Once again, a judge on Thursday ordered the state to scrap its plans to zip high-speed trains from Gilroy to San Jose and up the Peninsula, saying officials failed to show how the massive route would harm local traffic and homes.

This is, at best, a shockingly misleading lede. Judge Kenny did not order the California High Speed Rail Authority to do anything of the sort. In fact, he upheld substantial portions of the project planning documents, including the ridership analysis. What Judge Kenny did say was that the Authority’s analysis of traffic impacts on Monterey Highway south of San Jose was inadequate and that the EIR needed to address those issues. But he did not say that the entire plan to use the Peninsula and the South Bay should be “scrapped.”

I don’t know how Rosenberg, who knows this project and the issues quite well, came up with something that misleading. Let’s take a closer look at what actually happened in court on Thursday.

There were two rulings handed down in Judge Kenny’s Sacramento Superior Court – Stuart Flashman has them both up on his TRANSDEF site. The cases are known as “Atherton I” and “Atherton II.”

A quick summary of Atherton I:

• CHSRA did not adequately address traffic impacts of Monterey Highway.

• CHSRA did adequately address safety impacts of placing high speed tracks between Monterey Highway and the Union Pacific line.

• CHSRA does not have to reexamine noise and vibration issues for a four track Peninsula alignment.

• CHSRA properly deferred some analysis to project-level EIR and improperly deferred some other analysis.

• “Substantial evidence supports Cambridge Systematics’ ridership model and Respondent’s reliance on the ridership model.”

I want to delve into some detail on that last bit, because it’s pretty damn important. HSR critics and opponents have been running around the state for the last year or so claiming that the system’s ridership numbers are flawed based on the Berkeley ITS report. Some are still making these claims even after the independent peer review said the ridership numbers are sound.

Now Judge Kenny has weighed in on the side of the CHSRA, which in an ideal world would finally end the criticisms of the ridership analysis once and for all:

In the event of the inevitable CEQA “battle of the experts,” as is present here, it is important to note that “[d]isagreements among experts do not make an EIR inadequate.” (Eureka Citizens for Responsible Gov’t v. City of Eureka (2007)) “When experts in a subject area dispute the conclusions reached by other experts whose studies were used in drafting the EIR, the EIR need only summarize the main points of disagreement and explain the agency’s reasons for accepting one set of judgements instead of another.” (Association of Irritated Residents v. County of Madera (2003)) “Technical perfection is not required; we look not for an exhaustive analysis, but for accuracy, completeness, and a good faith effort at full disclosure.” (Eureka Citizens, supra)….

Cambridge Systematics’ analysis is clearly not inadequate or unsupported and Respondent reasonably relied on Cambridge Systematics’ conclusions in approving the ridership model after extensive debate regarding ITS’s criticisms of the model. Respondent’s thorough explanation regarding its selection is contained in the record.

The court included a discussion of the disputed “headway coefficient” that Elizabeth Alexis originally claimed as a kind of smoking gun showing the Pacheco route was flawed and should not have picked – and the court utterly rejected the challenges to the EIR on that basis.

I would like to believe this will be the end of criticisms of the ridership model, but I know it won’t be, because as long as people continue to believe “nobody will ride trains in California” then truthiness will trump evidence and court rulings.

So let’s look at Atherton II:

• CHSRA was right to reject the “Setec Ferroviaire” proposal for an Altamont alignment, based on “substantial evidence”

• CHSRA properly responded to public comments on the Revised Final Program EIR.

• CHSRA was not required to recirculate the EIR based on most of the reasons the petitioners claimed, except where it involved Monterey Highway.

• CHSRA’s biological impacts findings are supported by substantial evidence.

