Quentin Kopp’s term on the board expired in December and he asked Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, not to reappoint him to the nine-member board….

“I wrote Steinberg and told him I didn’t want to be reappointed,” Kopp said. “I am pursuing other opportunities to serve the public.”

Although, the former judge believes the 800-mile project linking San Francisco to Los Angeles will one day be fully realized, he told the Daily Journal sitting on the board was no longer a joy.

“It isn’t fun like it used to be,” Kopp, 82, said.

Kopp’s replacement on the board is Bob Balgenorth, president of the California Building and Construction Trades Council. It’s good to have some union representation on the board. There’s every reason to believe he will be an asset to the project.

But Kopp’s retirement from the board (though not from HSR advocacy, thankfully) is a blow. He was a tireless advocate for the project, and for doing it right. Kopp, like Rod Diridon, took a lot of abuse from HSR opponents who saw in him an easy target. But Kopp wasn’t such an easy target. A fiercely independent figure, whether as a politician, judge, or board member, Kopp refused to give the project’s enemies the satisfaction they wanted. He smacked down critics in the state legislature who had violated the state constitution in waiting over 2 months to pass a budget and yet criticized the CHSRA for not getting the business plan done in time – even though the legislature had failed to give them any funds with which to do it. It was a classic moment and showed Kopp’s passion for the project – and his clever ability to defend it.

Nor did he shrink from criticizing things he thought were wrong, like the placement of the “throat” of the Transbay Terminal or, controversially, the tenure of some board members in apparent violation of state law. And at his last meeting, Kopp turned his eye toward the Ogilvy Public Relations contract:

One of his last official acts on the board was to send Chief Executive Officer Roelof van Ark a letter urging the authority to terminate a $9 million contract with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

Ogilvy, with an office in San Francisco, was awarded the contract to handle the rail authority’s public relations in November, 2009.

“Since Ogilvy’s engagement in February 2010, its inadequate performance can be measured, by among other things, the worsening legislative, media, academic and popular comments in the public domain about our project,” Kopp wrote in the letter to van Ark.

So far, Ogilvy has charged the authority more than $2.4 million for little more than a “plan,” Kopp said.

In the letter to van Ark, Kopp details a long list of invoices from Ogilvy he disapproved of including $1,500 spent for someone to read news clips related to the authority for a little more than three hours in April 2010.

There’s more in the article – it clearly doesn’t reflect well on Ogilvy, although that’s the kind of stuff that you tend to get with this kind of PR contract. And that’s a problem. The HSR project doesn’t need PR – it needs people who can help CEO Roelof van Ark continue to improve the Authority’s outreach to communities. And outreach is distinct from PR.

With Kopp being replaced by Balgenorth, that still leaves Rod Diridon’s seat open. And both HSR backers and critics from the Caltrain corridor agree that Diridon should be replaced by another representative from San Mateo or Santa Clara counties:

The Silicon Valley Leadership Group has previously lobbied the authority to appoint someone from the Peninsula to serve on the board. Burlingame Mayor Terry Nagel hopes the same thing.

“We’ve been asking the authority for years to have someone from the Peninsula on the board,” Nagel said. “There has been an absence of information and it is trouble getting the authority to answer any questions.”…

“It is a good idea to have representative from Silicon Valley on the high-speed rail board because of our population and economic center,” said Steve Wright, spokesman for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “It is a very long process, though, and the board will be around for a long time.”

There are a lot of proposals out there for reforming the CHSRA and its board. There’s no need to be hasty or reckless in those reforms. One possible reform option would be to ensure some geographic equity in board members. For the time being, though, it seems entirely reasonable to replace Diridon with someone else from the Caltrain corridor.

As for Quentin Kopp, he has been a crucial leader for the HSR project. He is stepping down, but he says he’ll stay involved. Which is good. We still need all the allies and strong, smart, sensible voices we can get. There’s still a lot of work left to do to build high speed rail in California, and it’s good to know that Kopp will still be there to help us do it.

Staff members are expected to recommend to the high-speed rail board next week that the report be delayed for as much as a year, former board member Rod Diridon told Belmont city officials Thursday afternoon.

The EIR was initially due last December but was pushed back until the spring, he said….

The staff will likely recommend the EIR be delayed to allow more time to look into a number of matters that still concern Peninsula city leaders, residents and business owners, including looking into a two-track system through San Mateo County instead of a four-track system.

