One of the supporters who expressed their anger was Congressman Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat whose district includes Merced. Yesterday he sent out this fiery press release:

“This last-minute bait-and-switch tactic is a Thanksgiving Day fraud. It completely eliminates the Merced station, which is in violation of Proposition 1A, and completely eliminates the entire Northern San Joaquin Valley from Phase I,” said Congressman Cardoza.

“The Authority staff has never vetted the Corcoran-to-Borden route with the public, and instead has wasted the community’s time and good will with endless public workshops and meetings on the other routes. This deceit harms the long standing trust and support that the Merced community and others in the Northern Valley have provided. This will completely undermine future support of the project.”

The staff recommendation was expected to select the first route of the train: either from Merced to Fresno, or from Fresno to Bakersfield, which have been the subject of public discussion and staff analysis. Instead, the staff selected a hybrid route which runs between Corcoran and Borden (near Madera), eliminating Merced. Proposition 1A, which the voters approved in 2008, provides $9.95 billion in state bonds funds and requires a high speed rail station to be built in Merced. 

“I have long advocated for the high speed rail project in California, but if voter intent is to be subverted in this way, it will certainly jeopardize the future passage of all bond initiatives,” said Congressman Cardoza. 

“The staff recommendation is fundamentally flawed.  Building the first leg of the high speed train from Corcoran to Borden turns a blind eye to the public’s concern over the lack of enough ridership to justify expenditure of billions of dollars and is a waste of public funds.  What kind of ridership figures does the Authority expect to see with trains running between Corcoran and Borden?  If this is how the system is going to be built, we need a full investigation of the process.”

In October the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded a $715 million grant to construct High Speed Rail with the requirement that the first phase of construction be in the San Joaquin Valley. In total, more than $4.3 billion is available in state and federal funds for this phase of the project.

“Simply put, the Merced-to-Fresno route is the superior choice. It achieves greater ridership and begins the core of the project, facilitating connections to Southern California, the Bay Area and Sacramento. The Merced-to-Fresno segment also has the offer of free land for the construction of the heavy maintenance facility at the former Castle Air Force Base.  This would be the most prudent use of funding and the most logical location,” said Congressman Cardoza.

I can understand why Cardoza is upset, but these claims are unjustified. Merced has NOT been excluded from the project, any more than any of the other stations listed in the AB 3034/Prop 1A bond. Unless Cardoza can show evidence that Merced is losing its station, his claims that the proposed starting point for construction violates the bond is not accurate, and very unhelpful.

Another critic is the person who comments on this blog under the name “Castle Expert,” a longtime project supporter from Merced County. Here’s excerpt from their comments denouncing the construction starting point choice:

As a big time High Speed Rail supporter I am deeply troubled by this sneaky act of the authority staff. Madera to Corcoran was written on a cocktail napkin and was never ever vetted like Bakerfield to Fresno or Fresno to Merced. I first heard about this proposal last week at a San Joaquin rail meeting but when I went back to look it up the proposal the language approved by the voters of California and the crtieria for the FRA funding this site misses nearly all the criteria put forth by the bond measeure and the President….

The latest rumor I have heard is that Cardoza is going to call for a full blown Congressional investiagation and he is going to contact FRA about freezing the money coming to California until this sham is corrected. I can hardly wait for people to see this route I would love to go on Rush Limbaug and show him what people are getting for their stimulus money a track to nowhere.

How does this selection build the spine when it does not even biscet the middle of the valley. If you live in Merced, Modesto or Sacramento you were just duped by the promise of HIgh Speed Rail. Anyone that lives in these areas is going to be missed altoghter or built sometime is 2020 or later if ever. I hope this board overturns this terrrible and illegal use of the tax voters wishes.

Again, I can understand why Merced HSR supporters are unhappy with the choice. However, I don’t believe this outrage is justified – and in fact it will deal a much greater blow to Merced’s HSR hopes if it is sustained.

I can understand why Merced is concerned about what has happened, since it opens the door to Merced being kicked down to Phase II. I don’t necessarily think that’s guaranteed, and I’m open to building to Merced as soon as we can.

However, the best way to ensure that Merced gets nothing – and to alienate other HSR supporters – is to use this to attack the project as a whole. If Merced does that – if, for example, Cardoza uses this to join Republicans in an investigation or trying to take back HSR money – it sets up an adversarial situation where the rest of the state has to fight Merced for the sake of the project’s survival. The result would be hostility to Merced, and much less support for Merced’s desire to be included in Phase I.

Look at the Peninsula. When cities there started attacking the project because they didn’t get their way, many project backers became hostile to their concerns. When the stimulus money went to the Valley, many backers saw it as a welcome case of “screw you” to those Peninsula critics. Maybe not the best reaction, but an understandable one.

