Shorter Mercury News: California Doesn’t Need Jobs
California’s current unemployment rate is 11.3%. That’s still a far higher level than the state has seen in decades – and it has been sustained at around that level for at least two years.
California faces nothing less than a severe jobs crisis. That doesn’t mean any old job is a good job. But when you have an opportunity to create tens of thousands of jobs per year while building sustainable infrastructure that can save money and spur new growth for the rest of the century, you would be crazy to dismiss it. California didn’t dismiss those opportunities during the Great Depression, building dams and bridges that put people to work immediately and still help create economic value 75 years later.
But some in the media believe we should indeed dismiss these opportunities. Concerned more with breaking a story than with playing a meaningful role in building a better California, they prefer to find reasons to not do something useful to address unemployment.
And so you get Mike Rosenberg’s attack on high speed rail jobs in today’s San Jose Mercury News:
Though California’s high-speed train faces an intensifying backlash over its $99 billion price tag, political leaders from Washington to Sacramento justify the cost by touting another huge number: 1 million jobs the rail line is supposed to create.
But like so many of the promises made to voters who approved the bullet train, those job estimates appear too good to be true.
A review by this newspaper found the railroad would create only 20,000 to 60,000 jobs during an average year and employ only a few thousand people permanently if it’s built.
My reaction? So what! I have been consistent on this blog in saying that whether HSR creates 20,000 jobs or 1 million jobs, it’s still a good idea and still would provide a badly needed economic boost to the state of California.
First off, 20,000 to 60,000 jobs a year is a very significant number. Rosenberg dismisses it (though one wonders how he’ll feel the next time the Bay Area News Group conducts another round of layoffs) but we can see just how big that number is by making some comparisons.
Apple Computer, based in the Mercury News’ backyard, employs 60,000 employees. About 10,000 are in Cupertino, but looking at their overall workforce, Rosenberg is saying HSR could create the equivalent of Apple Computer once every year and that’s somehow a bad thing.
Microsoft employs 55,000 people in the USA, most of them in Washington State but some of them in Silicon Valley.
Cisco employes 17,000 workers in Santa Clara County, the county itself employs 15,000, and Kaiser Permanente employs 13,000.
If any one of those companies closed or left the state it would be a blow to the economy. So for Rosenberg to dismiss 20,000 to 60,000 jobs per year is just an absurd thing to do, suggesting he is deeply out of touch with the tough economic conditions many Californians face right now.
But there are specific problems with Rosenberg’s analysis that deserve to be called out too.
But state leaders, it turns out, quietly beefed up employment estimates. First, they counted every year of work as a separate job. So if one person were to work 10 years, that would count as 10 jobs. Next, they figured outside companies, such as restaurants and retailers, would hire two new people for every single construction worker.
Grand total: 20,000 construction workers and 40,000 “spin-off” employees — each working the entire 22-year project — would count as more than 1 million jobs.
As it turns out, there really are secondary job growth effects of employing people on major projects. Look back up at that list of Santa Clara County employers. Cisco, Kaiser, Apple, and government workers all have to eat somewhere. They all have to have their cars serviced. They all have to buy clothes. Rosenberg is implying that the notion that one job doesn’t create the conditions for another job, and that’s just denying reality.
More importantly, I’m not entirely clear what the difference is between Rosenberg’s analysis and what the CHSRA is saying. Let’s go back to his lede:
A review by this newspaper found the railroad would create only 20,000 to 60,000 jobs during an average year and employ only a few thousand people permanently if it’s built.
Notice he doesn’t say what an “average year” is. If the project is 22 years long, and say 50,000 jobs per year are created, well, you’re at 1.1 million.
Just as important as what Rosenberg said is what he left out of his analysis. Nowhere in his article does he discuss the green dividend – the economic activity created by the money saved on oil purchases. As people buy less oil, they have more money available for other purchases thereby supporting new growth. In Portland the annual green dividend is estimated at $2.6 billion.
The same holds true for high speed rail. In 2010 the US Conference of Mayors estimated that HSR would generate $10 billion in green dividend for the Los Angeles area alone – statewide it could be double that amount. That includes new jobs.
As to long-term job creation, Rosenberg appears skeptical of that too. But here again, he just isn’t paying attention to the realities around us. We also know from global experience that HSR spurs the development of mid-line cities. In California that is crucial, given the sky-high unemployment in the Central Valley. That unemployment costs the state government billions and acts as a drag on the economic potential of the entire state. California’s recovery requires a Central Valley recovery.
HSR can help provide a boost to places like Gilroy, Fresno and Bakersfield. It brings those cities into the globally competitive coastal economy, allowing residents there to get jobs on the coasts and allowing coastal businesses to set up shop inland where land values are cheaper.
Rosenberg frets about job losses that might stem from construction:
What’s more, officials have not taken into account the potential job losses from the railroad, which will displace many businesses along the train route, including several along the Caltrain corridor between San Francisco and San Jose.
This is pretty fundamentally misleading. First, the businesses that are displaced don’t die out. They’re bought out and can relocate to continue operating. More importantly, there’s no analysis at all that suggests any jobs lost to construction would come anywhere close to even 20,000 a year. Rosenberg is just idly speculating here.
And he doesn’t discuss the other drags on the economy that come from relying too much on oil to get around. After all, the present economic crisis – which Rosenberg barely mentions – is the product of reliance on oil at a time when its price continues to rise.
So what Rosenberg has done is the typical move of a contemporary reporter. Instead of actually talk about the project in context, he treats high speed rail as an isolated thing disconnected from the rest of the economy and from our other natural resources. He assumes that the status quo is just fine, that if we don’t build HSR we won’t have any other costs or threats to jobs.
This is the default perspective of most modern American journalists. And it is corroding our society. Journalists shouldn’t act as boosters. But they also have a responsibility to help pull this country out of its present crisis. Instead journalists are trained to break stories by finding incidents of government being misleading, rather than breaking stories by finding examples of fundamental problems being ignored. This is particularly true when it comes to green infrastructure, which is so important to our economic future. It’s as if journalists are crabs in a barrel, pulling back down anyone who tries to climb out.
Even if Rosenberg wants to focus on job projections, he did so in a biased way, excluding important other facts and analysis that challenge the skeptical conclusions he drew.
Rosenberg is a smart reporter, so it’s depressing to see once again a journalist throw their integrity to the winds in order to try and make the high speed rail project look bad. It’s unfortunate that he chose that approach. But Californians have rejected these kinds of arguments before, and they should continue to do so now.
I’m not the biggest Rosenberg fan; I still feel the true intent of his reporting is to keep rail (whether it’s HSR or Caltrain) off the peninsula PERIOD! A warrior of the NIMBY-class. But I digress.
Wont building regional rail in NorCal and SoCal create sustainable transportation and jobs? I still feel this should be our priority now, not spending billions on a rail line from Fresno to Bakersfield. With that in mind, my proposal:
An initiative to make the $10 billion of prop. 1A bonds into our own version of an infrastructure bank for transit. A true jobs creator that builds regional rail and gets folks off of crowded freeways.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 21st, 2011 at 9:47 pm
“I’m not the biggest Rosenberg fan; I still feel the true intent of his reporting is to keep rail (whether it’s HSR or Caltrain) off the peninsula PERIOD! A warrior of the NIMBY-class.”–Tony D.
Man, if this is true, the Peninsula people are crazier than I thought. They actually want to get rid of an existing railroad that serves them today, and has been there for almost 150 years?
That’s even worse than the guys who want to tear up an operating heritage railroad in New York for a snowmobile trail.
Clem Reply:
December 21st, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Brilliant. Cut it down to a size that BART can swallow whole! Their SJ tunnel will cost only what, four or five billion? There goes the NorCal share of the booty.
Tim Reply:
December 21st, 2011 at 11:42 pm
What, you don’t think BART to Rod Diridon Memorial Station isn’t going to happen? Might as well get it funded now and line up some more suburban extensions…
Tony d. Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:06 am
WOW! now I’m being criticized by even those I now agree with (Altamont, Caltrain improvements anyone)? Where’s the love this Holiday season?! (Oh well)
Clem Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:54 am
Happy Holidays Tony. Nothing personal.
Tony d. Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 9:44 am
Happy Holidays as well Clem.
Tim Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:52 pm
And as ever, from one armchair transit planner to another, no hard feelings (I too am a proponent of breaking down infrastructure spending into more manageable “bites”, not $100 + billion taxpayer crushing “megaprojects”) and have a Merry Christmas.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:06 am
I’m not totally clear on why, but the standard Democratic position is that they want a national infrastructure bank only, and the Republicans wants state infrastructure banks instead.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:25 pm
but then when they go to the states they states won’t have the money so there won’t be state infrastructure banks.
VBobier Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Agreed state funded infrastructure banks are just a smoke screen, It would be nice If they just quit lying about It…
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Well, John Mica apparently likes the Florida Infrastructure bank which is very real indeed….
YesonHSR Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 10:37 pm
And now you Tony??..NO we will build HSR
Rosenberg’s article points out correctly the intent of the Authority to vastly inflate the number of jobs that the construction of the project will create.
However, his number of 20,000 jobs for the Central Valley ICS is itself inflated.
As was discussed on this blog a couple of weeks ago, when you look at job creation on the TGV, you won’t come to 20,000 jobs but rather 5 to 6 thousand jobs.
Robert doesn’t seem to care how many jobs are created, just that jobs will be created. Robert also doesn’t care that the 32 billion HSR project proposed to the voters in 2008, now is going to cost 98 billion and upwards, as well as take 12 years longer to build.
