This time of the year in Sacramento typically finds June 15 looming large as the deadline for passing a state budget on time. This year, however, the Legislature has a second deadline to contend with as well.

Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said Wednesday that he has set July 1 as the deadline for his house to appropriate $2.6 billion in bond funds for the proposed California High-Speed Rail. High-Speed Rail Authority Chairman Dan Richard said this week that July 1 is the date when the authority needs the bonds to be approved in order for it to move forward with the plan.

The high-speed rail project, of course, has been controversial across the state and in the Legislature. If the bond funds are not appropriated, the project would, for all purposes, stop dead in its tracks. Steinberg said he supports appropriating the funds but also wants to impose a schedule for making expenditures that’s conditional on certain benchmarks being met.

Steinberg said his office will be working on that over the next six weeks with an eye towards meeting the deadline on July 1. It remains to be seen whether the appropriation will garner the votes necessary to pass, although its generally thought it will, given that the project enjoys support among Democrats.

Steinberg has clearly heard the message from the Obama Administration that California cannot delay approving spending the HSR money without giving up the $3.5 billion in federal stimulus money for the project it has already been awarded. While some Senate Democrats such as Joe Simitian and Mark DeSaulnier have been trying to get the vote delayed, Steinberg knows that he is not in a position to cross the White House or the California Congressional delegation on this.

July 1 seems like a good date to have this resolved. June 15 is the deadline to pass a budget and with Prop 25 in place, you can bet the Legislature will have it done by then. That gives them 2 weeks to deal with the high speed rail funds, which should be pretty easy given that voters already made this decision for them in 2008.

Of course, we can bet that HSR opponents will be working as hard as they can to stop the project by getting the Legislature to vote against releasing the funds. HSR supporters have six weeks to make sure the Legislature does the right thing for California’s future and votes to start building high speed rail.

The latest plan for building a California bullet train system got a very conditional blessing Tuesday from a “peer review committee” of transportation experts.

Will Kempton, the veteran transportation official who heads the committee, told a Senate hearing that the latest revision is “measurably improved” from previous versions.

“It’s more reasonable and realistic than previous proposals,” said Kempton, who runs the Orange County Transportation Authority….

Kempton stopped short of recommending approval, but he did say that before money is committed, the Legislature should make sure that there’s a competent management structure in place, that the risks are fully weighed, especially whether more money will be forthcoming from the federal government, and that the authority update ridership and operating cost projections.

Of course, one needs to consider that Kempton works for an agency whose board, dominated by Republicans, is voicing more skepticism about the project. That’s due to their ideological opposition, based in an obsolete belief that Orange County should rely on automobiles alone for travel. High speed rail will benefit Orange County too, but because conservatives still tend to dominate local elections in Orange County, OCTA board members (drawn from local councils) reflect that bias.

According to tweets from those at the Senate hearing where Kempton spoke, the three anti-HSR Democrats – Joe Simitian, Alan Lowenthal and Mark DeSaulnier – all voiced opposition to approving HSR funds as part of the budget process. One wonders when the White House and Democrats in Congress will begin putting the heavy pressure on these three to start toeing the party line.

Flickr photo by Salim Virji

Critics depicted the bridge as financially unsound, legally dubious, an aesthetic blight and an engineering hazard in the decade before the start of construction in 1933. The battle was most fierce in the fall of 1930, when voters in six counties were asked to allow $35 million in bond sales for construction.

We know the outcome: one of the few structures in California that genuinely deserves to be called an icon. But, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the span’s completion, a look back at the fight shows how little has changed in terms of the attacks that are aimed at major alterations to the landscape – and the difficulty that one generation has in predicting how future generations might choose to live and the values they might hold.

The criticisms should sound familiar:

The committee findings soon became fodder for a newspaper advertisement that began “MR. TAXPAYER: This Ad is published to save you money – READ IT.” After all, they echoed what opponents had been saying all along: Things were moving too fast. There were too many unanswered questions. The numbers couldn’t be trusted.

The ad was one of many placed by the Taxpayers’ Committee Against Golden Gate Bridge Bonds. With a membership list that included future Mayor Roger Lapham and City Engineer M.M. O’Shaughnessy, this was no mere collection of gadflies. Such opponents insisted they weren’t against the idea of a bridge, simply the reality of this one.

“I am in favor of a bridge across the Golden Gate if it can be physically and feasibly built,” O’Shaughnessy declared in one ad. His statement then cautioned that toll bridges “too numerous to mention” didn’t generate the traffic necessary to pay the costs of needed maintenance.

