• Jim Hartnett of Redwood City, a member of the California High Speed Rail Authority board, has a good op-ed in the Mercury News today promoting the HSR project and the business plan. It doesn’t break any new ground but as something intended for a more general audience, it does a solid job of describing why the plans as they currently stand are sensible and worth supporting.

• China puts several HSR trains back into service after they were recalled in the wake of the deadly Wenzhou crash back in July. Chinese authorities also have been reducing the number of trains and their speeds on the Beijing-Shanghai run. Hopefully this will help restore public confidence in the safety of China’s HSR system, which took a big hit after the Wenzhou crash.

• Saudi Arabia signs off the on the Haramain HSR project deal, giving a Spanish consortium over $9 billion to build a high speed rail link to connect Mecca, Medina and Jeddah. If the world’s leading oil exporter is building HSR, that might be something California might want to pay attention to.

According to the new schedule issued by the Ministry of Railways, high-speed lines with a designed speed of 350 km/h will be allowed to run at 300 km/h from Sunday.

Lines operating at 250 km/h will now run at 200 km/h, and passenger trains that used to run at 200 km/h on older lines will operate at 160 km/h.

Other schedule changes will affect the overall system, but these are to be matched with a 5% drop in ticket prices. Whether that is enough to stem growing criticism in China of the bullet trains’ safety record is another question entirely.

The move to reduce speeds may wind up validating criticisms that the Chinese Ministry of Railways was operating its trains too fast. The chairman of JR Central was one of those who argued that China was too close to maximum safe speeds. That was seen at the time as the words of a rival, but the events of the summer of 2011 have certainly caused a big black eye to China’s flagship infrastructure project.

On the other hand, lowering speeds and fares is a smart move to rebuild public confidence in the system. We’ll see how this plays out in the months to come. China has bet heavily on high speed rail, and it’s a bet they are still likely to win.

China has pulled the brakes on its flagship high-speed rail project, freezing approval of new railway schemes and halting some bullet train manufacturing after a crash last month that killed 40 people and dented public confidence in the government….

“We will suspend for the time being the examination and approval of new railway construction projects,” the state council, or cabinet, said in a statement….

The normally placid People’s Daily newspaper, which is effectively the Communist Party mouthpiece, wrote that the China did not need “blood-soaked GDP”.

In short, the Chinese government is being accused by its own citizens of having rushed the HSR system into operation without doing enough work to ensure it is safe to operate. Public outrage was widespread and the leadership in Beijing clearly felt it was time to act.

They also ordered a recall of several HSR trains:

The recall applies to model CRH380BL trains used on the Beijing-Shanghai line, which has suffered repeated delays blamed on equipment failures, state-owned China North Locomotive and Rolling Stock Ltd. said. There was no indication it was linked to the July 23 crash on a separate line in southern China.

Experts will examine sensors that might be faulty or too sensitive and cause trains to stop unnecessarily, said a CNR spokesman, Tan Xiaofeng. He said that might happen if a door is ajar or a passenger violates rules and lights a cigarette in a restroom.

The Beijing-Shanghai line has suffered “frequent quality problems” with components provided by U.S., European and Chinese suppliers, Tan said. He declined to identify the suppliers.

This is yet another blow to the Chinese HSR system, as well as a blow to their hopes of exporting their technology to other countries looking to build HSR, including California. China’s breakneck pace at building HSR has positioned it as a global leader, but now serious questions are being raised about whether the pace was too rushed, with too many corners having been cut, to ensure the system can be operated safely.

China is right to slow things down while they ensure their system is safe to operate. This doesn’t invalidate the Chinese HSR system entirely, but it does suggest that China needs to get its act together before they can be seen as credible bidders for overseas HSR lines.

Looking at those stats, it’s really difficult to imagine why anyone would prefer the status quo, why anyone would argue against strong measures to produce economic recovery. Unfortunately, too many people became convinced that the last 30 years of boom and bust – where recessions appear to have come and gone like a fierce winter storm – are the norm. After three years of Depression, it ought to be clear that recovery isn’t just magically going to happen. We have to make significant changes to the way we do things in this state and this country. The status quo is unacceptable.