Apparently 2/3 of the California voters, no longer approve of the project.
The last sentence in his present article, again questioning, in the case, “the integrity”, of the reporter, carries on his constant theme, “if they don’t agree with me”, they are not only wrong, but have political or other agendas they are pursuing, and certainly not doing their job as a reporter correctly.
Elchu Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:19 am
“Apparently 2/3 of the California voters, no longer approve of the project.”
Apparently 80% of statistics, are made up on the spot.
GoGregorio Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:51 am
Apparently comma use, is irrelevant when talking about statistics.
Zach D Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:43 am
If you are going to use the $32 billion cost estimate, which is in 2009 dollars, then you can’t compare it to the revised $98 billion…you are comparing apples to oranges. But, just the like the 2/3rds stat that I’m guessing ahs no basis…it’s more about making the statement than actually backing it up with real numbers.
StevieB Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:55 pm
The intent of the Authority is to use job-years to describe both the number of workers and the longevity of their work. It would inflate the numbers if you counted a worker who did a few days of work on a minor task as a separate job. Several of such workers would constitute a job-year. Few workers will work the entire 20 – 25 years to build Phase I at the same job. Consistent with analysis for capital projects used by transportation agencies throughout the country, the employment impacts of construction are expressed in terms of “job years.”
Mike Rossi, a High-Speed Rail Authority Board member, states.
StevieB Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 4:01 pm
The Rossi quote should read.
It’s called the Ripple Effect Robert, Toss a pebble into a pond or a lake that’s still and watch the ripples created from the stones impact with the water, same thing for core jobs(the wiki says economics, same thing), 1 core type job can create other jobs around It, pizza jobs, super market jobs, security guard jobs, real estate agent jobs, car dealer jobs, etc, etc… It’s an investment and It will pay off, 20,000-60,000 jobs and that’s just the stone tossed into the pond, the ripples are where the other jobs are created, as people spend money from their paychecks, Jobs are created by those paychecks, the ripples is money spent which is supply and demand.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Ah yes, the good old ripple effect.
I’m going down street right now to buy a doughnut.
You see, by buying a doughnut, I help pay the shop’s rent, which goes to the landlord, who buys paper for his printer, which goes to the office supply store, who passes it on to the local distributor, who pays truckers to make deliveries, who buy Harley Davidsons, employing Skilled American Machine Workers At Good Wages, who buy Macbook Pros, which run on electricity, which is bought from the friendly local private monopoly, which uses the money to build power plants, which burn coal that is hauled by mighty freight railroads, who employ operations researchers, who have kids who play in a youth soccer league, which pays rental on sports fields, which pays for grass seeds, which are supplied by yeoman farmers who are the soul and backbone of The Republic.
Indeed, a rising tide floats all boats.
joe Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:42 am
Krugman’s been writing about the importance of spending multipliers for projects like HSR for a few years.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html
He’s written that with constant interest rates, current conditions, a 1B spending project produces economic stimulus that generates about 0.5B in government tax revenue.
Another fact the mercury news omits.
20,000 jobs is the warrior cry for the Keystone pipeline.
@ Robert
Rosenberg wrote: “What’s more, officials have not taken into account the potential job losses from the railroad, which will displace many businesses along the train route, including several along the Caltrain corridor between San Francisco and San Jose.”
I thought you’d be interested in this report (which we footnoted in our Congressional Testimony) that talks about business relocation in California and some of the challenges. The report is available here: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/realestate/nbrs2002_8.htm
The full report has lots of information but I’ll pick out a few things of interest. It is not a random survey, but it provides interesting insights. For context, here’s background on the study:
“In addition to the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS), the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) was included in the interview survey to provide an example of a non-highway relocation project. Seventy-four relocation cases were reviewed in California for the study; forty-three displacees from the pool of seventy-four cases were contacted and personally interviewed. Of those contacted, thirteen chose to close their respective businesses due to a perceived financial hardship having been imposed as a result of their business displacement. An additional thirty-one businesses were never located. Replacement locations were indicated in the parcel records; however, personal inspection revealed that the businesses were not there. Contact was made, however, with sixteen adjacent businesses at the respective replacement sites. From these interviews, it was concluded those businesses either never opened or closed within the first two years.”
“The reestablishment payment maximum in California, as in most other states, remains at $10,000. This often does not cover the total costs of reestablishing a business including code related cost modifications.” (note: CARRD would absolutely endorse changing this law in order to facilitate keeping businesses in their current cities – however, this takes planning, cooperation, communication and time – none of these things seem to be in play on this project).
“The pervasive comment among the majority of business owners interviewed in California is that the skyrocketing real estate industry does not allow an established business the opportunity for a successful relocation without huge financial implications. Rents are reported to double, triple and sometimes quadruple when a business is forced to move. This rent increase affects the pocket of all businesses, but smaller businesses are more vulnerable and less able to sustain the increased rent costs. As evidenced by the thirty-one businesses have ceased their business operations, higher rents in California are a primary reason that displaced businesses are forced to close, or choose not to reopen. The reestablishment payment maximum of $10,000 is cited as an additional impediment to the successful relocation of many businesses. The majority of both CALTRANS and BART participants reported code related cost modifications well in excess of the $10,000 limit. Most business owners said that if the state had contributed toward the increased rent and increased the maximum for the reestablishment payment, their chance for a successful relocation would have been greatly enhanced.”
The Mayor of Fresno is excited about HSR but seems to be ignoring the need for a real plan to make this work. Scott Mozier who works for the City of Fresno discussed his concerns at the City Council meeting and Council Members chimed in.
I would encourage you to watch this video: Video: http://www.fresno.gov/video/council/CouncilVideo111006.asx. The presentation starts at minute mark 2:16:00.
In a nutshell, they describe that the City couldn’t handle simply the permit process for relocating the sheer number of businesses. They also talk about the fact that where most businesses would relocate in Fresno, there is no Growth plan in place and indeed probably not enough real estate available to handle the number of places that would need to relocate. There is no plan to overcome these issues and facilitate keeping those businesses in Fresno. There is no traffic mitigation plan for what happens during construction, nor an analysis of what that prolonged and extensive construction period does to the businesses that are nearby but not actually subject to eminent domain.
Mozier describes (I’m paraphrasing) “To put the magnitude into perspective, the impact to Fresno would be as if they did all three highway projects in the area (which were done over 30 years) at the same time.”
“None of the overpasses are ADA compliant because they are too steep – so they would all require additional pedestrian bridges (not detailed in the plans and cost not accounted for)”
“Because it is a Design/Build contract, they are leaving the “details” to the next bidder, which means lots of change orders and likely huge cost escalations.”
“It is estimated that the effect on traffic caused by the construction of the project would require widening many of the other roads as mitigations to the prolonged construction (also not budgeted or planned for)”
It is possible, of course to over come each of these elements of concern – especially with a good partnership between the Authority and the cities and a good plan in place for dealing with displacements (hello CSS!). However, the Authority is having trouble executing on the big things, much less the detailed plans required to ensure success for places like Fresno – hence the concern about jobs lost vs. the inflated jobs numbers….
StevieB Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 9:58 am
Some businesses will not be able to relocate because they are paying well below market rent in their current locations. Once displaced, however, they are forced to compete in the market rent arena with all other businesses searching for space. The example of the Federal Highway Administration in the report you cite is a barbershop, in San Francisco (with an average annual profit of $6,400) where the replacement site rent was going to be too high to maintain this profit. Small marginal businesses as in this example are unfortunate losses but Fresno is on record as favoring the increased business growth High Speed Rail provides the city.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 10:31 am
@StevieB: On what basis do you assume that some businesses “are paying well below market rent in their current locations”? If the rent they are paying is based on the mutual agreement of landlord and tenant, then by definition they are paying market rates. The problem for the barber shop was that rental rates in the “replacement site” were going to be higher, not that the rent paid at the original site was below market rental rates. Evidently the replacement site was in an area where market conditions support higher rents than the area from which the barber shop was displaced. The same was true for the bar-restaurant mentioned in the report.
If there is something in the report that supports your statement that the displaced businesses had been paying “well below market rent IN THEIR CURRENT LOCATION,” please point it out.
StevieB Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:21 pm
The report made the statement about market rates for rent.
The barbershop rent was $370 per month and the going rate at a replacement site was $1000.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:37 pm
It’s unfortunate that the report doesn’t provide some numbers as opposed to saying “some.” Still, thank you for pointing out that portion of the report.
StevieB Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:07 pm
There is additional information provided in the report.
It would be a good assumption that the businesses paying below market rent are well represented among those eleven.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:29 pm
I don’t know what you mean by “well represented,” but I agree that probably the businesses that faced higher rents, due in part to below market rates at their original location, would be among the eleven. But there is no way to tell how many of the eleven fall in that category. “Some” is probably less than “most,” but more than “a couple.”
StevieB Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:11 pm
“Some” of the forty-three reviewed could easily be “most” of the eleven businesses that closed because of increased rent. “Some” being an unspecified number could possibly be all of the eleven.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:53 pm
I think it is obvious that we are forced to engage in speculation since the report fails to provide the actual number.
StevieB Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 4:06 am
The exact number is unknown but significant enough to merit inclusion in the report.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:02 am
Nadia,
You are being inherently disingenuous here. Businesses have to cope with relocation all the time. The one disadvantage to losing your location due to eminent domain is that there is no Proposition 13 recovery. If you rent from a guy who is paying nothing on his strip mall, and the city blows it up, and you have to move to a strip mall where property tax is higher … then yes, the higher rent could put you out of business.