I’m not convinced this is the best move. Delay of a few months made sense – with stimulus money going to the Central Valley, there was some room to delay the draft EIR into early 2011 to enable more time to discuss implementation of the project. But any greater delay will actually hurt, not help, the Peninsula. While I have never believed that HSR would hurt property values along the route, it is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that there would indeed be a hit to property values from the uncertainty surrounding the project’s design. Once something is decided, the market can price it in and values will stabilize and, before long, begin rising (depending of course on much broader factors in the national housing market). But if a year or two goes by with the situation being uncertain, then it could well cause problems.

And then there’s the ostensible reason for the delay – a desire to explore a two-track system instead of a four-track system:

“This could make all the difference between having the project and not having it,” said Bill Dawson, a member of Belmont’s high-speed rail ad hoc committee. The committee is comprised of local residents and business owners who investigate the potential impact of high-speed rail on Belmont.

“It’s a game-changer,” Dawson said. “People are worried about having four tracks. The right-of-way in Belmont is wide enough to accommodate four tracks, but many oppose four tracks, because it widens the right-of-way.”

Look at that last paragraph there and marvel at the circular logic being employed. The right of way is wide enough for four tracks, but four tracks would widen the right of way? Um, what? Either the ROW is wide enough right now or it’s not.

The other question is whether a two-track system would actually meet the needs of both Caltrain and HSR. I would assume that HSR opponents are proposing this precisely because it can’t, and the tracks would be used primarily by Caltrain. Or, if Caltrain has to scale back its operations, HSR could use more of the track capacity, but none of us wants to see that happen to Caltrain.

Another reason the two-track proposal doesn’t really make sense is that it doesn’t resolve the question of the vertical alignment. Is there that much difference between a two-track aerial structure and a four-track aerial structure? As for a tunnel, Diridon explained at the meeting in Belmont, their chances of getting one without the locals helping pay for it are slim at best:

“If we build a tunnel down the Peninsula, we’re going to have the build the tunnel for Sanger, and Cochrane, and the other Central Valley cities,” Diridon said. “That’s the law. If we don’t, the project will be stopped by legal action.”

Holding out for a tunnel would significantly delay the high-speed rail project, he said.

“If you hold out for a tunnel, I think what you’ll do is delay the project on the Peninsula maybe forever,” Diridon said. “Because I don’t think you can build a tunnel.”

And of course, the costs of giving everybody and their brother a tunnel would be astronomical, so it’s not something that can be done without local funding. As we know, the Peninsula so far has been reluctant to provide it.

So I’m not quite sure what this EIR delay is going to accomplish. It’s not going to resolve some of the basic inconsistencies in the anti-HSR viewpoint. If a delay can help everyone hammer out an agreement on how to build the tracks, then it would be valuable. So far though, the anti-HSR folks seem to be pretty deeply entrenched, and many political leaders on the Peninsula are either with them or aren’t yet willing to side with the clear majority that supports HSR and wants it built.

If a delay happens, then I do hope that everyone can come together to figure out a solution that, above all, provides for the best passenger rail service, because that’s what matters most. Oil prices keep rising, so there is some urgency to getting these details resolved.

Given a longtime caveat that in politics nothing is real until it is done, there is both a longtime friendship between Brown and Diridon and — perhaps a deciding factor — Diridon was co-chair of Brown’s initial campaign for governor in 1974.

The vacancy on the authority board could occur because board member David Crane was appointed Dec. 30 to an opening on the University of California Board of Regents, a 12-year appointment also made in the closing days of Schwarzenegger’s governorship. There has been growing attention to “incompatible” appointments on the authority board, and if this is deemed one of those Crane almost certainly would opt for the regents.

Diridon, 71, describes himself as a “staunch Democrat,” and points to a record of chairing or serving on environmental bodies. But he is best known for decades of advocacy for public transit, and during 20 years on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors (1975-1995) became known as “the father of light rail” in the county.

Brown has indeed shown a preference for bringing back old advisers and aides from the 1970s. Further, Diridon has the kind of experience in transportation policy that the CHSRA board needs to be effective. While I have nothing against Thomas Richards and Matthew Toledo, the two new CHSRA board members, and have every reason to believe they’ll do well on the board, it is unfortunate that they do not have the kind of transportation experience of Diridon and Richard Katz, whom the new appointees are replacing. Governor Schwarzenegger believed that having business experience mattered more than having transportation experience – but then he also believed that was true about being governor, and we all know how well that turned out.

It’s especially unfortunate that Diridon was seen by some as being an unfit public spokesman for the project, with reports that he and Quentin Kopp were being asked to not speak publicly on the Peninsula:

But his own words have also contributed to the sturm und drang, notably when he publicly referred to opponents of a rail line up the Peninsula as “rotten apples.” He later qualified his reference to mean about a score of individuals who had opposed high-speed rail, as far back as Proposition 1A on the 2008 state ballot that approved the concept and provided $9.95 billion in bonds as a down payment.

