Assembly Bill 900, the companion bill to SB 292 which gives Farmers Field protection against legal chalenges, provide the same protection to ANY project costing more than $100 million. Thus, any lawsuit filed under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) against the Westside Subway will go directly to the Court of Appeals and be heard within 175 days. I’m sure the Expo Construction Authority is jealous.

“The subway is a natural from a job-creation standpoint, from an investment standpoint, from an emission reduction and air quality standpoint,” said Senator Alex Padilla, the author of SB2 292, to the Daily News.

If the Westside subway might benefit, what about high speed rail?

Let’s take a closer look at AB 900. Here’s what the bill’s intro text has to say:

This bill would enact the Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2011 and establish specified judicial review procedures for the judicial review of the EIR and approvals granted for a leadership project related to the development of a
residential, retail, commercial, sports, cultural, entertainment, or recreational use project, or clean renewable energy or clean energy manufacturing project. The act would authorize the Governor to certify a leadership project for streamlining pursuant to the act if certain conditions are met.

Does HSR meet those “certain conditions”? Back to the text of AB 900:

(b) “Environmental leadership development project,” “leadership project,” or “project” means a project as described in Section 21065 that is one the following:
(1) A residential, retail, commercial, sports, cultural, entertainment, or recreational use project that is certified as LEED silver or better by the United States Green Building Council and, where applicable, that achieves a 10-percent greater standard for transportation efficiency than for comparable projects. These projects must be located on an infill site. For a project that is within a metropolitan planning organization for which a sustainable communities strategy or alternative planning strategy is in effect, the infill project shall be consistent with the general use
designation, density, building intensity, and applicable policies specified for the project area in either a sustainable communities strategy or an alternative planning strategy, for which the State Air Resources Board, pursuant to subparagraph (H) of paragraph (2) of subdivision (b) of Section 65080 of the Government Code, has accepted a metropolitan planning organization’s determination that the
sustainable communities strategy or the alternative planning strategy would, if implemented, achieve the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
(2) A clean renewable energy project that generates electricity exclusively through wind or solar, but not including waste incineration or conversion.
(3) A clean energy manufacturing project that manufactures
products, equipment, or components used for renewable energy
generation, energy efficiency, or for the production of clean
alternative fuel vehicles.
(c) “Transportation efficiency” means the number of vehicle trips by employees, visitors, or customers of the residential, retail, commercial, sports, cultural, entertainment, or recreational use project divided by the total number of employees, visitors, and customers.

Keep in mind that I’m not a lawyer. But as I read this…I am not seeing how HSR would qualify. And to be honest I’m not seeing how the Westside subway qualifies either. Neither seem to count as a “residential, retail, commercial, sports, cultural, entertainment, or recreational use project,” neither appear to be “infill,” and neither appear to be clean renewable energy projects or clean energy manufacturing projects.

When I first read about AB 900 last week I took a quick glance at the text and came to the same conclusion. Upon seeing Senator Alex Padilla’s comments I decided to take another look for the purposes of writing this post, and I am again coming to the same conclusion. But then he is much more familiar with this bill than I am, so maybe I am missing something, though it doesn’t seem that way.

This bill is clearly part of a broader effort in Sacramento to streamline CEQA review for large projects that could create jobs and help the environment. So even if the Westside subway and HSR don’t fall under the specific and narrow definitions of AB 900, a precedent has been set. Both projects are environmentally friendly, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and will create desperately needed jobs for the state. If AB 900 is perceived to be a success, then political momentum could be generated in Sacramento to apply it to more projects, including rail projects.

That might be a good thing. As I have written before, CEQA is outdated and needs to be reformed. California needs land use planning law that promotes projects that help lower greenhouse gas emissions. CEQA, however, was written in the 1970s when those concerns didn’t exist. CEQA has had a positive impact on the environment, but over time NIMBYs have found ways to use it to stop projects they don’t like, including rail. And that has fueled sprawl and dependence on automobiles, increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

CEQA needs to be a tool to help fight global warming, not a tool to help wealthy people stop those fights. That means it’s time to bring it into the 21st century. AB 900 is one way we can get there. Even if it doesn’t apply to rail projects, it’s still a good way to get infill redevelopment moving more quickly, without actually preventing people from using the law as a basis to sue against projects they dislike.