I would also suggest making a clear case for why Merced deserves to be on Phase I. I personally support it, but we need Merced itself to make that argument. After all, Merced is not directly on the SF-LA route, so it can be easy for others to argue Merced isn’t a priority. Show people why it is.

Finally, Congressman Cardoza needs to step up his efforts to secure more federal funding for the project – which is by far the most important thing needed to bring HSR to Merced quickly.

Let’s be very clear here: Merced has been strongly supportive of HSR. They should continue that support if they are to bring the bullet trains to them in the near future. The only thing they’ll get from an adversarial approach to this choice is further delays in getting what they want.

UPDATE: Just to reemphasize that I don’t believe Merced should be cut out of Phase I, nor do I believe that’s what is happening here. My point is that if Merced is worried, the best way they can ensure they get HSR as quickly as they can is to work with other supporters, instead of turning to the dark side of HSR criticism.

But Los Banos isn’t giving up so easily, as this Merced Sun-Star report shows:

As the California High-Speed Rail Authority prepares to hold an informational meeting in Los Baños next week, Mayor Tommy Jones is working to come up with a location near the city where a station could be placed.

The rail authority will meet with the public Tuesday from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Police Annex building, 535 J St.

Los Baños is not one of the sites chosen for a stop on the high-speed rail route. However, Jones believes having a location picked out is one of the critical steps in lobbying the rail authority to change its decision.

“I talked to the people who did BART. They told me a lot of stops were added,” Jones said, comparing Bay Area Rapid Transit to the high-speed rail project. “It’s going to have to be a fight, (but) we’re going to get the process started.”

Jones must be a master of understatement. This is going to be more than a fight. It would be a major battle between Los Banos and environmental advocates, including but not limited to the Sierra Club.

So far, however, it seems to just be Jones who is trying to revive the dead station. There’s no evidence so far that many officials, aside from a few, are backing this. And there is no evidence that any HSR planners are either (their planned meeting in town is focused on the route between Gilroy and Merced).

At this time a Los Banos station does not appear to be a good idea. The ridership would not only be low, it would certainly encourage sprawl, whereas the other San Joaquin Valley stations are located downtown and so will help limit sprawl and protect farmland.

Jones argues that Los Banos residents would be inconvenienced without a station:

Jones and Merced County Supervisor Jerry O’Banion believe there should be a stop on the Westside.

Jones said he’s considering a location near Santa Nella as a place where a high-speed rail station could be constructed.

“The train is going south to Fresno. It doesn’t make logical sense to go north to Merced,” Jones said. “I think the only reason a stop was not here was politics. Politics is the reason California is in the shape it’s in.”

O’Banion is not convinced that commuters in Los Baños will use the high speed rail system if they are forced to go to Merced to board it.

“The whole reason for the rail is to eliminate car traffic,” O’Banion said. “I don’t think people in Los Baños or on the Westside are going to drive all the way over to Merced to cross the mountain and come back to Los Baños.”

Jones said because Los Baños has been declared a population growth center in the San Joaquin Valley Blueprint — a document listing goals and assumptions for the region in the next few decades — it is necessary for the city to have a stop along the high-speed rail route.

This argument could be made for countless cities along the proposed route. And I’m not unsympathetic to it – it’s good that civic leaders understand that HSR can benefit their cities and want a station for that purpose.

But that doesn’t mean every place that wants a station deserves a station, at least not in the first phase. Jones may be right about the development plans for the San Joaquin Valley, but the environmental groups fighting those plans have a point that sprawl in and around Los Banos is not exactly the best long-term planning for the region or the state. Better that such growth be directed to existing urban centers such as Merced, Fresno, and other such places.

Who knows, maybe in a few decades there might be an ability to expand the current HSR ROW, add some more electrified tracks for other local rail services, and maybe then Los Banos can be reconsidered. But it doesn’t seem to be a place that will ever be all that high on the list of desirable station locations even once the first two phases of the HSR project are built.

The plan itself is primarily an update of construction costs and ridership estimates. The overall cost of SF-Anaheim is pegged at $33 billion, of which $12 billion to $16 billion will come from the federal government. It’s worth noting not all of that is going to be in the form of cash, but much will be in the form of low interest bonds that the feds will float – Obama has for example proposed a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that could help provide construction cost support to high speed rail here.

The plan also anticipates that the ridership and operating surpluses are at their best when HSR fares are 50% of airfares on the LA-SF route. Some HSR deniers might scoff at the likelihood of that happening given possible cost increases – but consider that airfares will be rising over the next ten years, likely at a much faster rate than HSR fares will climb due to inflation. The airline crisis hasn’t gone away.