• CHSRA “did not precommit to the approval of the Revised Final Program EIR in violation of CEQA”

What does this exactly mean for the EIR? Judge Kenny will rule on that later. But it’s likely that he’ll ask the CHSRA to address the Monterey Highway issues and resubmit the EIR. It’s not a substantial issue and actually resembles the minor technical changes that Judge Kenny ordered in 2009 in the first Atherton ruling – which is a parallel Mike Rosenberg acknowledges in his article:

The same thing has happened before. The cities first sued in August 2008, and a year later Kenny ordered the rail authority to rescind the route and redo some of its planning. By September 2010, the rail authority had completed the extra studies and reapproved the same route, a decision that triggered the most recent lawsuit.

Which makes Rosenberg’s opening lines as quoted at the beginning of this post even more incredible. The plans to follow a route in the Peninsula and the South Bay aren’t scrapped – this is one part of an ongoing legal battle that, overall, the CHSRA continues to win.

A better article is by Gennady Sheyner at Palo Alto Online who writes:

Kenny’s latest ruling means the rail authority now has to go back for more revisions — a process that could further extend the timeline for a project whose estimated price tag now stands at $98.5 billion.

That’s a fair point and one I would see as accurate. Maybe Mike Rosenberg was simply writing link bait, but he could take some lessons from Sheyner on how to get this particular part of the HSR story right.

What does this mean for the project overall? Not much. Monterey Highway is not a heavily used route, and the CHSRA traffic impact analysis will not likely show anything that would blow up the route from San José to Gilroy. I expect that the project route will proceed as before.

More importantly, the attack on the HSR ridership analysis should now be at an end. With the peer review report and now Judge Kenny’s ruling, the ridership analysis can no longer be credibly challenged. We know that the usual suspects will keep trying, of course.

The HSR project will attract more of these nuisance lawsuits as the project continues. One cannot build a piece of infrastructure (or pretty much anything of substance, even an infill housing development) without having to face lawsuits from opponents under the cover of CEQA. Millions, perhaps billions of dollars each year are wasted on CEQA lawsuits and compliance.

California absolutely needs a comprehensive, statewide environmental planning regulatory framework. It’s not clear to me that CEQA is meeting that need, not as it currently is written. A law that is used by NIMBYs to promote sprawl and stop environmentally friendly, climate friendly development is not doing anything to protect the state’s environmental quality.

CEQA reform is therefore a top priority for California in the 21st century. I wrote up some thoughts on that back in November 2009. This lawsuit alone won’t produce change, but it does continue to build the case for reform.

Even if state officials can scrape together the billions of dollars needed to fund California’s ambitious high-speed rail plans, lawsuits from local cities and opposition groups still could delay, divert or derail the project altogether….

In Kings County, lawyers already are preparing legal objections to a recently released draft environmental study. Local officials and residents say that if their complaints fall on deaf ears during the legally mandated public comment period, they are ready for a fight.

“Some higher authority needs to put a stop to this,” said Diana Peck, director of the Kings County Farm Bureau. “If we’ve gone through every single channel up the chain, then, of course, it’s going to end up in court.”

The crux of the battle is whether the route would follow the existing BNSF railroad corridor, or whether it would follow Highway 99. The 99 alignment would be significantly more expensive, as it would require overpasses to be rebuilt. And it too would require purchase of farmland for right of way.

The difference is that Highway 99 does not enter Kings County. (It comes really, really close just south of Kingsburg.) Kings County farmers are basically saying that Tulare County farmers should have to deal with it, that somehow 99 is a more legitimate “existing corridor” than the BNSF corridor:

Theo de Haan, who sits on the local farm bureau’s board, said much of the anger in Kings County stems from the perception that residents were tricked. “It was sold on the premise that they would follow existing corridors,” de Haan said, referring to the ballot language in voter-approved Proposition 1A.

Like many residents, de Haan assumed that “existing corridor” would be Highway 99. Then he found out the rail authority was planning an alignment that would snake through a mile of his dairy farm, take out the house his nephew lives in while managing the farm and then run through his son’s home in a nearby subdivision.