But because a lot of people refuse to face the new reality, we get things like this piece of HSR denial in the Manteca Bulletin from managing editor Dennis Wyatt. Wyatt’s argument is that HSR is something California can’t afford, and that if we just sit around not spending any money, somehow we’ll have economic recovery. Nowhere at all does Wyatt explain that HSR would provide a massive economic stimulus to California, particularly to the Central Valley and including San Joaquin County. Wyatt doesn’t realize it or doesn’t care, which is bizarre considering the aforementioned 16.7% unemployment rate in his home county.

As is typical for pieces of HSR denial, Wyatt never once considers the cost of not building HSR – including dependence on oil. And he doesn’t list out the financial benefits. That leads him to make a false assumption that merely improving commuter rail would help California and that nobody will ride bullet trains from LA to SF, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Is high speed rail in its present form worth mortgaging California’s future?

Wyatt opens with this, without realizing California long ago mortgaged its future to suburban sprawl and automobile dependence. Manteca has been hit harder than almost any other place in the state by that bad deal. When gas prices hit $3/gallon in 2006, it made the long commute to the Bay Area too expensive for people who had flocked to Manteca, Tracy, Stockton, and other nearby cities. The result was a decline in home sales, a decline in home values, and a huge foreclosure and jobs crisis from which the region has still not escaped.

High speed rail is one way Manteca and California as a whole can essentially refinance that mortgage on better terms. Oil dependence was a key cause of the Depression. HSR not only provides immediate economic stimulus in the form of construction jobs, but it can help bring jobs and businesses to places like Manteca. By being within an hour’s commute of San Francisco, it can offer space for tech companies and startups looking for affordable rents while enabling workers to live in the desirable coastal cities. And for those workers who might want a more affordable single-family home, HSR would help Manteca do that.

Wyatt grasps this – to a point. His argument is that the state should invest in upgrading ACE but not in the SF-LA system:

If high speed goes forward, does it make sense to put in a Los Angeles to San Francisco component first? Does it pencil out as effectively or have as high of economic returns as doing high speed rail along heavy commute corridors such as the Inland Empire to the Los Angeles Basin or the Northern San Joaquin Valley to San Jose and even Sacramento?

This is a symptom of early Depression-era thinking, of people who haven’t completely reoriented their mindset to the new reality. Wyatt basically accepts that we can’t spend any new money and that we just have to suck it up and deal with it. That’s not how you get out of a Depression. You have to do things radically differently. And that includes doing a lot of things at once. ACE needs to be upgraded, absolutely. And HSR between LA and SF needs to be built too. It’s both, not either/or.

Wyatt’s argument boils down to the absurd and evidence-free argument that nobody will ride bullet trains in California:

The Los Angeles to San Francisco route can’t count on such a high concentration of potential day-to-day users that could keep ridership up and fare costs down to give high speed rail a fighting chance of at least covering operating expenses.

Vacation traffic is subject to economic ebbs. High speed rail projections for LA to San Francisco have relied on substantially cutting into passenger counts on the heavily used air corridor between the two cities. While there is substantial travel, there are extremely few who make it a five-day-a-week habit.

Nobody’s talking about daily commuters between LA and SF. What people ARE talking about is shifting over a lot of the people who make various kinds of trips between LA and SF during the day. When I worked at the Courage Campaign I flew from NorCal to SoCal about once a month for business. Lots of people fly regularly for all kinds of reasons. Every plane I was on was packed. Because HSR is competitive door-to-door from downtown SF to downtown LA, and because it offers a better travel experience than a plane, there’s every reason to believe people will ride it.

After all, that’s what the evidence from the Madrid-Barcelona corridor – once the world’s busiest air route – indicates. The Acela has a majority of the air/rail market share [thanks Alon] on the Northeast Corridor.

Ultimately, Wyatt’s argument falls on its face because if he were right, nobody would fly between LA and SF.

He continues anyway:

The real question is whether Los Angeles to San Francisco really is the best use of limited funds to boost the state’s economy.

And is it as effective as an Altamont Commuter Express or Inland Empire high speed rail system would be at reducing air pollution by getting a significant number of vehicles off the freeways?

