JJJ Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 2:40 pm

I live 5 miles from Fresno State. No train needed.

Jerry Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 3:54 pm

OK. So how do you get from the Fresno train station to where the “debate” will be held?

Nadia Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 9:35 am

@ Joe

Simitian said very clearly at his recent Town Hall meeting in Palo Alto that he does NOT agree with giving money to Caltrain. There was an audience question asking him if the Feds would let money move from the Central Valley to other projects, would he support money going to Caltrain Electrification. He clearly said no, because he thought that was not the will of the voters in Prop 1A. He said as much as he supports public transportation, he felt voters intended the money be used to build an HSR system and that giving money to any local transportation projects would not fulfill that objective.

I encourage you to contact his office 650-688-6384 and speak to Brock Winstead for further information.
As for Jerry Hill, you can ask his perspective by calling: 650-349-1900 and speaking to Marc Hershman.

These types of assumptions are exactly part of the problem – don’t assume – ask them directly.

VBobier Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 9:36 am

Like the lie that people who get SSI(Supplemental Security Income) are all on Drugs and should therefore be tested, Yeah I’ve heard It, they don’t know what their taking about, as It’s bunk, nor are they qualified to be giving out Medical judgements as they have no Medical Degree or License to practice Medicine in any of the 50 states where impersonating a Doctor last I heard is a Felony. SSI requires real hard Medical proof, not a mere diagnosis or someones say so, anyone who says otherwise has not gone through the process as I have and is a liar as they do not know what the hell they are talking about…

joe Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 12:01 pm

The lie and mob also lives on.

The same expectation that HSR has to cover operating expenses is currently being used against amtrack service and peninsula Caltrain service that requires subsidies to operate and will implode unless new revenue and a new business plan is adopted.

There is apparently a nuance and fine line that can be maintained so PAMPA reps can kill HSR but find Federal & State support for their very important local public transportation needs. They will have a new business model put in place to operate commuter rail. It will require taxes and subsidies.

Yes, Fresno Dems will gladly support the elimination of HSR and vote to forever subsidize rail system that services the lovely communities in the bay area.

joe Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 2:35 pm

What risk?

For example: say Perry wins and revokes all transit and rail funding he can, and his approval rate remains steady and the economy starts to improve so that by the end of 2013 it’s unlikely he’ll lose; then the question is whether to risk 1A to let the project continue before 2021, and I think that transit advocates should take that risk.

GDP = Function (Inf, Stuff)
Where GDP is Gross Domestic product, Inf is infrastructure and Stuff is stuff that uses on Inf to produce GDP.

Since our spending on Inf is about a trillion or two behind the current rate needed to maintain what Inf we have, I can find no alternative Earth where cutting Inf increases GDP.

There is no risk, you may proceed.

Nathanael Reply:
October 30th, 2011 at 10:31 pm

“For example: say Perry wins and revokes all transit and rail funding he can, and his approval rate remains steady and the economy starts to improve ”

The economy will not improve in the near future unless Keynesian policies are followed. (In the slightly longer term a technological breakthrough could cause economic boom, but not for a least five years; if there were something which would cause a boom before then we’d know about it by now.)

What are the odds of Perry implementing massive Keynesian money-printing deficit-spending policies? Well, I suppose it is possible, ever since Reagan most Republican electeds *are* hypocrites who talk about austerity only when they’re *not* in power. But the party now seems to have been taken over by true believers who really believe the bullshit.

VBobier Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 11:06 am

And Ya forgot one thing, Kasich is a kook as is Scott of Floriduh… :D

Yep, Meg wasted lots of Money, thats no lie, She thought that She’d lay waste to Jerry’s campaign to be Governor for a 3rd time, that effort fell flat(splat!), Jerry is a sharp cookie and pretty Wile E. too. She was out of Her depth and won’t likely try to ever enter into politics again after the shellacking She received from a campaign that under spent Her campaign…

Jerrys a Shark
Megs a guppy…

VBobier Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 11:17 am

People wrongly think that interstates(freeways out here) were first built in the Cities, they weren’t, so this is a repeat of how the interstates were built, where it’s cheapest and easiest to do, which was in the country, which has largely now mostly filled up to become suburbia today, then build to & into the cities, HSR without the the Cities of the Central Valley is just 24Karat Gold plated transit or a brat named BART and I don’t want that either as a voter, and I do pay property and sales taxes too.

synonymouse Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 11:21 am

“reduce the scope or delay the next phase of system development until the performance of the existing system can generate sufficient revenues to support future expansion.”