At one point, Diridon announced that he and another board member, Quentin Kopp, had been asked by staff to avoid speaking on the Peninsula because their appearances would be attended or disrupted by opponents interpreted as a “gag rule.” But Kopp called the Weekly to protest that he was a state Senate appointee to the board and “no one is going to gag Quentin Kopp.”

Diridon was absolutely right in his “rotten apples” comment – he wasn’t saying that the HSR deniers were themselves rotten, but that they were a small group of people that could “spoil the bunch” if their inaccurate attacks on HSR were listened to. More importantly, the HSR deniers had every reason to play the victim, and HSR supporters should know better than to let opponents define the terms of debate. This was a manufactured controversy, ginned up by sore losers who have spent the last two years trying to find ways to undermine a project that is popular in their own community and around the state.

That controversy should not mask the important work Diridon had done with local officials up and down the project route. Diridon often helped deal with and resolve concerns and issues cities had with the project. He had a manner of blunt speaking, but just because he speaks truths some people didn’t want to hear doesn’t make him a voice to silence.

I’ve heard Diridon speak about HSR on a number of occasions and found him to be an articulate and effective supporter of the project, with knowledge and skill in explaining its benefits to the public. That, combined with his expertise in transportation policy, makes him an important asset for the Authority board.

So too does his assessment of what the Authority can improve:

He said he feels the authority has failed in some areas, such as spending greater effort to get the word out about its benefits.

Most HSR supporters have agreed with this, and we have seen recent evidence that the CHSRA has indeed improved their outreach, including CEO Roelof van Ark’s recent visit to Gilroy. Again, sometimes that outreach doesn’t provide what certain people want to hear, such as how Burlingame’s desire to get a free below-grade track is not realistic. But that isn’t a sign of bad outreach, it’s a sign of totally unreasonable expectations on the part of cities that need to be willing to step up and help fund gold-plated infrastructure.

In short, Rod Diridon is an asset to the HSR project and did well in his time on the CHSRA board, and deserves to be reappointed at the earliest opportunity.

Galgiani said she was generally pleased because the 83,000 jobs coming exceed the population of Merced. She urged anyone “who’s presently a member of one of the labor unions or in the construction field” to be prepared to get to work.

Commuting 50 to 60 miles daily from Merced to Fresno to a good-paying construction job isn’t a bad deal.

Galgiani’s point is particularly important, reminding people that this is intended as a stimulus, and will create jobs that Valley desperately needs. Once construction gets underway in 2012, it will provide a significant economic boost to Fresno, Hanford, as well as Merced. If further federal funds materialize, Bakersfield will join in the job-creation party.

The editorial also cited CHSRA board member Rod Diridon’s pledge to keep Merced involved in the HSR project:

Authority board member Ron Diridon of San Jose said he is going to pitch these ideas to “salve the wounds” for Merced and Bakersfield when the board meets in January:

Allocate $2 million for environmental studies in Merced and Bakersfield.

Affirm that Merced’s Castle site remains under consideration for the heavy maintenance facility.

Ensure that work on the “Chowchilla Y,” where the trains to the Bay Area would connect to the Valley, be another early investment after work begins on phase one.

These are good things to do for the project anyway. The environmental studies and solving the Chowchilla wye issue will ensure that Merced is positioned to get its connection quickly, even if the CHSRA board pursues CEO Roelof van Ark’s approach and focuses on building the SF-LA route first.

Most importantly, the editorial puts the issue in bigger perspective:

This may help us to get over our disappointment on the way this is starting out. The next decade will go by quickly, and before you know it, we’ll be flying up and down the tracks at 220 miles an hour.

Let’s hope so. There are financial challenges ahead, particularly as Congressional Republicans threaten to destroy the American economy as part of their bizarre, sociopathic vendetta against the 21st century. Even as the Central Valley is poised to get a huge economic boost, Valley Republicans are criticizing the project and calling it a “train to nowhere.” Suddenly, jobs aren’t important to these representatives, who are going to have to explain to voters in their districts – which will be rendered much less safe by the redistricting commission – why they shouldn’t have the jobs and other economic benefits that the HSR construction project will be delivering.

The Merced Sun-Star editorial takes exactly the right tone – recognizing that there are a lot of frustrations in Merced right now, but reminding readers of the big picture – HSR brings jobs and long-term growth to Merced, whether there’s a track going to the city center in 2012 or not.

In its response, the agency said it has asked its financial consultants to find additional ways to bankroll the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles rail line. The auditor and project critics fear the agency’s current funding plan is too optimistic, which could result in delays or a partial railroad that cannot be completed.