HSR between SF and LA probably wouldn’t get as many cars off the road as those two other routes. So? We build all three. If you like this new Depression, then yeah, define your choices narrowly. If you don’t, define your choices broadly. And of course, getting cars off the road is NOT the same as an HSR system penciling out or boosting the state’s economy.

On the economic benefits, I am guessing Wyatt never read the US Conference of Mayors report showing the Green Dividend from California HSR. The study found it would generate $10 billion a year in new business sales and wages. In a Depression, you just cannot turn down that kind of stimulus.

The infamous bullet trains in Japan aren’t filled with executives moving from one part of the country to another. They are mostly rank-and-file workers.

Huh? Infamous? The Shinkansens are regarded as a marvel of both engineering and ridership. The trains are hugely popular in Japan and for nearly 50 years have been a model for the rest of the globe. And if they’re moving mostly rank and file workers, then it shows the HSR system can do the same in California.

The aftermath of the crash increased scrutiny on high speed rail. Despite all of its promises, it isn’t generating the fares needed to make it work on its own. The fares are out of the reach of the very people it supposedly is targeting. Toss in the factor they may not be able to secure additional bonds due to the economy and you understand why China may have to bail out the system.

This is ignorant stuff. The fares are high because the Chinese government wants the bonds repaid quickly. That’s a political choice, since the government floated the bonds to the railway builders. Beijing could simply redefine the terms of the loans to bring down fares if they wished. This is not an argument against HSR but an argument against using too much private sector financing to build it.

California can’t afford to bail out a high speed rail project once it is in place. There are too many other critical needs for dollars ranging from education, freeways, safety net services, water storage/flood control, prisons, and more.

Again, this is pre-Depression era thinking. We need to fund all those needs. And if the state and federal government currently don’t have the money, we can go get it from the rich, who aren’t doing anything useful with the huge amounts of wealth they are sitting on. If you define your choices as narrow, then your future will be narrow as well.

Even if it is a given that the cost of building it will be an investment that won’t be paid back, a high speed rail system must stand on its own in terms of operation and maintenance.

The best way to prove it can be done is to move forward with a less ambitious project on a heavily traveled commuter corridor.

This is nonsense, since a commuter corridor and the SF-LA corridor are by nature very different travel markets. You don’t judge the success of SF-LA flights by the success of Stockton-SF flights.

Wyatt’s column is just a collection of anti-HSR talking points. It’s a shame that Manteca residents don’t have a newspaper editor who has their interests in mind, who isn’t willing to do whatever it takes to address the economic crisis that San Joaquin County has been mired in for years now.

We know HSR will be a success, as the evidence clearly proves this. And we know that ACE is worth investing in too, and we also know we don’t have to choose between the two. Depression era thinking requires us to be bold, to determine what we need in order to get out of the crisis, and to figure out how we get there. We need people who can tell us how to do something, not spout off reasons why it can’t or shouldn’t be done.

Trainmakers CSR Corp. and China CNR Corp., builders including China Railway Construction Corp. and parts makers such as Zhuzhou CSR Times Electric Co., have targeted markets including the U.S. and Europe, touting experience gained from construction of the nation’s domestic network. The fatal crash, near Wenzhou on July 23, may undermine their sales pitches.

“Their chances of selling high-speed trains are zero,” said Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research Corp. in Tokyo, which manages about $3 billion in assets. “I don’t think they can ever get confidence back.”

CSR, builder of both trains in the crash, tumbled the most in about three years yesterday in Hong Kong trading, and China Rail Construction fell 6.7 percent on concerns the accident may damp China’s export push and disrupt domestic plans. Beijing- based CSR and partner General Electric Co. (GE) may bid to supply trains for a planned high-speed line in California, possibly competing against Siemens AG (SIE), Alstom SA (ALO) and Bombardier Inc. (BBD/B)

“There’s probably little chance of China winning a high- speed train order in the U.S.,” said Ryota Himeno, an analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. “There’ll be much more importance placed on safety now.”

As the Bloomberg article reminds us, China has been frequently mentioned as a possible funder/vendor/builder/operator for the California high speed rail project, and Arnold Schwarzenegger gave glowing reviews to the Chinese system on a visit there last year.