But the alternative to such a scenario is to effectively turn California into a feudal state where there is almost no social or economic mobility because the landowning class rarely if ever changes. This is the same sort of asinine logic that Disney and other other entertainment companies use to extending the life of patents.
Sure, it protects property rights, but it subverts economic and social equality.
Palo Alto ain’t Palo Alto because Larry Ellison thinks its pretty. It is what it is because you have what Joe Schumpter called, “creative destruction”. Stanford produces the minds, investors supply the capital and wealth is created and destroyed based on market forces. It’s because as Sean Parker famously tells Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network”:
I see you have come to California… you made the right choice.”
joe Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:57 am
Tom,
Palo Alto just approved a 5B expansion of Stanford’s hospital. This kind of planning is apparently too hard for Fresno.
Nadia gives us an example job creation. Fresno has to hire a few more city workers/contractors to plan for a better Fresno.
My town Gilroy has an envisioning project for the HSR station. It’s obvious the new station is going to displace business and be a bonanza for the landowners that will tear down and build facilities more suited to a HSR station. Not one City Council member, even the opponents, is upset that the 10th st. 99 Cent Store is going to be displaced by something like a 9 floor Marriott.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:21 pm
True, but keep in mind, Nadia is referring to places where rents are far below market. Such a place might not really exist is a town the size of Gilroy.
But yeah, Fresno will teach other cities in California what to do.
joe Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:54 am
All of CA has too much retail sq ft.
Gilroy’s an old town and has legacy areas that slowed once HW101 was built and took traffic off Monterey Highway.
Gilroy also allowed the first super Walmart and built malls east of 101 at 10st/152E. Many 10th street business near the Caltrain station closed and reopened with 99 stores.
That’s another reason Gilroy favors a downtown alignment. They want infill and the city recognizes that the current developments near the station are toast. The landowners would quickly expand and develop (or sell). Not even opponents of HSR care. They care about some legacy businesses in town that will be impacted but it’s part of the price the City will pay for staying alive.
What Nadia is writing about is 90% hyperbole. The only salient issue is Fresno needs to spend some money and time planning for the project’s construction and impact: Proof HSR will create jobs.
My crappy little city seems to be better run than Fresno.
datacruncher Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Its not about retail, Fresno is mainly talking about industrial firms located along the UP corridor. Finding new industrial sites for many companies at the same time is different than relocating a small retail store at a station site in downtown Gilroy or downtown Fresno.
Time and money IS the issue for Fresno vs Gilroy. How many more years does Gilroy have to get ready? Shovels hit the ground next year in Fresno but Gilroy has years to work out details. Fresno has months not years to prepare for business relocation and construction.
Fresno appears supportive of HSR starting work soon, but they are now asking implementation questions and dealing with details on a short timeline instead of just envisioning what might happen years down the road. Other cities like Gilroy will have more time to prepare and also see what works or doesn’t work elsewhere, Fresno doesn’t get the same. I think it shows smart planning on Fresno’s part to be asking questions and expressing concerns that nowhere else has had to ask yet.
joe Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Smart? I think not a sign of being smart but of being under-prepared. Still not a resin to slow but a reason for Fresno to spend $ and get going.
If one wants to stop HSR for the sake of legacy industry, that’s pennywise and pound foolish. Finding new industry sites isn’t hard. Tesla found the old NUMI plant, Gilroy’s got the old Indian Motorcycle facility. The State is full of abandoned industrial sites. We’re losing manufacturing in the US.
The issue is how the city can help with relocation if there are any impacts. I don’t trivialize the planning, I do question the issue of scare opportunity to relocated in a deep recession with manufacturing or retail.
As for my City, we have more time thanks to a lawsuit but we’re preparing and lining up money and civic support.
In a context, Nadia’s Palo Alto figured how to approve 5B in Stanford Hospital Expansion. The ARRA HSR budget is less than 5B.
datacruncher Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 7:53 pm
Who said they were trying to stop it for legacy industry? And every industrial real estate market is different. South Bay industrial sites are running about 12% vacancy right now in an area with lots of industrial buildings. Fresno is running about 8% vacant industrial in a smaller market with fewer industrial buildings (available or not).
That vacancy rate also doesn’t consider the requirements of different industrial businesses (some might need freight rail access, building sizes needed, current condition of potential buildings, etc) as well as processing of remodeling permits & plans/licenses/etc. for several hundred businesses in a short time frame with a firm deadline.
In context, Stanford worked with Palo Alto for something like 4 years on the expansion before the city approved the project? It didn’t just happen overnight. There were nearly 100 public hearings, development agreement negotiations, etc.
I don’t believe Fresno is trying to throw up roadblocks, but they are first city up and there are lots of details that have to be accomplished in a short time. Anyone who has planned a large event (like a fundraiser, wedding, etc) knows preparation details can cause stress until the event is over. But in the end it usually all comes together well. Expressing concerns about the details and stresses doesn’t mean someone is trying to stop things.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 2:44 pm
How many more years does Gilroy have to get ready? Shovels hit the ground next year in Fresno but Gilroy has years to work out details.
They’ve had three since the Proposition passed. And almost ten before that. How much more time do they need?
datacruncher Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 7:56 pm
You mean back years ago before the program level study when they were being told the ROW might run east of the city, west of the city or thru downtown?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 8:04 pm
Yes. They’d be prepared to say “we like this option best. If you use that other option you will find these fatal flaws. If can’t have our preferred option this one would be next best” It’s too bad they sat around with their collective thumbs up their noses for the past three years.
StevieB Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:17 pm
During the Fresno city council meeting a council member notes the need for help processing relocation and a growth plan for the area west of highway 99. Staff will be tasked with addressing these concerns. It is not a case of planning being too hard but one of not already done. There are months for Fresno to prepare. Nadia is correct that plans are not ready today but there is plenty of time.
Jonathan Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 5:36 pm
So… businesses which are in an established, long-established location and have to move, have to pay more, much more, rent.
Sounds lto me ike Naida doesn’t like the reality of Prop 13.
*Rational* people would blame downsides of Prop 13 on Prop 13, not HSR.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Proposition 13 has very little to do with it. What matters is that some locations cost more to rent than others. As people in the real estate business say, real estate values (and by derivation rental values) are based on “location, location, location.” That was true before Proposition 13 was enacted. And it is still true.
In fact, a tenant moving to a new location where the property has not changed hands in a long time may end up with lower rent than if he moves to a location that has changed hands recently and therefore been reassessed to a higher tax value.
As for reassessments on change in ownership when a property owner has been displaced due to the exercise of eminent domain, see Revenue and Taxation Code section 68, which begins as follows:
“68. For purposes of Section 2 of Article XIII A of the Constitution, the term “change in ownership” shall not include the acquisition of real property as a replacement for comparable property if the person acquiring the real property has been displaced from property in this state by eminent domain proceedings, by acquisition by a public entity, or by governmental action which has resulted in a judgment of inverse condemnation.”
The section then provides a formula for calculating “the adjusted base year value of the property acquired.”
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Great point, but it’s still the case that property owners next to each other pay vastly different tax rates depending on when they bought in. And the disparity in tax is so large it can affect rental rates.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 6:40 pm
Yes, but that is true everywhere, including in areas where eminent domain would be used and not just in areas to which people might relocate.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 6:16 pm
If the business is paying rent they aren’t paying property taxes… they are paying rent. Their landlord is paying property taxes. He would be the one eligible to move the assessment to a different property.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 6:39 pm
That would not be relevant to this discussion unless landlords and tenants moved in tandem to new locations purchased by the landlords and rented by the same tenants.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 7:05 pm
People who pay rent don’t pay property taxes.
Any discussion of property taxes is irrelevant if the business went under because they couldn’t afford the rent.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 7:56 pm
I think there is a misunderstanding here. Property taxes are part of the landlord’s cost of doing business, so they get passed on to the tenants.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Yes they do. Two identical buildings next to each other, one with a 40 year old assessment and one with a new assessment because the person who owned as personal property died and the family decided to sell it, won’t be able to demand higher rents. It means that the building with the 40 year old assessment makes more profit.
StevieB Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
Californians are not willing to make changes to Prop 13 to fix the commercial property loophole according to the latest Field Poll.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
@StevieB: When you say “loophole,” are you maybe talking about corporation-owned real estate?
Jonathan Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Ric Rong wrote:
“In fact, a tenant moving to a new location where the property has not changed hands in a long time may end up with lower rent than if he moves to a location that has changed hands recently and therefore been reassessed to a higher tax value.”
Exactly. Long-established businesses which have been in the same rented premises for many years, have very likely NOT had the premises change hands under them. That’s how you get lower-than market rental, lower than next door. Businesses in places with lower-than-market rent don’t move, because their rent IS below market.
Adirondacker; You’re flat-out wrong. Businesses with lower-than-market rent are (wait for it) LOWER than market rent. Your hypothetical commercial property sold by the inheriting family gets bought and rented out at (wait for it) MARKET rents. Thy buyer doesn’t NEED to “demand higher rent”.; the buyer just rents out at market rate.
Nadia’s argument s basically that HSR is Bad and Evil, because it forces businesses which are paying one-half or one-third or one-quarter of current market rental, to move. Here’s Nadia’s quote from the report again”
“The pervasive comment among the majority of business owners interviewed in California is that the skyrocketing real estate industry does not allow an established business the opportunity for a successful relocation without huge financial implications. Rents are reported to double, triple and sometimes quadruple when a business is forced to move.”