This isn’t much different from the reports of the Legislative Analyst’s Office or the anti-HSR NIMBYs in Palo Alto and Atherton who claim that the high speed rail project is being rushed, with too many unanswered questions, and that the project won’t generate the trips necessary to break even on operating costs.

Although the automobile had become a mass form of transportation by 1930, many people still didn’t accept that it would become the dominant method of travel. Looking back on a past they knew well, an era where ferry boats and trains moved people around the region, the bridge’s opponents were convinced that the new era promised by project supporters was nothing more than a delusional and risky fantasy.

Now there wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with relying on ferries and trains to move people around the Bay Area, and today we know well the costs of freeways and automobile dependence. The point here is that we also know the Golden Gate Bridge turned out to be a major success, easily generating the trips required to break even on system operations.

One reason this happened was that the bridge enabled new economic activity, particularly in Marin and Sonoma Counties. By creating a link from those two counties to the San Francisco economy, the bridge brought suburban development to the North Bay and with it the trips needed to fund the bridge’s operation. Again, we can and should debate whether that was the right way to grow Marin and Sonoma Counties, or whether a rail system would have provided better patterns of growth. In fact, the HSR system will promote urban density rather than suburban sprawl, so this time we are getting it right. The fact is, however, that the bridge did work out as forecast.

As King himself explains, this is very similar to the current debate over high speed rail:

What is striking in retrospect isn’t how wrong the arguments turned out to be – the $35 million indeed covered the cost of construction, for instance – but how familiar they still sound: We need more details, the details we do have can’t be trusted, and there are better alternatives.

Look no further than the ongoing campaign against California’s high-speed rail system. Before voters approved bonds to help fund the effort in 2008, opponents depicted it in ballot arguments as a “boondoggle” that would benefit “out-of-state special interests.” Since then they’ve used the environmental review process and other venues to challenge the financing, ridership projections and route of the still-evolving plan.

King’s explanation as to why we’re seeing these criticisms again:

Such rhetoric would have no traction now; a legacy of the 1960s is that people who fight large-scale change aren’t caricatured as old fogies. The presumption is that they’re on the side of the angels, battling gentrification or ecological harm or other threats to the common good.

That’s very similar to the point I made in yesterday’s post, that the media have been trained to see critics of government projects as being heroic when most of the time they’re just being selfish and small-minded.

In a sense, what is needed today is a corrective to the 1960s. The ideologies of urbanism that came from that time were deeply flawed in that they were utterly dependent on fossil fuels and automobiles. What Peninsula NIMBYs are trying to protect is a model that is extremely ruinous for the environment, yet was once defined as somehow being environmentally friendly (at a time when the effect of carbon emissions on the environment was not well known) and efforts to modernize the definition of “environmentalism,” to bring it into alignment with our current realities, are regularly blocked.

Ultimately that’s one of the biggest points of similarity between the high speed rail project and the Golden Gate Bridge – they are both examples of anticipating and meeting future transportation needs that get opposed by people who are just not willing to accept reality. Change isn’t easy. But change is happening, right now. The status quo is bad for the environment and for the economy. HSR is here to help. 75 years from now, I hope Californians can look back at the development of their high speed rail system and look on it with the same sense of success and pride that we view the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Los Angeles City Council called today for state lawmakers to release bond money approved by voters in 2008 to help fund the first phase of a high-speed rail system through the Central Valley.

The council unanimously approved a motion by Councilman Tom LaBonge urging state legislators to authorize construction of the first phase of the rail system and issue the bonds to pay for the construction….

“In order to stay on this timeline and put laborers back to work as early as next year, the Legislature must release Prop 1A funds to match (federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) monies,” he said.

The elected leaders of California’s largest cities – where the bulk of its economic activity takes place – are now on record as strongly supporting the high speed rail project. They understand that high speed rail is essential to their city’s economic competitiveness and to improving transportation options both locally and for the state as a whole.

It’s revealing that for many media outlets in California, it’s the opposition to a project that gets all the attention, but when far larger cities and counties support something, it doesn’t get much attention at all. The City of LA has 24 times as many people as Kings County (3.7 million versus 150,000) and surely their support of this project should count for more than Kings County’s opposition – and should certainly drive as much if not more media coverage.

But that’s not how the media works, at least not these days. Most reporters are trained to find problems with big government projects, rather than find reasons why they’re a good ideas. They believe their role is to look at government projects with skepticism, rather than look at government projects in order to figure out what is really going on, whether it’s good, bad, or deeply complicated. The media also has a ready-made narrative of heroic grassroots activists taking on the government, whereas large numbers of people supporting a government project doesn’t fit any ready-made narrative.

