Victory! LA Times Maintains Support for High Speed Rail
Yesterday the LA Times opinion page asked whether they should continue to back the high speed rail project. They got a lot of responses, including yesterday’s blog post. The case was clear, compelling, and apparently convincing. Today the LA Times declared HSR to be “a worthy gamble”.
The whole thing is worth reading, but they hit the key points:
• Spending money on HSR is a better way to meet the needs of a growing population than freeways and airports
• It’s a good investment in the kind of proven yet visionary infrastructure that made California great:
Bullet trains have been successful in places with even bigger financial problems than California (notably Spain), and we’d like to think that the home of such visionaries as Steve Jobs, Howard Hughes, D.W. Griffith and Earl Warren is at least as forward-thinking on transportation as, say, Japan or Turkey.
I might quibble with the list here (D.W. Griffith over, say Buster Keaton or Darryl F. Zanuck?) but they get it right. California was built by people who knew a good idea when they saw it and made it happen.
• The business plan is realistic and sensible, giving confidence that the project can work out as intended.
• The situation in Congress forced California to make some decisions the Times didn’t like on the HSR project, but they remain confident in the overall purpose and direction.
They have a good close:
It’s a gamble, and not one to be taken lightly. But gasoline isn’t going to get any cheaper in the future and the freeways aren’t going to get less clogged. We think California can find a way to get the train built. We think it can. We think it can….
Personally I think the bigger gamble is doing nothing and staying on our present course. But good for the Times to see that the right choice is to do the sensible thing and press ahead with high speed rail.
I don’t doubt LA Times/Tribune Co. interest in HSR. I am cautious about the Time’s parochial interests in having the HSR system build/improve “locally” first. That is move construction out of the CV.
Same concern holds for the Bay Area Peninsula /PAMPA which will become desperate for Caltrain $upport with planned Menlo Park/Facebook, Mountain View/Google and Stanford’s 5 B hospital expansion. The plan to pass EIR is for the builders to give employees free train and bus passes and operate free shuttles. Not gonna work if Caltrain is at risk.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 12:21 am
As opposed to parochical CV interests for building within the CV and leaving the connection to the LA Basin or the Bay Area for later?
StevieB Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 1:21 am
It is unfortunate that all funding is not currently available to construct the entire line at once and regions clamor to be first as a farrow of piglets vying for a teat.
Alan Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 8:03 am
As opposed to practical reasons like starting with a segment that’s actually ready for construction, and where the initial segment will be used as the test track for equipment acceptance? That makes too much sense.
Let’s change that. Borrow the Big Wheel from “The Price is Right”, put a city name on every slot, and let Drew Carey spin it. Wherever it stops is where we start building…
Donk Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 8:23 am
Any construction south of LA or north of San Jose right now is construction in the wrong direction.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 9:27 am
Strongly agreed. The most important task for passenger rail in California (looked at from a statewide perspective) is to connect the Bay Area to SoCal. The missing link is through the Tehachapis, of course. But starting in the Valley is a way to generate momentum to close that gap.
I do not believe investing only in upgrading what we already have to be good transit policy.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Monterey or bust!
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
They could build BART! Then San Jose would have two lines of BART!
joe Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 11:58 am
Alon;
CA didn’t vote to build raise funding for a SD-LA rail connection.
Prop 1A’s primary objective is a LA to SF. A first step building from LA south is FAIL.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 8:28 am
Where did I ever say they should start with LA-SD? What I’ve been saying ever since I had a coherent position on this issue is that they should’ve started with LA-Bakersfield.
Great news. But the Times needs to transfer it’s HSR beat writer.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 9:27 am
Dan Weikel did a decent job. Ralph Vartabedian, on the other hand, is a biased hack.
I am too. But I don’t write for a major paper and don’t pretend to be neutral.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
The Sam Zell Times pretends to be neutral on downtown LA development?
The SFGate of Friday published Editorial: High-speed rail plan on right track. The plan is admittedly expensive but better than not building.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 6:21 am
Well, I am pleased–and pleasantly surprised–that some people are still willing to go with this despite the “sticker shock.” Like Robert, they realize the problems with not building are worse.
It’s also interesting to note that the great bulk of the cost increases are due to various mitigation actions, such as tunneling or bridges where ground level would normally do (but was opposed by various people for assorted reasons). For that, we must blame ourselves. Now if we could just tackle the institutional corruption from not having adequate management to keep PB under control. . .
