of this project.

Can’t wait until this clown is out of office. And oh look his ex-wife plans to run for his seat, couldn’t get any better!

Jack Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 10:07 am

This was a rather balanced article. I am surprised it came from you.

Remember; Beer’s on the first train, on me, no RSVP needed!

VBobier Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 9:12 pm

How convenient, sen alan lowenbrau is just one person, he can’t stop funding all by himself, nor can the senate, he’s posturing and yer not much better, I hear the zoo needs a date.

Jack Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 10:09 am

Nothing will silence them outright. Their goal is to kill this project and then go to the voters and say “See were being financially responsible, we almost spent 35B dollars on this massive project but now we are not. Look at us saving money!”

Hoping the voters don’t realize it’s not a matter of saving money. That 35B is going to be spent, whether it’s spent on HSR or Roads & Runways. It’s going to be spent.

Elizabeth Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 10:29 am

The board was not laid out in Prop 1a. It existed long before that in prior legislation.

Prop 1a created the peer review panel (which seems to be the same one in Galgiani’s bill?) and set the requirements for using the bonds money- 50% match, usable segments etc.

It gets a little tricky, but the legislature can clearly change the authority and can add to rules.

morris brown Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 10:39 am

If you really had done research, you would know that the Authority was not created in Prop 1A / AB-3034. The Authority was in existence for a long time before Nov 2008.

The legislature certainly cannot change Prop 1A, without going back to the voters. The changes promoted in AB-415 or SB-517 are not changes that were part of Prop 1A.

Risenmessiah Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 3:53 pm

Unfortunately the way our legal system works is that the Legislature can pass anything it wants, and there must be a lawsuit to challenge constitutionality. It’s true that Proposition 1A didn’t create the Authority or its Board. The interesting thing though, is that 1A contains references to the Board and its chair that will likely make Galgiani’s bill unconstitutional. Namely Prop 1A doesn’t contain any mention of a Department of High Speed Trains…only “the authority”. That and the Chair of the Board has to approve the bond issuance on the High Speed Rail Finance Committee, which would violate it being only an advisory body.

Lowenthal’s bill looks like it’s closer to passing muster, but there’s still some problems. For example, the Governor must receive consent of the Senate to make appointments, but the Senate and the Assembly do not… Thus, the bill essentially takes an independent agency and makes it under the control of the Senate. Without knowing the California constitution so well, that doesn’t seem possible with separation of powers.

What probably is going to happen is that Lowenthal’s committee is going to try to kill AB 145 first with the arguments I mentioned. Then it will be up to Assembly and the Governor to figure out what to do with 517. It’s very likely that Brown will demand serious changes before signing it…but he also could veto the thing. Unlike everyone else these days, the man is still decently popular, and has a long time before re-election.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 5th, 2011 at 1:42 pm

Thanks. I may have more to say about this on my blog.