The latest annual report from the Saint Consulting group pinpoints who those people are: Not surprisingly, older people tend to be most active in opposing new development, while younger people are more often in support.

The Saint Index recently released its 2011 results, based on surveys with 1,000 adults in the U.S. this summer, with the goal of understanding what types of projects are most likely to be opposed and why.

The report finds that people aged 56-65 are most likely to actively oppose new projects in their communities, while people aged 21-35 are most likely to actively support projects.

This should come as no surprise. People ages 56-65 are smack in the middle of the Baby Boom generation, a group raised in comfort and privilege unknown ever before (and arguably, ever since). They were taught that the suburban way of life, with single-family homes and quiet leafy neighborhoods was an essential part of what it meant to live a good life. And when they came of age, they participated in a reaction against the uniformity of modernism, rejecting designs and projects that ignored local conditions and environmental needs.

That alone set them on a trajectory toward NIMBYism. But it’s been dialed up with the economic crisis that is now in its fourth year. People ages 56-65 are among the last remaining people who still have their wealth and assets from the great 20th century boom. They’re the ones who got subsidized educations, were able to buy homes when they were still affordable, and earn a living when jobs and wage growth were still abundant. As the economic crisis unfolds, their instinct is to grip ever more tightly to what they have, and to adamantly refuse to share it with anyone else.

Combined with their obsolete attitudes about urban life, this creates the toxic NIMBYism that is now rampant across the United States. The practical effect is clear: a group of people who still have some remaining economic security are organizing to deny anyone else the opportunity to enjoy the same, out of a delusional belief that providing such opportunities can only come at their own expense. The result is a group of people determined to cling to the status quo no matter how badly it fails.

On the other side are young people aged 21-35 (a group that includes myself). They have no special attachment to suburbia. Either they see it as just one of a range of equally valid choices, or they see it as a flawed answer to the questions of how to organize modern society. Millennials prefer living in cities where transportation costs are cheaper, where there is more to do, and where people are building communities rather than fleeing from them. Millennials were not raised to believe suburbia was the Greatest Thing Ever.

But just as importantly, they were also raised or came of age when the suburban economic engine had begun to sputter and collapse. Boomers see suburban lifestyles and land use practices as essential to their prosperity. That’s no longer true, but their ideology blinds them to this reality. Millennials see this reality up close and as a result understand that urban development, density, and passenger rail are absolutely essential to their future. Without it, they will continue to be shut out of any chance at prosperity.

The NIMBYs either refuse to believe this or simply do not care. They remain guided by their belief that change comes at their own expense and therefore must be opposed at all costs.

In that, we can see something else that is worth noting. NIMBYs and the Tea Party are two sides of the same coin, two movements springing from the same roots.

Both NIMBYs and the Tea Party are dominated by people aged 56-65. Both are animated by a belief that 20th century America was ideal and that any change from its forms and practices is not only bad, but will undermine remaining economic prosperity. Both believe, firmly, that anything done to help provide economic opportunities to others, especially younger people, comes at their expense and therefore must be opposed. Both oppose passenger rail and anything that moves America away from dependence on the automobile.

Even their behavior is similar. If you remember the summer of 2009, the Tea Party movement first asserted itself by shouting down members of Congress at town halls. NIMBYs take a very similar attitude at public meetings, shouting down government officials and project supporters.

So what makes them different? The Tea Party is more focused on social conservatism and white supremacy, whereas NIMBYs are more focused on design conservatism and supremacy of their physical space.

Of course, in many cases NIMBYs and Tea Party activists are one in the same. That’s not always true, of course. But the key takeaway here is similarity.

The author of the Atlantic Cities post, Nate Berg, also looked at demographic data and suggested that NIMBYism will grow worse, at least for a time:

Overall, however, NIMBYism is on the rise, according to the report. Nearly 80 percent of U.S. residents oppose any new development in their community. It’s the highest level of opposition recorded in the report’s six-year history, and the first time since 2008 that the amount of opposition has increased.

But the report also finds that, when asked about development in light of the recession, more people support new projects. About 70 percent of respondents say they’d be more likely than usual to support new development in their communities in the context of the recession. Those most likely to support projects are again on the younger side, filling in the 21-45 age range.

What I expect will happen is an analogue of Occupy Wall Street. That movement is in many ways a reaction not just against the financial elite but also against the Tea Party, which functions as the shock troops of that elite. Before too long I suspect we will see a growing reaction against NIMBYism too. “We are the train riders and apartment dwellers” may not be as compelling a chant as “We are the 99 percent” but nevertheless the same logic will apply.

As more and more people are getting shut out of prosperity, they will push back harder and more loudly against those who are holding those doors shut. Occupy Wall Street has come for the Tea Party. Millennials, who dominate Occupy Wall Street, will soon come for the NIMBYs as well.

I’m a historian. I’ve written a book on the transcontinentals (Railroaded). I know that the first thirty years of the old relationship between train and California were more than bad. They were horrid.

The transcontinentals promised us everything, and they lied. Much of the growth they promoted was dumb growth that came with high social costs. They corrupted our politics and our press and ruined our economy more than once. We fought the railroads for the rest of the nineteenth century.

California should have learned something from this. Do not build large railroads ahead of demand. Do not quickly fund those things that we might be able to do at less cost, more efficiently, and with improved technology later when we really need it. Do not funnel huge amounts of public money into private hands on the basis of only promises of benefits. Remember to calculate capital costs accurately.

I’m a historian too, though not nearly as accomplished as White. He’s right that the first 30 years of relationship between train and California were horrid.