You don’t get to feel “tricked” if it’s your own fault that you weren’t paying attention and instead chose to believe whatever was convenient for you. It makes sense that a railroad would follow another railroad, especially when doing so is much more affordable for the taxpayers of California than going along Highway 99. And while some Kings County farmers may not wish to admit this, the California High Speed Rail Authority’s responsibility is not to the farmers, but to the people of the state as a whole.

Kings County’s strategy is clearly one of trying to drive up the cost of the HSR project. Yet they have not explained to the rest of the state why exactly it is that we should have to pay more in order to make them happy.

Of course, by going to court they never have to answer that question. The CEQA process helps produce such expensive outcomes because it privileges those who prefer to push costs onto someone else, even at the long-term expense of their own county. If the 99 corridor is eventually used, the station will go to Visalia and Hanford will be bypassed. Tulare County will reap the financial rewards, with Kings County getting a far smaller boost.

In any case, there seems little point in arguing with the Kings County Farm Bureau. Their determination to sue to get their way has been clear for some time. If they wish to go to court, that is their right. But it’s also the right of the rest of California to ask what the cost will be, and whether it is worth paying.

From the email sent today by CA4HSR’s Executive Director, Daniel Krause:

Do you live in Central Valley or have family or friends from Central Valley? California’s High Speed Rail project needs you now more than ever!

In the coming days and weeks, Californians For High Speed Rail (CA4HSR) is asking HSR supporters from all walks of life – businesses, workers, students, families, environmentalists and more – to come together and show support for HSR at several upcoming public hearings organized by the CA HSR Authority and the Federal Railroad Administration.

Federal and state officials will be there. Members of the media will be there. As the CAHSR Authority takes comments on draft environmental impact reports/environmental impact statements cover Merced to Bakersfield, it is imperative that our diverse voices supporting HSR be heard at these public hearings.

Can we count on you to attend or invite your family and friends in Central Valley to attend? If you can offer volunteer support at these hearings or to our group in general, we look forward to hearing from you too!

Thank you for your continued dedication to bringing high-speed rail to California!

If you are interested in helping out, you can visit the CA4HSR site and contact us there, or you can leave a comment in this post and I’ll make sure that info gets passed on.

The schedule of EIR hearings:

Merced Draft EIR/EIS Public Hearing
When: Wed, September 14, 3pm – 8pm
Where: Merced Community Senior Center
Address: 755 West 15th Street Merced, CA 95340

Madera Draft EIR/EIS Public Hearing
When: Thur, September 15, 3pm – 8pm
Where: Madera City Council Chambers
Address: 205 W 4th St Madera, CA 95340

Fresno Joint Public Hearing – Draft EIR/EIS
When: Tue, September 20, 3pm – 8pm
Where: Fresno Convention Center
Address: 848 M Street Fresno, CA 93721

Hanford Draft EIR/EIS Hearing
When: Wed, September 21, 3pm – 8pm
Where: Hanford Civic Auditorium
Address: 400 N Douty Street, Hanford

Bakersfield Draft EIR/EIS Hearing
When: Thur, September 22, 3pm – 8pm
Where: Beale Memorial Library Auditorium
Address: 701 Truxtun Ave, Bakersfield

Why turn out for these hearings? First, there are important decisions to be made about specific alignments and the public ought to weigh in on them.

But more importantly, given the attention that these hearings will have, HSR supporters need to get out there and make sure their voices are heard. Some of the reasons why HSR in the Valley is so important:

• The project is estimated to generate $3 billion in new economic activity in the short term and could create tens of thousands of jobs. It will connect residents to job opportunities on the coasts, will help make Fresno and Bakersfield into affordable housing locations for workers on the coasts, and will encourage businesses to relocate to the Valley.

• High speed rail will allow Valley residents to have fast, affordable, convenient transportation to the Bay Area and Southern California, whereas they’re currently dependent on driving (flights are hard to come by and expensive).

