But Kopp and Morshed sound decidedly less enthusiastic these days. They still believe high-speed rail is necessary for the state. They stand by the decision to build the initial leg of the system in the Central Valley — a route critics have derided as the “rail to nowhere.” They say it’s a critical piece of the line, and a good place to test the technology.

But they say the plan they envisioned – and that voters approved in 2008 – is not what’s being described by the High Speed Rail Authority today. They’re critical of the so-called “blended approach” that would force high-speed rail trains to share tracks with existing commuter services, like Caltrain, and, at least initially, require customers to make several transfers along the SF-LA route.

These are good questions to raise. KQED spoke with both Kopp and Morshed about these concerns:

What’s your objection to the “blended plan,” which integrates high-speed rail into existing services, like Metrolink and Caltrain?

Kopp: Real high-speed rail, you get on in one place, you get off in another. Making people transfer from one train to another in my opinion is a sure recipe for discouraging ridership. That’s why I fought to have BART into SFO, not a mile and a half away, and that’s proved to be the most successful part of the entire BART system.

You have to be running, as we’ve always predicated, ten trains per hour, in the peak hours of the morning and afternoon to generate the revenue you need so you can function without a government subsidy. It’s certainly not the project which I had in mind and others had in mind. It’s a different kind of system.

There’s even a legal question as to whether this so-called blended system — in other words, starting off with trains from San Francisco to San Jose at a top speed of 125 mph, or probably less than that if you’re using the same tracks Caltrain uses — whether that can be legally done under the provisions of Prop 1A, which was passed by voters in 2008.

I agree with Kopp here conceptually. Forced transfers aren’t ideal, and the blended system on the Peninsula is at best a short-term stopgap as we wait for generational change to occur.

But I’m not sure that the Authority is necessarily abandoning the kind of project that Kopp is talking about. The project was always going to be built in phases. And if revenue service from, say, San José to LA can be inaugurated more quickly then it generates the money and the demand that will be needed to expand the Peninsula rail corridor.

And I don’t agree that the blended system violates Prop 1A. But I am sure someone will litigate that.

According to the plan, the initial route from Fresno to Bakersfield is going to generate positive cash flows, and also attract $11 billion in private investment, which will help get the rest of the system built. Is that realistic?

Morshed: Fresno to Bakersfield is the key connecting piece that you have to build in order to build the rest of it. You don’t have any choice about it. But you have to recognize that there aren’t that many people going between Bakersfield and Merced. That piece was never going to make any money. It just isn’t logical. Who’s going to ride it? And private investors aren’t going to invest in anything that’s not making money.

Kopp: No way. No way. It was clear that that first leg was not for revenue service. It’s for testing trains, obviously. For revenue, you’ve got to [expand the system] to LA or to San Francisco. I am skeptical about private investment until the very end of the completion of the entire first phase, from SF to Anaheim.

I don’t believe that’s what the plan actually says. Fresno to Bakersfield is indeed an Initial Construction Segment for testing trains, essentially. The Initial Operating Segment, for revenue service, would be an extension of the ICS either west to San José or south to the San Fernando Valley.

So, what do you think is going to happen? Should the project be shelved?

Kopp: Absolutely not. Human beings are creative. They’ll come up with some other sources.

You have to take a long historical view. I-5 wasn’t built all at once. But, of course, the interstate highway system had a specific source of money, namely the federal gasoline tax. High-speed rail has got to get, if it can, a specific source of funding: federal or state. I don’t know how much regional sources can contribute. It’s gonna be a long haul. A much longer haul than I originally thought.

Morshed: I believe the same as I did three years ago or ten years ago, that given the growth of the state and our population, and the realities of our transportation needs, California has to build a high-speed network sooner or later.

I’m convinced it’s going to be built. But in which way, I don’t know. And with how many ups and downs, I don’t know. I intentionally haven’t tried to look at the details and second-guess people. Maybe they know something I didn’t know. I hope they do.

Again, these are good points. And Kopp is absolutely right that what’s needed above all else is a dedicated, federal source of funding.

After reading this, I think the main issue is not with the Business Plan itself. Phasing was always going to happen, and a blended system on the Peninsula is workable as a short-term solution. The issue is whether these interim solutions become the sum total of high speed rail itself. I read Kopp and Morshed as being concerned the core concept of HSR – true bullet train service from San Francisco to Los Angeles – is at risk of being abandoned for short-term expediency.

While I do not believe that is happening right now, they are absolutely right to raise that concern. It would be a disaster if high speed rail gets neutered forever due to conditions in 2011 that are temporary.

(Almost missed this from last Friday; thanks to Reality Check for the link.)

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.

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.

Lawyers for the group asked Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny to block the California High-Speed Rail Authority from proceeding with a route between San Francisco and the Central Valley. They say planners made flawed estimates of ridership and ignored traffic problems and other possible impacts.