But he goes off the rails when he implies that the HSR project, being planned by the democratically elected government of California and the democratically elected Obama Administration, is somehow corrupting the state. There’s no evidence, at all, for that innuendo.

Further, White assumes that the financial case for the project is flawed. Here he makes his core mistake, misreading the evidence and coming to conclusions that are totally unsupported:

Californians have already voted $9 billion in bonds toward their new life with high-speed rail. It is only a small part of the cost of the system. The federal government supposedly was going to pay most of the rest—but now, apparently not. And once the system is up and going it will pay its own operating costs. We can live happily ever after.

Promises, promises, promises. Sometimes it is better to consult an accountant rather than one’s heart. Listen to the promises, go to the California High-Speed Rail website, but then talk to the accountants. In this case the accountants have a webpage. It is at the Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail.

This is serious. California has its children and their future to think about. The accountants say that the California High-Speed Rail Commission has underestimated the cost of the project, overestimated the willingness of investors to put private capital at risk, overestimated the ridership, and miscalculated the cost of servicing the immense debt that will be accrued to build it. They have the system meeting its operating costs, when it most likely will not do so for years and perhaps forever. Servicing the debt alone will put an immense burden on state and local governments when the money is desperately needed elsewhere.

White doesn’t tell his readers that “the accountants” are biased – one of them is a self-declared NIMBY who opposes the train because, and I quote:

An elevated railway would be hideous and intolerably noisy. We like to eat outdoors in the summer, but with such noise we would not be able to hear each other talking. And it would wake people at night. It would transform our pleasant semi-rural environment into an ugly urban environment.

White holds up “the accountants” as conveyors of truth. He expects us to believe that “the accountants” are correct in attacking the ridership numbers.

Except they’re not. White never mentions, and may not even be aware of, the independent peer review of the HSR ridership numbers that said the projections were sound.

White’s other claims are similarly flawed. He says that the willingness of private investors to step up was overestimated, but that misreads what is going on. The private sector has shown a great deal of interest in the system. They have been consistent in saying that they will not yet step up until there is a significant state and federal contribution.

White argues that the federal government won’t step up, even though Barack Obama has shown consistent support for federal funding, as have Democrats in Congress, and despite polls showing Democrats are likely to retake the House.

White claims that the system will never cover its costs, even though virtually every other HSR system in the world does so, including the Acela.

Of course, when we cite successful HSR systems around the world, White is ready to counter that claim too:

High-speed rail can be happy without us. It still has Paris and Tokyo. It may very well find a future between Boston and Washington DC. But it is too rich for our Californian blood and not suited to our conditions. We have plenty of other challenges.

In the end, Richard White is simply just one more person who is convinced that somehow Californians will never ride trains. He completely ignores all the evidence that disproves such a claim – including high ridership on existing intercity trains and data that shows California’s HSR route compares favorably to other successful routes, implying that the ridership base and the demand do exist.

And of course, White also commits the same error that virtually every other HSR critic makes: he never asks what is the cost of doing nothing. Even if HSR costs $60 billion, the cost of not building HSR could be as high as $100 billion.

White argues that HSR will only suck away value and money from other priorities, but in fact it will create a green dividend for California that could be as high as $10 billion a year for Los Angeles alone.

Richard White is a very good historian and a good intellectual. If he wanted to engage in a serious debate on HSR, he knows how to marshal evidence and have that discussion. That’s why it’s such a shame that he prefers to rely on flawed evidence and disproven claims to attack high speed rail.

A group of Kings County citizens opposed to the state’s high-speed rail project are hosting a series of public workshops about the system’s environmental impact documents. [Note from Robert: these were held on September 8 and 10.]

Called Citizens for California High Speed Rail Accountability, the nonprofit organization is hosting the free meetings to provide an update on the Fresno-to-Bakersfield segment as well as prepare citizens to submit public comments on the environmental documents.

The group, which is not affiliated with the California High-Speed Rail Authority, has hired attorney Gary Patton to review the documents and provide written comment. Patton is a former Santa Cruz County supervisor and counsel to the Sacramento-based Planning and Conservation League. He has been a vocal critic of the high-speed rail plan.

Gary Patton, of course, is the virulently anti-passenger rail fanatic who bragged about killing rail to Santa Cruz (and thereby causing huge traffic problems and sprawl). He believes in dependence on oil, sprawl, and freeways – exactly the things that have undermined the economy and quality of life in the Central Valley.

Patton, the Planning and Conservation League and the Peninsula NIMBYs aren’t satisfied blocking improved passenger rail in their backyards but also want to do it in the Central Valley as well. There are a small handful of farmers who oppose HSR as well, but clearly Patton and his allies want to exploit that opposition for their own purposes.

Again, this isn’t surprising, so why write about it? This is significant not just in terms of keeping tabs on the HSR opponents, but also in understanding the larger importance of the project.

For decades, the Central Valley, and the San Joaquin Valley in particular, have been left behind by people in the rest of California. People in the Bay Area and Southern California generally look down on the Valley. Growing up I was always told Fresno was the “armpit” of California and Bakersfield was something even worse. A hot, dusty, backward place is about all people on the coasts know of the Valley.

That cultural disdain is matched with a deep political disdain, the point that the Valley has been consistently left behind by major public investments and projects. The federal government helped in the 1930s with the Central Valley Project. The State Water Project, approved in 1959, largely bypassed the Valley to deliver water to Southern California. In the 1960s, Interstate 5 literally bypassed the cities of the Valley, who were left with a substandard freeway that even today is not fully up to interstate standards. Only in 2005 did the San Joaquin Valley finally get a UC campus.

