One idea outlined in handwritten notes was to tamper with an unspecified U.S. rail track so that a train would fall off the track at a valley or a bridge. Counterterrorism officials said they believe the plot was only in the initial planning stages, and there is no recent intelligence about any active plan for such an attack. The FBI and Homeland Security issued an intelligence bulletin with details of the plan to law enforcement around the country.

Notice the way I framed this – “speculating about an attack.” That seems to be all that was going on here. Still, the American government tends to overreact to this sort of thing, and increased security was seen around some passenger rail stations in recent days.

This raises the bigger question of how to keep the American passenger rail system – especially high speed rail – secure. We know that terrorists have targeted trains in the past – Algerian terrorists struck the Paris Metro in 1995; al-Qaeda struck the Madrid commuter rail system in 2004 and the London Underground in 2005, and of course there was the attack on a major rail station as part of a larger attack in Mumbai in 2008.

This is not a new discussion. Back in November Janet Napolitano floated a TSA-style screening of rail passengers. And in January 2010, this blog got into an argument with Politico about HSR security.

This blog’s approach has been consistent: for HSR security, we need to take our cues from Europe, and NOT from the flawed and not very useful TSA airport screening. Almost as if on cue, just before the report about bin Laden eyeing American railroads, an interesting article appeared at Miller-McCune about European HSR security, specifically in Germany:

When Deutsche Bahn renovated the 160-mile stretch [Berlin to Hamburg] in 2004 to allow the current speeds, it wiped out the market for business flights, just as a good high-speed rail corridor in California could end shuttle-flight service from San Diego (or even San Francisco) to Los Angeles. The savings in carbon emissions and overall hassle are terrific. But the crucial reason it competes so well with short-haul flights is that German trains involve no security lines….

Germany is interesting because its lack of dedicated high-speed corridors makes total security impossible. Fast trains are so well integrated into the national rail network that you don’t always know when you’ve wandered onto one. A scanner line for high-speed rail would mean a scanner line for the whole train station, which is hugely impractical. So Germany doesn’t bother.

The article explains that there are several reasons why Germany doesn’t bother: terrorists tend to attack large masses of people (like Atocha Station or a London Underground train; HSR doesn’t usually mass people like that); searching all rail baggage is impractical; and the nature of the German rail system as described above makes it difficult to separate HSR trains from others.

But the key point the article makes is that Germany, like other European countries, has a profound philosophical difference from the American Department of Homeland Security: they see that “security theater” is useless bullshit:

When some conservatives responded by saying surveillance cameras should also be installed in public toilets, a commissioner in charge of data protection said a move like that would be “alarming on constitutional grounds.” A leading Green politician named Hans-Christian Ströbele said, “It’s been proven for a long time that video surveillance of public spaces doesn’t eliminate danger.” And that was pretty much that.

The difference between America and Europe, at the moment, is that security theater carries no political reward in Europe: No mainstream politician wants to inconvenience a lot of voters for security that will never be airtight. Europeans have lived with bustling, open-plan train stations for centuries; they know the odds. In America, though, good rail travel stands to become something new and unknown — all over again! — and if U.S. politicians start crowing for airline-style security theater, the trains’ usefulness will vanish.

Europeans have also lived with a LOT more terrorism than Americans have. Few countries know that better than Spain, where ETA bombings were common for nearly 30 years, and where the 11-3 attacks at Atocha Station brought al-Qaeda terror to Madrid. But as Bianca explained in a comment on this site after a trip to Spain in late 2009, HSR security at Atocha Station wasn’t disruptive or intrusive and did not resemble the TSA at all:

we had to put our bags through an x-ray machine, but we did not have to walk through a magnetometer/metal detector.

No shoes off. No emptying pockets. No wanding.

Just drop bags on conveyor belt, walk around, pick them up off the other side of the x-ray, that was it. You barely had to slow your stride, it was such little hassle.