See? These businesses which are forced to move, were paying one-half, one-third, or one-quarter of *current* market rental rates.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Then the family gets less for the property. The tenant doesn’t care if your property tax bill is high and your mortgage is low or non existent. Doesn’t care if the property tax bill is low and the mortgage is high. All the tenant cares about is the rent.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Jonathon, you seem to be assuming that the rents in any building that hasn’t changed hands and where the property taxes have therefore remained comparatively low will consequently be “below market.” That is not necessarily true. A landlord whose property tax is lower than his neighbor’s property will still have an incentive to charge the same rents as his neighbor does, although he can offer somewhat lower and therefore more competitive rates than his neighbor because he has more of a cushion. If he charges lower rents for long time tenants he is probably taking into account the tenants’ history of paying on time and so forth. Stability of that type is also worth something.
My point is that one should not assume that rents in a building whose assessed value has been kept comparatively low because it has not changed ownership in a long time will be significantly below “market rates.” In fact, the ability of the owner of such a building to make a profit while charging lower rents in itself affects the market.
But the market has to be considered in the context of location. There is no indication that properties in one general location have changed hands more or less often than in another, so the net impact on the rental market is probably the same. What makes the big difference in the rental market and in prevailing rents is location.
It’s interesting that Rosenberg cites the $98B figure without qualification, but then he slices and dices the jobs numbers.
Tony d. Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 9:49 am
Need to be careful when reading Rosenberg articles. Again, he’s not only anti-HSR but (like Morris, Elizabeth, Syno) is anti rail through PAMPA period! He’s the official megaphone of the wealthy NIMBY contingent. Hence him ignoring cost numbers but totally scrutinizing jobs numbers.
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 10:23 am
@ Tony d.
Forget about the Peninsula. Ring the Bay is already in the works. The die was cast with BART to SFO over the TBT tunnel and BART from Fremont to San Jose. Neither the CHSRA nor Caltrain nor your celebrated ritchy NIMBY’S stand against a chance against the Evil Empire. To even try to slow down Manifest Destiny at this point you would have to dismantle MTC and put Heminger, Kopp, Wunderman, the bosses of Amalgamated and a whole host of others under house arrest. Obviously aint gonna happen in this or any other parallel universe.
Take it to the bank that BART and its toadies are hard at work trying to lay their hands on any and all hsr funds that fall off the truck.
Happy Xmas
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:24 am
The People’s Republic of BART already has it’s plan, I think. However, I don’t think it’s all that malicious.
Instead what the PAMPA types don’t seem to get is that outside of SF, there’s a big mismatch as to the urban plans of cities and what the transit agencies do. For example, VTA has this huge trolley system in San Jose and in Oakland there’s none. Stanford, Facebook et al. continue to add jobs but have no way to get people there on anything but CalTrain or the GoogleBus which only serve high rent areas to begin with, thus worsening congestion from the poor S.O.B in Tracy who has to gun it down the Sunol grade and over the Dumbarton to keep his modular house.
I think BART has done a lot of good so far in Alameda and Contra Costa counties and even SF. And it’s even helped Marin indirectly. The problem is, for now at least, the majority of California’s GDP is in Mountain View, not Bayview. No system is going to work perfectly and until Apple ditches their suburban headquarters for the other SP building and Safeway moves to the Metreon and puts the focus back on moving workers efficiently through sufficient capacity.
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:54 am
Earth to hsr foamers: San Jose in its own mind is now literally the center of the Bay Area. So the Silicon Valley gauleiters and wunderkinder have no problem whatsoever with hsr terminating at Iconic-Galactic. If you want hsr to serve the central Bay Area it is necessary to dump Pacheco right now and start chanting Altamont. I know this is a hard change of tack for the cheerleaders but if you don’t the Kopp-Diridon pack are playing you for suckers.
As to BART on Geary pardon me while I go chew the carpet. Please no ****ing broad gauge mutant of the B line. If Muni weren’t so screwed standard gauge ocs light rail would already be on its way on Geary. Instead they let Rose(where’s her degree in the qualified area?)Pak kill the obvious mezzanine level crossing at 3rd & Kearny for a deep tunnel under BART and Muni, which the “experts” for years claimed was impossible, or at the least, highly unwise. If a deep tunnel under Market were undertaken it should have been for the B-38 to connect to the TBT.
The blackout at Candlestick was more than an embarrassment; it was prophetic.
Tony d. Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:15 pm
You’re such an idiot! I’ve already come to my senses regarding regional rail and an Altamont commuter connection tion. Yet you still want to try and put down San Jose and Silicon Valley?! Anyone with a sense of intelligence knows that any Altamont commuter rail needs to connect to the largest city in NorCal and the economic engine of the 21st Century. I know you don’t want to hear this, but Caltrain will also need an upgrade on the peninsula. Its not going anywhere! Sorry PAMPA!
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Synonymouse’s peyote must have been strong this morning… he didn’t even address my points.
I don’t follow you, though.
Already you can take ACE from Stockton to San Jose through the Altamont Pass.
The gambit, I suspect, is that BART and the MTC want to reroute ACE to Modesto and Merced buy using new track that bypasses Stockton. They want to accomplish this before Pacheco is done because they want passengers to feed onto BART and BART alone. Diridon, Livermore, Tracy… it doesn’t matter. And oh yeah, they also want BART to reach Stockton.
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Kudos to Mr. Lubic, who came up with right analogy for BART. Don’t sell it short with Stockton ambitions – it really wants to be the Sacramento Northern. It will bring the glories of broad gauge civilization to the great unwashed and underprivileged of Chico.
t.s. about no toilets – I guess the cars would be smelling like Market Street on a hot day.
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:02 pm
It is sorry for PAMPA as they lose Caltrain no matter what. For all intents and purposes MTC is BART’s creature. Caltrain is dead train rolling. Its same enemies from 1991 are out to finish the job.
PAMPA’s challenge will be to come up with the extra monies for a subway. The rest get stuck with stilts.
Jonathan Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 5:55 pm
@synonymouse:
Silicon Valley “Gauleiters”? You have *no clue* what oppression or Totalitarianism is.
You are insane. *Plonk*.
Jon Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:31 am
If BART were smart their next project would be something like this, but modified to use the Caltrain ROW where there’s space for four tracks rather than Third St, and to tie in with the existing BART line at San Bruno. Everyone wants rail under Geary so this would get plenty of support. Caltrain would close their stations between Millbrae and 4th & King (which have low ridership anyway) and just run express between those stations.
This would set BART up nicely for ring-the-bay when HSR finally get round to rebuilding the corridor in 10+ years time. The main argument against ring-the-bay is, and will be, that forcing everyone enter SF via Daly City would be much slower than using the Bayshore cut-off.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Oh hell no.
Geary is SF’s problem, and SF’s problem alone.
Muni’s job is connect neighborhoods.
BART’s job is to connect cities.
HSR’s job is to connect regions.
The main issue with BART is that it has no ability to run expresses and that puts it at a disadvantage as far as ridership goes. But that’s not a reason to add track under Geary… instead it’s a reason to add track under Oakland….
Alon Levy Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:42 pm
Ew. What you’re saying is that transit planning should be based on where city boundaries were drawn a hundred years ago, rather than on travel patterns and service needs. Separate jurisdictions call for cooperation in planning, not for separate agencies with separate turfs.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Geography is destiny.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:32 pm
If Paris could get over itself and build frequent rapid cross-city transit connecting to all its shitty suburbs, San Francisco and Oakland can get over themselves and build a shared rapid transit line.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:58 pm
They don’t already?
Andre Peretti Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 5:29 am
“If Paris could get over itself…”
It’s very complicated, but it works.
The RER network is jointly operated by RATP (inner Paris transit) and regional agencies. When a train reaches an administrative boundary, a different driver/conductor team takes over. The different teams belong to different unions, have different salary scales and different pension and health benefits. All attempts at creating a one-team system have been defeated by unions.
RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens) is an autonomous entity with international branches while regional agencies are dependant on local politics, which is a source of conflicts.
If such a disparate system could be made to work seamlessly in France, why not in California?
swing hanger Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 10:32 am
Tokyo has had integrated public transport since the 1960′s, with interline running. An example is the Tokyo Metro Hanzomon Line, which also hosts trains from the Tokyu Den-en Toshi Line and Tobu Isezaki Lines. When a train enters a different line, like the RER, crews change, but it’s done quickly and with a minimum of fuss. The longest interline run, from Chuo Rinkan to Minami Kurihashi, is 98.5km, and connects the suburbs of Kanagawa Prefecture with those of Saitama Prefecture. It would be akin to riding one one train from Saratoga in Santa Clara County and via San Francisco, getting off in Concord.
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:56 pm
The Northbay has a vested interest in the Geary corridor as this has always been one of the two feasible entrees into the City. And the Rose Pak Memorial Central Subway makes that route less desirable as, theoretically, it would tunnel far to the north at Fishermans Wharf and the botched platforms limit its capacity. A 3rd & Kearny route could have cut under the Broadway Tunnel thence to a deep tube to Fillmore and Lombard and then on to the new Doyle Drive to the Bridge.
So it would be wise planning for the revived B to incorporate capacity for a light rail connection to SMART. A connecting tunnel under Pacific Heights from the Cathedral Hill area to the Presidio would be a possibility.
Jon Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Muni’s job is connect neighborhoods.
BART’s job is to connect cities.
Nope. Think technology, not agency.
Bus/streetcar (mixed traffic flow, stop spacing ~0.25km) is good for low capacity, short distances (e.g. downtown/neighborhood connectors.)
BRT/LRT (semi-exclusive ROW, stop spacing ~0.5km) gives more capacity for medium distances (e.g. major transit corridors with a city.)