Smaller towns like Palo Alto and Hanford may oppose HSR, but the cities that have the most population and the most economic activity – like San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Fresno and others – do support the project. That should matter more to legislators. After all, it’s all about numbers in the end.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warned the California Legislature today that the Obama administration will not wait until fall for a vote on high-speed rail, urging its approval in a budget vote next month.

“We need to make sure that the commitment is there to obligate the money,” LaHood told reporters at the Capitol, where he was meeting with lawmakers and with Gov. Jerry Brown.

The state’s commitment, LaHood said, will be demonstrated when lawmakers “put it in the budget and take a vote on it.”

Brown and the California High-Speed Rail Authority want to start construction on a $68 billion rail project by early next year, proposing initially to use $2.6 billion in state rail bond funds and $3.3 billion in federal funds. Lawmakers considering allocating that money remain skeptical, however, and the Legislative Analyst’s Office has recommended against it.

LaHood said he was at the Capitol to reiterate the Obama administration’s commitment to high-speed rail, while “checking signals” in the Legislature.

He said the suggestion by some lawmakers that they may need more time to consider the proposal – perhaps pushing an up or down vote into the fall – is unacceptable.

“We want to make sure that our partners here understand what’s at stake,” he said. “We can’t wait until the end of summer.”

That’s a clear shot across the bow at several legislators, including Sen. Joe Simitian, who have been arguing that the legislature should delay its decision on releasing the HSR funds. This is very similar to what LaHood said when right-wing Tea Party governors like Scott Walker, John Kasich and Rick Scott wanted to redirect their federal HSR funding.

With this statement, the lines are becoming even clearer. The Obama Administration – in the middle of a close re-election campaign – is counting on California to move the high speed rail project forward and show that it isn’t a wasteful, flawed concept. One would assume that Democrats in Sacramento would help the President out instead of giving Mitt Romney a big win by delaying and possibly killing the HSR project.

It will now be much more difficult for HSR opponents to successfully convince other Democrats in the legislature to delay approval of the HSR funds. Kudos to LaHood for stepping up to make this important and much-needed intervention in the debate over releasing the already-approved Prop 1A money.

Adding to the bafflement is the fact that Kings County officials are now screaming about saving Amtrak service in their county – even though the same county officials have been working to kill the high speed rail project:

Local officials raised concerns Tuesday with California High-Speed Rail Authority Board members about the impact of the project on Amtrak and agriculture. It was the fourth such meeting, part of a process intended to create more cooperation….

“I want to see the [Amtrak] service saved, and will do everything I can to make that happen,” said Dan Richard, Authority board chairman.

Officials representing Corcoran, including County Supervisor Richard Valle and Corcoran City Manager Kindon Meik, made it clear how important they think the station is. Valle presented a video in which Corcoran residents and business owners talked about the negative impact if the station went away.

It’s a social justice issue for economically disadvantaged residents in Corcoran who have no other means of transportation, Meik said.

“Amtrak is a crucial part of our community,” he said. “It’s likely that if Amtrak goes away, then our city-owned buses will also go away.”

I’m definitely sympathetic to these concerns, and applaud CHSRA board chair Dan Richard for working with Kings County officials to protect Amtrak service. It’s the right thing for him to be doing and the right thing for Kings County.

But I still can’t understand why Kings County wants Amtrak but is also trying to kill better, faster high speed rail service for their county. One has to ask this question: are they using Amtrak as an argument against high speed rail? Is their newfound concern for passenger rail service in the form of the San Joaquins an effort to preserve the status quo at the expense of HSR?

All the arguments that local officials are using for Amtrak also apply to high speed rail. If you support one, it just makes sense that you’d also support the other.

I’d be curious to hear how Kings County officials explain away this glaring discrepancy.

Fresno County supervisors this morning reiterated their support for California’s high-speed rail project despite a strong show of disapproval from the Tea Party.

After dozens spoke out against the proposed train as too costly and displacing too many businesses, the Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to send a letter to the state High-Speed Rail Authority, backing the venture.

While the letter expresses concerns with the project, it doesn’t include the sharp criticism that was part of an initial draft of the letter two months ago. Supervisors said today that some of their concerns have since been addressed by the rail authority.

Tea Party activists, of course, believe that because they’ve already got a semblance of economic security, nobody else is entitled to it and any effort to provide it, such as through the construction of high speed rail, is a threat to their own privileges and prosperity. That’s ridiculous, of course, and kudos to the Fresno County supervisors for seeing right through such short-sighted selfishness.

High speed rail will transform Fresno for the better, making it both a viable bedroom community for the coasts as well as a place where good, innovative coastal jobs can be moved. High speed rail is an essential piece of 21st century prosperity, especially for a place like Fresno County that is so dependent on oil-based transportation.