Back in April 2009, Rafael wrote about this topic and made some other points that are worth considering, including his argument that the most important thing is to prevent access to the tracks, with access to the trains being of secondary concern:

Rather, my purpose is to highlight the simple fact that rail networks are huge, yet a small amount of explosives or even just some concrete slabs can be enough to derail a train. The resulting casualties can be minimized by choosing very stiff train designs with articulated frames, e.g. products from Alstom or Talgo. However, the primary objective should always be to make it as difficult as possible to trespass onto the tracks in the first place.

In fact, bin Laden’s speculative plan involved tampering with the tracks to force a derailment of a passenger train, preferably on a bridge. That suggests Rafael had been right all along in his emphasis on track security over passenger screening.

Unfortunately, proposals like the Eshoo-Simitian-Gordon “blended” plan compromise this important safety goal. Already we know that the Caltrain tracks on the Peninsula are fundamentally unsafe. The death toll of the at-grade tracks is high enough as it is. If security is a concern, and it should be, then at-grade tracks do not provide the kind of security we need.

• Caltrain’s “phased” plan: The biggest news is Caltrain’s call for an “initial operating segment” to be constructed on the SJ-SF rail corridor:

CalTrain-9-13-2010

What this means isn’t exactly clear, and the devil is in the details, which we at Californians For High Speed Rail are examining as we speak. Still, there are a few questions that do immediately come to mind:

1. Is this legal? Prop 1A provides pretty strict rules about what has to be constructed with state HSR bond money. Does this “initial operating segment” count? Sources I’ve talked to indicate that it might not be.

2. What does San Francisco think? And would this screw the Transbay Terminal? Last month a very high profile groundbreaking was held at the Transbay Terminal with such dignitaries as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Barbara Boxer. They billed it as the “first high speed rail station” not just in California, but in the country. One would hope that Caltrain’s proposal has been vetted by those two important federal officials, as well as the whole of SF’s government (and not just SF’s members on the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board).

3. Will this make any difference to Palo Alto and other city councils that have been criticizing the project? Caltrain seems to be making a bid to earn the support of city councils like Palo Alto and Menlo Park that have expressed skepticism about the HSR project. But it may not stop these councils from ignoring their constituents and turning against the project:

Klein, however, likened the rail authority to a bad business partner, and urged Caltrain to pull its support from the project. Klein, who has been one of the most vocal council members against the project, said Caltrain could be more effective than any city in bringing down the project because it controls the track right of way.

Councilwoman Nancy Shepherd, meanwhile, urged Caltrain to come up with a more clear statement on the phased-in approach to better protect the Peninsula.

Councilman Greg Scharff argued that if Caltrain has the final say on the right-of-way, it should bear some responsibility if certain track options are taken off the table.

4. What does this actually mean for the HSR project? Can this phasing approach be built without causing logistical, operational, or additional cost problems for future HSR service? CA4HSR wrote to Caltrain about these concerns back in June when the agency was looking to move forward with their 2004 EIR, and this proposal will be judged by similar standards.

• San José Backs Aerial Structure: While the Peninsula city councils fight against aerial structures, despite considerable evidence from other Bay Area neighborhoods like Rockridge and Albany that these structures do not destroy communities or hurt property values, San José has indicated it will back a proposed aerial structure to carry HSR tracks south from Diridon Station:

After a lengthy discussion, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday agreed with a staff recommendation to study an aerial track, not a tunnel, for future high-speed rail trains into downtown….

First, the California High-Speed Rail Authority must agree by Oct. 1 that the city has the right to approve or reject any design for an aerial alignment through the Diridon Station area. If the authority does not agree, the council will send a letter asking the authority for a full study of a tunnel instead.

Any agreement also would ensure that the city is given significant input on the design and noise impacts of building part of the high-speed rail corridor along Monterey Road from Pacheco Pass at grade.

It’s good to see San José taking this productive, constructive, collaborative approach with the California High Speed Rail Authority – which suggests that Peninsula local officials’ claims that such approaches aren’t possible are just not true. Peninsula city councils that adopt an inflexible approach will find that collaboration is difficult – because of course, collaboration requires flexibility.