Metro rail (exclusive ROW, stop spacing ~1km) gives higher capacity for longer distances (e.g. rapid transit from the suburbs into downtown.)
Regional rail (exclusive ROW, stop spacing very roughly every 5-10km) is good for longer distance intercity connectivity (e.g. one metro area to another with stops in suburban and exurban locations.)
Long distance (high-speed?) rail (exclusive ROW, stop spacing very roughly every 40-100km) is good for longer distance intercity connectivity (e.g. one region to another, with stops in various metro areas.)
Now, the problem with Bay Area transit is that we have buses doing the job that should be done by metro rail (Geary) or LRT/BRT (Van Ness, Mission). Also we have streetcars doing the job of LRT (Market, Judah, Taraval, Ocean)
And we also have metro rail doing the job of regional rail (BART to San Jose, BART to Livermore, BART to Antioch…) and regional rail doing the job of metro rail (Caltrain Local.) And long distance rail practically doesn’t exist.
Point is, you need to chose the technology choice appropriate for the distance. Doesn’t matter if the train says BART or Muni or Caltrain on the side of it. Realistically, Muni will never be able to come up with the money for a subway all the way down Geary, the best they could ever manage is LRT. So a subway under Geary would have to be BART.
The confusion over technology choices is compounded by the fact that Bay Area is so sprawly and multipolar that it often needs different technology choices on the same corridor. Downtown SF to SFO would be a great metro rail line, but it also needs to be part of the SF- SJ regional rail corridor, and the SF – LA long distance rail corridor. So you have to balance all three needs. (I don’t actually want BART to ring the bay, I was just playing devils advocate above.)
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:57 pm
A tunnel all the way out Geary would turn the Richmond into a high-rise slum.
Jon Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Yeah, because exactly that happened to Berkeley when they got a BART tunnel…
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:37 pm
Berkeley has already been a slum for decades.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Real estate agents being the wily devils they are have these things called multiple listing services.
They’ve also discovered the Internet where they put those wily listings in neatly formatted search-able databases. They note things like price per square foot. Berkeley may be filled with people you find unpleasant but it’s not a slum.
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:57 pm
I’ll grant you this: you could plant Berkeley with TransAmerica shafts all over the place and it would be about the burnt-out same. Maybe that’s why they haven’t.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Like the one that Second Ave will turn into when they finish the Second Ave Subway?
Jon Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Another way to look at the problem is this. SF has the tax base of 800,000, but the transit needs of several times that population due to it being one of the major job and entertainment centers of the Bay Area. SF transit is a regional problem.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:49 pm
You got it kind of backward there. The tax base of most California cities after Prop 13 has nothing to do with it’s population and everything to do with land use. It’s how you have fiefdoms like Piedmont, Vernon, Newport Beach, East Palo Alto, El Segundo, et al.
Cities have no motivation to cooperate because there’s a natural tragedy of the commons. If you don’t build it, someone else will. And as jurisdictions become pigeonholed, the rich get richer and the poorer get poorer.
Your comment on technology though is exactly the point I was trying to make:
It’s San Francisco’s job to design streetcar systems and local area streets to help mobility at the neighborhood level. If you want to get from Golden Gate Park to Fisherman’s Wharf, you shouldn’t need to take BART.
The whole “genius” of postwar urban mass transit systems (MARTA, DC Metro, BART) is that because they are grade separated, they protect a city’s ability to best determine traffic flow. Arlington, Bethesda, and even places like Lafayette have demonstrated the benefits, even if SF, DC, and LA can’t.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 7:20 am
You’re still punting on why. For many trips within Paris, the best option is the RER, or a combination of the RER and the Metro (which are in a fare union: while you need to pass through faregates, there is no additional charge for transfers).
The supposed genius of postwar American subways is that they replicate S-Bahn features but at far higher cost because of the unwillingness to leverage legacy infrastructure. Philadelphia had the better idea with its SEPTA Regional Rail upgrades, but those were subsequently abandoned due to old-time railroaders’ intransigence. The reason Washington looks like a giant compared with Atlanta and the Bay Area is that from the start Metro was useful for neighborhood-to-neighborhood trips within Washington.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 5:20 pm
Washington, however, has retained many of its core employment centers downtown because of the U.S. Government. Not paying property tax is a great way to assure your jobs centers stay aligned with your transit system.
The Bay Area, however, can’t build a Beltway. Thus, the risk of what has happened in DC and Atlanta is minimal. But your point about legacy system’s right…hence the reason DC is trying to build a streetcar….
joe Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 6:05 pm
METRO stations, most but not all, are point to point and allow for walking between destinations.
BART is a colonial transit system designed to bring workers into SF. The stations outside the city are parking lots for commuters.
METRO stops are useful for moving around the DC area without a cab. The outlying MATRO stations are too often BART park and ride stations. Useless.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 7:10 am
What Joe said. The Washington Metro has three core lines in the urban core, which is normal for a subway of this size and high for an S-Bahn. (The Munich S-Bahn has only one line, albeit with better neighborhood coverage than BART). BART has one; it’s basically a shuttle for suburban drivers rather than urban public transit.
Also, I really don’t get why people attribute Metro’s relative success to the federal government. High property values and property taxes ensure the land is allocated to the highest-value use, and that’s invariably office towers. If anything, the formation of a CBD in Washington is hampered by downtown height restrictions.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:21 pm
I think you somewhat misunderstand regional rail. The job of S-Bahn systems is not to connect different cities (unless you’re in the severely polycentric Ruhr region). It’s to connect the city core to outlying areas, the same as a metro system. The stop spacing is the same as you’d expect from a metro system connecting the same geographies – fairly short in the city center, 1 km or so, but sparser in the suburbs, where density is lower.
The main distinction is that regional rail runs on the legacy mainline network and is compatible with its standards, in order to allow leveraging legacy commuter lines for cheap. For example, iIf BART tried to imitate German or Japanese regional rail, it would veer from Market Street to the Caltrain line at or not too far south of 4th and King, and run on an electrified Caltrain to San Jose. And in New York, before the route of the first subway was finalized, there were plans to instead use electrified rail to connect the LIRR at Flatbush Terminal to the NYC at Grand Central.
Another use of regional rail is that if the subway is built to be incompatible with mainline rail or has too tight stop spacing, then it allows taking over suburban lines and giving them better urban service.
So Caltrain local isn’t doing the job of metro rail or anything like that. It’s doing the job of regional rail, and it would do it well if it ran frequent EMUs with a predictable local service pattern. BART too is doing the job of regional rail, but is hobbled by park-and-ride hell and the construction costs of a full subway; if anything, it would function better if it acted like a metro in San Francisco and Oakland, which is what the Geary BART concept aims at.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:56 pm
And in New York, before the route of the first subway was finalized, there were plans to instead use electrified rail to connect the LIRR at Flatbush Terminal to the NYC at Grand Central.
I’d have to go rummaging around on nycsubway.org or PRRHS.org to find a reference. Long Island Railroad used the Nassau Loop for a while. They’d have the same problem back then they they have today with underrunning shoes and overruning shoes. There were great plans back then for a Union Station in the 50s and Ninth Ave….
Alon Levy Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 5:39 am
Pretty sure that those plans predate the electrification of the LIRR and NYC. Presumably if they’d been realized the NYC would’ve imposed its own electrification system on the LIRR.
Jon Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Commuter rail does indeed vary from being shorter distance, shorter stop spacing (closer to a metro line) to being longer distance, longer stop spacing regional rail. The problem with Caltrain Local is that it has a short stop spacing for too long a distance. This itself wouldn’t be a problem if the Baby Bullet ran all times rather than just at peak.
For example, from London Euston you can get to Watford Junction by short-stop commuter rail (London Overground – 18 stops – terminates at Watford Junction), long-stop regional rail (London Midland – 2 stops – terminates at Birmingham) or long-distance rail (Virgin Trains – 1 stop – terminates at Glasgow.) Metro rail also uses the corridor but only does as far as Harrow & Wealdston (Bakerloo Line.) That’s probably overkill for SF Downtown – SFO, but that’s the idea.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:34 pm
From Penn Station in New York you can get to Trenton on the Trenton local. Or you can take the Trenton Express. Amtrak has the Keystones and Regionals serving Trenton with less stops. Or there’s Acels with even less stops. :-)
Jon Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:50 pm
…then you get my point, which is that often a corridor needs multiple stopping patterns, because it is hosting travel over different differences for different people. This is why both BART and Caltrain Local fail to provide good connections from SF to San Jose. (If I need to to San Jose at the weekend it’s usually quicker and easier for me to take BART to Fremont and then the 181 VTA bus. Caltrain Local really does suck that badly.)
Jon Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 3:52 pm
I should say, BART will suck for getting to San Jose once it goes there, but it still wont suck as bad as Caltrain Local. Expect to see them lose most of their weekend/off peak ridership when that happens.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 4:03 pm
Yes Jon, precisely.
BART’s not perfect. But it is going to serve more people and be more effective than CalTrain when we get Ring the Bay. The lack of express trains is the key missing difference.
Peter Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 4:07 pm
@ Tom
No. Caltrain locals may suck, but Caltrain also has excellent express trains. Which BART has never had, and likely never will have. BART would never offer anything close to the quality of service that Caltrain already offers.