Currently there are no discussions that I’m aware of regarding HSR and CEQA. That may change. In the early 1980s Jerry Brown exempted HSR from CEQA altogether. I doubt that would ever happen today. But an expedited lawsuit review process could. It may be something worth exploring, as part of the effort to bring jobs and economic recovery to California and improving CEQA without gutting it or undermining its positive aspects.

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.

Gov. Jerry Brown has the state’s top infrastructure priorities half right. California badly needs to shore up the state’s primary water system. But a bullet train project threatens to become a costly boondoggle. The governor should push ahead with water plans, and sidetrack the high-speed rail proposal before it rolls over taxpayers….

A bullet train, by contrast, represents no essential public need, and Brown should rethink his advocacy of the project. The California High-Speed Rail Authority envisions a system that will whisk passengers between Southern California and the Bay Area at speeds of up to 220 mph.

Beginning a decade or two from now, people will look back on editorials like this the way people mock things like Dewey Defeats Truman, Irving Fisher’s October 1929 pronouncement that “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau” and other similarly wrong predictions.

The notion that a bullet train “represents no essential public need” is a shockingly ignorant statement that requires one believe there is no such thing as rising oil prices, no such thing as high unemployment amidst the worst recession in 60 years caused in no small part by high oil prices (as anyone from the Inland Empire ought to know well), no traffic problems (ever try commuting on Interstate 10 or State Routes 60 and 91?).

It also requires one not believe that global warming is a serious problem. And that’s the most patently absurd assumption in the editorial, because of its argument that rail and water aren’t related. If the goal is to ensure reliable water supplies to California’s farmers and households, then reducing carbon emissions is essential to water delivery. California’s own climate studies have found that global warming produces a significant risk that the state will face water scarcity in the coming decades. While high speed rail alone won’t stop global warming, the state has found that by removing 12 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, HSR is an essential piece of implementing the AB 32 climate target reductions. HSR and water, then, don’t trump each other – investing in the first helps protect the second.

The Press-Enterprise closed their editorial by saying “The state can survive just fine without the needless expense of a bullet train.” If it were up to them, we’d still be in the Great Depression. The bay bridges, Boulder Dam, and the Central Valley canals were all claimed in the 1920s to be too expensive to build or were simply unnecessary. But the state built each during the Depression, and they played a crucial role in providing the basis of long-term prosperity, just as HSR will (including for the Inland Empire).

California isn’t going to climb out of this economic crisis and thrive in the 21st century if it remains locked in obsolete 20th century thinking as embodied in the Press-Enterprise article. California needs both water and rail and has no choice but to find a way to fund them both – along with the other priorities facing the state. Rejecting the false belief that we can’t fund those priorities is the first step to actually getting those important projects built and helping put California on the path to recovery.

Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, writes about HSR as The Test of Our Generation:

Today, our generation faces its test. Three years ago, voters approved bonds to help build the largest public works project in the state’s history: a system of high-speed, electric passenger trains. The project is under assault with almost the same words flung at the Golden Gate Bridge – it’s too expensive, it’s impractical and it will ruin the neighborhood. Some leaders, sensing shifting political winds, are working to find a way to get to “no.” The business community of our region disagrees. We want to find a way to get to “yes.”

This discussion takes place against the backdrop of a state population projected to reach 50 million by 2050. If we do not build high-speed rail at a current price tag of between $40 billion and $60 billion, we will instead be forced to build an estimated $100 billion worth of new highways, airport runways and departure gates.

This is exactly the right kind of vision for California, the one voters endorsed and embraced in November 2008. When HSR opponents said we couldn’t afford it, voters rejected their claims and realized we should build new infrastructure just as we did during the Depression. Jim Wunderman, who represents the Bay Area’s largest employers, is in no position or mood to be profligate or wasteful with the public’s funds. Those businesses wouldn’t allow it. And they understand very well that California needs HSR in its future if the state is to prosper.

And like good businessmen, they know a good deal when they see one. If HSR’s price tag is as high as $60 billion, it’s still a $40 billion savings to the state. These businesses are also well aware of the cost of oil, and do not share the blind ignorance of most HSR critics to the serious problems that our dependence on fossil fuels creates.

Bob Doty’s article isn’t online yet, but CHSRA board chairman Tom Umberg’s article is, emphasizing the better travel that HSR will inaugurate (and that’s a serious consideration given how digital devices and the growing inconvenience of air travel, along with the soaring cost of oil, are making existing forms of travel less ideal).