The Mercury News article linked above also included residents’ concerns about an aerial structure being an “eyesore.” Most people in the East Bay have gotten used to the similar structure built to carry traffic from Interstate 880 north to Interstate 80 through the MacArthur Maze, and this portion of San José has a major stack interchange (I-280/CA-87), downtown skyscrapers, and is in the flight path of one of a busy passenger airport. I doubt very much that an aerial structure will make that much difference – and of course, focusing on those concerns misses the much more fundamental and important point that HSR will save San José residents (and Californians) money and help produce a cleaner environment.

• Mountain View decides against an HSR station: Mountain View has been pretty supportive of the HSR project, but this week its city council decided that an HSR station didn’t fit their downtown plans:

A majority of City Council members oppose having a high-speed rail station in Mountain View, they said in a study session Monday night. Unless two of the four station opponents are unseated in the November election, it appears that high speed trains are not likely to stop in Mountain View’s downtown.

It’s always seemed that Redwood City or Palo Alto were the more likely locations for a mid-Peninsula station anyway. Mountain View would certainly benefit from a station – it would be a huge boost to local businesses and the economy, spurring job creation and significantly boosting property values. Sure, some of the neighbors complained about needing a parking permit for their streets, but really, that’s a tiny, tiny inconvenience that many Californians deal with just fine – especially if it were a tradeoff for a big boost in their home values.

Still, a Mountain View station never did seem all that vital to begin with. If they prefer not to have one, that means we can focus more on the question of whether it should go to Palo Alto or Redwood City.

Three options will be the focus of further study. All leave the Transbay Terminal in a covered trench to the Fourth and King streets Caltrain station, then travel at ground level to South San Francisco.

– One option relies almost entirely on ground-level and elevated structures – either earthen berms or concrete or steel viaducts – to travel from San Francisco to San Jose.

– Another option uses ground-level and elevated rails until Atherton, then mixes ground level, elevated, trench and tunnel designs on the southern part of the Peninsula with tracks placed in open trenches in stretches through parts of Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Mountain View.

– A variation of the second option would place tracks in a long trench stretching from Atherton to Sunnyvale.

(UPDATE: Mike Rosenberg’s Mercury News article has a very good graphic showing the different options.)

The Supplemental AA report noted that the long tunnel would not only be extremely costly to build, but has two other problems that contradict the expressed desires of those in the community that spoke out:

• It would be difficult to build the tunnel while maintaining existing Caltrain operations

• It would be difficult to build the tunnel without an expanded right of way at the transitions into and out of the tunnel, requiring more property takes than the public would likely support.

As the article indicated, a tunnel could still happen in the southern Peninsula area, including Palo Alto – and if the public expresses a desire for a tunnel and is willing to accept Caltrain disruption and more property takes, a longer tunnel could be back on the table.

That would still require it to be funded. Here, the Peninsula Cities Coalition would do well to help their own case and stop attacking the HSR project and instead work collaboratively and constructively to ensure HSR is funded by Congress. When PCC member cities such as Atherton or Menlo Park sue the Authority and play up claims that the ridership numbers are flawed, it does not help the cause of getting more HSR funding from Congress, which the Peninsula cities will need to construct their desired designs.

The fact that aerial structures are still on the table will likely revive discredited claims that it would be a “Berlin Wall” that would “divide” communities, a claim that does not acknowledge the fact that Peninsula cities are already “divided” by the existing tracks, whether they’re at grade or above grade, and that an aerial solution would actually help reunite these communities by making the rail corridor more permeable and safer.

Of course, some of these cities already have built their own aerial structures and haven’t suffered as a result, with San Carlos being a high-profile example. Clem reminds us of another example from San Mateo:

The elevated structure spans across several blocks of San Mateo, like a gash through the heart of downtown. Its 67-foot width casts vast shadows onto downtown shoppers, like a freeway overpass, although women and children seem to pass underneath without being attacked. The concrete structure, strangely free of graffiti, provides a full 16 feet of free clearance underneath it for trucks. Three stories up above, the side walls of the elevated bridges loom a full 25 feet over the street. To add insult to this injury, metallic poles tower another 18 feet above the structure, bringing its overall height to an incredible 43 feet!