Jon Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Caltrain express trains are reasonable (though they still should be doing that distance in less than 60 mins) but they never run when anyone who doesn’t work strictly 9-5 needs them. One local train per hour off-peak is utterly pathetic. If BART ring-the bay happens, it will be a service improvement for me, even though it’s nowhere near as good as what an properly run Caltrain service could do.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 8:41 am
It depends on city size. I’m not as sure about the details of London’s National Rail lines, though I’ll note that the only express services you cite are intercity. But here is how things work in the cities with the most metro-like commuter rail systems:
In Paris, RER trains are more or less local. There are some trains skipping stops, but in RATP territory, trains will just skip one stop here and there, rather than running truly limited-stop. In SNCF territory there are some express trains. In addition, the Transilien trains run on legacy routes even in the city, and run express outside it; often they’ll make just 1 or 2 stops between Paris and the terminus of the parallel RER line.
In Berlin, the S-Bahn lines run local. As in Paris, there are regional lines that are separate from the metro-like S-Bahn, and those make fewer stops in the urban core.
In Tokyo, there are local trains and rapid trains. Local trains make all stops. Rapid trains come in several flavors – they only stop at select stations, but sometimes there are several levels of rapid trains (all on the same tracks). The busiest lines have a track pair dedicated to local trains, and a track pair dedicated to express trains, and then there are usually two consistent express patterns, one more express than the other. The local trains (Yamanote, Keihin-Tohoku, Chuo-Sobu) run on dedicated tracks and are very metro-y in their lack of branching, and the rapid trains run on separate lines and look more legacy, just without the brand separation of France and Germany. In addition, there’s less separation of infrastructure.
For example, the Chuo-Sobu Line has local trains running to Mitaka, and the Chuo Rapid Line has trains making limited stops to Mitaka and local stops farther west as well as trains making limited stops all the way, with timed overtakes at the express stations; the express trains’ stopping pattern is consistent. The local Chuo Rapid trains make 20 stops over 53 km, the express trains make 13.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:37 am
It depends on city size.
Yes. Keep that in mind when you are redesigning NYC. Brooklyn Queens and Nassau are half the size of Metro Paris. Bronx and it’s northern suburbs are half the size of Metro Paris. Northern New Jersey is half the size of Metro Paris. They have Manhattan in the middle. Or keep it in mind when the foamers go and on and on about running trains from Suffern to Port Chester.
In Paris, RER trains are more or less local.
Depends on you point of view. When I look at RATP maps they seem to be taking the place of NYC express subway trains. M and R are Metro, E and F are RER and LIRR between Jamaica and Penn Station is Transilien.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 10:41 am
You’re right that the express trains in New York (and the lines in London) are somewhat of an RER substitute, but they lack the integration with suburban transit. The only one that really goes as far out as even one of the shorter RER lines is the A to the Rockaways, and then it’s too slow in Brooklyn to provide good service to Manhattan. They lack the natural branching structure that lets trains that run half-hourly in the suburbs combine to form frequent trunk lines in the city. They also have very tight stop spacing when they run local, including the A to the Rockaways again and also the 2 to Wakefield.
The issue with city size is that the larger the network, the more complex the service pattern can be. If there’s not enough ridership to support frequent service on every branch, then a simple service pattern becomes more important. It’s not an issue on the New York City Subway or on the Tokyo rail network, but is a big problem for Caltrain – or, for that matter, for a network with ten times the traffic of Caltrain.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 11:38 am
Why do they have to be integrated with the suburban network? ( And the LIRR does a decent job of it with Jamaica and Woodside. Penn Station in Newark is pointed to as example of integration ) Do People in Gibson really need access to the Pathmark in St. Albans when there’s a Shop Rite in town? New Haven line goes to Penn Station someday it probably makes sense to extend the 6 from Pelham Bay Park to that station. I’m sure there’s lots of people along the 6 who would like easier access to Co-Op City and peole in Co-Op city who would like easier access to things along the 6. Is there going to be enough demand to extend the 6 all the way to New Rochelle, no.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 3:40 pm
The entire point of integration is that there’s no need to construct a new line from Pelham Bay Park to New Rochelle – all that would be required would be to extend the 6 to the junction and then run trains through. But that would require the subway and the mainline network to be compatible, which they are only in Japan and South Korea. Germany and France have had to build new cross-city tunnels to have equivalent service.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 4:16 pm
This is the 6 not the shuttle to Rockaway Park. The schedule for the 6 at the peak of rush hour is
“Every 3 to 6 minutes from Pelham Bay Park and every …. ”
Run it to New Rochelle and it will get some traffic from Co-Op City. They should have done that while they were planning Co Op City. How many people in New Rochelle want to get to Westchester Square? The people in Stamford, both them, who want to get to Westchester Square can change at Co Op City.
synonymouse Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:42 pm
@ Alon
The route you describe for BART(veering to the Caltrain alignment)is precisely why the SP via its friends at Bechtel decreed BART be built to broad gauge. Remember SP used to own it.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 5:40 pm
However, in hindsight, the decision to use non-compatible broad gauge may turn out to be a boon for urban planning. After reading Earl Swift’s “The Big Roads” you get a feeling that sprawl really happened because freight and passenger car traffic used the same infrastructure. SP’s gambit to make freight and passenger traffic incompatible limits the ability of sprawl to piggy back on existing infrastructure that is otherwise not part of the general plan.
synonymouse Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 10:46 am
All things considered, it was a horrible gaffe, ranking up there with the failed Mars lander due to a failure to convert from imperial measurements. Just a few ****ing centimeters/inches.
If we had standard gauge BART it would be possible to use its alignments, especially in the more fringe, low ridership, routes for dual purpose BART/hsr.
synonymouse Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 1:22 am
BART’s job is to plunder loot from other transit projects. Which it does better than anybody, thank you.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 10:41 am
If I understand all this correctly, the $98 billion figure is the CHSRA’s current projection.
As for the job numbers, the problem was the confusion between actual jobs and “job years.” Since a member of the Authority, Dan Richard, is quoted as saying, “It’s absolutely fair that we should be more disciplined about that going forward,” it seems that he is acknowledging some sloppiness (to put it in the most benign light) in how the job numbers were presented.
You can challenge Rosenberg’s motivation and the things he says, but I don’t thing there is any basis to support the implication in your statement that somehow he is being inconsistent in terms of the $98B figure as opposed to the jobs numbers.
aw Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 10:44 am
Those are inflated dollar-years.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 10:51 am
Are you saying that the article misstates the CHSRA’s projections as to cost? If so, in what way?
aw Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:05 am
Actually I said it badly. He could have expressed the cost in constant dollar years, then divided by the length of the project. That yields a much smaller number, as does taking the total job-years and dividing by the length of the project.
BTW, saying that the number of permament jobs working on the railroad is smaller is a good thing. You wouldn’t want unnecessarily increased operational costs.
joe Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 10:59 am
Rosenberg doesn’t cover HSR favorably and isn’t that bright. I attribute the use of the 98B figure as being not that bright. It’s hard to keep track of apples and oranges.
I think his coverage of side effect jobs, the multipler effect, is intentionally poor and relies on he said / she said rather than accept the job and tax growth is grounded in sound economics.
Krugman in 2099 for example:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/bang-for-the-buck-wonkish/
I do not expect Rosenberg will whine about a tax cut (.75) creating debt but he sure does hammer about HSR’s 98B cost while making no attempt to balance that cost with the revenue it will produce.
Finally, Rosenberg is at his worse when he quotes the LAO’s complant that building the HSR ROW will eliminate Kings County jobs. This minor economic loss is obviously offset by the economic gains of having a HSR station in Kings County. Plus, the trivial amount of impact to dairy producers will save the government in milk price support and ag subsidies. Yes, those AG jobs require subsidized tax dollars.
The AP has also picked up on this story
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/12/22/state/n134113S62.DTL&type=business
So now local bloggers, start ragging on the AP also.
Peter Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Umm, Morris, the AP picks up anything written by an affiliate paper (like the Mercury News) that any other paper (such as the Chronicle) may be interested in. It doesn’t mean anything, really.
morris brown Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 3:09 am
@Peter
“Doesn’t mean anything.”
Only that it gets picked up by print and electronic media everywhere. This story has really had wings.. its has been very widely distributed.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Morris wants a rag on AP, I’ll give him one, and it applies to news services in general:
The news media tends to be pretty damned ignorant of a lot of things, rail in particular. I recall, back in the late 1960s or early 1970s, when there was a freight derailment in my home city of Wheeling, W.Va. It occurred at low speed, but did involve some cars that rolled over, and blocked a major street at a grade crossing for three days. At that time, there had been a number of rail incidents involving tank cars loaded with hazardous materials, and Penn Central was notorious for derailments caused by poor track at the time.
In the case of this incident in Wheeling, the local paper had a photograph of a “tank car” laying on its side, and took note that it was “fortunate” that this “tank car” was empty. There was just one problem–despite the car having curved sides, it wasn’t a tank car, but a covered hopper car. Its large bottom outlets were facing right at the photographer!
Covered hopper for grain service; note the large outlets in the bottom:
http://railfanning.org/graphics/hopper_covered.jpg
Tank car, in this case for bulk corn syrup service; not quite like the covered hopper above:
http://www.krunk.org/~joeshaw/pics/pvt-tank/crgx/crgx6556.jpg
Experts in the tank car field can tell you those cars can be quite specialized. Some are for liquids that don’t require heating, others require an insulating jacket, some are equipped for heating to unload their cargo, some require special linings to handle corrosive loads, some (such as for handling lubricants) are smaller than normal but weigh as much as larger cars because of dense loads, and others are “pressure cars” for handling assorted gasses–but none look like a covered hopper.