First, let us be very clear here: the Auditor is completely mistaken to fear that a “partial railroad that cannot be completed” could be a result of the HSR project. The Auditor apparently did not understand the concept of “independent utility” – meaning any spending of currently secured money can only go to HSR projects that can be usable even if that’s all that is ever built. Whether that failure to understand was an oversight (calling into question the Auditor’s competence) or a deliberate slight (calling into question the Auditor’s objectivity) is still unknown.

But as a result of the Auditor’s criticism, the CHSRA is examining alternative funding strategies:

But the alternative funding options will outline how the agency could finance construction under the best- and worst-case scenarios, in case the agency cannot get the federal grants it expects or has difficulty attracting investors, for instance.

Rail authority officials have said the backup funding plans could simply show that the state will get its money over a longer period of time, which would drive up project costs because of inflation.

Let’s hope the Authority is familiar with the fate of the Seattle Monorail, which found itself short in its motor vehicle excise tax revenues and proposed to get its money over a longer period of time. The media ran with the proposed estimate, blowing it all out of proportion, and when the possible $11 billion figure (for a monorail that was to cost between $1-$2 billion) was publicized, it was enough to convince voters to kill the project at the November 2005 election.

The CHSRA ought to take care how it reports on such a worst-case scenario. They also should point out that such a long-term construction plan would only come about because the Auditor misunderstood some basic things about how infrastructure projects get funded by the feds (you have to have all your environmental work done AND local/state funds; until then federal funding is merely a wish and a hope no matter what it is you’re trying to build).

It does appear that the CHSRA board also understands another extremely important point – that there is such a thing as too much federal funding:

But Diridon said the newest plans could also show more reliance on private financing. While it would decrease the agency’s dependence on government grants, he cautioned about giving the project’s reins over to investors.

“We have to be careful that we don’t give up so much control over the project that ultimately fares are too high or the quality of service would be eroded without the control of the state,” Diridon said.

Diridon is putting it mildly. We have a significant amount of evidence that too much private investment will cause the financial and operational problems that HSR critics wrongly claim will result from public funding. Taiwan is the classic cautionary tale, with about 80% of its construction costs coming from the private sector. The debt service was unrealistic, and Taiwan’s HSR system was forced to open with a truncated line. Although Taiwan saw high HSR ridership levels and significant modal shift away from planes and cars to the trains, the debt service levels were so high that default was inevitable, and a state bailout ultimately necessary. A similar fate befell the Channel Tunnel, built primarily with private funds at the ideological insistence of Margaret Thatcher.

Overreliance on private funding would be a disaster for California high speed rail. The way we avoid that is to secure the federal funding we need to complete the project and ensure that private funding comes at small, acceptable levels (with minimal levels of risk). The State Auditor did not appear to understand this, nor do those in the Legislature who ostensibly support HSR but are touting the Auditor’s report seem to understand how that flawed report could undermine the effort to win federal funding.

Finally, nobody seems to be discussing the risks and costs that come with doing nothing. Sadly, that’s an ongoing problem here in California, where people assume that if we don’t build HSR, we face no risks and no costs.

The risks and costs that come with not building HSR are considerable. If California remains dependent on oil, we might see increased pressure to open the coast to more offshore drilling, which will eventually cause a repeat of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill or the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and cause major damage to the state’s environment and economy. We will definitely face the economic impact of rising gas prices, which will cripple any economic recovery we might experience in the near future.

After having sat in traffic on Interstate 5 in the middle of the Central Valley today (thank god I was able to turn off at Highway 46, having only to suffer about 15 minutes of slow-going), and watched the massive backup from Santa Barbara to the edges of the San Fernando Valley on Highway 101 on Saturday, I can also attest to the costs of the existing traffic congestion. If somehow there is a miraculous innovation that enables electric cars to be built and charged at or below the present cost of gas-powered cars – and that enables the resulting massive electricity demand to be met cheaply – then California will still be faced with a huge bill to widen the freeways, a bill that has been estimated to run between $80 and $160 billion. (Highway 99 widening alone will cost at least $25 billion).

Of course, there are the environmental costs of all that driving, and the huge risk to the state’s economy of the changes to our climate that our dependence on oil has produced and will continue to exacerbate if not reduced.

None of those risks or costs was included in the State Auditor’s report. They should have been, and the Authority would be wise to mention those risks and costs in their own reply. It’s about time that someone took a look at the true risks and costs faced by California regarding HSR, instead of making an artificially limited study as the State Auditor did.