However, criticism has been mounting in recent years of the safety of the Chinese HSR system. Last year JR Central slammed China’s HSR safety record:

The chairman of Central Japan Railway, operator of Japan’s oldest and busiest bullet train link, has denounced China’s growing high-speed rail industry for “stealing” foreign technology and compromising safety…

Many trains on Chinese routes travel at up to 350kph, 25 per cent faster than Shinkansen trains in Japan, and have had no big accidents. But Mr Kasai said they are much closer to maximum safe speeds: “I don’t think they are paying the same attention to safety that we are. Pushing it that close to the limit is something we would absolutely never do.”

In February 2011, Chinese officials took action to address safety concerns:

the railway minister who oversaw the high-speed push was removed on charges of corruption, and under his successor, the plans changed: top speed was reduced to a ‘mere’ 300 km/h, lengthening the shortest Beijing-Shanghai trip to 4 hours 48 minutes.

But those efforts appear to have been undone by the Wenzhou crash. HSR systems should not fail as a result of a lightning strike – and in the nearly 50 year history of HSR around the world, nothing like this has happened. The crash, then, raises serious questions about Chinese train exports. No wonder the Chinese companies have taken a tumble on the Hong Kong stock market.

It’s not the end of Chinese HSR or Chinese HSR exports, of course. The crash’s cause can be isolated and fixed, and as China gains experience building and operating high speed trains, the country can repair the damage to its reputation. Still, it doesn’t help China’s cause, and should be a boost to rivals in Japan, Germany, Spain and France.

What does this mean for California HSR? Right now, not very much. The project is still in planning stages, and even the Central Valley segment is over a year away from its first contracts. Were China an active bidder, the crash would be a big setback for their California HSR efforts. But there is time for Chinese HSR to address any outstanding problems and provide a solid, safe, sensible bid for California HSR work.

HSR opponents have already been using the Wenzhou crash as an argument against Chinese HSR and against HSR in general. Both claims are premature at best. China needs to conduct a transparent and thorough investigation, and address whatever issues are discovered to the satisfaction of outside observers, and not just to the leadership in Beijing. And if it gives a boost to other HSR builders and operators, with a clean record of safety, all the better for those companies. California’s HSR system will be built to strong and, it’s safe to say, exacting state and federal standards. Whoever builds it, there should be no doubt that the millions of people riding it each year will do so safely.

The segment is short and so only a snippet of our discussion was included, where I trash Congress for not stepping up to fund HSR in the US. I did mention that California voters showed more vision and leadership than Congress when they approved Prop 1A in 2008, and that the public supports high speed rail.

China understands that high speed rail – and sustainable transportation more broadly – is essential to 21st century prosperity. And I liked my closing line, which I came up with on the fly, that “if you don’t invest in your future, you’re not going to have one.”

Apparently that happens in journalism too. Instead of breaking new ground in examining the California high speed rail project, California Watch and the Orange County Register basically put together all the previously heard criticisms of the HSR project into a single article. There’s no original reporting here, no assessment of whether the criticisms hold merit. It’s a sadly typical example of the laziness that has come to define American journalism: assume the critics are right, get a few quotes from the target of the criticism, and basically take the side of the critics without actually doing any independent analysis of what is really going on here.

This blog exists to provide that independent analysis. And yet again we see an anti-HSR article failing to actually make its case:

But public records show that the state High-Speed Rail Authority, the agency spearheading the bullet train, is plunging forward despite repeated warnings that it may be tens of billions of dollars short of the money needed to build and operate the system.

“There is an air of unreality” about the project’s $45 billion construction budget, a panel of experts warned the state Legislature last year.

It’s a “big gamble” to start construction, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office warned in May, saying financing was “highly uncertain.”

The project lacks “a disciplined business plan that makes any sense,” says state Treasurer Bill Lockyer. He fears Wall Street won’t invest anywhere near the $12 billion in private capital needed to build the system.

The problem is that nowhere in the article is it explained that the funding issue is that Republicans in the House of Representatives are ideologically opposed to HSR, and have temporarily seized control of the House and have blocked further HSR funding. Good journalism would not only explain that, but would also explain that President Barack Obama and Democrats who still have the majority in the Senate and who are leading the polls for House elections next year are strongly supportive of funding high speed rail.