Instead of bypassing the Valley cities, the high speed rail project was designed to connect them while carrying passengers between the larger coastal metropolises. This investment and the project have the potential to dramatically reshape the Valley economy for the better. Putting cities like Fresno and Bakersfield within two hours – in some cases within an hour – of the job engines of the Bay Area and SoCal will provide a transformative boost to the economic fortunes of Valley residents.

And it has benefits for the state as a whole. Businesses can set up shop in the more affordable locations of the Valley. Mid-route cities on European HSR lines, like Zaragoza and Ciudad Real, have seen significant benefits from being connected to larger cities. And with less unemployment in the Valley, the state will save money on social services and have more money to spend via increased tax revenues. The Obama Administration directed HSR stimulus funding in California to the Valley precisely because it has some of the highest unemployment in the state.

No wonder Valley cities like Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield and Visalia are so strongly supportive of high speed rail. And it’s one reason why HSR advocates have been working to organize supporters in the Valley, and helps explain why those efforts are being stepped up as we speak.

It also shows just how wrong it is for Peninsula NIMBYs to attack the Central Valley HSR section. It reinforces the long tradition of coastal California spitting on the Valley, of abandoning the Valley, of leaving the Valley behind. When NIMBYs and HSR opponents call for redirecting the billions in HSR funding already earmarked from the Valley to the coasts, they are saying to the Valley “your fate in life is to be poor, to breathe unhealthy air and to be overly dependent on a single industry. It’s telling the Valley that they can never aspire to anything greater, and can never share in 21st century prosperity.

Gary Patton already caused serious damage in Santa Cruz County, whose transportation system is completely broken, where sprawl has eaten up some of the state’s best farmland, where workers have a hard time participating in the Silicon Valley job market. Now he wants to do the same thing to the Central Valley. There are legitimate issues to be resolved in the Valley, and I understand the reasons why some farmers are upset, even though I completely disagree with them. But they should know that Peninsula NIMBYs do not have their best interests in mind with this organizing effort.

High speed rail is key to the Valley’s future. Stopping it is a good way to ensure the Valley’s economic crisis lasts for a long time to come.

Gary Patton, the ringleader of the anti-HSR and pro-oil forces in the state, is given some extensive quotes showing his virulent opposition to passenger rail in California. But just as much space, if not even more, is given to people like Daniel Krause, executive director of Californians For High Speed Rail and Emily Rusch of CALPIRG to explain some of the project’s benefits:

What happens if we don’t build high-speed rail?

“To me, this is the core question that California should be asking,” said Emily Rusch, with the California Public Interest Research Group. “Forty-two billion dollars sounds incredibly expensive. But highways aren’t cheap. Airports aren’t cheap.”

In environmental-review documents for the project, the Authority has estimated that, without high-speed rail, the state would have to spend $80 billion on other kinds of infrastructure—including 3,000 miles of highway lanes and 92 airport gates.

Doing nothing to upgrade California’s infrastructure is probably not a politically palatable option. And most policymakers seem to agree that the state needs to significantly cut carbon-dioxide emissions out of its transportation system.

Still, a significant number of people are ideologically opposed to high-speed rail. Among them are the folks who see spooky similarity between the HSRA logo and the Obama campaign logo.

“There certainly is a set of people who think high-speed rail is just a boondoggle. It doesn’t matter what the details are, they just don’t think it’s worth money,” [Sacramento Assemblyman Roger] Dickinson said.

Emily Rusch’s point is key, and it’s the question that people like Gary Patton and other anti-HSR folks will never, ever answer. Because they can’t answer it in a way that does anything other than bolster the case for high speed rail. The cost of oil, the cost of expanding freeways and airports, the cost in climate change, are all quite significant. Yet we know that HSR around the world does well, attracts riders, and covers its operating costs – and that is also true of the Amtrak Acela. HSR will save California money, even if some people cannot get over their ideological opposition to rail.

The whole article is worth a read and does a good job of capturing the basic nature of the HSR discussion in California. It’s clear that anti-HSR folks like Patton are getting some traction, but they also have to reckon not just with the facts of a climate and energy crisis – they also have to reckon with widespread public support of the project that remains, even in the face of efforts to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt about the project.

It’s also a good encapsulation of the political scene in California today. The state has its problems, but a big one is the flat refusal of those still wedded to a failed 20th century way of doing things – burning oil, driving everywhere, fighting any effort to rely on sustainable transportation – to allow the majority of the population to pursue the changes that are logical and in fact already unfolding. The question is whether there is political leadership in the state to help push through the obstacles and ensure that California is prepared to – and actually will – invest in the future, or whether it will be content to slide into oblivion just to make a few NIMBYs happy.

Dueling ridership forecasts in a political arena heated by cultural antagonism makes it difficult to assess costs and benefits. As a result, some say it’s better to delay the project, or for Californians to drop high-speed rail altogether. Those with a need to generate readership, or wish to get noticed for a statewide run for office, purposefully craft the environment that creates that frustration.

Framing specious arguments against high-speed rail as a cultural issue drives a level of distrust that allows shoddy research and uninformed opinion to color perceptions. Californians should fight against being used to score political points when the state’s economic future is on the line.

Grisby, a Deputy Policy Director for Reconnecting America, is certainly right about this. He marshals a lot of statistics to show that high speed rail will help people who commute, who travel for recreation or business, boost downtowns, and reduce congestion at airports and on freeways. Everyone benefits from this.