One important article is by Frederick Jordan and Darlene Mar, two advocates for minority contractors in the state. Ignore the bizarre title the article was given – their complaint is substantive, that the CHSRA has been excluding women- and minority-owned contractors. Their recommendations include:

That’s why small and minority business groups are calling on the state and federal government to:

– Demand transparency and accountability in the High-Speed Rail Authority’s distribution of funds;

– Insist that all potential contracting opportunities be opened up to all interested firms through broad public outreach and selection; and

– Put a stop to the Rail Authority’s practice of simply funneling contracting dollars to large international firms.

We also are calling upon the Obama administration to stop all federal funds to the project until the Rail Authority overhauls its restrictive procurement system and reassigns components of the mega-contracts already awarded to businesses that reflect the full diversity of our state.

It’s certainly worth looking into. And I’ve never been a fan of sending contracting dollars to large international firms if there are locally owned contractors that can do the same work. Of course, since the US has ignored HSR for the last 30 years, we don’t have a strong base of domestic expertise in the matter. But where local contracting can happen, it should happen.

The most important of the SF Chronicle articles is by Assemblymember Jerry Hill, who represents the 19th district based in the north Peninsula. In the article, Hill outs himself as an HSR denier – someone who refuses to accept the facts about the HSR project, its success in the US and around the world, and instead peddles often-debunked claims that he should know better than to repeat. It’s a sad thing to watch:

I voted for Proposition 1A because it seemed to be good public policy. Done right, high-speed rail has the potential to meet the future transportation demands of California’s growing population by providing a green alternative to new freeway lanes and airport runways.

But much has changed in the past three years, including the reliability and accuracy of the cost and ridership projections on which Proposition 1A was based, and ballooning costs and uncertain revenue potential.

Actually, the cost and ridership projections remain reliable and accurate. As the project proceeds in its engineering, the details become known more clearly, and the cost estimates become more reliable, not less. As to the ridership projections, we’ll deal with those in a moment, but the key is that their reliability has never been disproven, and the evidence from around the globe and the US is clear that HSR will have high ridership and high revenue. Hill appears to ignore that evidence, as most deniers do. The costs are rising, yes, but as Jim Wunderman pointed out it’s still a good deal.

Hill’s argument rests, as do those of most HSR critics, on a complete misunderstanding of the evidence. He doesn’t do himself any favors by completely misreading the situation in Washington DC:

California faces many challenges that are certain to be exacerbated by the gridlock in Washington and upheaval on Wall Street. Despite success in securing stimulus dollars, future federal funding will be reduced significantly in the coming years. Control of the House of Representatives has also changed, increasing the likelihood that funding for high-speed rail will be on the chopping block.

So too will funding for schools, libraries, public safety, old people, young people, middle-aged people, health care, pollution cleanup, scientific research, the arts, and so on. But what Hill doesn’t realize is that this is a temporary situation. Democrats lead the polling for the House of Representatives 51-44, which is about where they were at in 2006 when they retook the House and made Nancy Pelosi speaker. Speaker Pelosi is strongly committed to HSR, and she’d find a way to get the California project the funding it needs.

Hill is basically using the Tea Party reign of terror to justify killing HSR in California. That will look particularly stupid in January 2013 with Pelosi again wielding the speaker’s gavel, with Democratic control of the Senate and Obama still in the White House. (Of course, if Obama loses, saving HSR will be the least of our worries.)

Hill continues:

In Sacramento, the Legislature is evaluating state programs as we struggle to balance revenues and expenditures. California has had to cut more than $30 billion from its budget in the last three years. The state has important needs, including more than $20 billion owed to its schools and colleges.

The question we need to ask is: “Does high-speed rail make fiscal sense – and is now the time?” In 2008 we were told that federal funding would make up nearly half of the money needed to complete the first phase of the $33 billion project, with the private sector contributing 25 percent, and the rest to be picked up by state and local governments.

Jerry, let me introduce you to the concept of investment. It is a simple and effective concept. You spend some money up front and you get more than that in return. This is the same concept that led California voters to approve bonds to build the Golden Gate Bridge in November 1930 during the depths of the Depression. Hill apparently believes the Golden Gate Bridge shouldn’t have been built. That bridge, and the Bay Bridge, and Shasta Dam, and other projects put people to work in the near term building infrastructure that has lasted for nearly 80 years. That’s a good investment.

So too is HSR. I am sure that Hill would love to have new revenue for the state budget. He’s in luck. HSR will have a green dividend of at least $10 billion a year (for LA alone) and a lot of that money will show up in Sacramento via taxes. That more than covers the cost of building the HSR system. And in an era of rising gas prices (which Hill never once mentions) it will help individuals and businesses save a lot of money.