If you know San Mateo, you might have guessed this describes the Central Parking Garage, a structure with presence, visual impact, and context-sensitivity resembling the elevated, four-track high-speed rail corridor that residents fear.

There are examples of aerial passenger rail structures that are integrated well into their communities and have spurred growth and activity. We highlighted several in March 2009. Unfortunately, there still remains a bias in the US against aerial structures, equating them with blight.

One of these biased sources is, once again, the folks from KALW News, who for some reason that I cannot quite understand, have been given a platform at the SF Chronicle’s website on their Bay Area Transit blog. This is despite the fact that these reporters appear to not have much familiarity with the HSR project, or with the years of accumulated knowledge built up by the transit blogging community, and despite the fact that other writers for the Chronicle’s Bay Area Transit blog, such as Greg Dewar and Matthew Roth, have far more experience, knowledge and insight on Bay Area transit issues.

Today’s post by Casey Miner is a great example. Miner, who apparently had little understanding or familiarity with the HSR project until very recently, had this reaction to the Peninsula Supplemental AA report:

As anyone who’s lived near an elevated BART station knows, the noise, vibration and general aesthetics of those kinds of tracks aren’t always the greatest. And they can indeed wreck a neighborhood—just look at what happened to West Oakland’s 7th Street.

This is quite ridiculous, to claim that West Oakland’s 7th Street was “wrecked” by BART. As Miner may not know, the true damage was done by the Cypress Street viaduct, which collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It also didn’t help that West Oakland suffered 40 straight years of economic dislocation, brought on not by freeways or BART (in fact, BART was welcomed by local residents as a bringer of jobs and access to other employment centers around the region) but by state and federal economic policies that starved the community of jobs and other economic resources. I’ve studied Oakland history, and am very familiar with the work of others that have done the same, and no historian has yet claimed that BART was what “wrecked” West Oakland.

In fact, one can see places where BART aerial structures haven’t “wrecked” a community – Albany is a pretty good example – and places where it may even have helped, with Fruitvale being another example.

But that error is minor compared to Miner’s next statement:

But what seemed more salient to me was a comparison to this country’s last big infrastructure project: the interstate highway system.

The dream of futuristic highways soaring over the land led many cities to build freeways right through the middle of neighborhoods. By the time people started to rethink those ideas the damage had been done. It’s only now that some groups are gaining traction in their efforts to take down sections of freeway and re-unify the areas they divided. The push to tear down part of Interstate 280 is the latest local example.

It’s been a long time since we built BART and the freeways, and it may be that engineers are able to solve some of the problems with aerial tracks. I’ll be looking into those issues in the coming weeks and will let you know what I find.

This is a totally inappropriate comparison for several reasons, all of which indicate Miner’s basic lack of understanding of transportation issues and therefore call into question her fitness to write the Bay Area Transit blog for SFGate.com:

1. The Peninsula HSR project is entirely unlike the Interstate projects because, unlike those projects, the HSR project will not be built on a new alignment. The tracks already act as a barrier. An aerial structure would, in practice, not be all that different, except things would be safer and more permeable to vehicles and pedestrians. This is totally unlike a freeway project, however, because the HSR project isn’t being blasted through a neighborhood on a totally new alignment.

2. Rail corridors behave very differently for communities than freeways. This is especially true for the Peninsula corridor, which was built up around the tracks. Downtowns and urban development patterns emerged around rail stations, which is totally and completely different from most freeways, which ignored existing development patterns and blasted through them, causing disruption. Whether the Peninsula rail corridor is aerial, at-grade, or in a trench/tunnel, it would still act to bring the community together through its stations, whereas a freeway does not bring community development activities toward it by its very nature.