And he correctly identifies the people who are trying to convince Californians and Americans that those benefits are illusory – the right-wing Cato and Reason think tanks. As we know, Reason is funded by oil companies who have every reason to want to undermine high speed rail. Grisby is right that we should not cast HSR as being part of a “culture war” and show that it is instead a common-sense solution to a wide range of problems, that many people will embrace, especially because people around the world have already done so.

That all being said, I wish I could agree that we can pull HSR out of a “culture war” framework. Not because HSR supporters are invested in it – we’re really not. This blog’s most consistent approach to HSR advocacy is that high speed rail simply makes sense and is supported by a mountain of evidence. Yet we spend a lot of time here debunking criticism – sometimes aggressively – and this blog might well be seen as a key battleground in an HSR culture war.

That’s because of how culture wars work. They are not waged by both sides of an issue. Culture wars are waged by one side alone – the side that resents and resists change. The other side, which supports and is promoting the change in question, doesn’t view it as a war at all. The thing they are advocating for, whether it’s marriage equality or high speed rail, is simply seen as a logical outcome of compelling evidence and common sense.

Those who resist the change know they cannot win on the grounds of evidence and reason. They can’t win a fair fight. So they wage an unfair fight. They make up arguments, distort evidence, and try to change the conversation away from facts and towards more elemental and visceral things, where they might have an advantage.

In 2008, the Palo Alto City Council unanimously endorsed Prop 1A to bring high speed rail to the Peninsula. There was broad interest in an HSR station for the city. The project was evaluated on the merits and passed with flying colors and with 60% of the community voting for it.

That wasn’t the end of the story, because HSR critics learned the same thing that marriage equality opponents learned: you can’t win on the facts, but you might just win if you make it about values and culture. Soon after Prop 1A’s passage, HSR critics changed their tune and began focusing on the ways in which trains would somehow “destroy” the communities of the Peninsula. The entire claim was absurd, and not just because passenger trains had been operating there for over 150 years, and not just because other Bay Area cities had found no problems at all with aerial rail structures.

It was absurd because it was specifically intended to pull the discussion away from evidence and toward deeply held values. HSR critics realized that if they could convince their neighbors that the prized aesthetic values of the Peninsula would be destroyed by the train – even though HSR will be quieter, won’t spew diesel into the air, won’t kill children, and won’t produce traffic jams the way the current at-grade tracks will – then they could circumvent the factual arguments in support of HSR.

People wage culture wars precisely because they already lost the factual discussion. And if they make the discussion more of a shouting match, a fight, or even a war, they score even more points, because they make reasonable dialogue impossible. If you have a farm in the path of the proposed HSR route in Kings County, you could try and argue moving the tracks somewhere else on the basis of facts and merit, but the reason your farm is in the path in the first place is because factual considerations suggested it was the best location for the tracks.

So if you really really don’t want to sell your farm to the state of California, you could instead go around the county riling up people by claiming the California High Speed Rail Authority is waging a war on farmers, wants to destroy agriculture, and generally hates Kings County. You would have no evidence of this whatsoever – in fact, the Authority was happy to just bypass Kings County entirely until officials from Kings and Tulare Counties and the cities of Hanford and Visalia began lobbying hard to get a station. But you can tap into deep-seeded resentments and turn what should be a reasoned, factual discussion into a culture war.

Through scorched-earth tactics such as shouting down opposition and claiming that a simple passenger rail project is either the Death Star or a Berlin Wall, HSR critics are not so much trying to win the argument as they are trying to tire people out of the issue. As defenders of the status quo, they win if they convince everyone else that all the rancor and ugliness just isn’t worth the trouble and maybe we should just postpone HSR indefinitely for the good of the community.

That’s how culture wars are designed to work. And that’s why HSR is very much the subject of a culture war.

Grisby’s argument is essentially that HSR advocates should not get drawn into the culture war and should stick to the facts. That’s a wise policy, and this blog has followed it for the 3+ years we’ve been around.

But there is also a place for pushing back, showing how the critics are wrong, and pointing out the motivations behind their actions. This blog will continue to do that too. Because it is true, in the end, that HSR advocates are pushing for change. We push for it not because we are partisans in a culture war, but because we see a society and a civilization in evolution and believe we should push that forward in sensible, reasonable ways. And most anti-HSR people are indeed motivated by their hostility to that change. If we could persuade them on the basis of facts, then they would already have come over to our side.

We know they won’t be persuaded. Nor do we really expect they will be. Our job as HSR advocates is to withstand their assault and ensure they don’t succeed in destroying our projects. In the end, they will fade, because logic, evidence, and the population at large are on our side, and will only be increasingly supportive as the years go by.

That’s the thing about culture wars – the people waging the war eventually tire out and fade away, because they are fighting an uphill battle. And as long as the people who embrace change are persistent and don’t lose heart, they will eventually prevail.

Although the complex barrier solution could be implemented along the Caltrain corridor to avoid the perceived blight of the aerial structure, it would likely cause severe traffic headaches on the major roads that cross the tracks given the nature of the “blended” service proposal.

Under Caltrain’s electrification plan, train frequency would increase to 10 trains per hour in both directions. Coupled with HSR service, crossing barriers would close major peninsula streets every 5 to 6 minutes during rush hour.

Just think about that. Streets closed every 5 to 6 minutes. Imagine trying to get across the tracks during rush hour in Palo Alto, or Menlo Park. The rail corridor would be an actual barrier dividing those communities. It might not look like a “Berlin Wall” – but it would certainly act like one. In contrast, an aerial viaduct would be much more permeable. Cars, bikes, and pedestrians could cross easily and safely below a viaduct. Communities would be even better connected than they are now, as Albany or Rockridge can attest. But under the at-grade operations, as Mullen points out, communities will be severed.