The updated business plan also notes that if there are problems in getting funding to build the entire system, the urban segments can likely pay for themselves. Of course I have often railed against the possibility of turning HSR into a glorified commuter rail, and strongly believe that the first items that ought to be constructed are the tracks through the mountains – Pacheco Pass and the Tehachapis – which are the current choke points for intrastate passenger rail. In any event this is one of the issues we will need to monitor very closely over the coming months and years.

Of course, the HSR deniers are still out in force, getting their misleading quotes into the newspapers. Today’s SF Chronicle article on the business plan is a good example, giving leading HSR denier Jon Coupal, of the Howard Jarvis Association, the chance to spew his truthiness:

Critics said they were disappointed by the plan released Friday, saying it lacked the necessary detail.

“We waited three months for this?” said Jon Coupal, spokesman for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which opposed Prop. 1A. “I will say it’s very pretty and has nice photographs. But as a business plan to present to venture capitalists to convince them to invest, it falls far short.”

This from the guy whose organization’s business plan involves bankrupting our state? I find it amazing that anyone in the media sees him as a credible source when it comes to government spending and balancing out the numbers.

Let’s also be clear – the HSR deniers will claim that everything “lacks the necessary detail” up to the day the first passengers board the trains. If Coupal wants to see informed discussion about the details instead of misinformation intended to kill the project he would do well to click on our comments, where the details are given very intense discussion.

The business plan update provides the necessary information for our state to move forward on the project voters endorsed on Tuesday. At this point HSR deniers are trying to undermine the project – if they want to be useful, then join us in the comments and show how we can improve it. We all want the best possible HSR system for our state. It’s time for Californians to come together and make it happen.

Why the delay? The bill was passed out of the Assembly on May 29. From there it languished in the State Senate. Alan Lowenthal put out a nonsense study trying to cast doubt on the plan, but it was Sen. Roy Ashburn who played the central role in delaying AB 3034 into early August. By the time the Senate passed AB 3034, however, Arnold Schwarzenegger had started in on his temper tantrum, refusing to sign any new bills until we got a new budget. Arnold relented on AB 3034 – but had the bill bent sent to Arnold sooner, it would not have been subject to Arnold’s tantrum, and there would have been time to produce it.

But it gets worse. As you know, the state budget delay this year was the worst on record – three months long. The state Constitution mandates that a budget be approved by June 15 and implemented on July 1 – the beginning of the new fiscal year.

The Authority’s staff consists of 6.5 employees. Not a huge amount of staff to put together a business plan, actually, especially when you give them five days and then withhold a budget from them.

HSR deniers have now tried to use the delayed business plan to claim that Prop 1A and HSR are flawed. Today the State Senate held a hearing about the business plan, likely designed and timed to hurt Prop 1A’s chances. You can see the video here. At the hearing Quentin Kopp explained that the plan will be ready around November 8, after proper work goes into its production and review by Goldman Sachs.

Roy Ashburn tried to attack Kopp over the delay, asking “You and your Authority are in violation of California law as we sit here today. If you were in my chair, what would you say?”

Kopp’s reply: “If I were sitting in your chair I would use temperate language. Did you ever read the state Constitution? Did you ever read Article 4, Section 12? Do you know what it says? It says…the Legislature shall pass the budget bill by midnight on June 15 of each year. You’re in violation of the law. Consider the outcome should a taxpayer bring a suit to recover the money that you eventually drew between June 15 and September 23 of this year. Consider the fact that people don’t work without being paid. Consider the fact that my executive director hasn’t been paid since January of this year. Consider the fact that when you finally appropriated the money the contractors who expect to be paid can finally begin work on the business plan. I’ll tell you why people should believe me. Because I have an impeccable reputation for honesty, integrity, and independence.”

Ashburn could not reply to that point. He avoided it and tried to repeat his same points. But the smackdown was delivered, and Ashburn is exposed as a fraud. The state legislature, led by Republicans like Ashburn who held this state hostage for three months, refusing to do their Constitutional duty to pass a budget because they were demanding unspecified cuts, have absolutely NO place to be criticizing ANYONE else in the state government for not following the law. Ashburn is full of it and kudos to Kopp for calling him out on it.

Kopp drank Roy Ashburn’s milkshake. I think we’re done with this whole “business plan” nonsense, aren’t we?

UPDATE: Huge hanks to jwb for turning the key segment into this handy YouTube clip:

UPDATE 2: Kopp then takes on lawsuit-happy HSR denier David Schonbrunn.

Weintraub’s article does not set a good tone, and is rather deeply biased against HSR. For example:

Will they risk $10 billion, which translates into $650 million a year in debt-service payments, on an unproven idea at a time of great personal, societal and governmental financial stress?