Hill continues down the road of delusion:

Information released this week indicates that the cost of constructing just the first phase of high-speed rail from San Francisco to Anaheim has swelled to more than $60 billion. Federal, state and local funds committed to date make up less than a quarter of the actual cost.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office reported that the “availability of the funding necessary for the new system is highly uncertain.” Were California to borrow money to fund the remaining 75 percent of the project costs without funding from other sources, opponents estimate it would create an annual obligation of more than $4 billion on our general fund for 30 years.

This would raise the state’s annual debt service payment to a dangerous level and siphon funding from other programs and infrastructure projects.

It certainly would, which is why it’s not likely to happen. If neither the federal government nor the private sector contribute another dime, we build what we can in the Central Valley, put people to work on building infrastructure that has independent utility, and wait for the Tea Party madness to pass so we can pick up where we left off. Hill’s nightmare scenario isn’t going to materialize, as much as he wants us to believe it will.

The anticipated operating costs for the system also appear improbable in light of the fact that under Proposition 1A, the project cannot have an operating subsidy.

The High-Speed Rail Authority’s 2009 Business Plan estimated that a ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles would cost $105, which amounts to about 24 cents per mile for the 432-mile trip. However, in Europe and Japan, which successfully operate high-speed rail systems, the charge averages 44 cents per mile, according to research by the Community Coalition on High Speed Rail. The authority’s 2009 business plan was not realistic.

Ah, now Hill is quoting research by known anti-HSR folks. What CC-HSR didn’t tell Hill is that all those HSR systems have high ridership and cover their own operating costs. That includes the Amtrak Acela. But hey, it’s good to know that Hill just believes whatever bullshit people tell him without actually pausing to do his own research.

Ridership projections from the authority have been called into question. Studies conducted by UC Berkeley and the Federal Railroad Administration found the authority’s ridership projections may be highly inflated.

They said that the ridership numbers may be right, they may be too high, and they may be too low. But the notion that the numbers would be inflated is absurd to anyone who has actually looked at the performance of HSR around the globe. The Acela is packed. So is the Russian Sapsan high speed train between Moscow and St. Petersburg. So too is Spain’s AVE between Madrid and Barcelona. So too is Taiwan’s HSR. And so too are California’s own slower intercity trains.

Obviously the exact ridership projections matter, but only for figuring out the details of the financing. There is no reason at all to believe that HSR ridership claims have been wildly inflated. There is more than enough evidence from around the world to prove that won’t happen. Only a denier – someone who still refuses to believe something even after having been shown the evidence – would still claim HSR ridership could be low.

Hill goes on to dig his hole deeper:

Voters like myself were under the impression that if we approved the $9.95 billion in Prop. 1A, the rest of the money to complete the project would pour in. Now it remains unclear whether the private sector is willing to finance the project due to cost increases and other uncertainties.

If you were under that impression then you probably aren’t fit to serve in a state legislature. Money never “pours in” for any project, especially a big one. These days, getting funding for anything is tough. But the private sector is NOT yet saying no. They just want to see a strong federal commitment. In Florida the private sector agreed to cover cost overruns. They were that confident HSR was a good deal. A Tea Party governor, Rick Scott, rejected it anyway. Should we send Jerry Hill an application for membership in his local Tea Party organization?

Where do we go from here? The answer will come soon. The authority’s newest business plan – its third – is scheduled to be released in October. It will tell us if cost estimates have been modified and if the funding and passenger projections are sound.

I hope that this project can proceed for many reasons, including job creation, modernizing our transportation system and reducing our reliance on energy imports. We should explore combining existing rail infrastructure throughout the state with the high-speed rail system to help defray project costs.

But if the numbers in the business plan are unrealistic, the project should be put on hold to allow Californians to vote on whether they are willing to absorb the additional costs or want to pull the plug.

Nowhere in here did Hill acknowledge that the cost of new freeways and airport gates is at least $100 billion – and it wouldn’t help relieve traffic, reduce dependence on oil, or create a green dividend. Nowhere did he discuss the global and American success of HSR. He only tossed in job creation and energy independence as sops at the end to try and convince people he’s not really against HSR, despite his flawed and evidence-free attacks.