Speaking after Thursday’s CHSRA board meeting, Rod Diridon suggested that the question over which segment gets the funds means the Bay Area segment has to “catch up” to the rest of the state, as reported by Mike Rosenberg:

California High-Speed Rail Authority board member Rod Diridon said after a San Diego board meeting that of the four corridors eligible for the federal cash, the Los Angeles-to-Anaheim section was clearly leading. He said the corridor is about 18 months ahead of the San Francisco-to-San Jose section in terms of planning.

“We’re going to have to catch up (in the Bay Area),” said Diridon, one of two Bay Area representative on the board, which is in charge of divvying up stimulus funds. “That doesn’t mean shortcut — shortcuts are deadly.”…

At the very least, he said they would “put a lot of pressure” on the Bay Area engineering team to maintain its schedule. In the Bay Area last year, the state extended a public outreach process by 30 days and its critical report on track alignment, originally scheduled for completion in December, now will be out in March.

The larger staff would not necessarily accelerate the process past checkpoints, only ensure planners don’t fall behind schedule while holding all the public hearings they promised, Diridon said.

Diridon’s caution against “shortcuts” is important here, and the timeline proposed is fair, though work will have to be done to ensure that Context Sensitive Solutions doesn’t get tossed aside in the process. The need for economic stimulus and jobs in the Bay Area is still desperate, and there is every reason to believe we can balance that with the need to run a fair and thorough public input process.

Of course, the mere mention of “catching up” is causing concern on the Peninsula that it might indeed mean cutting corners on public engagement:

But many officials and residents in the Peninsula and South Bay have pushed for the opposite, hoping to slow down the process to make sure each detail is tirelessly examined. They already fear the White House stimulus grant awarded last week will spark the authority into a mad dash that could result in oversights and critical errors. The state needs to enter a construction contract by September 2012 or lose the federal money.

Some of these voices were heard at the Palo Alto State Senate hearing last month, calling for a delay of the stimulus so that more time could be taken to assess the project and possible ways to build it, including Palo Alto mayor Pat Burt.

Such a delay is unnecessary. The engineering team working on the Peninsula is going to publish its Alternatives Analysis next month, and preliminary outreach to stakeholders about that analysis are already under way. That analysis will help clarify many questions and uncertainties about the project, and provide for a more focused discussion. That discussion may not be any less contentious, but it will be more productive in that there will be something more concrete (literally and figuratively) to look at, to examine, and to help provide feedback to the Caltrain/HSR project.

One of the most common and notorious ways to kill a project or an idea one dislikes is to study it to death. That can’t happen with high speed rail. At the same time, the people of California, no matter where they happen to live, deserve the ability to provide input and have their voices heard about the project proposal. Additionally, there is the commitment to a CSS process that must be respected.

There is every reason to believe those commitments, those obligations to receive public input, and the need to produce solid plans can be done in time to meet federal stimulus deadlines on the Peninsula – if the present timeline and schedule is kept.

A spirit of honest collaboration may be slowly starting to emerge on the Peninsula. High speed rail is going to happen. Let’s hope all the parties on the Peninsula, including the great silent majority of HSR supporters, are able to work together to ensure this gets built in a way that fits the community’s needs.

• The San José Diridon HSR tunnel lives, as Rod Diridon responds to San José Mayor Chuck Reed’s letter that the CHSRA will continue to study the underground station and tunnel, although it is a “longshot.” This is actually the better outcome, since the CHSRA needs to show its work to the public clearly in explaining why a tunnel is a bad idea, instead of just dismissing it. For its part, San José needs to explain where it would get the money to help build the underground station and tunnel.
• Further north, the San Mateo Council of Cities chose San Carlos Vice Mayor Omar Ahmad for an open seat on the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, which oversees Caltrain, instead of Burlingame city councilman Jerry Deal. Ahmad is seen as a supporter of HSR, whereas Deal has voiced concerns about the project and has called for a tunnel, an expensive option that jeopardizes Caltrain’s electrification and survival plans. Worth keeping this in mind the next time you see someone claim “the Peninsula opposes HSR unless it’s in a tunnel!” – by this vote, it seems most San Mateo County cities actually want HSR to happen.
• Following up on yesterday’s post about the Transbay Terminal, Jamie Whitaker, who is participating in the comments section to that post, is helping circulate a petition to the CHSRA to stop considering the Beale Street alternative. Also in the comments, Dan Krause makes some more good points about the need to keep HSR at the Transbay Terminal.
• Over at The Infrastructurist Yonah Freemark takes a skeptical look at an Indonesia HSR project that has some shady characters behind it and a questionable technological basis.
• Finally, the date and time for Joe Simitian’s State Senate hearing on HSR in Palo Alto has been set: 7PM, Thursday January 21, at the Palo Alto City Council chambers. It’s possible that the meeting may be moved to allow more people to attend; if so I’ll report that here. See you there!