I fully expect Kenny to reject these claims as he rejected the vast majority of their claims in 2009. In fact, if that was all that went on I probably wouldn’t even write about it. But this following quote from Stuart Flashman that appeared in the Mercury News article was too absurd to leave without comment:

“There will be congestion on highways south of San Jose that people won’t be aware of, and they should have been made aware,” said Stuart Flashman, attorney for the coalition.

Is he serious? I am guessing Stuart has never actually been on a highway south of San José. If he had, he would know that there is already a huge amount of congestion on those routes, particularly Highway 101 to and from Monterey.

Stuart and anyone else who thinks there isn’t already a major traffic problem down there should get up tomorrow morning around 9 AM and drive from the Bay Area to Monterey. From the 101/880 interchange in San José it should take you about 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to Cannery Row. On a Saturday heading south it will take between 2 and 2.5 hours. On a Sunday afternoon heading north it can take as many as 3.

HSR can help resolve those traffic problems. The Transportation Agency of Monterey County has plans to connect Monterey and Salinas to the Gilroy HSR station with rail, enabling visitors and residents alike to get to and from Monterey County without having to clog up Highway 101. HSR can help people get to their destinations around the state. Sure, some people will still drive, but they’ll find much less traffic.

Flashman might also be talking about traffic in south Santa Clara County. Here again he shows his ignorance – rush hour traffic on 101 between San José and Gilroy is already pretty bad. HSR could help reduce some of that traffic by giving people a commute option for Gilroy – and improved Caltrain service can help shoulder even more of the load. Robust transit service can support transit-oriented development, reducing traffic impacts even further.

If that’s what the HSR deniers are reduced to arguing in their attempts to derail the project, they’re even more desperate than I imagined.

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.

This week the plan appears to be gathering momentum:

“That’s part of what prompted us to consider getting involved,” said Adrienne Tissier, a San Mateo County supervisor who serves as chairwoman of the transportation commission and also sits on the Caltrain board.

At today’s meeting, Tissier plans to ask the commission’s planning staff to take on the high-speed rail effort. She expects the commission will have about a year and a half to work with the rail authority before the spring 2013 deadline for a final San Francisco-San Jose plan.

And the Bay Area Council is getting even more serious about the plan, hiring Gavin Newsom’s former campaign manager to lead the effort:

“We see this as the way forward to save this project,” said John Grubb, a senior vice president of the Bay Area Council, a pro-business advocacy group.

The council, working with Metropolitan Transportation Commission officials, is calling for formation of a coalition of Bay Area transportation agencies and cities to work with the California High-Speed Rail Authority to come up with an acceptable plan to run high-speed trains between San Jose and San Francisco, perhaps at less-than-high speeds. The group also plans to hire San Francisco lobbyist Alex Tourk to help build business backing.

Jim Wunderman, president and CEO, of the Bay Area Council, explains the thinking that went into the effort:

“There were some assumptions made that everyone was flat-out excited about high-speed rail,” said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council. “The concerns of the cities along the line weren’t anticipated by the authority, and by the time they realigned their operations to deal with that, it was too late for a second chance at making a good first impression.”

Clearly, the BAC has decided that it’s too late to push back against the NIMBYism and that instead some sort of deal has to be struck. While I am not sure they’re right, I can understand why they’re taking the approach they are, especially with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo pushing hard for something like this. And as I said when discussing the BAC proposal last week, this could work out OK – but there are some important issues to take care of, including ensuring that whatever hybrid plan is reached can accommodate the passenger rail traffic that it needs to carry.

Others are raising these concerns:

“A scaled-back plan is good,” said Marian Lee, head of the Caltrain Modernization Project, “but can we get enough trains through our corridor – high-speed and Caltrain – to make it work?”

That’s one of the key questions the Bay Area Council plan needs to answer. While the plan might make political sense (and that’s still an open question) it might not make operational sense. In the end, that’s what matters. NIMBYism is a temporary phenomenon, but whatever does get built will have to last us for a while. Let’s make sure that the hybrid solution doesn’t undermine Caltrain or HSR, but that if it does go forward, it provides a strong basis to grow passenger rail ridership on the Peninsula, whether the destination is local, regional, or across the state.

There is much common ground among the framework put forward by Senator Simitian, Assembly Member Gordon, and Congresswoman Eshoo; the Caltrain concept; ideas from San Francisco and San Jose; and even the “phased” approach that the Authority has aired.

The Bay Area Council has had discussion with these leaders, and I see substantial areas of agreement among them and with the Bay Area Council. I believe that there can be broad support for a project that:

• Brings both high speed rail and Caltrain electrification to the Peninsula as soon as possible, by utilizing a simple design that can be funded and built quickly.