• High speed rail will help improve the air quality of the Valley, which is currently very unhealthy and causes serious problems for children in particular in the Valley.

Farmers may raise concerns, but Interstate 5 was built on an entirely new alignment in the 1960s, slicing through farms, without undermining the agricultural industry. The number of farms that will be affected is small, but the benefits for both farmers and other residents will be enormous.

If you live in the San Joaquin Valley, I hope you will be able to attend.

Kings County officials are appealing directly to Gov. Jerry Brown to intervene and force a reconsideration of the proposed high-speed rail route that would swing through local farmland.

The letter, dated Thursday, asks Brown to “bring the California High-Speed Rail Authority and Federal Railroad Administration to the table to coordinate the proposed project’s enormous impacts on Kings County as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.”

“Kings County understands your support for the project and also your awareness of the growing criticism of management and increasing costs of the project,” the letter states, going on to refer to recent news reports that quoted Brown as saying he wanted to become personally involved in “working with the Authority to get its act together.”

By “coordinate the proposed project’s enormous impacts on Kings County” the letter may be referring to the minimal impact on farmland that will result from the tracks bypassing Hanford. Kings County may also be hoping to get Gov. Brown to help them convince the Authority to adopt a Highway 99 alignment, despite the enormous costs of doing so (and despite Union Pacific’s longstanding opposition).

Such an alignment isn’t necessarily a bad idea. The problem is that Kings County is not going to get it by following the path they’re currently on. Protesting to the governor is fine, but if they really wanted to put Highway 99 back on the table, they ought to be going out and finding some money to make that happen. I’m speculating here, but if Kings County were to come up with its own cash, that could help change things.

Instead, Kings County is more interested in prepping a lawsuit:

Since then, the county’s coordination strategy has been laying the groundwork for legal challenges to the Authority down the road.

“We’re putting all these issues in the record … By doing that, it will allow us to continue the EIR/EIS process,” [assistant county administrator Deb] West said.

It was always safe to assume that someone in Kings County would sue to block the EIR for the Central Valley segment. Residents there should ask why their tax dollars will foot the bill for a lawsuit that would be filed on behalf of a small group of farmers, at the literal and figurative expense of everyone else in a county whose economic future depends on the HSR link to jobs and economic activity elsewhere in the state.

As part of an effort to spur additional job creation, the Obama administration will push Congress to keep surface transportation spending at current levels rather than subject it to cuts, according to sources familiar with the matter.

House Republicans have demanded big cuts to transportation spending, which drew the unusual response of having the AFL-CIO join the US Chamber of Commerce to call for increasing transportation spending, rather than cutting it. House Transportation Committee chairman John Mica, a Florida Republican, said he would agree to one more extension, but it’s not clear how long that would last. With the GOP trailing in polls for the next House election, Mica likely realizes he has one shot to gut federal transportation spending, and intends to use it in 2012.

Of course, this all could have been avoided had Democrats actually done their jobs and gotten a new transportation bill done when they had majorities in both houses of Congress in 2009 and 2010. The White House preferred to do health care first, which took over a year to finalize and meant that other important legislation did not get completed. The Democratic House proposal for a new transportation bill included long-term funding for high speed rail, but this never made it to the Senate. Such funding, which is essential to building high speed rail in California, now has to wait until 2013.

Of course, California does have enough HSR money to start construction in the Central Valley. But the process of getting required environmental approvals will mean that contracts will be signed close to the stimulus deadline of September 2012 – that’s just one year away. However, another announcement made by President Obama today could mean a shorter EIR/EIS process:

Finally, in keeping with a recommendation from my Jobs Council, today I’m directing certain federal agencies to identify high-priority infrastructure projects that can put people back to work. And these projects — these are projects that are already funded, and with some focused attention, we could expedite the permitting decisions and reviews necessary to get construction underway more quickly while still protecting safety, public health, and the environment.