It feels like we’ve spent the week in the Bay Area when it comes to HSR – tomorrow we’ll go visit the Central Valley.

High-speed rail bureaucrats want to deny San Jose an underground train option, instead proposing tracks and station structures as high as nine stories towering over our community….

City leaders worked hard to persuade high-speed rail powers to route the rail through San Jose via Pacheco Pass and not Altamont Pass. Now, those same leaders need to ensure high-speed rail designs do not divide key neighborhoods in their city, including downtown.

At issue is a staff decision reported to the California High Speed Rail Authority Board on Dec. 3 and supported by San Jose’s Rod Diridon, the former county supervisor who is a powerful supporter of high-speed rail. The decision would essentially eliminate any consideration of putting the San Jose high-speed rail corridor underground.

In short, this is basically an open letter to San José Mayor Chuck Reed and the city council asking them to push back against Rod Diridon and the CHSRA staff and board on the issue of an underground station. Diridon’s reasoning was this:

At the meeting, director Rod Diridon said an underground station is off the table because of loose soil, a high groundwater table and the cost of digging deep enough for the tunnel to be under Highway 87 and the planned BART trains.

“It’s a really complex issue,” Diridon said. “If we were to keep the tunnel alternative in the study, it would fall out. You might be offering some very temporary hope in that alternative, but I don’t think it will ever be viable. Let’s concentrate on the ones that will work.”

The planned BART station already is at least four stories underground, project leaders and California High Speed Rail directors said.

The cost of building an HSR station deep underground would be enormous, even if these other issues Diridon raised could be handled, and Cord and Dresden haven’t explained where these funds would come from. Their op-ed argues that the issue is that San José and the neighbors in particular would be better off with a tunnel, so that should be the option and the only consideration that matters.

The problem is that the remaining “workable” high-speed rail staff recommendations essentially divide our city with a gargantuan structure. The engineers propose an overhead station and train tracks that would create a potential barrier through central San Jose. In addition to being 87 feet tall, the train station platform would be more than a half-mile long and almost a football field wide.

This cannot be solely an engineer’s cost-saving decision. This matter is also about doing what is right and in the best interest of the community from long-range aesthetic, quality-of-life and economic points of view.

Think about the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, which separated downtown from the waterfront, as well as the equally deficient Cypress Structure in Oakland. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, they both were eventually removed, and the areas they once blighted have been transformed into magnificent urban spaces.

Here in San Jose, train officials have regrettably suggested building something even larger and potentially more divisive and unappealing. These engineers are not thinking about a community’s practical realities — maneuvering each day through or around imposing structures, or attracting future real estate investors. A massive trestle platform with overhead railways is not the way our city becomes more fluid and livable. Nor does it enhance the connections between midtown neighborhoods and the downtown core.

This is a classic 20th century model of urbanism, where any elevated structure is seen as an inherent bringer of blight. There’s no reason at all it has to be that way, but it should be noted that “overhead railways” actually reduce physical barriers in the city, enabling people to pass underneath in a car, on a bike, or on foot much more easily. Besides, a structure that’s only a half-mile long won’t be some impassable Berlin Wall structure but a different implementation of a train station that already serves to split part of San José. Does it really make much difference if the current Diridon Station, feeder tracks and all, with the HP Pavilion just to the north, rises into the air? This all strikes me as much ado about nothing.

Ultimately, the question San José leaders, CHSRA officials, and the people of California as a whole must consider is whether the aesthetic concerns of a small group are worth taxpayer subsidy, to the tune of at least a billion dollars, potentially more. Cord and Dresden err in dismissing the question of cost, since it is by far the most important consideration for the city and the CHSRA. They cannot hope to succeed in their push for an underground station unless they deal with that question head on.

Are they willing to help pay for it? Should the city of San José fund the station themselves through public funds, which ultimately come from taxpayers? Can they make the case that doing so would generate new revenues, jobs, or economic opportunities for residents? Would an aerial station structure hurt revenues, jobs, and economic opportunities? I cannot imagine how it would, but Cord and Dresden need to provide some answers on that. If they can’t, then I don’t see why the San José city council would demand an underground station, when it is clear that the cost would be significant.

I suspect Cord and Dresden are of the opinion that it’s government’s job to subsidize their housing prices and their sense of aesthetics. That isn’t the case, but that 20th century opinion dies pretty hard. I’m not opposed to an underground station, but appealing to aesthetics isn’t going to convince anyone that such a station is necessary. They need to resolve the cost question before moving forward with their pro-tunnel activism.