Miner then compounds her already-flawed post by not showing any understanding of the backstory between the CHSRA and Peninsula HSR opponents:

People’s reactions to the plans weren’t only about the engineering. They also revealed a deeper mistrust of the Authority board’s motives. Several objected to the fact that the plans had not appeared on the Authority’s website until some time after the meeting started, when they had been promised to the public earlier. And when the time came to vote on the staff recommendations, Authority board member Rod Diridon sparked yells of disbelief when he declared that “the board doesn’t have an entrenched position.” It seems clear that some trust issues will need to be ironed out if this project is going to move forward effectively. The board seemed to acknowledge this fact, even making a point of asking that all information be posted online in a timely manner. But there’s still a long way to go.

Miner basically assumes that the critics and “yells of disbelief” are authentic displays of community anger, when in fact they are calculated statements by known project opponents designed to discredit the Authority and its work by giving the inaccurate appearance of a lack of community support.

In other words, it’s exactly the same thing as the teabaggers who disrupted town halls across the country a year ago.

I really do not understand why KALW News has such a prominent perch at SFGate.com when their reporting is so consistently flawed on the HSR project, including Nathanael Johnson’s notoriously biased HSR report that failed to interview a single HSR project supporter.

Miner, Johnson and the KALW News folks appear to suffer from what I would call the “Tracy Wood problem” after the notoriously anti-HSR biased reporter for the Voice of OC. Like Wood, the KALW News folks don’t appear to have very much knowledge of transit issues at all, especially HSR. But they are attuned to the idea that government sometimes screws up and sometimes doesn’t listen to the public. So they walk into the HSR issue, see a bunch of HSR critics complaining about this and that, and suddenly believe they’ve found some huge story about a flawed government agency.

In reality, they’ve found no such thing. But like Donny from The Big Lebowski, they’re like someone who walks into the room in the middle of a movie: they have no frame of reference. Lacking an understanding of transit issues or the HSR project and its critics, they misinterpret what they see without even doing the basic due diligence that once was taught as standard practice in journalism school.

The HSR project remains popular around the state, and thank god for reporters like the SF Chronicle’s Michael Cabanatuan who understand the HSR project and the debate around it, and who can provide fact-based, neutral reporting that is useful. The KALW News folks could learn a thing or two from that model.

The proposed high-speed rail project through the Peninsula will stir up contaminated soil near Burlingame High School and cause other serious disruptions in the San Mateo Union High School District if bullet trains don’t go underground, local education leaders contend in a letter….

San Mateo Union wants the authority to pay particular attention to the arsenic school leaders believe is in the soil along the Caltrain corridor that fast-moving trains would use. District leaders say the arsenic could be the result of weed killer sprayed along the tracks years ago. They worry that construction could dig up that contaminant, exposing Burlingame High.

The school is about 400 feet away from the tracks and just saw the completion of an arsenic remediation program costing more than $4.6 million.

Here’s what I don’t get. A deep bore tunnel would disturb the soil as well, and could also dig up the arsenic. The TBM (tunnel boring machine) has to put the soil somewhere, and if there’s arsenic that’s worked its way down to where a deep bore tunnel would go, then any disturbance could cause the arsenic to resurface or get into nearby watersheds and creeks.

Of course, that’s merely speculation on my part, same as with the SMUHS letter. What is really needed is a rigorous soil analysis to determine what is actually there, and what if any impact the various construction would have. An above-grade solution, especially if it were retained fill, might not actually do all that much to disturb existing soils. But it seems the prudent and sensible thing to wait for the technical analysis from on-site studies before firing off a “tunnel-only” letter.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this issue is being used as a “won’t somebody please think of the children!” move by people who don’t want an elevated solution anyway. Burlingame’s city council has been critical of the HSR project for some time now, and this seems like a too-convenient way for them to say “it has to be a tunnel.”

I’m not dismissing the concern about arsenic. But there’s crap all over the Peninsula left as a result of 20th century industrial activity that has to be considered as part of this construction project. Depending on the soil analysis, it could be the case that it’s actually safer to build above-grade than below-grade. So Is it so hard to wait for an in-depth analysis of what is actually there and what it means for the various alternatives before pronouncing one alternative safer than the other?