It’s unclear whether California high speed rail would be one of these high-priority infrastructure projects. But it would fit the profile of the type of work that the Obama Administration appears to be targeting. Obviously any expedition of the HSR permitting process would be deeply controversial in the Central Valley, where project critics and NIMBYs have been fighting to move the HSR route to the Highway 99 corridor between Fresno and Bakersfield. So it’s not at all clear whether California HSR will be included among the expedited permitting process the president envisions.

Still, the announcement about the transportation bill is itself significant. If we can survive the next 18 months without Obama caving to Republicans and accepting big cuts to federal transportation spending, we might just have a shot at getting a long-term HSR funding source in 2013. Of course, that requires Obama to get re-elected. And that’s looking more and more uncertain with each passing day. 2012 is going to be a white knuckle ride.

Sheehan’s article sets the tone in its intro:

For two years, the California High-Speed Rail Authority said it could build 520 miles of high-speed train tracks between San Francisco and Los Angeles for about $43 billion.

But that figure – long derided as unrealistic by critics – went off the rails this month when the authority released detailed environmental reports for its proposed Merced-Fresno [PDF] and Fresno-Bakersfield [PDF] sections, the first two segments the agency wants to start building next year.

The assumptions in the first two paragraphs are clear:

• Government always lies
• Government claims are objects of derision
• Critics of government spending are always neutral, even heroic people who never bring any biases to the table
• Cost overruns are always treated as a sign of a project that is in trouble, rather than a sign of a project that is becoming more accurate and effective in its estimates.

The other move that the media makes is to ignore the low estimate and assume the high estimate is the most likely to be realized:

The authority’s most optimistic estimates for the San Joaquin Valley sections alone total about $10 billion; route choices could run the price to $13.9 billion.

That’s a far cry from the 2009 estimate of $8.1 billion.

If projected costs can rise by as much as 71 percent in the Valley – a relatively flat, straightforward stretch – what will happen when tracks must be built through mountains and across cities in the Bay Area or Southern California?

If costs escalate statewide as much as in the Valley, the price to build the system from San Francisco to Anaheim could leap from the 2009 estimate of $43 billion to as much as $67.3 billion, even before buying any trains.

Actually, $10 billion isn’t a far cry from the 2009 estimate. And the graphic that accompanies the article indicates that the low-end estimate for the entire SF-LA-Anaheim route is still $48 billion, which isn’t much higher than the $43 billion estimate from 2009.

Sheehan does spend a lot of time actually explaining why the costs have gone up, noting the different options for constructing the segment in the Central Valley. He gives a lot of quotes to members of the CHSRA, including CEO Roelof van Ark and board member Lynn Schenk:

Lynn Schenk, a former congresswoman from San Diego and a member of the rail authority’s board, said the 2009 plan was created in “an atmosphere of wishes, hopes and faith, and … was more of a sales and marketing piece” than a reliable prediction of costs.

Schenk said the October business plan will be “just about our last chance to rebuild confidence in this project, and us, that we can get this done” in the face of growing statewide concern over the rail project.

Van Ark also understands the implications of the new business plan, which will detail not only the costs for the statewide system, but also how the authority expects to pay for it.

And, he added, it will paint a much more realistic picture than the 2009 plan.

“We – I say we even though I wasn’t around – we were a little bit optimistic in those days,” van Ark said.

This suggests that the new estimates are much more accurate and, therefore, less likely to rise. Earlier estimates were made based on less detailed information, and therefore had less certainty. Sheehan’s article criticizes the new cost estimates, but in fact they should be praised for being more realistic.

Of course, the main failing of the article is the same failing that most members of the media make when assessing the cost of a big project – there’s no discussion of the costs of not building high speed rail. Those costs have been estimated at $100 billion. Readers ought to have been given that information, which is important to an honest and accurate assessment of the costs and benefits of the project.