Weintraub does his readers a disservice to argue that HSR is an “unproven idea.” That is simply untrue. It is a proven idea – he can look at France, Germany, Spain, Japan, China, and Taiwan to find HSR success stories. Many of these systems have been operating for a long time – for 45 years in Japan – so Weintraub is off base to claim it “unproven.” Californians have been setting monthly records on intercity passenger trains for nearly two years, so he can’t credibly argue intercity rail is an unproven idea either.

And even in good times, $650 million a year is not chump change. To put that number in perspective, consider that it is equivalent to 20 percent of what the taxpayers spend now on the California State University system, which has become a giant assimilator taking working-class kids, many of them from poor immigrant families, and turning them into successful players in an ever more technological economy.

Would a new train, even a futuristic one, really be a better investment than giving 70,000 more young adults a college education every year? That’s the kind of choice that is buried in these single-issue ballot measures but rarely debated.

This is a deeply biased and misleading framing. $650 million a year is 6.5% of the annual budget of California prisons, but Weintraub didn’t use that as the point of comparison. Instead he argues that California must choose between higher education or high speed trains, a clearly biased choice designed to make HSR look bad.

The state Legislative Analyst, a nonpartisan office, noted that California can afford Prop 1A – that the bond debt will not break our existing debt ceiling. Further, as a Sacramento-based political reporter Weintraub certainly knows that the problem with California’s budget is a broken process where the 2/3 rule prevents the state from generating as much revenue as it needs to. Simply restoring the pre-1998 income tax brackets for the top earners, or restoring the Vehicle License Fee that averaged $150 per driver per year, would generate more than enough money to close our budget deficit, pay the debt service, and have enough left over to help more kids attend college.

Besides, “futuristic”? Huh? HSR is a standard, off-the-shelf technology that is actually rather prosaic in its day to day operations.

At the end of his column Weintraub mentions the jobs and economic stimulus that will be generated by Prop 1A, but this feels tacked on – especially as it directly challenges many of his earlier claims about the “opportunity cost” of HSR:

But voters seldom consider the trade-offs inherent in each such proposal, the opportunity cost of doing less of something else, such as higher education, that is not on the ballot.

The problem is that voters also don’t often consider the tradeoffs of rejecting a badly needed piece of long-term infrastructure, partly because writers like Weintraub do not ever put it in that way. The stats on job creation Weintraub cited should have caused him to reconsider this “opportunity cost” point – how exactly is California going to have money to do anything if people are out of work, dependent on volatile oil prices, and if the state lacks the tax revenues that the jobs would create?

Further, Weintraub is assuming that the state cannot or will not generate new revenues to ensure that we can do all the things we need to do – pay for schools and health care AND generate new economic opportunities through projects like high speed rail. His framing is inherently Hooverite – that we should not turn to deficit spending in a time of economic crisis. One wonders if Weintraub would have supported the Golden Gate Bridge or the Shasta Dam were he writing for the Bee in the 1930s.

Perhaps the most egregious part of his article is his discussion of outside funding, which is just plain wrong:

More than two-thirds of the money to complete the project is supposed to come from sources still not identified. If that money never materializes, or comes up short, the taxpayers would some day be asked to step up with even more billions to finish the line, or risk stopping mid-project with the world’s most expensive train to nowhere.

None of this is true. Much of the remainder of funds is to come from Congress. Weintraub’s own paper ran an article quoting Rep. Doris Matsui as saying California is well positioned to receive some of the first Congressional HSR money. Senators John Kerry and Johnny Isakson are leading a bipartisan effort for HSR funding. Weintraub would have been on less biased ground had he said that the funding was not secured.

Additionally AB 3034 amended the ballot proposal to NOT leave the taxpayers on the hook. AB 3034 directly addressed and rendered moot Weintraub’s worry about a train to nowhere, since the Prop 1A bond money cannot be used to build more than 50% of a track or a station. The Legislature is not stupid and they will simply not authorize money to be spent to build half a station – only when matching funds are secured will construction begin.

Of course the Bee also included an article from Joseph Vranich, the co-author of oil company-funded Reason Foundation’s HSR study that was thoroughly debunked here a few weeks ago. His article offers little that is new and relies on the same discredited ideas as that flawed study.

Happily Weintraub did solicit articles from two California women who eagerly await high speed rail. Estelle Shiroma is a frequent rider on the Capitol Corridor and shared her reasons for wanting HSR:

High-speed rail could very easily replace airline trips when I travel within California. The advantages are numerous – no long waiting period to board, more comfortable surroundings, and ample work space not available on planes. Trains are also more accessible for the handicapped. As the baby boomers age, there will be many more seniors who will not be (or should not be) driving, and the train would provide a safer alternative.