I actually like the sound of barking sea lions at night, which I can hear from my apartment a few blocks away. I’m used to it (as I am also used to the VERY loud bugle calls played over the PA system at the Presidio of Monterey just a block from where I live). I can see how it might be a bit surprising to someone, but they might as well complain about the sound of crashing waves or foghorns.

In short, experience matters. Most of us here on the blog have some personal experience on high speed trains. I’ve been a convert to HSR ever since a 2001 trip on Spain’s AVE system. So when we talk about HSR, we have some sort of experience in mind. We know what the trains look and sound like, we know how the grade separations look, we know that the routes integrate pretty well with the urban landscape.

Your average Californians, on the other hand, doesn’t have that experience. When they think of trains they think of loud and long freight trains or commuter trains. Those things are clearly an annoyance to people living nearby, and often pose a genuine safety risk, as Palo Alto understands well.

So when people hear about “high speed trains” they may not have any experience with actual bullet trains, and start flipping out, assuming that the CHSRA is planning to destroy neighborhoods with intrusive rail infrastructure that serves loud trains blowing horns and rumbling by at all hours of the night.

We can see this at work in the debate over using the Taylor Yard in LA:

One committee member, who asked to remain anonymous, said she generally supports the project so long as it does not increase the noise pollution in the area.

“Is there going to be noise?” she asked. “I’m right next door and I hear the horns of [Union Pacific Corporation] trains all night long.”

As a homeowner, she has fruitlessly tried for years to persuade Union Pacific to alter its operations to reduce the noise during late hours. As a private company protected by federal law, Authority representatives acknowledged that the Authority has no oversight on the rail companies that currently utilize Taylor Yard.

“Yes, there will be noise,” Ortman answered bluntly.

Ortman said the high-speed line does not utilize horns. Ortman said the amount of noise the line will create would not be known until the EIR is completed sometime in the middle of 2011. He said a “noise analysis” is included in the report.

A big issue for residents, especially after several high-profile rail accidents, is train safety for a system that is proposed to boast speeds of over 200-miles-per-hour. Ortman, assured committee members that by design, the project will be safe because it requires as little interference as possible. For example, although one proposal requires the line to share a right-of-way with Union Pacific freight trains, the line itself will have separate tracks and will be barricaded to prevent collisions.

A lot of that seems common-sense to us, but it’s not to a lot of the public. We also know that there are ways to build this train in a way that complements the park – the CHSRA has its own simulation showing how that can work and I hope they showed this at the meeting in LA.

More of that needs to happen. CHSRA simulations are very useful, especially for contentious sites. But it’s also worth using the magic of technology to bring the world of HSR to California. We can and should continuously show people some of the key details about how HSR works, how it looks, and how it sounds – that it’s very different from Metrolink and Union Pacific.

For example, this image from Sweden appeared in a recent article on CNN about “green trains”:

Obviously HSR on, say, the Peninsula would be wider. But we’ve also shown other examples of above-grade rail that work elegantly with their surroundings. From Italy:

Two from Berlin:

And from Lambeth Road in London:

None of these look like a Berlin Wall. All of them have become accepted parts of the urban landscape, in parts of the world where aesthetics matter every bit as much as in California, if not moreso (you can be sure that the Italian beach town shown above cares very much about how the rails look).

As the CHSRA works to build and rebuild support across the state for its designs, they would do well to show people as much as possible more than just lines on a map, and even more than the very good simulations from NC3D – they need to show examples and, ideally, video of actual, operating HSR. This one from Spain is still one of my favorites, not the least of which is because the landscape resembles California so well:

The more we can show things like this to Californians, the more successfully we can push back against the NIMBYs. Their opposition to HSR is rooted in their desire to preserve the economic and political arrangements in this state which benefit them immensely, even at the expense of others. We’ll never overcome that by showing images of how HSR actually works. But the more we can do to make HSR seem less strange and more familiar, the more success we’ll have at getting through the planning process with a minimum of fuss.