The basic issue is whether the tracks and station should go through downtown Gilroy, or whether they should pass just east of town, east of both Highway 101 and the Gilroy Outlet Mall. The image below indicates the two primary options (east is the top of the image):

Recent discussions in Gilroy have produced a growing consensus among city officials and community leaders that the preferred implementation would be a downtown station, located approximately where the current Gilroy Caltrain station is – and that the tracks be trenched in order to reduce noise and vibration impacts.

At yesterday’s California High Speed Rail Authority board meeting, Rod Diridon was able to convince the other board members to keep the trench on the table as an option:

Staff had recommended that putting the tracks underground be scratched because of added costs. However, Authority board member and former Santa Clara County Supervisor Rod Diridon said trenching was important to Gilroy residents. Due to his lobbying, the board did not eliminate the trenching option.

“What happened was really a tribute to (the Gilroy Dispatch’s) editorial board meeting last week,” Diridon said after the meeting.

Both editorial board members and local council members favored trenching over aerial tracks, he said.

Trains would potentially be traveling through Gilroy at up to 150mph, and since locals have no experience with this, they’re convinced that a trench is the only acceptable option for implementation through town.

There’s also a desire to channel growth into the city center itself, and concern that a station east of 101 would generate unwanted sprawl in that area, where Gilroy residents fought off a planned Wal-Mart a few years back. Gilroy’s downtown has room to grow upward, and an HSR station would help make that happen.

Further, a downtown station could be (and should be) intermodal, offering easy transfer to Caltrain – not only to serve the stations between San José Diridon and Gilroy (such as Morgan Hill) but also to transfer to expected passenger rail service to the Monterey Bay. Caltrain and the Transportation Agency of Monterey County (TAMC) had been very close to signing an agreement to provide daily service to Salinas when Caltrain pulled back due to budget problems. The concept and plans are still very much alive, if not quite as close to fruition as they used to be. TAMC is also looking at a possible Capitol Corridor extension to Salinas, and there’s still the plans to revive the Coast Daylight from SF to LA via the Coast Line, and in the future that could conceivably be scheduled to provide a cross-platform transfer to HSR at Gilroy.

Santa Cruz County is also nearing an agreement to purchase the tracks from UPRR from Davenport to Pajaro, with the aim of instituting passenger rail service. That could easily be extended to serve the HSR station at Gilroy as well.

There is also an emerging consensus in south Santa Clara County about what the overall alignment should look like:

[Gilroy] Mayor Al Pinheiro said Wednesday that the council on Monday will discuss a joint resolution with Morgan Hill’s council that supports a high-speed train station in Gilroy and U.S. 101 alignment through Morgan Hill.

While Pinheiro said there has been some opposition to the route in northern Santa Clara County, that’s certainly not the case in Gilroy or Morgan Hill, he said.

Diridon said Pinheiro was a supporter of the project early on, and he has appreciated the council’s input.

“I’ve especially enjoyed the mayor’s thoughtfulness and courage on this issue,” he said.

This overall plan seems workable – downtown alignment through Gilroy, 101 alignment (which is straight and on a corridor with room for the tracks) north past Morgan Hill to the San José area. The primary concern, of course, will be cost:

Dave Mansen, regional manager for Parsons Corporation and regional team manager for the Authority, said that trenching the tracks near Gilroy would add as much as 20 percent to the costs of the San Jose-to-Merced portion of the project. Although the entire project is expected to cost $45 billion, specific costs of the various project alternatives have yet to be determined.

As with the Peninsula, the best solution would be for the city of Gilroy to find a way to fund the trenching project itself, potentially as part of a redevelopment project. Gilroy doesn’t yet have a redevelopment agency, but as Rod Diridon argued, they probably ought to, especially if they want a downtown station and its economic benefits.

Much of this effort has involved a truly stunning amount of disinformation on the part of the HSR opponents. They have learned well how to use what Stephen Colbert aptly described as “truthiness” – where people see something as true because they “feel” it to be true, because a statement comports with their own inherent biases, even though it lacks basis in evidence.

Truthiness has been rampant on the Peninsula. HSR opponents like Martin Engel have been effective purveyors of misinformation, such as the idea that HSR would be some sort of “Berlin Wall” along the Peninsula (it won’t), or that it will require mass demolition of housing along the Caltrain corridor (it won’t), or that the CHSRA is determined to destroy communities (it isn’t). Of course, it doesn’t matter that there are no facts behind these claims, because to NIMBYs, these claims “feel” true. Anything that is perceived to alter the aesthetics of their community is seen as a threat. And Engel is very adept at playing on those sentiments.