Shelly Poticha is the president and CEO of Reconnecting America and offered her own thoughts on HSR’s value:

If California’s high-speed rail is anything like the Acela in the Northeast Corridor or the trains I’ve ridden in Italy and France, the cars will be clean, the seats comfortable, and good food will be available. I’ll be able to look out the window at the landscape of our beautiful state and see the communities that define much of our history and support our economy. And, unlike air travel, I’ll be able to plug in my computer and connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi or take a business call on my cell phone(in the cellphone-approved cars, of course)….

Ironically, I’m heading to Mississippi to speak to a group of 100 mayors who have joined the Southern High-Speed Rail Commission. They want to build high-speed rail from New Orleans to Atlanta and Houston to Mobile. Many see the rail investment as a huge economic boon: thousands of new jobs, revived towns and travel options for residents who have to commute from city to city. It looks like they are going to pull this off. Can California afford to be left behind?

HSR is a better way to travel, and Poticha does a good job of explaining not only that aspect of HSR’s value to California, but reminds us of another aspect of the “opportunity cost” that Weintraub ignored – if we don’t build it, other parts of the United States will. California will lose out on not only federal funding, but on the economic opportunities that high speed trains generate.

California cannot rest on its laurels and do nothing to secure a prosperous 21st century future, the way Weintraub and Vranich suggest. Instead we should follow the lead of Estelle Shiroma, Shelly Poticha, and the San Jose Mercury News and plan for our future. From the Merc’s Yes on 1A editorial:

The proposal, years in the making, has been thoroughly vetted in public debate, particularly over the route. The High Speed Rail Authority made the right choices, coming up with a practical and visionary plan that will place San Jose and Silicon Valley at the heart of the Bay Area’s economy. We recommend it.

Proposition 1A’s $9.95 billion bond will cover about a quarter of the cost of the high-speed rail project. The source for the rest is not certain, although similar systems have found private investment, and a federal high-speed rail funding bill just signed by President Bush was drafted in part with this project in mind.

Still, there’s no question it’s expensive, and, with a recession looming, voters will be wary. But a down economy is exactly the time to invest in transportation and other infrastructure that will form the backbone of our future prosperity.

California cannot rely on the 20th century infrastructure to provide prosperity for much longer. Just as we rejected the advice of Herbert Hoover and his supporters in the 1930s and built the Golden Gate Bridge and Shasta Dam anyway, so too should we reject the claims of the New Hoovers and build high speed rail in California.

That’s the measure that would borrow $10 billion and spend it on promoting, not building, a high-speed train system. This is a colossal ripoff with no promises of any results except that the money would get spent.

AB 3034 changed the proposition to ensure that no more than 50% of bond funds could be used to build the system to ensure that we must have matching funds to proceed. The editorial somehow turns that into a negative, which is absurd. Their claim that the bond money wouldn’t go to construction is a lie, plain and simple.

Worse, it would get spent with no oversight, and participation on the campaign’s “finance committee” by nobody other than politicians and bureaucrats. Supporters brag that the $10 billion would not require a tax increase, but what they don’t say is the obvious, which is that the money, $20 billion including interest, would come straight from the state’s deficit-ridden general fund.

Another lie – AB 3034 created an oversight committee that Republican Roy Ashburn fought hard to include. The editorial misleads readers about the cost – $20 billion would not be spent all at once. The bond has a 40 year life, meaning the cost would be closer to a manageable $500 million per year.

If the project ever actually got built, supporters say the cost would be $40 billion, but skeptics say it would be more like $100 billion. The expectation (which seems more like a fantasy) is that the rest of the money would come from the federal government and the private sector, neither of which is standing in line with checkbook in hand.

There is NO evidence for the skeptics’ $100 billion claim. None whatsoever. But there is a LOT of evidence to suggest Congress actually has the checkbook ready – John Kerry and Johnny Isakson are proposing a multibillion HSR funding bill and if he wins, Barack Obama has shown a desire to build HSR as well. As to the private sector, nearly a dozen companies responded with interest in helping fund HSR.

High-speed trains are wonderful assets in Europe and Asia, where they whisk travelers to their destinations at speeds of 180 miles an hour or faster without the misery of airport security lines. It’s a concept that works well between Washington and New York, or between Paris and the chateau country. But those aren’t 400-mile trips. The ideal travel distance for a high-speed train is a couple of hundred miles or less, or, as in Tokyo, less than 50 miles or so from an airport to an urban center. Trying to connect San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, Fresno, San Jose, Sacramento and San Francisco is a far more daunting task, and not likely to put any airlines out of business.