Mullen’s argument is that Anna Eshoo, Joe Simitian, and Rich Gordon realize this, and that’s why they floated a below-grade system:

It appears that Eshoo et al. realized this potential problem with the “blended” approach, since they later express openness to “below grade” options which would eliminate the danger and delay of level crossings. However, below grade solutions like tunnels and trenches conflict with their long winded opening statement about scarce resources and limited funding.

With proposals short on practicality, it’s difficult to understand what kind of design Eshoo, Simitian and Gordon are actually pushing for. Some speculated that they were implicitly working towards terminating HSR service in San Jose which prompted clarification from Eshoo.

With the San Jose rumor out, the only realistic solution is to reintroduce the aerial viaduct option in some places along the corridor. It’s cost-effective, makes Caltain service more reliable, reduces traffic congestion, and silences the dreaded airhorns. While intensely disliked, it’s the only proposal that will actually bring twenty-first century train service to the Peninsula.

Mullen is of course right about all of this. So why did Eshoo, Simitian, and Gordon take the cost-effective, community-uniting aerial option off the table?

Because the NIMBYs demanded it. The NIMBYs do not care – at all – about uniting communities. They do not care about being cost effective. They do not care about traffic jams, loud horns, or the profoundly unsafe nature of at-grade crossings. They do not care about high gas prices, they do not care about climate change, and they do not care about improving passenger rail.

The only thing the NIMBYs care about is protecting their own outdated, failed 20th century values. They have a bizarre concept of aesthetic values, and demand that they be allowed to impose those values on everyone else around them, no matter the cost.

And as Mullen has explained, the cost is quite high. To communities and to pocketbooks.

It’s a real shame Eshoo and Simitian in particular appear to be demanding an elimination of aerial structures as a price of further support for HSR. I’ve never been wedded to aerials; if there are other ways to bring communities together they absolutely should be explored. But that exploration needs to be based on facts and evidence – and not on NIMBY delusions.

It appears that Eshoo et al. realized this potential problem with the “blended” approach, since they later express openness to “below grade” options which would eliminate the danger and delay of level crossings. However, below grade solutions like tunnels and trenches conflict with their long winded opening statement about scarce resources and limited funding.

Assemblymember Cathleen Galgiani, author of California’s voter approved $10 billion high speed rail bond, today strongly condemned efforts to redirect the bond funds to non voter approved projects. This amounts to a bait-and-switch effort by certain interests to take money away from the high-speed rail system, and use it to cover shortfalls in funding the Caltrain commuter rail system on the San Francisco Peninsula,” said Galgiani. “It is highly suspect that the same few wealthy communities on the San Francisco Peninsula who want to stop the High Speed Rail project, would cynically work to divert the money to meet their existing obligations to the Caltrain system.”…

“Mr. Simitian is trying to syphon $1 billion of high-speed rail bond money for the Caltrain system in his district and proposes to make it legal under Proposition 1A by running one High Speed Train. This is the Great Train Robbery,” stated Galgiani. “Californians voted for a high-speed rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco, not a piggy bank for legislators.”

According to Galgiani’s release, her concerns were sparked by Simitian’s comments at a legislative hearing yesterday:

Yesterday, in a Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 2 hearing on the bond allocation to match Federal funds for the first segment of High Speed Rail, Senator Simitian told the executive director of the High Speed Rail Authority, “I don’t want to see an EIR completed for a project that will never be built.”

“Senator Simitian has continually criticized the High-Speed Rail Authority while failing to recognize the shortcomings of the rail system in his own back yard. Simitian should fix his own system, not tell the HSRA how to build theirs,” said Galgiani.

When talking about the authority’s proposed phased system, Simitian, chair of the Subcommittee, also said, “We’re saying there is a (one) phase and then you’re done.” He added, “If we run one High Speed Train from San Jose to San Francisco, at any time of day, we will comply with Prop. 1A”

That statement by Simitian is beyond the pale. He has been trying to occupy a middle ground, supporting high speed rail while seeming to be responsive to NIMBY concerns (for no understandable reason; he is termed out next year). But by threatening the project like this, Simitian is going too far. It is inappropriate for him or any other legislator to make threats like this.

Further, Simitian is basically trying to undermine the core premise of the project in a very fundamental way. He is clearly implying that SF to LA is an option, that a token one train per day would satisfy the Prop 1A requirement.

I’ve got news for you, Senator: Californians did NOT vote for a single token train. We voted for a true bullet train service, with numerous trips per day from SF to LA. We voted for it because we understood that because of rising gas prices, we needed high speed rail to move people around the state. Simitian is suggesting that he override the wishes of California voters merely to satisfy a very small number of NIMBYs in his district, people he isn’t willing to stand up to.

Here’s the background, for those of you new to the story. In November 2008, a clear majority of Californians voted to build a high speed rail system that can carry passengers from SF to LA in 2 hours, 40 minutes, using bullet trains like you’d find in Japan, Spain, or France. They also appropriated $10 billion in bond funding to get started. Voters wanted a true system that would provide fast train service all day long, from downtown SF to downtown LA while serving high-population communities along the way. That was the entire point of doing high speed rail.