• Provides sufficient speed, capacity, and flexibility to support an attractive high speed rail service, while also providing adequate capacity for robust Caltrain service.

• Minimizes community impacts by forgoing construction elements that are not needed in the near/mid‐term.

• Connects to the Transbay Terminal.

• Meets legal requirements necessary to access Proposition 1A high speed rail bond funds.

• Is designed such that future upgrades, should they be necessary and desired at a future date, would not require unnecessary disruption or wasteful reconstruction.

Some will have concerns additional to those above, and some might quibble with the precise wording— there certainly will need to be a degree of compromise on all sides in order to reach agreement. But agreement, I am confident, is within our reach.

What the BAC lists here is, broadly speaking, a workable starting point. A good design that meets both Caltrain and HSR’s needs, connecting to the Transbay Terminal and designed in a way for future upgrades – which ARE quite necessary – is something I think a lot of people can get behind.

I worry about what “minimizing community impacts by forgoing construction elements that are not needed in the near/mid-term” means. I wish the BAC had not accepted the NIMBYs’ framing that things like aerial structures are “not needed” and have impacts that need to be “minimized” – what about the community impacts of at-grade crossings that cause significant traffic jams, that split communities, and that are very unsafe. Jim Wunderman might say I’m “quibbling with the precise wording” but I think this matters.

But this seems worth exploring. HSR was always going to be built in phases, and if the initial SF-SJ phase is some kind of hybrid that carries bullet trains to and from Transbay Terminal along a route that includes the Central Valley and terminates in downtown LA, a phase that can and will be expanded when the other segments are fully built out and when NIMBYism has faded, then it could work.

The politics here matter. The Bay Area Council have been strong backers of the HSR project, and have long been concerned at the NIMBYism cropping up on the Peninsula. While I’d always hoped the BAC would play a stronger role in helping push back against that NIMBYism by helping mobilize the Peninsula’s large, silent, pro-HSR and anti-NIMBY majority, they appear to be instead trying to broker a deal that enough people can live with. By providing backing for a hybrid plan they’re making that plan much more likely. And since the local electeds, including Anna Eshoo and Joe Simitian, have been converging on this plan along with the California High Speed Rail Authority (who has increasingly been open to this), the hybrid plan may be the new consensus path forward.

Perhaps another elected official who is converging toward this plan is Governor Jerry Brown. Remember that at the beginning of the month, he line-item vetoed $145 million in Prop 1A funding on the basis that it didn’t help build a comprehensive statewide rail plan:

The High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority), the Department of Transportation (Caltrans), and local jurisdictions should work together to develop a comprehensive statewide rail plan. The projects identified by Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission appear unrelated to the high-speed rail project or an integrated rail plan. As plans for the high speed route are further developed, the Authority should work with local agencies to build mutually beneficial projects.

That reads pretty closely to what the BAC letter proposed. Now it could be that the BAC simply read Brown’s veto closely and is appealing to his way of thinking – or both Brown and BAC are trying to produce this kind of coordinated, integrated solution.

In any case, it’s good that BAC is trying to keep HSR not only alive but well on the Peninsula. HSR advocates will closely evaluate both the concept that BAC has proposed as well as the details that emerge – and those advocates will fully expect to be a part of the process. After all, we represent the majority of Californians and the majority of Peninsula residents, both of whom continue to strongly support this project.

Of course, that funding is for the much-maligned CBOSS form of PTC, which raised a lot of ire, and for good reason.

Instead of actually trying to engage me in a dialogue about the post – and several other issues – Hamilton went straight for the innuendo-laden attack. This was entirely unnecessary, but for reasons known only to herself, that’s the path she chose. Here are some excerpts:

First, for those of you who haven’t read the California High-Speed Rail Blog, let me tell you about it. It’s run by Robert Cruickshank. The site is affectionately known as Robert’s blog, not because he’s anybody’s best friend but because no one can spell or pronounce his last name.

Really? You’re going to open with that? Wow.

Cruickshank is actually a pretty easy name to pronounce. All you have to do is ask. She has my contact info – we actually had a very brief email conversation over the weekend – so there’s no excuse for her to wonder idly.

Further, all she has to do is ask about any of the other issues she raises:

Many have suspected this blog site, www.cahsrblog.com whose logo looks amazingly like the California High Speed Rail logo, might be funded by the High Speed Rail organization but proof positive has not surfaced.

Again, if she was so damn curious all she has to do is just ask me. I am in no way, shape, or form affiliated with the California High Speed Rail Authority. They haven’t given me a dime in funding. Nobody has. I pay this site’s hosting fees, which are minimal, out of my own pocket. If anyone ever wants to donate anything I ask that they fund the cause by giving to Californians For High Speed Rail. I serve on the board of that organization and was until January of this year its Chairman. They’re not funded by the Authority either.