No, he appears to have instead been cowed by a few of his NIMBY constituents who have convinced him that HSR is a bad idea. That’s a shame. It’s up to us as HSR organizers to ensure that more legislators don’t get swayed by bad evidence and that Sacramento, like the people of California as a whole, remains strongly behind the HSR project.

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.

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.

Today another step toward construction of that system was taken as the California High Speed Rail Authority announced that it had received $86.4 million in stimulus funds from the USDOT toward Central Valley construction:

The funds secured in the agreement were a portion of the May 2011 award, which was the re-allocation of funding from Florida. This amends a previous agreement signed December 2010.

The Authority applied for the funding in April and offered a 20 percent state match – therefore this agreement represents $108 million that can be applied to next year’s initial infrastructure construction in the Central Valley, the backbone of the statewide system.

When state matching funds are counted along with federal funds that have been awarded, the California HSR project has received $6.3 billion in funding. The first funds will start being spent next year on the Central Valley segment, with land acquisition as the first step. The Authority is looking to hire consultants to help with this process:

Within the next week or so, the California High-Speed Rail Authority will begin looking for companies to negotiate with property owners and seal the deals on rights of way for the first 120 miles or so of tracks in the Central Valley. It’s a contract that could be worth up to $40 million.

What sort of reception will they find? As is often the case, the reception will be mixed. Most farmers along the route will sell without a fuss, just as they do when a private developer comes along offering money to turn their land into subdivisions. And those developers don’t have the power of eminent domain. Farmers can’t say no to the state, they can only say no to an offered price. If they continue to refuse, they can take the state to court for a judge to settle the matter. But the 5th Amendment of the United States constitution and 200 years of Supreme Court precedent is absolutely clear that these farmers will have to sell if the state uses the power of eminent domain.

As we’ve pointed out before, this is nothing new for the Valley. In the 1960s Interstate 5 was built largely on an entirely new alignment, and agriculture didn’t vanish as a result. If a Highway 99 corridor were chosen for the HSR route, there would be farmers there who would be affected and would likely have to sell land as well.

Still, there are farmers who are planning to resist:

“It’s going to be the toughest possible reception we can give them,” said Helen Vierra Sullivan, whose family farms almonds north of Hanford. “My land is not for sale. … How can they take away my heritage, my livelihood, something my family has invested blood and sweat in for more than 80 years? It’s wrong on so many levels.”

Of course, nobody is telling her she has to lose her heritage and livelihood. It’s not as if she’d be the first person, farmer or urbanite, to lose their land to a transportation project. I won’t minimize the impact this would have, and it cannot be easy to have to sell. On the other hand, if this is the best route for the project, then the greater good of California does take precedence here.

Other anti-HSR activists are making their plans:

Farmer Frank Oliveira said more than 300 individual parcels in the county would be affected by the high-speed tracks.

Oliveira and others along the line from Laton through Hanford and Corcoran want to either have the route moved elsewhere or see the rail project stopped altogether, despite pledges from the rail authority that they will be compensated for their property, crops, homes or businesses.

“People here don’t really want their money. People just want them to go away,” said Oliveira, who runs MELs Farms. The company has several farms in the path of the train line near Hanford.

Oliveira said he expects property owners will listen politely “to whoever shows up and knocks on our door” to negotiate for their land. “Obviously we’re not happy or receptive to this process,” he said. “But as far as not talking to these people, we’ll listen.”

“There are people who will and should try to ensure they are adequately compensated for what the state is trying to do to them,” he added. “That’s only fair and right.”

But Oliveira believes some owners will take their battle for property into court as eminent domain cases.

Activists like Oliveira have had increasing success in getting Kings County officials to fall back from their originally strong support of HSR. It’s an echo of Palo Alto, whose City Council voted unanimously to endorse Prop 1A, and 60% of whose voters approved the proposition. In both places, a small number of loud voices have been enough to convince skittish politicians to cave on their HSR support.

Kings County Supervisors recently wrote to Joseph Szabo, head of the Federal Railroad Administration, to slam the HSR project and call on the FRA to delay approval of the EIR:

Citing federal law, the letter argues that the authority’s decision to build its first segment through Kings County farmland next year was based on a “pre-determined outcome” rather than through cooperation with local government agencies.

“Clearly, the refusal to coordinate and comply with the law has become the policy of the Authority, not the exception,” the letter states.

The letter, along with binders full of supporting documents, was scheduled to go by overnight service to Szabo and several others, including Authority Chairman Thomas Umberg, Assemblyman David Valadao, Rep. Jim Costa and the mayors of Hanford, Lemoore, Corcoran, Avenal, Visalia and Tulare.