There have been plenty of other things. Electric GG-1 locomotives, about to be retired to museums, “chugged” into stations. Steam locomotives that were oil fired (and in some cases were built that way, such as the Santa Fe’s 2900s) were “converted to Diesel.” A motorman on a transit line in Chicago “steered” (!) his train into a rear-end collision (I don’t know which was more embarrassing–the collision on the transit line, or the goofy story). The !!@#$%&!!! paper where I live now had a story about a derailment on a local shortline railroad. This involved an “express cargo” train, and fortunately the “engine cars” didn’t derail. Ha! This was on a railroad that had a speed restriction on that line of 10 mph and hasn’t had passenger service in almost 60 years! (Ironically, the line has since been rebuilding its ancient track, and there has been some talk about reinstating passenger service on the line for commuters.)
When Barrack Obama made the trip by train to Washington for his inaugural, he rode in a “caboose.” That “caboose,” Georgia 300, is about the longest, heaviest, and most luxurious “caboose” you’ll ever see:
http://www.flickriver.com/search/georgia+300+rail+car/
Now, I can rag about this because I happen to know a little bit about railroads. You want to know what worries me? What do I read about, or hear about, or other people watch or read or hear about, that’s wrong due to lack of knowledge on the part of the reporter (who is fighting deadlines, managers, etc.)–and we don’t know it’s wrong because we don’t have the background ourselves?
Do you ever worry about such things?
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 10:59 pm
http://sendables.jibjab.com/originals/what_we_call_the_news
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 11:43 pm
In a related subject, how much should we worry about things we do know about but don’t get reported at all, such as what does appear to be a peak oil problem? Or about large numbers of older drivers who are unsafe to themselves and those around them (and who tie up the road system with their slow driving)?
We hear and see little if anything on those subjects, but plenty on celebrity marriages and divorces, celebrities without pants, sports people without pants. . .
Neville Snark Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 2:12 am
Definitely! It just one case of the paradox of (US-style) democracy: More or less, the ideal is to have granny in charge of everything, including things that, bless her, she has no chance of understanding, such as issues of taxation, the law, science funding, etc., and trains. And in the case of trains, she thinks she understands – it isn’t like the hadron collider, she thinks there just choo-choos, nothing to understand. Dare I say it, parliamentary-style is better in this respect, there is a bit more insulation of the government from popular opinion. Maybe Plato’s idea of a dictatorship of philosophers isn’t quite the thing, but the truth about US-style democracy is coming out: it must change – not a lot – or Synonymouse’ nightmare might really come true.
I am genuinely surprised by the lack-of-clue in the discussion with Nadia in this thread.
The documents from the CSHRA are quite explicit in stating that some of the upside from HSR will be the land around the stations which gets *rezoned*, redeveloped, and (ta-dah!) gets reassessed at the new market valuation. *Post* HSR-station, if I read the documents aright.
I’m thinking of a CSHRA document with Silt-a-Rail “iconic” (PB-speak for Billions-Wasted) station in Los Angeles, with commercial development encircling the station. Not just TOD, or jobs; but Vastly Increased Property Taxes.
Tom McNamara Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 6:19 pm
Don’t be.
The number of people in the entire world that understand exactly what PB does are numbered in the thousands. Although there are no shortage of smart people here, most of us have spent our lives in only one part of the civil infrastructure universe: planning, technical design, government finance, politics.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:54 pm
I see. PB plans only seem insane because we are all too ignorant to appreciate their genius.
BTW, the only “redevelopment” around stations will be to convert existing parcels into parking garages.
joe Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Gilroy’s funded public envisioning exercises for planning and communicating what future development around the HSR station will be for either the downtown or pepper field location.
The Authority’s formal response to Rosenberg’s article on job creation.
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/12212011_jobs.aspx
China plans further cut to railway spending
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-plans-further-cut-railway-042642818.html
China announces another cut in railway spending amid concerns about debt, bullet train costs
Critics complain authorities have spent too much on high-speed lines, a prestige project for the ruling Communist Party, while failing to invest enough in expanding cheaper, slower routes to serve China’s poor majority.
Donk Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:20 am
What happened in China is basically the equivalent of giving PB a blank check to build a nationwide HSR network.
joe Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:59 am
Krugman thinks China’s got an economic bubble. That explains the financial pull back.
Morris’ comment that slower trains are better suited to serve the poor is another example of Peninsula elitism.
Would anyone suggest the poor are better suited to fly propeller aircraft?
morris brown Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 10:34 am
@joe:
If you had bothered to read the article, you would have seen that this is not a comment from
me… it is a comment taken from the article.
joe Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 1:18 pm
It’s a morris comment on the HSR blog.
No ambiguity. HSR is and benefit to and for lower income residents in CA. I reject CARRD’s attack on the ridership model because CV cities have a lesser socio-economic measures. CV residents are not as affluent as those who live in some of the most expensive zip codes in CA but the HSR system is important for CV residents.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Get real. If you want benefit to lower income residents of California — or pretty much anywhere in the First World — increase unemployment benefits. There is pretty much nothing else that does so much good for so many who benefit so greatly.
HSR is “important” to construction contractors, engineering consultants and rail fans. Otherwise, it’s a “nice to have”, but not at any cost.
Eric M Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 9:08 am
Increase unemployment benifits??? That’s a great idea smart guy. Give out more free money without having someone earn it. Let me guess, you on unemployment and need more money?
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 11:15 am
Your guessing is as good as your macroeconomics.
Eric M Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 1:25 pm
It’s no wonder people in some organizations stopped listening to your opinions grump old man.
Eric M Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
People started taking your opinions with a grain of salt long ago and I am not talking about on this blog or Clems (although, that could be the case too). You think you are always right, but it just speaks volume how isolated you are from reality.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Actually, Eric, what Richard is saying was dogma among movement progressives in 2009, before HSR became a partisan issue to fight over. I distinctly remember complaints about the infrastructure lobby and about the gender implications of spending stimulus money on construction rather than on teachers and social workers. The unifying theme was that the best kind of stimulus was direct cash benefits, and aid to states and local governments.
And for the record, I am the 91% who have a job, but also the 80-99% (your guess is as good as mine) who don’t have perfect job security.
J. Wong Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 8:53 pm
Actually, @Eric M more money for those who will spend it, like those who are currently depending on unemployment, is the best possible stimulus in the short term.
morris brown Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 6:43 pm
@joe
Again Joe, the comment:
Critics complain authorities have spent too much on high-speed lines, a prestige project for the ruling Communist Party, while failing to invest enough in expanding cheaper, slower routes to serve China’s poor majority.”
is not my comment. It is a direct copy from the article. Why don’t you read the article instead of posting crap, attributing a comment to me, which is an outright lie.
Do you have any credibility?
Eric M Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 9:03 am
This coming from one who continually spams anti-HSR articles.
Max Wyss Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 4:16 pm
FWIW, the comment about “China’s poor majority” is a quote from the article, and such statements have been made quite often in the past by Chinese officials. Fact is that the HSR fares are very high, compared to the disposable income of many people. This is also the reason why the “conventional” trains with their lower fares are said to be (still) crammed full.
It also seems that in China, there is no political correctness concerning poor people.
So, the only thing one might say against Morris in this particular comment is that the quote was not that obvious.
Headline:State high-speed rail vows to show real job figures
Buried in the story:A spokesman for Brown did not address the jobs claims but in a two-sentence statement called the newspaper report “hyperbolic” and said it “attempted to create an inaccurate impression.”
“High-speed rail will be a major, much-needed boost for California’s economy,” the statement said.
Union head Jim Earp of the California Alliance for Jobs also blasted the newspaper’s investigation, adding that the project would give paychecks to “thousands” of out-of-work laborers.
morris brown Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 10:39 am
@joe:
The Alliance for Jobs, poured $2 million into advertising at the late stages of the Nov 2008 election and managed to get Prop 1A passed. They could case less about what is being built, how much it costs, whether it is useful or not — their only goal to to start construction on anything.
Jim Earp can shoot off his mouth all he wants; just take any comments he makes in the context of who he is and who he represents.
joe Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 11:47 am
There are clear, positive effects of government stimulus in a economy with 0 interest rates that cannot generate economic recovery. The facts are immutable and indpendent of the messenger.
Secondly, Jim would be negligent if he didn’t advocate for this construction project and he’s 100% right about job creation. That this HSR ARRA money goes to creating good paying jobs is better stimulus than any tax cut. It will produce tax income.
Imagine a project that creates thousands of jobs and the Labor rep sits it out so he can appear unbiased. That’s nuts.
Mr. investigative reporter Rosenberg has not once reported HSR would produce tax revenue that offsets the cost. Not once. Krugman did an exercise that 100B in spending in this economy produces 50B in tax revenue. It’s an inconvenient truth Rosenberg omits. That he’s a member of a Union and still opposing a project that produces union jobs is a travesty.
StevieB Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Jim Earp of California Alliance for Jobs represents more than 2,000 heavy construction companies and 80,000 union construction workers from Kern County to the Oregon border. His comments as well as yours should always be taken in context of agenda.
Tony d. Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 3:31 pm
And this is exactly why Mike Rosenberg is an a$$ Hole when it comes to HSR reporting. I wonder how he’s able to look in the mirror every @#$% night.
CARRD calls them Twinkie Jobs.
I call it bubble thinking.
To an unemployed worker that Twinkie Job is Lembas
I prefer to call them Lembas Jobs http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Lembas
Thoughts on a West Coast NEC.