As to private capital, we have known for three years now that private capital won’t show up until state and federal funding is assured. You don’t see that in this article either, presumably because the reporters didn’t actually bother to interview any potential private funders (which is, you know, what journalists are actually supposed to do).

The article makes specific points, which are repeats from other criticisms that have been made:

A financing gap: The appointed officials who make up the rail authority say they will rely on $19 billion in federal aid to pay for the 800-mile system. But the legislative analyst says federal funding may amount to less than $4 billion — a $15 billion shortfall.

This “shortfall” is the gap between what the federal government has already committed and what we need from the feds, and the gap exists solely because of House Republicans. The article does not mention this nor does it mention that Democrats in DC do support delivering this funding. The article makes this sound like the “shortfall” is a result of flawed planning when in fact it is the result of a political problem entirely outside the control of the California High Speed Rail Authority. This criticism is therefore without merit.

Ballooning costs: The rail authority’s $45 billion construction estimate may be $22 billion too low, the legislative analyst says. Cost overruns of the sort that have afflicted other big U.S. projects could drive the actual price above $200 billion, according to a critical study by a Stanford University professor.

Had the article’s authors actually done their homework, they would know that the LAO claim the cost estimate is low is entirely speculative and has no basis in any actual credible analysis. The $200 billion claim comes from a Stanford professor who is a declared opponent of the project who is motivated by NIMBY concerns. Similarly, his $200 billion cost claim is not backed by any actual evidence or analysis. It’s a totally speculative figure dreamed up by someone who has a very strong personal reason to make the project look bad. Any journalist with a passing knowledge of what Google is could discover this. But the article’s authors, not having done any actual research, instead pass the claim off as credible when it isn’t. So they fail here too.

Dubious projections: The bullet train’s prospects for turning big profits are founded on ridership forecasts that are deeply flawed, two studies claim. Rather than making billions in profits, high-speed rail might actually “incur significant revenue shortfalls,” a UC Berkeley study found.

The word “might” is a weasel word. Here again, had the authors actually done research, they would see that intercity passenger rail in
California is experiencing high ridership. More importantly, good journalists would ask “gee, I wonder what other countries’ experience with HSR has been” and they would find that not only has Japan been successful, but so has Russia, Spain, Taiwan and China, just to name a few. But they didn’t do research, so they have no clue about the context, and therefore they credulously pass off criticism as if it’s accurate.

If we had a press corps that actually knew how to do their jobs, we would be having a very different conversation about HSR. But because our press corps is lazy, HSR critics are able to basically make their points without being called to account for their flawed arguments. It’s sad not just for the HSR project, but for our democracy, which requires a better press corps in order to survive.

China’s manufacturing might and global export machine are likely to grow more powerful as 200-mile-an-hour trains link cities and provinces that were previously as much as 24 hours by road or rail from the entrepreneurial seacoast.

Zhen Qinan, a founder of the stock exchange in coastal Shenzhen and the recently retired chief executive of ZK Energy, a wind turbine producer in Changsha, said that high-speed trains were making it more convenient to base businesses here in Hunan Province. Populous Hunan has long provided labor to the factories of the east, but its mountains have tended to isolate it from the economic mainstream.

Mr. Zhen ticked off Hunan’s attributes: “Land is much cheaper. Electricity is cheaper. Labor is cheaper.”

Around China, real estate prices and investment have surged in the more than 200 inland cities that have already been connected by high-speed rail in the last three years. Businesses are flocking to these cities, now just a few hours by bullet train from China’s busiest and most international metropolises.

The description of Hunan Province sounds almost exactly like the description of California’s Central Valley. As I have been saying for years now, the Valley will do extremely well with California HSR – land and labor are both cheaper there, and there’s every reason to believe businesses and jobs will flock to Fresno, Bakersfield, Merced and Hanford once the system is complete.

The article also points out that China’s HSR system has opened up more room for freight trains on tracks in China, and the separation of passenger and freight has had positive impacts for both.