One major element of their strategy is to paint the HSR project as some sort of Death Star aimed at the Peninsula, and to paint Quentin Kopp and Rod Diridon as the Emperor and Darth Vader. Both men have a long history on the Peninsula, and have been involved in their share of controversial projects, so in them Engel has found an easy target. If he can find ways to paint them as mean, out of touch, and unwilling to listen to public input, then he and other HSR opponents will have delegitimized the CHSRA and the HSR project. And that helps them gain ground in the local battles, where most residents want HSR but also want it to be built the right way. Engel doesn’t want it built at all, so anything he can do to discredit the CHSRA helps pull more people away from the “sensible compromise” camp and into the “kill it!” camp.

That’s the background to the latest controversy manufactured by Engel. At last week’s CHSRA board meeting, Rod Diridon said he hoped Ogilvy, the CHSRA’s new communications contractor, would do a better job fighting the widespread misinformation on the Peninsula. Engel decided to turn this valid criticism of both the Peninsula opponents and of the CHSRA’s public outreach into something else entirely, as explained in the Palo Alto Daily Post:

[Diridon said:]“Misinformation is causing serious media relations problems in the mid-Peninsula — Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto area especially. That misinformation coming
sometimes from inadvertently our own staff. But then again, it’s being presented by opponents, blatantly providing false information to the media and then having no correction. No information being provided that would counter that misinformation and I think you related to that earlier.

Robert here: There is no doubt this is a true statement. Project opponents have been spreading lies and the media has fallen for it. This is a potent attack on the NIMBYs, which is why Engel wants to undermine it. Back to Diridon:

“So would you relate to those two examples, not those two specific cases but those examples as kind of in-the-weeds detail that you really need to be on immediately, so that it doesn’t, the kind of thing are like a sore that festers, or the rotten apple in the barrel, if you would like to use another example. And you got to get that apple out of the barrel immediately and please figure out a way and let us know at some time in the future and call us individually or give us a report on how you would be creating kind of flying squads of emergency response to nip those problems in the bud.

“You want to avoid them if you can but if you can’t avoid them you need to have a way of countering them immediately so that, misinformation isn’t allowed to float around, it’s corrected. So please consider that as early tasks.”

Makes sense, right? Diridon here is merely explaining what has already happened on the Peninsula. One could use any number of other metaphors here – “poisoned the well,” “spread like a cancer,” anything to illustrate the point that the lies and distortions peddled by Martin Engel and others have spread on the Peninsula and threaten the project. It makes sense for Ogilvy to figure out how to respond to that misinformation. Nowhere in Diridon’s statement did he say he wants to attack individuals – just the untruths they have spread.

Of course, Engel decided to continue making stuff up, and used this statement as his way to try and defuse the effort to counter the lies. In a move reminiscent of Sarah Palin’s claim about “death panels,” Engel spun this as Diridon having attacked himself:

When Diridon told an Ogilvy representative “you got to get the apple out of the barrel immediately,” Engel interpreted that as an assignment for Ogilvy to silence high-speed rail dissidents.

Engel said, “Here is Diridon basically saying, ‘Take car of these people. Their information needs to be corrected with our information. We need to shut them up because they are a pain.’”

There is no way you can draw the conclusion Engel did from Diridon’s quote – unless you place truthiness about actual truth. The quote was very clear: Diridon was referring to the lies, not the people who tell them. Diridon explained as much to the Daily Post reporter:

“What I referred to was that one piece of misinformation will be repeated and repeated and therefore cause a lot of confusion,” said Diridon, a former Santa Clara County Supervisor who now sits on the rail authority’s board of directors.

But that truth doesn’t matter to Engel, who went further in his baseless claims:

Engel said, “Everything they put out is misinformation. That is what’s so ironic about this.”

“Everything” is misinformation? Ridiculous. What you see here is that Engel is engaged in a classic case of projection, where you take a criticism of oneself and deflect it onto the person making the criticism. And Engel does this for the purposes I laid out at the beginning of this post – to convince the “silent majority” on the Peninsula that CHSRA and its board members are somehow engaged in bad faith and are making mean statements about nice people.

If Engel was confident that he had a solid case against HSR based on the facts alone, he would feel no need to resort to these kinds of manufactured controversies, deliberate misinterpretations of statements, and continued spreading of misinformation. We who support HSR do so on its merits, and we have no hesitation making an honest and factual case for its construction. I suppose that’s our weakness, since we aren’t willing to embrace truthiness the way HSR opponents will.