On another note, I was doing a little research about alignments and whatnot and had an interesting thought. Instead of getting into a fight with the class I’s (UP and BNSF) or creating new corridors in the central valley, has anyone given a serious thought to the Class III tracks? Looking at various state trackage maps, the San Joaquin Valley Railroad (SJVR) California Northern Railroad (CFNR) more or less meander through most of the valley, and combined with the old SP Altamont route (plus Dumbarton bridge), wouldn’t that create a publicly owned rail line all the way to the southern end of the valley; which then could cross the the mountains and merge with publicly owned metrolink tracks. I have no info about the quality of the row (like if the gaps can be filled or how curvy it is) or if the Class III’s would be interested in selling, its just a thought to ponder during the holidays.
You may have answered your own question: “more or less meander.” A meandering right of way seems to conflict with the kind of right of way needed for high speed rail.
YesonHSR Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 10:43 pm
of course not thru GOD’S COUNTRY…PA/Bulingame and MenloPark…
synonymouse Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 10:40 am
GOD’S COUNTRY already belongs to BART, which is no doubt hard at work at this very moment(like Scrooge)working on leeching hsr funds.
Tim Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Maybe I am a bit naive when it comes to NIMBYism, but the ROW through the peninsula is publicly owned and active. Just ram a 4 track mainline network through the area and get over it. Electric trains will be a great improvement over (diesel spewing, horn blaring, kills multiple civilians a year…) current service. Why is everything so difficult in this state.
On another note, it would be astronomically stupid to sever San Francisco from the national rail network, so a blended BART / HSR-only system must be stopped at all costs (I am not a BART hater per say, but frankly wasting anymore money to duplicate existing service really grinds my gears. Oakland and San Francisco need more high capacity subways, not the peninsula).
synonymouse Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 7:47 pm
There won’t be any blend – just Ring the Bay with hsr terminating at Iconic-Galactic.
If you don’t like that it’s Altamont or bust.
Tim Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 2:16 am
Or in a best case, most likely budget-busting alternative, a second transbay tube… but an Altamont crossing is easily the most preferable way to enter from the central valley to the Bay (to say with a straight face that Pacheco makes the most sense and then to purpose an Altamont overlay shows either utter incompetence or politics-as-usual lining the pockets big construction firms).
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 2:21 pm
No new transbay rail tube is going to happen in any of our lifetimes under any circumstance. It’s not worth wasting a minute of your irreplaceable life span even speculating about it.
http://www.cahsrblog.com/2010/06/court-tosses-peninsula-anti-hsr-suit/#comment-79769
http://www.cahsrblog.com/2010/06/michael-lind-tilts-at-windmills-and-bullet-trains/#comment-78544
http://www.cahsrblog.com/2010/08/the-first-high-speed-rail-station-breaks-ground/#comment-83612
http://www.cahsrblog.com/2010/08/why-stopping-hsr-in-san-jose-is-bad-for-the-peninsula/#comment-84489
http://www.cahsrblog.com/2011/08/livermore-bart-battle-a-sign-for-altamont-alignment/#comment-121331
Joey Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
I still think 7th to Mission to Alameda (for regional trains only) is feasible if sub-optomal. Alternately you could build a stub end terminal between Beale and Main and terminate HSR there via Altamont (shaving a bit of time off of SF-LA).
Rick Rong Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Will there ever be a high speed rail station at “Transbay Transit Center”? (Notwithstanding FRA’s investment of $400 Million in TTC.) Is the most anyone could expect a permanent “temporary” station at Fourth and King?
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 9:24 pm
Above my pay grade to say.
But Bay Area history can provide an excellent and multiply precedented guide: it’s hopelessly incompetently designed, unsuited for its nominal purpose, massively expensive and pretty much useless. Therefore it will — it must — happen.
Tim Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 7:53 pm
“No new transbay rail tube is going to happen in any of our lifetimes” ~ Richard
Hey I’m still young… but I digress. Bad choices have most certainly been made in the design of the new rail terminal + the approval of annoying skyscrapers in the way of a future transbay line (maybe even shutting Oakland out of HSR forever); but this does not preclude the need for more capacity for BART. It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter when. Channeling some Synonymouse conspiracy ideas, why won’t BART JUMP at the chance to devour $10 or so billion to enrich the profits of Betchel and Co.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Tim, the SF CBD, and much else, such as most of SoMa, will be well below mean sea level in the not so long term. Constructing a new BART tube for the purpose of delivering extra CBD commuting capacity is likely to be some way down the priority list.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 9:34 pm
Piece of cake. short seawall across the Golden Gate. Turns the Bay into freshwater but that’s what happens when you go and melt Greenland.
Tim Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 10:28 pm
If the sea levels rise that much in the next century or so, I’m pretty sure a place like San Francisco would sea-wall itself in; the real estate is too expensive not to do so.
On another note:
And progress marches on…
“BART planners begin work on new vision for future” from The Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/25/BA1C1M79J1.DTL&tsp=1
BART is an ever evolving monster in the transit planning world… and that’s why I love to read about it (even if I am a lowly armchair transit enthusiast).
Joey Reply:
December 26th, 2011 at 12:35 am
And as usual, they’re pushing forward with low value extensions while ignoring the maintenance and capacity problems which are unfunded and scheduled to hit us hard any day.
Joe Reply:
December 26th, 2011 at 8:13 am
Many parts of SF were below sea level and were filled in to create the current city as we know it.
Tim Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 12:19 am
Any more of a meander than the route to Palmdale… my point is wouldn’t it be easier to purchase impacted rail corridors than to create new stilt-a-rail tracks throughout the central valley. I personally don’t have high hopes for the current plans for high speed rail presented by the authority, but if a publicly owned route could be forged from various rail corridors spread through out the state, maybe an electric locomotive hauled FRA compliant “high speed” rail system could be created (150 mph segments, it will still come into contact with freight and whatnot, thus would be subject to the rules). This all would of course require a new vote on the original bond measure and the class III’s whose routes do go from the tracy-stockton area to Fresno and all the way to Bakersfield (with some holes) to comply (plus a route through Tejon and beyond). Just a thought.
Joey Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 12:34 am
FRA compliance is to be avoided at all costs
Alon Levy Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 7:04 am
What you’re missing is that the cost of acquiring land to create a new ROW are very low. Farmland doesn’t cost much. The main cost is the grade separations and the other civil infrastructure (including viaducts and tunnels), and those are an issue on any existing ROW.
Tim Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
As I said before, I’m not completely sure on the quality of the ROW owned by the various Class III’s and the corridors that are currently abandoned. That said, I recently looked over a couple of reports by Caltrans and the CA DOT on ROW preservation and whatnot, and a reasonably straight shot could be compiled using impacted ROWs that hits the major cities in the Valley (without resorting to an I-5 alignment that bypasses Fresno and Bakersfield). My greater overall question would be if these corridors could be acquired on the cheap, since they are/were active railroads, wouldn’t that ease some of the environmental regulations and NIMBY problems (if one forgets the Peninsula debacle). As for Joey’s comment on FRA compliance, and from reading your Blog Alon, I understand that archaic laws lead to suboptimal performance. But according to my internet rambles, I have seen no signs of the FRA modernizing their regs any time soon. Would it be better to appease them and create a “compatible” higher speed network with technology that could be applied to the other emerging corridors in the United States. I am thinking of the RailJet concept in Austria, faster conventional electric locomotive (~150mph or 240km/h) hauling conventional coaches. It wouldn’t be an out of this world idea to make a new generation of Superliner amtrak coaches with passive tilt (using Talgo or I-can’t-remember-where-I-read-it Kawasaki technology) go over 150 mph. Wouldn’t this then allow them to go anywhere on the national rail network much like the current Acela train sets (which we would NOT want on the west coast). This is of course, all just a thought.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
First, no FRA-compliant solution should be considered. Trying to work with Acela constraints will lead to Acela results. Even the FRA’s own statements as well as history with Caltrain suggest it’ll entertain requests for waivers; CAHSR is large enough a project to obtain such a waiver for the blended plan. The problem with the FRA’s unwillingness to modernize is the implication for smaller agencies.
Second, what you’re missing when you talk about the Class III ROWs is that they are not grade-separated. The FRA’s 125 mph speed limit through grade crossings is actually high (though not uniquely so) by world standards – normally regulatory agencies want grade separations beyond 160 km/h. The issue is not straightness, since carving a new straight ROW through the Central Valley is not expensive. Under the current plan, the deviations from existing ROWs to go around unserved cities are a money saver.
Tim Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 2:09 am
Ok, I’ll buy the idea that a greenfield, grade separated alignment will be potentially cheaper in the end compared to upgrading existing impacted corridors (ignoring I-5, which would definitely be the cheapest but will bypass the cities of the central valley). As for the whole FRA issue, I understand the constraints with working with a hopelessly arcane institution; but as with many federal bureaucracies, I don’t see them giving up their little fiefdom anytime soon. Leveraging our states size and financial backing / bonds and grants lined up, would it be more preferable to combine our efforts with the next generation NEC trains, Midwest HSR trains, Las Vegas trains, (Texas?) etc. and create a standard system that could be applied throughout the state. If this involves a Tier II compatible train or a regulatory change, than so be it; creating orphan technology (or waiver ridden) trains is not a way to bring costs down and expand faster rail access in this country.
Rick Rong Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 10:33 am
Apropos of selecting greenfield alignments as opposed to upgrading existing corridors, see Streets and Highways Code section 2704.09(g):
“(g) In order to reduce impacts on communities and the environment, the alignment for the high-speed train system shall follow existing transportation or utility corridors to the extent feasible and shall be financially viable, as determined by the authority.”
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
December 25th, 2011 at 9:21 pm
That language was inserted expressly to head off organized farm lobby opposition to Prop 1A, and as a side effect placate the dimmer sort of self-described “environmentalist”. It worked.