The article discusses some of the criticisms of Chinese HSR:

Financial regulators in Beijing have cautioned banks to monitor their rising exposure from hefty loans to the rail ministry. To pay for rapid deployment of the high-speed system, the ministry has borrowed more than $300 billion.

That’s a hefty sum, and tax revenues would be a better way to fund it than a lot of borrowing. But even then, the borrowing looks like it might just pan out. China used HSR as a form of economic stimulus during the recession, and the effects on business and freight, as well as savings in energy costs to move passengers, may very well balance out the construction costs.

The New York Times doesn’t explore that issue explicitly, a reflection of the bias in American journalism against making an honest accounting of infrastructure benefits, but we can see the balance sheet pretty well, and the article gives plenty of ammunition to make the case that China’s HSR investment is worthwhile.

Another issue that frequently comes up is fares. Unlike HSR in France or other places, where governments chose to subsidize fares at system launch, China doesn’t subsidize its fares, perhaps because they need to pay back the debt. That’s a risky policy and a bad one from the perspective of getting riders and ensuring everyone can enjoy the system’s benefits. But even with higher fares, China’s HSR system is wildly popular:

From Changsha to Guangzhou, the one-way fare in economy class for the two-hour journey, at speeds of up to 210 miles per hour, is 333 renminbi ($51). That is comparable to a deeply discounted airfare, but expensive for a migrant worker from Hunan who might earn only $160 to $400 a month in wages in Guangzhou….

Zhou Junde, a migrant construction worker with a large red and green tattoo of a hawk on the right side of his neck, stood in line here at the Changsha station on a recent Friday afternoon to buy a high-speed ticket to Guangzhou. But the next high-speed train was sold out, and so was the next one 10 minutes after that. He would have to wait 30 minutes to board a train with a seat.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I come several hours early to get the departure I want.”

Ultimately the issue here seems to be that Chinese workers aren’t getting paid well enough, and not that HSR is too expensive. But that too reflects a bias in American journalism for deflation and against wage inflation.

Many Americans are reading this article and wondering why the hell we aren’t doing more of this here. Oliver Willis, a leading progressive blogger, blamed the right for our inability to get HSR done:

The Bush years were the beginning of America slipping behind the rest of the world, as our government rapidly increased its hands-off approach to national greatness projects. What we are dealing with now is the aftermath of that (and Democrats enabling it).

Willis points out that conservatives are “constraining our innovation” and that is undoubtedly true. Whereas the United States was once a global leader in new and better technology, today’s conservatives, whether they are Republicans in Congress or NIMBYs in Palo Alto believe that innovation is bad and that anything which threatens the status quo must be ruthlessly crushed. It’s an anti-intellectual, anti-progress stance that has no place in a modern society.

And it has no place in a global economy. Those conservative anti-HSR folks are convinced that it will always be 1985, that the United States will always dominate the globe, always be rich, and always will be able to base that success on burning oil. Anyone who has looked at reality lately knows that’s no longer true. But anti-HSR forces are more interested in propping up a failed status quo than in actually preparing the country to meet the challenges of a new century.

They will happily ruin all of our futures just so they can keep burning oil, just so they can keep living out a fantasy of having a semirural life in the middle of a dense urban area. There’s no reason – none whatsoever – why we should go on humoring these reckless attitudes any longer.

The future of High Speed Rail took center stage at a crowded panel discussion with over 120 attendees on May 19th at the annual conference for the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) in San Francisco, CA. WTS is an international organization committed to supporting the professional development of women in the Transportation industry. The membership of WTS spans from undergraduate students to women who serving at the highest executive levels in state and federal government and in the consulting world. The leadership of women in the transportation sector was evident at the panel discussion, which was moderated by Karen Rae, Deputy Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration who is leading the efforts to advance President Obama’s commitment to bring true high-speed rail to the United States. The panel consisted of Patrick Merrill, Assistant Vice President for Policy & Development for Amtrak West, Roelof van Ark, CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), Guifeng Quan, Deputy Director, U.S. Project Working Group, Ministry of Railways, People’s Republic of China and former General Manager for the Shanghai – Hangzhou High Speed Rail Project and Denis Douté, CEO of SNCF America, all senior executives leading rail initiatives across the U.S. and the world.