Who is that Flores guy who keeps complaining so? He’s shown up in a bunch of places with cut-and-paste anti-rail comments here (after the editorial) and elsewhere (in this case, he’s using the name “traintonowhere.”)
Alan Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 8:11 am
Sounds like the guy, Mike-something-or-another, who was whining in every Peninsula paper that would listen about the “thousands” of poor people who would be thrown out of their homes if HSR is built on the Peninsula. His letters are always hysterical and amazingly fact-free.
Spokker Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 10:47 am
Do you think age has something to do with it?
synonymouse Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 11:22 am
The Chronicle would favor it if the pricetag were $500bil because they are the mouthpiece of the Pelosi machine and favor any and all spending, except maybe to secure the border. They are Bloombergian flavor of the 1 percenters – you and I nobodies pay for the infrastructure toys of the elite – not Bloomberg, not Feinstein, not Buffett. We have become Rome, with its inverse taxation practice of the bottom paying for everything.
If and when robotics progresses to the point of doing the “dirty, difficult, dangerous” tasks currently performed by immigrants all of a sudden you will see a ruling class “volte-face” and time to dispense with the unruly underclass. Besides by that time the “low-level employees” will have so little wealth taxing them will be fruitless. They will be expendable. They won’t even be needed as universal soldiers as drones will do the job and don’t involve any veterans benefits.
The liberal establishment, just as with the TeaParty, are all the handmaidens of the Wall Street elite.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 8:27 pm
“Do you think age has something to do with it?”
You won’t believe this, but I didn’t think of that this time. It would be interesting to find that out, though.
I do wonder if somebody actually knows the fellow. He has certainly had lots of posts and comments in various places, most of which are copies of things he’s sent elsewhere first. The most common one is to tell you to call your representatives and tell’em HSR is a boondoggle. I must have seen this one a dozen times or more in different places.
I am disappointed too by the fact that they do not have the funds yet to build the segments and connections at the same time. According to the plan, they could have the San Francisco to Los Angeles route completed by 2024, if it did not have a financially unconstrained schedule. Instead, the current outlook is the first segment must be operational by September 30, 2017. The next segment to be constructed will be chosen within the next 18 months by May 2013. Either to San Francisco or to the San Fernando Valley (Sylmar). This will not be completed until 2021 with ridership expected in 2022. The revenues should then be of help. Then the remaining route Los Angeles to Anaheim won’t be ready until 2034.
That’s the current plan for now as I understand it. Let’s see what they say after January 2012. This plan will have to be updated and turned into Legislature every two years.
Donk Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 8:23 am
Lets see what they say after November 2012.
VBobier Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Yep, One step at a time, We have all the time in the world.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
That’s right. A lifetime of revenue going to the pockets of PB. Doesn’t matter what actually gets accomplished, or how long it takes. Because, you know, the cost of doing nothing isn’t zero.
Jack Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
It’s a good thing PB is just some money sink and the people performing work there do so voluntarily and contribute nothing to the economy. Oh wait…
Alon Levy Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 8:30 am
I call it for Obama, by a large enough margin to retake the House and keep the Senate by a squeaker. In other words, a return to the dictatorship of Susan Collins. If I ever live in Maine, I’m going to have amazing HSR into Boston. (North Station only, of course, since the North-South Rail Link is a Massachusetts project.)
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 10:28 am
North South rail link should be a national project, after all people in Providence like to go to Portland too. And people in Albany and Hartford. Should be partially funded by tolls on the Big Dig. After all one of the mitigations the Big Dig was supposed to use was a North South connector.
Beta Magellan Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 11:53 am
My friend in Bethel looks forward to her 110-mph links to Portland, Boston and Montréal.
In any event, I’d call the election for Romney (thank you, Greece and Germany!) with the Republicans narrowly taking the Senate and underperforming in, but nonetheless holding on to, the House. And adirondacker, I’d expect President Romney to be as hostile to mitigating the Big Dig as Governor Romney was (although I can’t entirely blame him, given that Massachusetts has basically the same problems with its contractors as NorCal).
James McD writes:
>This plan will have to be updated and turned into Legislature every two years.