The Madrid-Barcelona AVE train is a similar distance to SF-LA, and is pressuring airlines there. Passenger rail already connects the cities the editorial claims can’t be linked – HSR merely provides a much, much faster service.

Additionally, the editorial makes the common media mistake of not explaining the cost of doing nothing. Nowhere are rising oil prices mentioned. Nor are higher airfares, nor are flight cutbacks, nor the environmental savings of reducing carbon and cutting oil consumption, nor the $80 billion price tag of expanding freeways and airports to meet the demand HSR will serve, nor the cost to the economy and the state budget of not creating 160,000 jobs. Instead the editorial board relied on misinformation and lies to give readers a deeply biased picture of Prop 1A.

The editorial board should know better than to write an editorial that has not been fully researched and vetted. Journalistic ethics do not end at the opinion page. The Long Beach Press-Telegram owes its readers a correction and an apology for this flawed editorial.

Almost a year ago Southern California went up in flames. As the fires worsened around the region, the OCFA was left without the adequate resources to respond when the Santiago Fire broke out. Equipment that Measure D would have paid for was not available and the fire spread. My hometown of Tustin was threatened, and the fires were within blocks of where my family lives. A sudden wind change saved that community, but doomed Portola Hills. Dozens of families lost everything they had.

I wrote about this a year ago at Calitics in order to show the madness of conservative philosophy, the staggering costs of being cheap. In response to my article the Register devoted their lead editorial page to attacking me. I didn’t mind, it was a nice sort of validation from the hometown paper. I was kind of shocked by how they defended their position on Measure D, which had led to the predicted and tragic results in October 2007 – by advocating against public firefighters:

A broader goal would be more privatization efforts and more private ownership of land. Private firefighting firms would have a financial interest to promote prevention, and more private ownership of land would mean better-maintained property. Private owners are far better at protecting their property than public owners, who follow an entirely different set of objectives.

That should help you understand what we’re dealing with when the Register editorializes against Prop 1A. Their editorialists represent the farthest fringe of the California right-wing. They are inherently opposed to any new government spending on principle and believe that even effective services like the fire department are bad. They are quite willing to play recklessly with public safety and ignore basic social needs in order to pursue their strange agenda.

So it was a foregone conclusion that they would oppose Prop 1A. And like all the other HSR deniers in our state, their arguments are built on a lack of evidence or a complete misunderstanding of reality. The bulk of their editorial is drawn from the throughly discredited Cox-Vranich study. They go on to make a clearly false claim:

If a high-speed train were economically feasible – that is, if revenue from anticipated operations were projected to be higher than capital and operating costs – private investors would be lining up to put money into it.

Of course, as readers of this blog know, they ARE lining up to put money into it, as shown at the June CHSRA board meeting. What the ostensibly pro-business Register doesn’t understand is that private investors are not going to put down money until the state does so first. Californians must make the first move by approving Prop 1A – which as amended by AB 3034 provides firm safeguards to ensure that if federal and private money somehow doesn’t materialize, California voters won’t be on the hook.

The editorial repeats other common flaws, such as the notion that without a strong train network we can’t attract many HSR riders. Matt Melzer discredited that claim as well by showing how California compares favorably to Spain, where HSR is a stunning success. The Register claims California lacks a “train culture” which the editorialists can easily disprove if they walked about two blocks west from their offices on Grand Avenue to the Santa Ana Train Depot, where Metrolink and Pacific Surfliners do a booming business.

The irony is that Orange County voters have already rejected the Register’s bizarre anti-government rantings. In 2006 voters renewed a 1/2 cent sales tax which included massive new investment in Metrolink and other passenger rail, as well as improving public transportation links to train stations. Most Orange County Republicans wholeheartedly endorse Prop 1A, including Anaheim mayor Curt Pringle, who sits on the CHSRA board.

Orange County residents will reap significant benefits from HSR. The Anaheim station, part of the first phase, will provide commuters faster trips to Los Angeles and other parts of the region via the many connecting services at Union Station. It will enable OC residents to visit family and friends in the Central Valley, the Bay Area, and yes the Monterey Bay region more easily (and vice versa). It will help sustain the Disney resort as a viable tourist destination especially as air travel becomes unaffordable for most families over the coming years (whether Disneyland tickets become affordable is unfortunately out of our hands). HSR will create good local jobs, save OC residents money, and spur long-term economic development.

Orange County knows better on Proposition 1A. I would not be surprised to see OC vote for Prop 1A come November 4. The Register can write a good rant. But increasingly OC residents are seeing the high cost of far-right dogma.