“There’s been a huge effort to put the letter together,” said Colleen Carlson, Kings County counsel. “[People] are really concerned about what it will do to the community and the economy. They really want people to pay attention to the problem and look at other possibilities that may resolve that problem.”

Carlson’s comments are particularly interesting given that it completely ignores the fact that the reason there’s an HSR station in Hanford is because local governments organized and said they really, really wanted it. From a March 2009 Fresno Bee article (dead link, but I quoted it at the time):

“In 30 years, there’s going to be a million people in Tulare and Kings counties, southern Fresno County and northern Kern,” said Visalia Mayor Jesus Gamboa. “I don’t want the train to zoom by and we just look at it.”…

This week, the Visalia City Council got a word of encouragement from Bob Schaevitz, project manager for the Fresno-Palmdale stretch of the 800-mile rail line.

“This station makes a lot of sense,” Schaevitz said. “I’ve heard nothing negative about the station.”

But the community should make its voice heard before the environmental impact report is written, he said.

There’s precedent in speaking up. Two years ago, a coalition of city managers and elected officials from Visalia, Tulare, Corcoran, Kingsburg, Selma and Fowler went to the authority and asked for a station.

The group succeeded in getting the authority to change its route maps to include one potential station between Hanford and Visalia, and four more sites around Tulare and Goshen.

Now the goal is to get one of the sites changed from “potential” to “designated,” Gamboa said.

In other words, they were for HSR before they were against it.

We know there are a lot of HSR supporters in Kings County, including farmers. And they support it because they know that HSR is essential to bringing jobs and economic growth to Kings County. Agriculture will still be an important part of the county’s life, but it can be supplemented with other things without eating up farmland by locating new growth near the Hanford HSR station.

It’s a shame, then, that their county elected officials are so easily cowed by a small group of vocal opponents. One reason we are facing a political crisis in this country is because elected officials are so skittish that a small, persistent group of hecklers are able to get them to shrink back from supporting transformative projects that will help solve the problems we face. That lack of leadership doesn’t instill confidence in the public, and instead increases distrust of government.

Kings County knows that transportation projects can be built through it without causing disruption or harm, and that in fact they can cause a big economic boost. It would be a shame if they continued to oppose a better future for their county out of fear of offending a few vocal opponents in 2011.

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.

Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, D-Livingston, who wrote the language in Proposition 1A, a voter-approved $9 billion bond measure that passed in 2008, told the Daily Journal that a plan offered in May by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, and two other high-ranking lawmakers may be an acceptable way to get high-speed trains into San Francisco quicker by limiting the system to Caltrain’s right-of-way rather than constructing the full buildout of the system on four tracks.

Galgiani initially opposed the idea because Simitian said back in May that getting just one high-speed train into San Francisco a day would satisfy the legal requirements of Proposition 1A….

“I wrote the bond language and there is nothing that says it all has to be done at once,” Galgiani said.

A blended system could help ridership build up to then determine any additional infrastructure needs, she said.

“It is important to determine the needs of the system and the community,” Galgiani said.

Galgiani is quite correct here, and it may make sense to use a blended approach in the interim to carry high speed trains to San Francisco via the Peninsula while longer term plans are developed to implement fast, high-capacity passenger rail on the Peninsula rail corridor. The current fit of NIMBYism will fade, as those who cling to 20th century fantasies of metropolitan life will be replaced with those who realize that passenger rail is essential to high property values and a good quality of life.

If a blended plan can provide access to downtown SF for a significant number of trains, carrying enough passengers to make the HSR system pencil out financially, without preventing longer-term fixes for the system on the Peninsula, then yeah, it’s probably worth considering. The details matter a lot, and HSR advocates need to be at the table for any such discussion.

Will the blended plan be enough? Maybe not. The San Mateo Daily Journal article linked above indicates HSR critics may shift the goalposts, in an effort to undermine the project no matter the details:

Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, said the California High-Speed Rail Authority, however, needs to present a feasible business plan for the project come October or face calls of ditching it outright.

Cost estimates have gone from $30 billion to $40 billion and now to more than $60 billion to fund the project, a figure taxpayers simply cannot afford, Hill said.

“Escalating cost overruns are outrageous. Who is going to pay that when there is no guarantee for a private partnership? This project could double the state’s debt service,” Hill said. “If the third business plan in October doesn’t pencil out, it is time to pull the plug on the project.”