Say what?

If this is the sort of nonsense PB-CHSRA has talked themselves into, I guess there is no hope for Tejon or any other rationalization.

Or maybe PB quietly and privately sees the game is all over. If so they have nothing to blame but their own hubris. Shades of BART broad gauge. Nothing ever changes.

morris brown Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 11:57 am

Elias either hasn’t read Prop 1A or is too dense to understand what it mandates.

There is simply no way that funds from Prop 1A bonds can be used to build anything other than a true HSR project Why do you think all these conditions were inserted? They were inserted to prevent the morphing of the project into something other than what the voters approved.

Now this isn’t to say that the Authority or the legislature or the Governor won’t try to change the project to something else, but at the judicial level, an independent level of government, that just won’t fly.

Thus far the Feds have said, you can’t spend Fed funds without matching state funds. The grant agreement clearly states those terms. Maybe the Feds will change their terms — very doubtful, but possible. But building a conventional rail system using Prop 1A funds isn’t gong to happen.

joe Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 2:56 pm

Maybe. No one’s made the case yet and the Peer review panel did not flag that “mistake”.

Elizabeth used existing airline ridership to project HSR ridership and equated that ridership with thesocioeconomic conditions of CA residents.

1) Today’s Airlines are gate limited. Today’s air travel does not fully model the demand for HSR or economic conditions under HSR. The Peer review professionals knew better. CARRD, not so much.

Airlines want HSR to funnel air travelers to/from airports. Airlines have have more demand for gates than there are gates available to them. Using a gate to fly a plane from Fresno to LAX takes that gate away from a more expensive and profitable, longer distance routes like NYC/JFK. if airlines increase ticket costs, they compete with car and bus costs.

We know flights to/from Europe can use a rail segment to complete a connection. It’s seamless to the ticket buyer. She took existing data and built a lame explanation about why the data indicate HSR isn’t needed.

2) A UK study of HSR in Germany statistically documented that HSR added to the town’s GDP. The economic growth was sustained and attributed to the HSR station. So Elizabeth uses existing socioeconomic data AND the assumption HSR will not alter socioeconomic conditions once built. The data prove her wrong. CV cities will see economic growth due to HSR and that obviously undoes her core assumption in her ridership model.

3) Today, the socioeconomic level of those in cars and those on buses in PAMPA show her assumption is wrong. People on limited income and people from modest backgrounds have no qualms about using public transit. One would argue the correlation between lower socioeconomic levels and ridership is positive, not negative.

4) Professionals in the airlines and Peer review do not agree with her findings – they do not make the same conclusion.

Elizabeth Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 3:32 pm

Joe,

First, I want to thank you for not just yelling but actually taking the time to read the documents. Now we can actually have a conversation.

The peer review group definitely flagged the socioeconomic issue. One item they were very concerned about was that model is not sensitive enough to income levels. CS has apparently been playing around a lot of different versions that would make it more sensitive. It is unclear as to whether or not that will get fixed for the numbers they are using for the IOS and Biz Plan.

I also suggested using some other socio-economic indicators that have known correlations with travel in general (education levels) and hsr travel in particular (working in certain types of industries where you can get work done on the train).

There are some obvious ways in which income feeds in to demand – the more money you have, the more you have to spend on discretionary things like travel, the less sensitive you will be to price vs convenience. There are also some harder things to understand, but it is generally accepted that income levels are important determinants in travel demand.

It is a little bit like trying to guess who is going to vote. The older you are, the more likely you are to vote. Why is this? Again, lots of reasons.

Please understand that having a model that is sensitive to socio-economic conditions does not say anything about what inputs you should use for 2035. Indeed, it would be interesting to see how different futures could be.

My point about air ridership is not that it is the only thing to look at, but that there is information in it. If it is all about gates, why is there pretty good service and much higher demand to sacramento?

This is the data that CS gives for 2000 (a busy time in California!). These are daily intra-California passengers:

Market
Observed

Los Angeles – Sacramento 12,308
Los Angeles – San Francisco 29,329
Sacramento – San Diego 3,848
San Diego – San Francisco 8,096
Los Angeles/San Francisco – San Joaquin Valley 140

There are no flights from SJ Valley to San Diego

joe Reply:
October 26th, 2011 at 4:01 pm

As novel and about as interesting as a shampoo directions.

Lather, rise, repeat.