However, after Prop 1A was approved, a small group of wealthy people living near the proposed HSR route in the Palo Alto area started to flip out. They didn’t want the trains in their backyards – even though the trains would use the Caltrain corridor, which has been carrying passenger trains for 150 years. Although the Palo Alto City Council unanimously voted to endorse Prop 1A in 2008, although 60% of voters there approved the project, and although a poll last year found that despite NIMBY whining residents there still supported the project by large margins, elected officials began to start chickening out. Palo Alto city councilmembers began criticizing the project, even joining a frivolous lawsuit against it.

Now, Senator Simitian appears to have succumbed to the vocal minority of NIMBYs. Last week he joined Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and Assemblymember Rich Gordon to propose “blending” HSR with Caltrain. That’s an idea worth exploring, but Eshoo immediately began suggesting that the HSR trains stop at San Jose instead of going to San Francisco as promised. Eshoo was rebuked by Nancy Pelosi for that suggestion and she backed off.

But Simitian’s new argument, that we only have to run just one train a day from SF to LA to satisfy the law and the will of the voters, would effectively mean trains stop in San Jose and not San Francisco. Again, I hope he checked with Nancy Pelosi before trying to undermine the project.

Why would stopping in San Jose, or running just one train per day to SF, be a problem? Not only would it violate the law, not only would it be a big “fuck you” to the people of California, but it would destroy the HSR project’s viability. The project by law cannot rely on government operating subsidies, and so it needs to get a lot of riders to make ends meet. That’s also a good goal because the more people that ride the train, the fewer carbon we emit, and the less we spend in gas.

Simitian’s proposal, which includes limiting the Caltrain corridor to two tracks forever, would cripple high speed rail. It would mean an artificial and permanent limit on the number of trains that could go from LA to SF – all because Simitian won’t tell the NIMBYs that they’re wrong and don’t deserve to be prioritized over the rest of the state.

Galgiani’s criticism is motivated by this concern, and her statement matches what other sources have told me about what Simitian is doing. Basically, he is now demanding that the proposal he, Eshoo and Gordon made last week is an ultimatum. He’s taking high speed rail funding hostage, and will destroy the project if he doesn’t get his way – and that way would undermine the project anyway.

Galgiani’s anger is entirely appropriate. Simitian is way out of line here. His “blended” proposal is worth considering, but it is totally inappropriate for Simitian to demand that it be accepted, without study, or else the project lose funding and collapse.

In her statement, Galgiani vowed to fight the Great Train Robber:

Galgiani responded, “Senator Simitian essentially put a gun to the Authority’s head and said, do it my way or no way. Well, I’ve got news for him. This is not Florida, this is California. Proposition 1A is a voter mandate, and if we have to, we’ll sue.”

Right the fuck on. Good for Galgiani. But it’s not enough for her to stand up. We need to stand up to Simitian too. You can contact him here – or by phone at the numbers below. Keep in mind that calling during work hours on Monday is best (calling on a Friday night or the weekend would be pointless):

Sacramento
Phone: (916) 651-4011

Palo Alto District Office
Phone: (650) 688-6384
or (408) 277-9460

Santa Cruz District Office
Phone: (831) 425-0401

We cannot, and we will not, let Joe Simitian destroy high speed rail.

“We have many houses close to the railroad in the multiple millions in value,” said Atherton Mayor Jim Dobbie. “We just hope the project dies.”

That’s a perfect, succinct statement of what the “debate” on the Peninsula is really all about. Wealthy people with homes the envy of the rest of the state telling Californians suffering from $4 gas prices that the project voters approved in 2008 should just die in order to protect their high-value asset. It’s a stunningly elitist statement that says the rich are more important than everyone else. Simple as that.

Usually Peninsula NIMBYs are more careful than this, couching their self-interested opposition in bogus claims about ridership numbers, funding, or enormous cost overruns. Their usual trick is to mobilize public assumptions that nobody rides trains in America, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. But I guess when you’re talking to the Wall Street Journal, sometimes the rich feel right at home and let their guard down.

It’s also nice to see that there are more folks getting organized to support HSR on the Peninsula:

Such strenuous opposition to a high-tech rail line from the capital of high technology strikes some proponents of the system as ironic. “The success of Silicon Valley and California as a whole has been an ability to embrace innovation,” said Scott Klemmer, a Stanford University assistant professor who is a member of the group All Aboard Palo Alto. “It’s a real shame that we’re seeing a baseless fear of change in our own backyard.”

Well said, Scott. Silicon Valley thrived by embracing innovation and technology, not by holding back when innovation threatened some rich man’s property values. Happily, he speaks for the majority of his neighbors, and not for the small but vocal minority of NIMBYs who have been allowed to dominate the conversation by local elected officials.

Let’s hope Sacramento and Washington DC hear voices like Scott’s, and properly ignore the rich NIMBYs.

Still, it doesn’t necessarily make him an expert on what is best for the middle class. Especially when it comes to high speed rail. Enthoven, as we know, is not a neutral observer on the topic. He lives about a block from the Caltrain tracks in Atherton, a railroad that was built 100 years before he served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Enthoven has a material interest in killing a high speed rail project that he is convinced will undermine his property values. Enthoven lent his name to a flawed study that tried to put an academic face on NIMBYism – but as he explained in a comment on the revised program EIR for the high speed rail project, his primary worry is – and I quote:

An elevated railway would be hideous and intolerably noisy. We like to eat outdoors in the summer, but with such noise we would not be able to hear each other talking. And it would wake people at night. It would transform our pleasant semi-rural environment into an ugly urban environment.