Steve Emslie, Palo Alto’s deputy city manager who has been working with a coalition of Peninsula cities to track the progress of the controversial project, said the agency’s anticipation of private funds is one of the most problematic aspects of the new business plan. Emslie characterized the agency’s plans for private investments as “optimistic.”

“It really doesn’t give a lot of definition of where the private money will come from,” Emslie said. “I don’t think in the last 100 years there has been a public transportation system that actually made money without a lot of subsidy.”

The business plan bases its projections for private contributions on its assumption that the rail system, unlike most transit services, “is expected to generate significant operating surpluses.”

It’s unfortunate that Gennady Sheyner, who has a spotty record of covering HSR accurately, regurgitates Emslie’s claims without fact-checking them. Beyond the patent absurdity of the “last 100 years” claim – many passenger rail services, from streetcars to intercity trains, were quite profitable for the first half of the 20th century. Only after 1945 did some of these begin to lose money, as government spending shifted toward a subsidy of roads and automobiles.

Within the last 50 years or so – which Emslie tellingly assumes is the way it’s always been – many transit systems have indeed required ongoing subsidies to remain in operation. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, as the roads the city of Palo Alto owns and maintains are subsidized, as are Highway 101 and Interstate 280, as are the region’s airports.

The issue here is whether HSR can generate enough revenue to pay back investors as well as its own operating expenses. There is every reason to believe this will be the case. Every HSR system in the world generates operating surpluses, with SNCF, operator of France’s TGV system, and RENFE, operator of Spain’s AVE system, leading the way.

And of course, despite the hullaballoo over the possible increase in ticket fares for California HSR, what the new business plan showed is that HSR will generate a profit, even with tickets costing 83% of airfares instead of 50%. It may not attract as many riders, but what riders it attracts would be able to pay back the investors as well as the system operations.

The problem is that HSR should maximize ridership. And so in one sense I agree with Emslie that private investment is problematic – not because it isn’t likely to materialize or be repaid, but because the costs to the system, to our ability to move people away from roads and planes, to maximize our carbon reductions and oil independence, as well as possible financial costs to the state, are simply too high to pay.

Another Palo Alto-area reaction to the business plan worth watching is that of State Senator Joe Simitian. We’ve been critical of Senator Simitian this year, so his reaction to all this will be critical.

Of particular interest will be a town hall Senator Simitian, and HSR opponent Senator Alan Lowenthal, will hold in Palo Alto in January:

Simitian said the plan will be carefully reviewed by various legislators and committees in the coming month. Simitian also said he and Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, plan to hold a public meeting in Palo Alto on Jan. 21 to discuss the business plan and other high-speed-rail-related developments with area residents.

We’ll be sure to give you more information about this meeting as we get it.

It will be particularly interesting to see whether the full range of views on the Peninsula will be represented. Currently there are three broad sets of attitudes regarding HSR:

1. The “silent majority” of HSR supporters. These are among the 60% of area voters that backed Prop 1A in November 2008, people who want to see HSR built and don’t much care how it’s done or what it looks like. Their voice has been almost totally absent during this year, but they are out there, and deserve consideration.

2. Folks who want HSR built but care deeply about how it’s done. These are the “reasonable critics” who think that HSR is needed, but want it built in a trench, or in a tunnel. They might be supportive of some form of at-grade or above-grade solution, depending on the details. They play an important role in the discussion on the Peninsula, but tend to get shouted down by the folks in the third group.

3. HSR opponents and deniers. They don’t support HSR, either because they don’t understand it or don’t care about the need for it. Perhaps they prioritize their property values or their sense of aesthetics or their refusal to share their wealth with anyone else above the need for high speed trains. Some are OK with HSR, just as long as it doesn’t follow the Caltrain corridor. Whatever the reason, they are the most vocal people in this entire debate, and are willing to use the concerns of folks in group #2 and the apathy of folks in group #1 as leverage to try and reverse the outcome of Prop 1A’s passage.

The goal of HSR supporters should be to mobilize group #1, have a reasonable discussion with group #2, and find ways to neutralize the arguments and effectiveness of group #3.

That’s the task before us in 2010, at least on the Peninsula.