How will “pencil out” be defined? Will Hill include the costs of doing nothing? Will the $80-$160 billion cost to expand freeways and airports to handle the traffic that HSR would carry? What about the cost to the economy of gas prices? What about the lost productivity that comes from sitting behind a wheel or on an airplane? What of the financial costs of carbon emissions that would be spewed in the absence of HSR? What about the lost jobs that would have been created for HSR and the tax revenue those jobs would have been created?

I’m guessing Jerry Hill wasn’t even thinking of those costs at all, and his accounting is probably unbalanced and deeply flawed.

And that does give me pause about embracing a “blended” approach on the Peninsula. If this is to be a compromise, then HSR critics need to have some skin in the game. They need to stop attacking the project, stop calling for it to be defunded, and start working with us to find ways to make it work. If a “blended” HSR plan is just a way to bait HSR supporters into backing some NIMBY-friendly plan while the critics run around making nonsensical claims and trying to destroy the project itself, then that’s no compromise at all, and HSR advocates should stay away from the effort.

If the Peninsula wants a “blended” solution and are asking HSR advocates to give up some things, they need to meet us halfway – and that includes, at a minimum, a cessation of the misleading and evidence-free attacks on the project. If they’re serious, they should have no problem at all agreeing to those terms.

Aaron Renn claims “High Speed Rail is Dead”. After claiming that the public perceives the stimulus to have been a failure (not sure about that) and pointing out that teabagger governors elected in 2010 turned against HSR (which is no surprise), Aaron Renn believes that HSR is dead because us advocates screwed up:

But beyond those philosophically opposed to HSR, some high speed rail advocates have done themselves no favors either. They’ve resolutely backed pretty much any and every rail project regardless of whether it is potentially useful or an outright boondoggle. They’ve engaged in false advertising by labeling 110 MPH peak speeds as “high speed rail” instead of what it really is:Amtrak on steroids. (One of the more serious HSR advocates is Richard Longworth, who labeled the Midwest 110 MPH rail plan the “Toonerville trolley”). Nevertheless, Illinois is pocketing well over $1 billion of the HSR stimulus funds for this “high speed” system that will offer end to end journey times that are at best only slightly better than what’s already being provided today by Megabus – and that for only a handful of trains a day on a line still subject to freight interference.

My first reaction to this is “so what?” Renn is assuming that we all agree Amtrak sucks, and we very much do NOT agree with that – it has a 71% farebox recovery rate and the Acela is profitable.

But my second reaction is to criticize what I believe is an unfair argument. HSR advocates actually DO want true, 220 mph service in the Midwest. After all, one of the nation’s first HSR advocacy groups, Midwest HSR, takes exactly that approach. They are supportive of the upgrades to 110 mph – which will help improve train travel and attract more riders – but they are by no means satisfied with that, and continue to advocate for a true 220 mph system. So I don’t really know where this particular charge, that advocates are willing to settle for 110 mph, is coming from. That doesn’t seem to be an accurate reflection of where the advocates actually are.

Renn continues:

Advocates have excoriated opponents to high speed rail, but have shown themselves largely utterly unserious about the enterprise as they have put no focus on overcoming major institutional barriers such as the steam road era thinking of the Federal Railroad Administration which is stuck in the 90s – the 1890s – or the mismanagement at Amtrak. Getting to an HSR system that works is going to involve major reform (or replacement) of those agencies since all proven, international HSR systems are illegal in the US under current rules. Witness here also the histrionics about a Republican proposal to privatize the Northeast Corridor rail operations rather than engage with it as a starting point. Even in Europe and Japan, many HSR operations are private, so there’s no reason they can’t be in the US too.

I don’t think this is quite true either. California HSR advocates have long called for the FRA to change its policies. When Caltrain finally got its FRA waiver I wrote the following:

The importance of this waiver cannot be understated. Not only does this enable the Caltrain/HSR project to proceed, but it sets the stage for similar waivers that will be needed if track sharing is to happen on other segments of the route, particularly Los Angeles to Anaheim. The CHSRA will have to seek its own waiver, but the Caltrain waiver is a clear precedent that should help the CHSRA’s waiver succeed.

Hopefully this is the beginning of a long-overdue modernization of the FRA’s antiquated and obsolete rules on passenger trainsets on shared-use rails, rules that have cost rail agencies a lot of money and throttled the growth of ridership across the country.