Deputy Administrator Rae in opening the panel noted the scope of the High Speed Rail program outlined by the Obama Administration. She commented that President Obama is committed to bringing high-speed rail to 80% of the population of the United States in the next 25 years and compared the program to the expansiveness of the Eisenhower Administration’s investments in the Interstate Highway system. She said this commitment was illustrated by Vice President Biden’s announcement of the administration’s six-year budgetary commitment to high-speed rail as one of the first budgetary programs to be announced.

Amtrak’s Merrill provided an overview of Amtrak’s services in the U.S. The Accela Express service operated in the Northeast Corridor of the United States, the fastest passenger train operating in the U.S. was touted as a highly successful service with Accela fare revenue covering 169% of the operating expense. Over the entire Amtrak system fares cover about 80% of total costs. In a clear sign of the popularity of existing California inner-city rail services, Miller said that during some summer months ridership on the Pacific Surfliner exceeds the Accela Express. He closed by stating that Amtrak is in full support of bringing high-speed rail to America and spoke of plans to increase train speeds in a number of corridors across the U.S.

CAHSRA’s van Ark presented a brief overview of California’s High Speed Rail plans and focused on an update of the current status of the state’s rail program The agency is moving forward towards construction, have released a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) from firms exploring the opportunity to bid on the construction of the first funded segment of High Speed Rail in the Central Valley. Plans are to release follow-up RFQs for companies to bid on the construction of the first segment of track between Bakersfield and Fresno by mid-2011 with award and construction beginning in early 2012. This schedule is driven to meet the Federal Government’s deadline of expending funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by 2017.

Although he did not directly mention the recent Legislative Analyst Office report criticizing the High Speed Rail effort in California, van Ark addressed critiques about the project and the CHSRA’s commitment to build the first segment in the Central Valley. Mr. van Ark described the utility of the first phase by pointing out that 4 million people in the Central Valley (Merced to Bakersfield) region would be served by this first phase. He also mentioned that every new transit system is required to have a test track to identify problems before operations begin. This is a role the Central Valley segment will provide not just for California, but the entire United States as the first true high-speed rail segment in the country. Finally, he argued that the choice to build a first segment that is easier to construct from an, environmental, political and constructability view would pay off in the long term, as this segment is built into an initial operating segment that connects to existing rail tracks. This will allow high-speed rail service to begin operations while the full high-speed rail system is still being constructed (a point expanded on by Douté from SNCF later in the presentation).

The CHSRA is focusing now on finishing environmental review work on the Fresno-Bakersfield-Merced segment, with the next priority to finish environmental review to connect this segment to San Jose and Los Angeles. He stated that it is critical to start construction now and secure public funding to show the private sector that we are serious about constructing a high-speed rail system. While the $3.9 billion in current federal funds commitment to California’s project is larger than the total federal commitment originally envisioned, van Ark noted that a longer term Federal commitment is needed. In response to a question of whether Federal investment would restrict private capital, he strongly endorsed the need to operate high-speed rail as a public/private system but stated that private capital will not be attracted without a commitment of public investment.

Quan Guiefing provided an overview of the massive investment that China is making for High Speed Rail, noting that by 2015 over 45,000 km of high speed rail will be operating, with trains running between 250km/h and 350km/h depending on the individual segment. Within this network will be high-speed (350 km/h) segments connecting several major cities, including the Shanghai to Beijing corridor. Ms. Guiefing described some of the technical challenges overcome in building the line, including the construction of a 320 meter viaduct over a large active expressway that was built in the median of the roadway and rotated into it’s final alignment across the roadway. In response to questions about timeframes for constructability, the unique political and project delivery environment in China was evident when Ms. Guiefing stated in response to a question that it took four years to plan and three years to construct the Shanghai-Hangzhou line.

Finally, comments by SNCF Americas CEO Dennis Douté provided the most hopeful comments on the viability of HSR in California. Speaking from the perspective of a system operator, he provided an context of how building and operating a high-speed rail system could occur using the SNCF Paris-Marseille route as a case study (at 488 miles it is equivalent to the distance between San Francisco and San Diego). The first phase between Paris and Lyon was not constructed with any public subsidy and had a reasonable financial Internal Rate of Return of 15% according to the presentation. While subsequent segments required some public subsidy, they were phased in over time resulting in a twenty-year time span before the entire high-speed rail was completed. Prior to full completion trains were running along high speed segments connecting Paris, Lyon and intermediate points to Marseille, with non high-speed rail compliant tracks used to connect trains between the mainline high-speed rail tracks.