I’m not saying Sheehan is a bad reporter. He’s a very good one, and has shown a good understanding of the details of the project. The problem is instead with the basic assumptions and biases of investigative journalism these days, where government is assumed to be lying or lacking controls, where critics are never shown to have anything other than neutral intentions, and where the bigger picture of costs and benefits tends to not get shown. It may help get more eyeballs on a story. But I’m not sure it helps get us better public policies.

The schedule for this week (all events last from 4 to 7PM):

Tuesday

Fairmead: Galilee Missionary Baptist Church, 22491 Fairmead Blvd

Bakersfield: Grace Baptist Church, 2550 Jewetta Ave.

Wednesday

Le Grand: LeGrand Legion Hall, 12560 Le Grand Road.

Wasco: Veterans Hall, 1202 Poplar Ave.

Thursday

Chowchilla: Chowchilla Fairgrounds Little Theater, 1000 S. Third St.

Corcoran: Technology Learning Center, 1101 Dairy Ave.

Tuesday, August 30

Fresno: Harmony of Harvest Church, 1410 Kern St.

These workshops are good opportunities for Valley residents to learn about the project and examine the details and options for themselves, rather than simply rely on what project opponents and NIMBYs have to say about it.

We really need to re-examine what we’re spending and what we’re going to get for it,” said Sen. Alan Lowenthal…

State Sen. Doug La Malfa, R-Willows, said he is preparing legislation that would ask voters to reconsider the project in June 2012. Voters authorized $9 billion in bonds for the project in 2008, although most of those bonds have not yet been sold.

“This thing is well on its way to massive cost overruns,” La Malfa said. “The costs are starting to escalate and we need to take a time-out.”

US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hit back hard against such thinking:

“Our country is so short sighted — our highways are jammed … and we are spending so much wasted money hauling people in airplanes for 300 miles or less, which is terribly inefficient,” he said. “I am a big big fan of high speed rail, you have to look at things other than the raw numbers of how much it costs. How much does it save?

“If you could take a train from Sacramento to L.A. to San Diego, that would be wonderful, instead of the inefficient San Francisco to Los Angeles flights that happen every day,” he went on. “It would be so short sighted to walk away from the bonding capacity — you have $10 or $12 billion in bonds — because of costs.”

Senator Reid, still the most powerful man in the US Senate, clearly gets it. So too does Nancy Pelosi, the once and future Speaker of the House. And of course, President Barack Obama gets it as well.

One reason they get it is they actually look at the whole cost picture, rather than just one half of the equation. We know HSR isn’t cheap. But the alternatives are even more expensive, as the Draft EIS highlights explain:

Statewide, over the next two decades, California’s HST system would alleviate the need to spend more than $100 billion to build 3,000 miles of new freeway, 5 airport runways, and 90 departure gates to meet the transportation needs of a growing population. In fact, the San Joaquin Valley is projected to grow at a rate higher than any other region in California. Four counties – Fresno, Kings, Tulare, and Kern – are projected to grow by 72% by year 2035.

In other words, not building high speed rail is the most expensive option of all. Those who suggest we kill HSR because of concern about costs are actually saying we should do the option that is WAY more expensive, and won’t actually help us build a sustainable transportation system.

Further, building HSR generates significant economic benefits that the critics never, ever acknowledge. Its green dividend for California could be as high as $10 billion a year just for Los Angeles alone.

If people are going to discuss costs, they need to discuss the full range of cost concerns, from the cost of doing nothing to the green dividend we’d been sacrificing without HSR. If people aren’t willing to include those figures, they’re not engaging in an honest debate.

Merced to Fresno:
Draft EIR
Summary
Highlights
Submit a Comment

Fresno to Bakersfield
Draft EIR
Summary
Highlights
Submit a Comment

As the planning process advances, more information is gathered, and specific alternatives are proposed, it’s no surprise that cost estimates can change. And so they have with the Draft EIR. Given that the US news media is trained to believe that all megaprojects are bad and that changing cost estimates – which are normal as a project goes from an idea to a hard, solid, detailed plan – is somehow a huge story, it should be no surprise that the news outlets are all over this.