Perhaps others haven’t been doing as much, but it’s just not true that HSR advocates have been ignoring the problems at the FRA.

As to privatization, Renn again makes an assumption (in this case that privatization is always good), defines it as truth, and then excoriates people for not agreeing with him. That’s a flawed way to discuss an issue. Besides, the record is clear that private operators aren’t necessarily good for HSR or for rail systems more broadly.

This seems to be the heart of Renn’s argument:

It’s time to take a major gut check on high speed rail in America and rethink the direction. Clearly, with the budgetary and political situation, significant future HSR investments are unlikely. Even if some billions materialize, the experience of the stimulus suggests that they will be frittered away as salami slices sent hither and fro.

Of course, most HSR advocates would agree that we never wanted HSR funding to be “frittered away as salami slices” and that the current budgetary and political situations are a serious challenge.

But neither does that mean HSR will die anytime soon. What we are living through is the death throes of the 20th century. A well-funded political movement, that does not know partisan boundaries, has come together since 2008 to stop that the changes that are already underway – changes designed to make this country operate more efficiently and in a way that meets the challenges of the 21st century instead of pretending they don’t exist. That movement prefers to prop up that failed 20th century status quo.

And people like Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, who run the site where Renn posted (although as the comments note, I should not lump Renn in with them, so what follows isn’t about him) are important figures in that movement. They believe that sprawl is just fine, that deficits are bad, that oil dependence is good, that privatization is always good, that everyone will always want to drive everywhere. None of those things are true and there is considerable evidence to disprove each point.

Yet they and people like them don’t care, because theirs is not an evidence-based movement but an ideological movement. They like the 20th century, and in some cases are funded by the people who came out on top during the 20th century, like oil companies, and who do not want to give up their position of power.

HSR is alive not because of us advocates, but because of the inexorable logic of the times in which we live. It is impractical and unaffordable in an age of digital devices, high gas prices, crowded roads and global warming to drive and fly everywhere. People want alternatives. The evidence is clear: vehicle miles traveled are in decline and people around the world are flocking to high speed trains whenever they’re given an option. Even the slower Amtrak California trains are quite popular.

As gas prices continue to rise, as people forsake suburbs and flock to dense urban living, as digital devices continue to contribute to the great shift away from driving and as people realize that reducing carbon emissions to deal with global warming is a high priority, HSR will continue to gain momentum.

The political obstacles will not last forever. Teabaggers will not control Congress for long – polls already show Democrats lead the Congressional polling for 2012 – and a generation that believes cars are awesome and trains are evil will fade. The budgetary challenges are purely political – deficit spending is not only fine but smart, especially in an era of low interest rates, and once the political obstacles fall away, the budgetary obstacles will evaporate.

Alon Levy, in his own deconstruction of Renn’s post, shows just how fluid the political situation actually is:

High-speed rail has challenges, many correctly identified by Aaron. The FRA is an obstacle (though the people most interested in changing it tend to be good transit activists); spreading the money around was a problem. But right-wing populists who can’t govern soon become unpopular, and are thus an ephemeral phenomenon. Rick Scott’s approval rate is 27%, John Kasich‘s is 35%, Scott Walker‘s is 37%. And it’s deeply troubling to go on a website and say that high-speed rail is dead when one of the reasons it’s dead is shoddy or dishonest work done by another contributor to the same website.

Fortunately, in California, the real obstacle is so far not a huge deal (California is planning to run on dedicated tracks, or at least on tracks shared only with commuter trains), and the ephemeral obstacle lost the gubernatorial election. Money is a problem and so is incompetence, but the incompetence seems to be waning, albeit slowly, and the money is likely to materialize. Don’t count HSR out yet.

I think he has it right. HSR faces its challenges, true, but the overall environment remains favorable. Anti-rail advocates are dependent on the current trend of right-wing populism, and when that fades – as it always does – high speed rail will come back strongly.

In short, while Renn does identify some legitimate issues facing HSR, it’s hardly the case that it is dead, and his claims about the role of advocates in creating the crisis miss the mark. I’m sure we advocates haven’t been perfect – I think many of us, even myself included, were slow to react to the anti-HSR deniers when they hung around in 2009, but then the rapid return of right-wing populism after November 2008 was unexpected by most people.

HSR will continue to survive because of the underlying conditions. This blog, the HSR advocacy movement, and HSR plans themselves are products of those conditions. And the evidence suggests those conditions will continue for some time to come. So too will HSR.