Sierra Club supports Proposition 1A, which would provide $9.95 billion dollars to catalyze the development of the 800 mile High-Speed Rail (HSR) system, and to make improvements to existing rail networks. Building HSR in California will reinforce our cities as the hubs of our economies, promote sustainable land use, significantly reduce global warming pollution, and get commuters off congested roads and out of crowded airports. While it is an extremely expensive project, adding the same capacity by expanding highways and airports would cost at least twice as much.

The statement also mentioned safeguards that the Sierra Club helped include in AB 3034, including the elimination of a Los Banos station and protection of important ecological areas. It also mentions the cost of doing nothing – $20 billion to bring Highway 99 to interstate standards, and far larger sums for airport expansion. They also noted approvingly that the Authority approved the goal of powering the trains with 100% renewable energy, ensuring that we get maximum carbon reduction benefits from the project and spurring development of new renewables sources.

A small number of activists in Northern California have been trying to claim that high speed rail is somehow environmentally damaging or won’t bring the promised benefits. The Sierra Club of California has resoundingly rejected those arguments by backing Prop 1A – with nearly unanimous support from those who cast votes on the endorsement.

Over the last few months the urgency behind global warming action seems to have eased a bit as economic and energy concerns have dominated the public mind. But all three – environment, economy, energy – are fundamentally linked. To grow the economy and provide affordable, reliable energy we need to reduce carbon emissions and build sustainable, green infrastructure in our state.

The Sierra Club has demonstrated that it understands the importance of what Van Jones called moving “from opposition to proposition” with their endorsement of Prop 1A. It will be a pleasure to campaign for high speed rail alongside their membership.

Think of it as a big Y placed smack dab in the middle of California.

No, think of it as a big WHY?

Proponents tout its ability to eliminate commuter congestion, reduce air pollution and provide an alternate mode of transportation.

At last week’s transit forum sponsored by the city, I didn’t meet any Tracy-to-LA commuters, just Tracy-toward-the-bay commuters.

High-speed rail won’t help reduce their congestion along the Interstate 580-205-120 corridor.

Earth to Craig: Tracy is not California. It’s one thing to point out that Tracy isn’t going to immediately benefit from HSR. But quite another to assume that since Tracy isn’t going to get an HSR station, nobody else will, and nobody anywhere will benefit. Commuters in the Bay Area and Southern California will see a significant benefit from high speed rail, whether you live in San Jose and commute to work in downtown SF, or live in Orange County and commute to LA, or any number of other combinations.

Of course, HSR riders won’t just be commuters. They will also be travelers – tourists, business travelers, families going to see grandma and grandpa for the winter holidays. Lots of residents in Tracy have family in SoCal. Lots of residents in SoCal have family in the Bay Area. Given the ever-rising cost of gas and airfares and the cutbacks in flights, this is an important consideration for all Californians.

Saalwaechter’s article mentions none of this. It’s basically a bunch of non-sequiturs strung together to reach the 800 word requirement.

Supporters of the bond reluctantly claim that the total cost of the high-speed rail system could reach $40 billion. They expect $10 billion from the feds and the rest from “private investments.” Bet you can’t wait to see the shenanigans and shady deals that are put together by our bureaucrats in Sacramento.

This HSR supporter – me – has never been reluctant to explain the total cost of the HSR system. Of course it’s $40 billion. Of course we expect $10 billion or more from the feds, and yes, we expect private investors. But there’s no reason to imply “shenanigans” unless your worldview is so cynical that you probably have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. The Authority has already been in discussions with private investors about what their needs are to invest. This is a discussion that will unfold over the coming years and involve the legislature’s oversight in a public process. If Saalwaechter can’t be bothered to be a good citizen and get involved in the process and actually read the documents, he shouldn’t be making baseless claims.

And have you noticed that as projects grow from city to county to state, they get worse? Just look in our own backyard at the multi-county San Joaquin Delta College disaster. Gee, what a shocker that the big city of Stockton gets all the goodies and the neighboring towns get shafted.

This non sequitur is actually rather telling. To folks like Saalwaechter, ALL government projects are inherently flawed. There’s not a good one in the bunch. Whether it’s a school or a train or a bridge or who knows what else, anything government touches turns to dung in his mind. His objection is really to government, not to HSR. Otherwise he’d have more knowledge of the transit projects that came in on-time and on-budget, like the Metro Gold Line extension.

But back to Prop. 1A and its cost estimates. It’s a huge underestimate comparison, but let’s use recent and planned BART extensions as a template. The almost $2 billion Millbrae-to-SFO connection and the now estimated $7 billion Milpitas-to-Santa Clara line will be a total of less than 40 miles of 1960s technology. Total cost: $9 billion. Does that number sound familiar? Can you imagine the higher cost of a state-of-the-art bullet train?