There are two reasons Congress is unlikely to pass a new bill, and instead will extend SAFETEA-LU, in a lame duck session.

1. The logistics are against it. Congress will likely have only about four weeks to deal with a multitude of issues. True, there are about seven weeks between Election Day and January 2 when the sequester-triggered spending cuts are scheduled to occur. But holidays will cut out two weeks to three weeks. Figure another week off right after the election. There simply won’t be enough time to deal with all the issues that are being postponed to the lame duck session.

2. Other issues will trump transportation. First and foremost will be a 2013 budget, and dealing with the looming sequestration spending reductions and expiring tax cuts. Other issues that likely will need to be addressed and could trump transportation: payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits, doctors’ Medicare payments, the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and the estate tax and the renewal of a tax-extenders package. Other issues that could get postponed to the lame duck session include major legislation like the renewal of the Farm Bill.

Perhaps the best predictor that the lame duck session will be “chaotic [and] high-stakes” is that lobbyists are already cancelling their November/December vacations. One lobbyist advises others to complete their holiday shopping before the election.

The best hope for high speed rail advocates is that nothing happens until 2013 and Democrats win this November’s elections – keeping the Senate and the White House and retaking the House. It’s no guarantee that Dems would pass a Transportation Bill, as 2009 and 2010 showed us. On the other hand, the experience of those two years would show Dems that they might not have a lot of time in the majority and should get good things done now. More importantly, Democrats in the House and the Senate have shown support for funding high speed rail, and we know that President Obama has been a strong proponent of HSR funding.

A new Transportation Bill with dedicated and predictable funding for HSR would go a long way to easing some of the concerns from HSR skeptics in California about the project’s finances. Tea Party Republicans in the House have gutted federal HSR funding in the last two years, making other HSR projects look less viable because of the lack of long-term federal funding. A new majority in the House could reverse that and bolster the California HSR project with dedicated funding.

At least, that’s the hope.

But in a letter to the authors Friday, Mike Rossi, a former banking executive who serves on the board of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said the analysis used flawed data. The report was based largely on a report from BBVA, a Spanish foundation, which used mistaken cost data supplied by the International Union of Railways, Rossi said.

Rossi said that the foreign system most like the one California is planning is in Taiwan, which has a cost per seat mile of 3.1 cents, less than half of California’s projected 6.5 cents. Rossi has taken the lead in crafting the business model for the future California system, which he says will generate multimillion- dollar surpluses on the day it starts partial operations.

In addition, Rossi said Enthoven and Grindley improperly used the cost per passenger mile for part of their analysis, which mixes up costs and revenues.

Of course, there’s still no mention in the LA Times article, authored by Ralph Vartabedian, that Enthoven owns property next to the proposed HSR route and in 2010 submitted a public EIR comment explaining his concern that the project would reduce his property values. Nor does Vartabedian mention that Enthoven and Grindley are affiliated with the Community Coalition on High Speed Rail, a group that in its own words has said “CC-HSR is doing everything it can to derail the current high-speed train project.”

The media has no business treating this study or its authors as a serious document, especially given its serious flaws.

With the California High Speed Rail Authority’s adoption of the Madera to Fresno EIS yesterday, one of those possible private investors decided to step forward:

Now, a businessman touting a possible site for a train-maintenance station near Chowchilla is dangling such an investment to the agency.

“We are convinced of the viability of California,” said Ed McIntyre, a partner in the the proposed Gordon-Shaw heavy-maintenance facility site. McIntyre told the authority’s board today in Fresno that he and his partners are prepared to commit up to $1 billion in private-sector investment through development of their site.

McIntyre said that in addition to an estimated $668 million to build the heavy-maintenance facility — a station planned to be located somewhere in the San Joaquin Valley to service trains for the statewide train system — his group is also willing to build a maintenance-of-way facility, where crews would be based to maintain the tracks and right-of-way. Together, the two facilities would add up to a commitment of about $1 billion.

“To those who want further study or planning … I think we’ve planned enough,” McIntyre told the board. “I encourage you to move forward” with approving the environmental impact report for the Merced-Fresno section of the system.

McIntyre is speaking for a lot of other potential investors when he says that HSR is viable. All the studies indicate this is the case, notwithstanding those reports produced by NIMBYs and project opponents. The business case for investing in HSR has long been known – a 2010 UBS report indicated that HSR was a sound investment but that the primary risk was governments would stop supporting it, rather than any concerns about ridership.

This investment proposal won’t be the last to materialize. Many more are waiting in the wings to see whether the state legislature will follow through on the commitment voters made in 2008 to get this project built. It’s a cliche, but this news shows that if we build it, they will come – “they” being both riders and investors.