The main story is the AP’s “exclusive” which claims the HSR cost “soars”:

Building tracks for the first section of California’s proposed high-speed rail line will cost $2.9 billion to $6.8 billion more than originally estimated, raising questions about the affordability of the nation’s most ambitious rail project at a time when its planning and finances are under fire.

Notice the way this is framed. In and of itself, getting a more accurate cost estimate is not inherently bad. You learn what your options are, get a better idea of the costs, and make choices based on that. But the AP report implies that the new numbers are a bad thing and that it could “question the affordability” of the project – yet, as usual, you will not find anywhere in the AP article a discussion of the cost of doing nothing. Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps?

A 2009 business plan developed for the California High-Speed Authority, the entity overseeing the project, estimated costs at about $7.1 billion for the equivalent stretch of tracks. Officials say those estimates were made before detailed engineering work and feedback from communities along the proposed route.

Which is correct. Feedback from communities is particularly important. Some in Fresno want a viaduct. Chowchilla wants a bypass. Wasco and Shafter would like one too. Those are not free and have cost implications.

The rail authority’s chief executive, Roelof van Ark, said planners anticipated the higher costs as more information about land acquisition and other details related to actual construction became known.

“We’ve had cost increases, but I believe the costs are now realistic and fair,” he said.

Van Ark also said he expects the estimated total cost of the project, originally pegged at $43 billion, to rise.

I have always said the same thing. Van Ark believes this is an accurate cost estimate. We’ll discuss that in more detail in a moment, but it’s good to have a solid idea of what the costs are so decisions can be made about project design.

The documents being released Tuesday lay out specific route alternatives for the 178 miles of planned tracks between Merced and Bakersfield, with an estimated total cost of $10 billion to $13.9 billion, depending on which route is selected. The first portion to be built covers most of that area.

Those estimates come out to a range of $56 million per mile to $78 million per mile. If you extrapolated that to the entire first phase of the project, which is 465 miles from San Francisco to Anaheim, you get an overall cost of $26 billion to $36 billion. Of course, building tunnels and building in urban areas will be more expensive than the Central Valley, but there’s as of yet no reason to believe that the figures of $80 billion, $100 billion, or $200 billion that are routinely thrown around by HSR critics have any merit.

Those costs are a lot higher than in other countries, such as Spain. Then again, Spain has quite low labor costs. And the cost estimates are “year of expenditure” estimates, which factor in inflation that might not materialize. Actual projects costs could be higher, but there’s just as good a chance they can be lower.

Still, as the Authority has $6.3 billion in hand, that leaves anywhere from $4 to $7 billion left to raise to build out the Central Valley segment. There are plenty of places that money could come from, such as federal loans or from the private sector (or some combination of the two).

The usual suspects will crow about this being yet another reason to not build the HSR project. But they will just be repeating their claims that new spending is bad, that the status quo is just fine – a statewide 12% unemployment rate and $4 gas is great, according to them – and that we’d be crazy to want to do anything about our economic crisis. If we want to build high speed rail and provide the basis of sustainable 21st century prosperity, we need to figure out how to get this built, and not make excuses for doing nothing.

As to the cost estimates themselves, these are not the product of a general increase, but of the specifics of the various alternatives still under study. For example, about $3.8 billion of the cost increase is due to proposals to build over 40 miles of viaducts through Fresno and other locations, especially if a Union Pacific/Highway 99 route is used. No wonder the Authority began looking at an at-grade option earlier this year.