We have consulted with a local real estate broker who has 34 years of experience and knows our neighborhood well. In her judgement, even the hint of HSR becoming reality is causing a 10-15% drop in real estate values. When or if the train actually materializes, prices will drop 25-30%. That will reduce assessed values and local tax revenues. We are counting on our property value sometime in the next 10 years to pay for a retirement home and to help with the college education of our grandchildren.

Enthoven isn’t concerned about the rest of us poor schlubs, who struggle to pay our bills and watch helplessly as college becomes unaffordable for ourselves and our families, who see gas prices soar, who see government scaling back stimulus and now even basic programs in the name of giving more money to rich people like Enthoven. Nobody in the middle class owns a home worth $2.7 million, most aren’t expecting to buy a retirement home, and few expect to be able to pay for their grandchildren’s college education.

Our earlier criticisms of Enthoven as being a privileged NIMBY must have stung, because he’s out this week with a new report attacking HSR – this time on the basis of it somehow hurting the middle class.

If the ancient world knew to “beware Greeks bearing gifts,” 21st century California should know to “beware rich people offering advice to the middle class.” Enthoven doesn’t care about the actual needs of the middle class. They only matter as far as they can help him preserve his property values, his ability to buy a retirement home, and his ability to enjoy a meal out on his patio (which, it should be noted, will be made easier by grade-separating the tracks and eliminating the horns).

Especially because, as we see in this report, Enthoven has once again put his name to a bunch of flawed and indefensible statements. HSR critics apparently cannot rely on factual arguments, so they have to make up their own facts – and distort others. Let’s have a look.

Will The Train Be Where My Family Can Use It? – The project scheduled to start at the end of 2012; from north of Fresno towards Bakersfield will not have riders. That’s because the State and Federal governments plan to spend over $5Billion to build a track bed in the Central Valley without a locomotive, passenger car or electrification. So the answer for at least the next five to seven years is definitely no.

Well, by that logic, we shouldn’t have started the Interstate Highway System in 1956, because it wasn’t finished for decades.

If the government assembles $66Billion to build the Anaheim/Los Angeles to San Jose to San Francisco project, it is supposed to benefit all Californians. However, if you are among the 7 million residents north of that route you aren’t likely to drive south to use the train. Ditto for the 3.2 million residents to the south and east of the route, and the 1.7 million in the coastal counties.

Note the assertion – undefined and unexplained – that the project will cost $66 billion. There is no firm basis to believe that number; it’s a scare tactic being used by the opposition. They plucked that number out of thin air, and are willfully ignoring the value engineering the CHSRA is now undertaking. But they like to define a lie as truth and then make assumptions based on that “truth.”

The rest of this paragraph is pretty flawed. It assumes no connecting rail service will ever be delivered to other residents – and in fact ignores the connecting service, such as BART and the Capitol Corridor, that already exists. Not everyone will drive to those stations, no. But a hell of a lot of people will get there.

Still, this is setting up the next set of arguments – that Californians shouldn’t have to pay for a train nobody will use. As we’ll see, that’s simply ridiculous.

Will My Family Be Able To Afford To Ride The Train? – The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) said in 2008 that the cost of a one-way ticket between Los Angeles and San Francisco would be $55. By the end of 2009, that one-way fare had risen to $105.5

Which is still cheaper than flying – but they do not mention airfares anywhere at all. A notable omission, designed to bias the “study.”

If you drive that 407 miles, and use the standard deduction the Federal government allows for business trips by car, your total cost would be $206.6 That puts a round-trip at $412, including all the costs of owning the auto; that is, fuel, taxes, insurance, amortization, depreciation, etc. Only counting gasoline costs at $4.50/gallon, the round trip would be about $200.

That’s assuming 2011 conditions remain constant forever. As we know, they won’t. By 2020 fuel prices will be much higher than they are today – unless demand destruction occurs. That demand destruction will come in one of two forms – either people don’t take those trips, or they use more affordable options such as electric trains.

The denial of reality and ignorance of planning shines through here as well:

For the family to ride the train it will cost $840 round trip, twice as much as the total cost of driving and four times the gasoline costs. You’ll also have to rent a car when you get to San Francisco or Disneyland, adding another $45- $65/day even for a compact. The same is true if you’re not going the entire length of the route. If you’re going only to where it stops, the trip may take less time, but can your family afford the extra costs?

The family won’t “have to” rent a car at all. SF is well-served by public transit today. And the ARTIC station in Anaheim will be close to Disneyland, which will provide some kind of connecting service that does not require a separate car rental.

Their next question is “Will There Be A Job For Someone In My Family To Build Or Operate The Train?” That’s a flawed way to frame the matter if ever there was one. Most Californians won’t be hired to build or operate the train. But that economic activity – as a economics prof like Enthoven knows very well – will create other jobs that WILL employ middle-class Californians. The construction jobs alone will add tax income to state and local governments, helping to sustain vital services. That’s how “stimulus” works. But in their self-interested zeal to attack the project, Enthoven and the other authors are reduced to parroting Tea Party arguments.

We can see that in their next section, a completely specious and flawed argument that the train will cause taxes to soar and services to be slashed:

Will It Cost Me More In Taxes To Support The Train? – A $66Billion Phase One construction cost doubles the State’s long-term debt. To help pay that off, your middle income California family will pay 8-11% above the $1,300 in State income tax you already pay. That’s an unannounced $100-$140 annual tax increase. And the more you earn, the larger bite of your income that 8-11% takes.

The lies are flying thick and fast now. Not only have they failed to prove (or even explain) the $66 billion cost claim, they’re falsely assuming the cost will be borne solely by the state of California. It won’t. California voters already approved $10 billion. The other $33 billion (of a total project cost of $43 billion) come from the federal government and the private sector.