“Proof positive has not surfaced…” that’s such a sleazy line. It’s the equivalent of “have you stopped beating your wife?” It presumes guilt and that the “proof” is out there waiting to be discovered, along with Atlantis and the contents of Al Capone’s vault.

Regardless of where Robert’s motivation comes from, he’s no doubt a good friend of the Authority since he gets scoop on the project early.

The Authority is full of very good people, but I don’t actually have very much interaction with them, and never really have. I’ve always thought of that as something of a weakness. I never did go out of my way to cultivate sources inside the Authority, have met its staff on a couple of occasions, exchange the occasional email, but that’s about it. Not out of any desire to keep my distance, or out of any dislike, but more out of my own inherent laziness. I’ve often felt I should actually be doing more to build relationships there, not less.

The overwhelming majority of what I write about here is based on publicly available info, and that is deliberate. I do that because I want to be able to have my writing be accessible to the broadest possible audience. I’m not a reporter or an investigator, I am an activist and an advocate. This blog exists to support and promote the HSR project, because when I started back in March 2008, barely anyone else was doing so.

That’s all prelude for Hamilton’s true purpose, which is to attack me for supposedly cheerleading the unpopular CBOSS:

The comments on the blog were very negative such as this one: “I’m sorry Robert but I have to strongly disagree with this. As we have stated multiple times why develop another custom system after custom system after custom system? Anyone who wants to save money would use an off the shelf system. Why spend $300 million on a new signal system vs. spending it on something more useful. It makes no sense to R&D your own signal system when there is a good standard out there.”

Another: “ Robert, your posts are becoming a little too, how should I say this. HSR cheerleader (y) if that’s a word. We all know this is bad news for HSR on the peninsula.”

Virtually all the other bloggers–including ardent supporters of high-speed rail-agreed that funding CBOSS is a bad idea.

Again, all Hamilton had to do is ask. I thought it was good news that the Authority helped bring funding to the Peninsula for PTC, but I have always been concerned about CBOSS and have agreed with many of the criticisms about it.

I’m not sure I agree that it is a portent of doom, as Hamilton seems to believe. But I also think that Clem Tillier’s criticisms of CBOSS are good ones and should be taken very seriously. If Hamilton thought I was cheerleading CBOSS – when nothing in my post from a few days ago indicated I had actually been making comments on the type of PTC that had been chosen – once again she could have just asked me.

Ultimately, the solution to the CBOSS issue isn’t to blow up the HSR project but to instead find ways to actually get Caltrain to think more sensibly about their long-term planning, and that involves supporting better cooperation between all parties with an interest in the Peninsula rail corridor. My post was designed to promote better cooperation, and the issues with CBOSS simply illustrate that need more clearly.

Instead what we have are a bunch of people fighting with each other, some of whom want all trains to go away, some of whom think the status quo is just fine (it isn’t) and some of whom recognize the need for rail to be improved and better integrated with the communities.

What do I think of Kathy Hamilton’s role in that situation? All she has to do is ask.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has signed a grant agreement with the Federal Railroad Administration to obligate $16 million to fund the design of signaling technology to optimize safety on the Bay Area segment, benefitting the Caltrain system and improving train control and safety on the corridor during high-speed rail construction. Caltrain is the regional commuter system connecting San Francisco to San Jose – the same 52-mile rail corridor in which the state’s high-speed train will operate….

The technology, Positive Train Control, will increase safety and operations of the passenger train network that currently carries 41,000 people per day. The improved control and management of the network is necessary to upgrade and then maintain service during the future construction of the state’s high-speed rail system….

The agreement funds the design of a Positive Train Control system. Positive Train Control is an advanced technology used primarily for avoiding train-to-train collisions, monitoring train locations, preventing train incursion into track work zones, and preventing speeding and over-speed derailments.

The Peninsula Joint Powers Board (as Caltrain is formally known) is providing the matching funds to the federal award.

Anna Eshoo played a role in getting this funding, as Palo Alto Online explains:

“The $16 million doesn’t cover all the costs, but this is the bridge that will get us to complete the design,” Eshoo told the Weekly. “That’s why it’s so important — it’s an improvement for safety and efficiency.

“It’s a significant step to upgrade Caltrain.”…

Eshoo has been working since spring 2010 to allocate federal stimulus money for Caltrain improvements. In May 2010, she sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, requesting an allocation for positive train control on the Caltrain corridor. LaHood finalized the deal with the California High-Speed Rail Authority this week.

In other words, when all the parties work together for mutual benefit, good things happen. This is why it’s so unfortunate that some folks on the Peninsula want to pit HSR against Caltrain. Ultimately the solution requires more money – more local, more state, and more federal money to bring the kind of passenger rail improvements that the Peninsula wants and needs.

Everyone on the Peninsula needs to unite behind this – go get the money. Let’s hope this is a sign of things to come.