You can see the impact of different alignments, for example, on page 6 of the Merced-Fresno highlights document. The cheapest option, a West Chowchilla version of the “hybrid” alternative that uses both BNSF and UPRR corridors, is $3.83 billion. The most expensive option, the East Chowchilla version of the UPRR/99 corridor, is $6.94 billion. However, there is significantly less variation in the Fresno-Bakersfield section, where the lower end estimate is $6.19 billion for a version bypassing Corcoran, Allenworth, Wasco and Shafter (which would likely cause farmers in Kern County to howl) and the most expensive, at $7.19 billion, is for a version following the BNSF route with an elevated through Corcoran. The other 22 options all fall within that narrow range.

There’s a lot to pore over here and discuss. One common theme is that if farmers all got their way and the project hewed closely to the Highway 99 corridor north of Fresno and the BNSF corridor south of Fresno, then the cost will be close to $14 billion for the segment. If farmers didn’t get their way and some land was taken for bypasses, the cost would be around $10 billion. In short, viaducts and aerials are expensive, and at-grade is cheap.

We know that HSR critics will jump all over this and claim it’s more evidence the project is a bad idea, we can’t afford it, blah blah blah. HSR advocates should respond by pushing the Authority to choose the segments that provide the best operational capacity for the most affordable price. That doesn’t mean we should automatically embrace the cheapest option everywhere, but if we can meet operational needs without long viaducts, we might as well do so. And if we need the viaducts, then we should go out and find funding. Each alternative should be assessed on its merits.

Overall, it’s worth keeping in mind that HSR will not rise or fall on cost estimates or the details of project design. Like virtually everything else in America, from schools to health care to roads to police and fire, it is caught up in the great battle over the nation’s future. American politics is dominated right now by a group of older, privileged people who are dead-set against spending money on anything, from health care to high speed rail, to help address the economic crisis and build a better future. HSR is coming along just fine, without any major problems. Its misfortune is to be coming along during a moment of right-wing political extremism so fierce that it threatens to destroy the country’s basic economic foundations.

If we believe HSR is a good idea, we will be motivated to solve the funding questions. If we believe HSR is a bad idea, then we’ll be motivated to use this report as an excuse to kill a project we didn’t really like. For those of us who believe it’s a good idea, the Draft EIR is a key milestone toward getting construction under way and showing us what issues need to be addressed, what choices need to be made, and what the options – and costs – really are.

The two Central Valley sections (Merced to Fresno and Fresno to Bakersfield) will delay their draft EIR release to June 2011, as a result of very positive Value Engineering which has been accomplished along the alignment, and which is being achieved in close cooperation with the local stakeholders. This will not affect the ROD/NOD, nor the award of construction contracts for the Initial Construction Segment, which is still envisaged for the second half of 2012. The two segments, LA/Anaheim and San Francisco/San Jose, have laid out a framework to investigate possible phased implementation that may provide services to these areas sooner and in the most efficient and cost effective way possible. Both sections also incorporate, in some form or other, “Shared Track” alternatives which become more complicated as phased implementation is envisaged. The LA/Anaheim phased implementation framework will be presented to the Board on March 3. To accommodate these shared track and phased implementation scenarios, more work needs to be done. This will result in the submission of the draft EIR being moved to late 2012, allowing inputs and participation by local and regional transit agencies and all other stakeholders. This approach allows us not only the time to involve these stakeholders, but also time to consider additional cost savings in further study of the alignments as we move forward.

It is important to note that only the estimated schedule for environmental milestones has changed; the schedule for construction has not. Should unexpected large amounts of additional funding become available at short notice, we will of course examine this schedule again and identify ways to not only expand the reach of initial construction, which will begin September 2012, but also to possibly accelerate these schedules.

So there you have it. More time to work in the Valley with farmers and local governments, as well as to settle some of the outstanding questions (like where the tracks go in Corcoran). And a lot more time to work with local governments and local residents in the Peninsula, in the LA County Gateway Cities, and in Orange County.

More time is probably useful. But it cannot become an indefinite delay. That helps nobody. Residents along the line, the surrounding community whose economic futures depend on the trains, and the state as a whole need to know the details. Let’s hope that this extra time gets used productively, instead of as an excuse for further delay.