BART’s construction costs are unusually high owing to its unique technology. It’s a distinction few in the public understand, since they see all passenger rail as basically being the same. It’s an unfortunate legacy of decades of underinvestment in rail. But that doesn’t mean that HSR will face the same cost overruns as BART – the technology is standardized, the construction methods are standardized. Any cost overruns will come due to inflation and the declining value of the dollar.

So picture this: You drive over to San Francisco, and after waiting through long Homeland Security lines, you start your Southern California trip from the marble-laden San Francisco station, with your hair figuratively whipped by 200 mph winds. You race down the peninsula watching blue “Your Tax Dollars at Work” signs whiz by. You roar into the polished granite San Jose station and literally fly off toward Gilroy.

Oh, no, the train is slowing, and you see a “Track Closed” barrier ahead. As the train grinds to a halt, you notice there is no Gilroy station, just a retired garlic worker wearing a conductor’s hat sitting in the sun at a card table! Off in the distance, you faintly hear, “Sorry folks, we ran out of HSR money.”

This is where his column, already shaky to begin with, goes off the rails completely. From the 200mph speeds in a “marble-laden station” to a train that stops in the dead of nowhere his fantasy makes little sense. Obviously the underlying concern is the Authority will run out of money before the system is completed. That’s a real issue, but Prop 1A – as amended by AB 3034 – has some pretty strong safeguards preventing such a situation. The bond money can’t be spent on more than 50% of station and track costs, essentially requiring a federal commitment before construction can begin.

Recently it was written (Our Voice, Aug. 30) that this 800-pound gorilla of a proposition may generate $11 million for the Altamont corridor. It could improve the ACE tracks or lead to building a separate rail line. With the costs of land acquisition, planning, designing and environmental impact studies, that money would be burned up before the first spike is driven.

Even with some nebulous matching-fund scheme, the current cost of rail track construction would net Tracy about 3 miles of track. Well, if Alaska can have a bridge to nowhere, we can a track to nowhere.

But nowhere does he define “the current cost of rail track construction.” If he wants to call Tracy “nowhere” he’s free to do so, but here I thought he opened his column by arguing Tracy needs a commuter connection to jobs in the Bay Area. If he’s making speculation about costs that aren’t based on any evidence, and if he’s contradicting himself within a single op-ed, can we really take what he says that seriously?

Prop. 1A would do absolutely nothing to improve our commuter problems. So why would we saddle our residents with this massive state bond debt?

Furthermore, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is floating a 1-cent increase in sales tax to close the current $15 billion deficit. If BART costs are any indication, expect the true cost to put in the stations and 800 miles of track to easily exceed $100 billion. So expect repeated massive income and sales tax increases in the future. Do we really need this debacle?

As I noted above, BART is not HSR. I’d love for him to show me an HSR construction project anywhere in the world that saw 250% cost overruns. If he can’t he’s not credible.

More importantly, Saalwaechter is making the same mistake as dozens of other HSR deniers – assuming that the cost of not building HSR is zero. It’s not. The cost of not building HSR is north of $100 billion, when you include the cost of expanding freeways (which Saalwaechter supports), the cost to travelers in higher fuel prices, the cost to businesses and workers of those fuel costs, the costs of climate change, and the lost economic opportunity for jobs and growth that HSR provides.

Ultimately the problem with this op-ed is that it assumes the status quo works just fine. That we can stop big bad government in its tracks and save ourselves from disaster. For that argument to work you have to ignore a LOT of evidence that demonstrates disaster is coming and that our current transportation system is not tenable.

California is going to have to pay to extricate itself from this crisis. There is no way around it. The question before us is whether we spend $10 billion on this bond or north of $100 billion to try and manage without HSR. When you look at the complete picture, as the HSR deniers never do, HSR clearly is the cost-effective, fiscally smart solution.

• Bart Reed of the Transit Coalition was on LA CityView earlier this week defending the pro side on Prop 1A against Joel Fox, former head of the Howard Jarvis Association and predictable train hater. Click “Roundtable 48″ to see the video. Reed made an excellent case for Prop 1A. Definitely worth watching. I’ll have more detailed responses to Joel Fox’s claims in a post later this week.
• Cathleen Galgiani was the subject of a positive piece in the Stockton Record about her work in getting AB 3034 shepherded through the legislature. This bill was originally going to be carried by Fiona Ma, probably the best HSR advocate we have in Sacramento, but when Ma’s legislative calendar got too full she handed it off to Galgiani, whose persistence helped get the bill passed. This blog hasn’t been totally supportive of Galgiani’s approach to HSR, as we disagreed with her efforts to weaken the LA-SF “spine,” but she has become a key HSR figure in the state and deserves to have her fine work recognized.

Anything else you guys want to discuss? Put it in the comments. Enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend, everyone.