Mr. Douté closed with lessons learned from an operator’s perspective. Unlike high-speed rail service in Japan, which serves dense population corridors and operates like mass transit, the French system uses a reservation-based system to manage demand. SNCF utilizes principles of yield management developed by the Airline industry (he specifically mentioned American Airline’s Sabre reservation system) to optimize seat utilization on SNCF trains. Mr. Douté suggested that given California’s lower population density as compared to Japan it would be wise to incorporate this into operations in California. He also suggested that a system operator as early as possible when developing a high-speed rail system. The operator would then be charged with securing private funding. While this might seem a bit self-serving coming from SNCF, it does seem prudent to bring in a partner who has experience operating a high-speed rail service. Finally, one lesson that seems especially pertinent to the design phase was toe ensure quality in connections between high-speed rail and other modes. Mr. van Ark noted this in his presentation as well, stating to the transportation professionals in the audience that “we are dependent on you to bring us passengers, and we will deliver them back to you on the return trip”. Providing a high-quality experience in transferring between high-speed rail and local transit modes as well as on the local transit system to a final destination will be critical to attracting the riders needed to make the system viable.

A final question asked by a participant was whether the capacity among American contractors to build high-speed rail here in the U.S. Deputy Administrator Rae noted that before Florida cancelled its high-speed rail program they received bids from eight consortiums of contractors. Clearly the private sector is ready to build high-speed rail. In the case of high-speed rail, the decision we are faced is a question of whether we as a society are ready to commit to investing in our future.

Kenya Wheeler is a graduate student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at U.C. Berkeley. A California native, Kenya has previously worked as a transportation planner for consulting firms and public agencies in California and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. He has been active in statewide political campaigns and formerly served as the Deputy Field Director for Organizing for America in California.

From CBS 47:

Members of the China Railway Construction Corporation visited Fresno to take a tour of the area. The group out of Beijing built the high speed rail system in China and is one of several bidders that want to bring their construction skills to the Golden State.

The meeting between Chinese delegation and Fresno officials took place at Precision Civil Engineering, one of the companies heavily invested in bringing the railway’s maintenance yard to Fresno.

California Assemblyman Henry T. Perea says, “Today we’re giving them an overview of the project, timelines, the process, as well as what the Central Valley looks like.” Delegates got a good vantage point of that from inside the Fresno County Sheriff Department’s Helicopter.

A spokesman for the Chinese says they liked what they saw. Jeffrey Chang says, “They understand Fresno is going to be the beginning or the end of the high speed rail project and the Chinese are very eager to get their foot hold here in North America.”

This group did not pledge any money, but Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki’s offer to fund half the project is a big, bold move that will force China to step up its own game and make their own pledge if they are to have a chance to build and operate what will be a lucrative HSR system here in California.

Fresno’s ABC affiliate story included this from Supervisor Henry Perea (father of Assemblymember Perea):

“I think the Chinese are going to be very competitive in the application they put forward, but they understand and embrace the fact that they are going to partner with local valley businesses and hire local labor to do the work, so it’s a win-win all around,” Henry Perea said.

High speed rail is expected to create more than 100,000 jobs in the valley.

The Chinese want to build the trains, the tracks and possibly a manufacturing facility in Fresno.

I’m sure the discussion of the merits of the various trainsets will continue in the comments, as well it should. And the reports suggest that teams from France, Germany, and Spain will come to Fresno soon to take their own tour and, possibly, to make their own offer.

Of course, the details of that involvement matter – as the Peer Review Report noted late last year, the California High Speed Rail Authority needs to choose a business model, which will then allow the Authority to determine exactly what foreign participation might look like. But the bigger picture is what is important here. None of these countries or delegations would be wasting their time if they did not believe that the California HSR project was sensible and made financial sense.

Someone ought to tell that to the Washington Post.