That’s extremely important keep in mind; a two year document is not written in stone. It could be, God willing, that more funding will become available after Jan. 2012, and who knows Clem & co. might make some progress in persuading CHRSA etc. engineer more sensibly, hence more cheaply. So don’t despair, the schedule might be speeded up.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Are you INSANE?
Look, they TRIPLE their costs, the fanboys wet themselves with happiness at this prospect, they’re not looking as if they’re going to be any of jailed, cancelled, or defunded, and yet you somehow imagine there’s a motivation in any of this for them to CUT costs?
The sky’s the limit. The way scams like this work — and PBQD is pretty much the global poster boy for fraudulent public works megaprojects with fraudulently under-estimated costs and fraudulently over-estimated use — is to lie through your teeth just long enough to get the first big tranche of public funds pocketed, and from there on in play the “too big to fail” card over and over as the price tag goes up and up and up.
The only thing that can possibly result in “more sensible” engineering is defunding and termination, not actively rewarding failure.
Spokker Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
How did you vote on Prop 1A and how would you vote on a bill that would repeal it?
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
The Altamont “decision”, which explicitly telegraphed to every single contractor in the country that the sky was the limit and that cost maximization was the entire point of the undertaking, preceded the Prop 1A plebiscite, and Los Banos was written into the 1A language at the explicit behest of PBQD.
That ought to tell you. It’s embarrassingly easy to accurately predict the future in a significant number of cases.
VBobier Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 8:37 am
I’d say Rich voted NO. That’s My guess, Unless He didn’t live in CA in 2008, then He had no say, too bad, so sad.
joe Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
Kill HSR and the waste will go into designing and making a B3 bomber or a new war. That’s the industrial-complex system we have – it will be fed.
Stopping HSR doesn’t fix shit, it moves spending to a new project, probably overseas where it can’t be as scrutinized.
CA people can’t afford to do nothing until shit gets lined up the way you want it. What we have, imperfect needs to start and it needs oversight.
Unbelievable. Despite all the evidence that this is a loser for CA, just as it had been for the rest of the world, people still want to go forward? The scariest part is the total lack of vision presented by those who claim that trains are the future.
First, in the next 20 years we’ll have better hybrid/electric cars that will be easily be cheaper per passenger mile than trains. Not to mention that aircraft are becoming more efficient perhaps even challenging HSR.
Secondly, in that same time span that the HRS would be constructed, cars that can navigate themselves will be introduced. Personally, I see this as true game changer in terms transportation benefiting all travelers at all economic levels. Given the benefits of personalized travel it seems obvious that continued investments in freeways is the clear winner.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
It’s been great, or at least borderline positive, for most of the rest of the world.
The problem is with contractor capture of public works in the USA, not with High Speed Rail, and especially not with the concept of cost-effectively executed HSR in the SF-LA-SD corridor in California.
(Oh and just who do you imagine is going to contracted to “deliver” these fairy tale self-navigating automobile systems?)
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
The same people who deliver the fairy tale battery that can whisk you, non-stop from Palo Alto to Beverly Hills at 100 MPH? Or even 50 MPH non-stop. Taking your self driving electric car on a 400 mile trip isn’t much fun if you have to stop to recharge every 50 miles, stretching that to 100 miles doesn’t help much.
Derek Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
If electric cars had pantographs, then they wouldn’t need more than a few miles of battery life.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Pantograph needs a wire to connect to and a return path to the generator. First time the automatic “lower pantograph to change lanes” system fails a few miles of catenary gets ripped down. On to the other cars on the road.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 5th, 2011 at 8:42 pm
Hmm, wired-overhead pickup cars might make things interesting in driving:
http://www.lusseautoscooters.com/html/legend_history.html
Looking at this, I begin to appreciate a boring, no-trouble trip. . .
I do find this to be an interesting site.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/01/bumper-cars-o-1.html#more
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-cars-better-batteries-same-range.html#comments
Richard has the consistent, unwavering track record to back up his harsh verdict.
Just who is going to make “value engineering” more than a PR ploy?
The party machine? – no way – spare no extravagance
The 3 favorites at the CHSRA court -LA-Palmdale, Fresno, SJ? And foul up the fix – no way. Count on them to oppose any and all efforts at rationalization.
MTC? Laughable, as it is thrilled to have very likely successfully set Ring the Bay in motion for its patron
Only the threat of termination could produce any change of substance. Which is of course intentional as the electorate does not seem to have the nerve to proceed to the coup de grace.