Of course, if for some reason California did decide to spend more and decided to raise taxes to do it, we could always tax the rich to do that. Notice, of course, that the wealthy Enthoven does not mention it as an option (shocking, I know). And of course, Californians could well decide that even if the costs soared, that it was worth paying $100 more a year to help build a train that people want to ride, that enables economic growth, helps our environment and reduces our dependence on expensive foreign oil.

But Enthoven isn’t done on this question yet. Not by a longshot:

There’s even more downside. History teaches us that nowhere in the world does a high-speed rail system collect its entire operating costs from riders. It’s impossible to know precisely what passengers will bring to the fare box. But it’s not impossible to be skeptical about the CHSRA’s claims that, on average, nearly every Californian will ride the train every year and the CHSR operator will collect all of the relatively high fares all the time. So, you must assume that your family is exposed for even more, probably substantial annual income taxes, to pay creditors’ in order to subsidize the operations.

This is complete nonsense. Bald-faced lies being promoted under the cover of a prominent academic. Most HSR systems DO indeed cover their operating cost from riders, including Amtrak’s Acela. Here you also see the core argument of the anti-HSR forces – that “nobody in California will ride trains” reappearing. No matter how often we show them that around the world and even here in the US that HSR is massively popular with riders, the opponents refuse to acknowledge that truth. Nor can they – they’re motivated by self-interest.

All the while, your State Government is collecting less in taxes to pay for education, police or other services from its middle class’ shrinking incomes. You could choose to pay these taxes as-you-go. Or you could create more State debt that puts off the day of reckoning for your children to face. And this for a train you may not be near enough to use and can’t afford to ride.

Or we could raise taxes on the wealthy and not worry about it. Again, Enthoven refuses to consider that option.

The “study” closes with this doom-and-gloom scenario:

To continue the virtuous cycle that has fueled California’s growth and provided long-term jobs, your taxes would have to increase, more debt created or choices made to cut present State spending on other programs. What will benefit the next generations more: a world-class education system, or the profits of a few engineering, equipment, software and train-operating companies? Choosing the later might bring California a train your family may not be near enough to use or afford to ride; raise your State taxes, cut essential services like police and cripple California’s education system that sustained its virtuous cycle. That threatens the kids’ future.

Of course, that future is already being threatened – right now – and not by high speed rail, but by state budget cuts that are happening because California politicians refuse to do what 78% of Californians want and tax the rich to close the gap.

But we can, and must, say more. I’m from a middle-class California family, and am still middle-class myself. So I am much better qualified to speak on this issue than a wealthy former Pentagon official.

California’s middle class is suffering because the rich have taken our money and are leaving us to face the problems caused by soaring gas prices without any alternative. Enthoven never has to worry about affording to fly or drive wherever he wants to go, whenever he wants to go. The rest of us do. And as gas prices pass the $4/gallon mark, that reality bites hard for most middle-class Californians.

That’s why a majority of California voters approved the $10 billion in HSR bonds in 2008. Gas prices soared and the middle class immediately understood: their future lay with electric passenger trains. Enthoven and the rest of the HSR opponents have never accepted this truth, and believe they can somehow snap voters out of this “delusion” – not stopping to think that voters knew damn well what they were doing in November 2008 when they voted for Prop 1A.

California’s middle class will vanish if it is not liberated from dependence on oil. It’s that simple. High speed rail helps that happen. It has saved money and created jobs all over the world and it will do so here in California. It won’t save the middle class alone, obviously, but it’s a necessary part of the solution.

So is taxing the rich. And that’s what this is really about. Enthoven isn’t just worried about his own property value (which if anything will rise when the loud horns and diesel fumes are gone). He is worried about us middle class folks coming after his money and his assets. And he should be worried. We need things like high speed rail, affordable and quality college education, universal health care, and government-funded job creation programs if the middle class is to survive. Enthoven doesn’t dare mention the idea of taxing the rich in his “report” because if he did, he’d undercut his entire argument.

Enthoven doesn’t care about the middle class. He only cares about himself. California’s middle class saw right through similarly specious arguments in November 2008. They did so again when Enthoven’s fellow Atherton resident, the mega-rich and anti-HSR Meg Whitman, got crushed in the November 2010 election. Now Enthoven is reduced to making stuff up and distorting the truth to try and convince middle class Californians to somehow undercut their own economic interest in favor of his own.

It won’t work. But it’s still good to push back against this nonsense anyway. We can never rest until the trains are built and operating.

• High speed rail will be a boon to California sports fans. Although it won’t solve the problem of Dodger fans attacking Giants fans in the Dodger Stadium parking lot…

• Breaking news: NIMBYs come up with excuses to oppose project even though every other HSR system in the world has met its ridership goals.

• The California High Speed Rail Authority might want to consider bringing this British sound simulation to the Gilroy area, where train noise is the latest excuse being made by NIMBYs against the train. Sadly, British NIMBYs are making the exact same anti-HSR arguments as their American counterparts.

I respect the British government for trying to reason with these people, but as they will soon learn, there is simply no reasoning at all with NIMBYs. They are NIMBYs precisely because they are elevating their own selfish beliefs above the good of the community. It’s an irrational position to hold, which means you can’t win them over with logic. Instead you have to rally enough supporters to simply overwhelm the NIMBYs and move ahead anyway. Once the rail line is built, the NIMBYs will either realize it’s not so bad, or if they just can’t stand it, they’ll move.