This isn’t an entirely unreasonable assumption. Many cities, in the Prop 13 era, have had to cut back on spending for keeping the streets clean. The areas underneath overpasses tend to collect trash and dirt, and cities are generally not consistent about sanitation there.

Further, the evisceration of the safety net over the last 30 years has created the problem of homelessness, and overpasses tend to be a favored spot to sleep – a crude roof over one’s head, and in a place that’s generally out of the way, so one isn’t rousted by the cops as often as if they slept somewhere else.

By the late 20th century, then, overpasses became symbols of blight. This scene from San José is a good example – it’s an image of a railroad overpass near Diridon Station and San Carlos Street. The photographer’s caption reads “Elevated so the trains can pass freely underneath it, also doubles as a dumping ground and homeless encampment.”

Of course, there are other examples of railroad overpasses along the Caltrain route, including the prominent one at San Carlos (photo by Clem):

Although I’m not a regular user of this station, I have used it on a few occasions, and it did not seem at all “blighted” to me. Sure, there are some issues with the design and implementation, as Clem’s post explained, but overall it struck me as a successful implementation of building an above-grade rail structure in a way that looks good and doesn’t encourage “blight,” which is after all a nebulously defined concept.

Some Peninsula residents point to the San Carlos overpass as an example of what they’re afraid of, but it is no “Berlin Wall.” Neither are the other above-grade HSR tracks we showed back on Thursday. Continuing that post’s theme, since HSR is “strange and unfamiliar” to most people, they’ll try and understand it by thinking of what they believe to be comparable situations. In this case, it’s the freeway overpasses, and the few rail overpasses they know.

The two San Carlos overpasses described here are different not only in form and in use, but in location. The city of San Carlos overpass is in the city center, along one of the major streets and at the foot of the city’s historic business district. The San José overpass near San Carlos Street is in an industrial part of town that lacks a community atmosphere and generally feels abandoned. Those who assume that any overpass produces blight need to pay attention to context as much as anything else.

Still, the notion that overpass = blight is strong, and showed up at a recent CHSRA public event at Bellarmine College Prep in College Park, directly adjacent to the Caltrain and future HSR line:

“Our main concern is the potential blight,” said Shawnee Grossmann, who has lived near the corner of Myrtle and West Hedding Streets for 10 years. “If the train has to be elevated, lower the elevation.”

The proposed roue follows current Caltrain tracks to De La Cruz. Caltrain would continue to run and the College Park and Santa Clara Caltrain stations would remain. Rail planners are trying to design a new elevated or trenched line within Caltrain’s right of way. It could mean building an elevated structure with 16-foot pylons and electrical wires that reach 40 feet above the tracks.

Engineers said they are open to many options, including reconfiguring the Hedding Street overpass, digging trenches and building sound walls on the roughly 3-mile stretch from Diridon Station to De La Cruz.

Here again you see the concerns about “blight” arise. For College Park residents, they’re almost certainly more familiar with the tracks near Diridon Station than with the overpass in San Carlos. Their concerns are sensible, but this is exactly the kind of situation where the ability to show real-world examples of successful above-grade HSR implementations would be extremely valuable, for both the CHSRA and the community. In fact, that’s exactly what the community is asking for:

Scott Soper, a leader of the College Park Neighborhood Association, expressed frustration because the railroad’s design is still vague.

“If we want to make this process work, we need to know what this thing is going to look like,” said Soper, who lives on Asbury Street.

If one could show residents the choice between something like the Caltrain San Carlos overpass and the loud, smelly diesels that currently serve the tracks in their neighborhood, I have to imagine many of them would come around to seeing the benefits of above-grade tracks in their neighborhood.

Concerns about “blight” are real, and are based in the slow decay of California’s urban infrastructure and social safety net. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. Overpasses can work well, and it begins by showing the community how they work well along other rail lines in the region, the nation, and the world.

• DesertXpress: Tom Stone, president of DesertXpress, plans to break ground sometime in 2010 on a train to link Victorville to downtown Las Vegas. DesertXpress is enthusiastic about CHRSA plans for the LA-Bakersfield segment that make a Palmdale-Victorville link viable:

The other big news for DesertXpress is that representatives of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, seeing the opportunity of connecting the Las Vegas-Victorville link with that state’s planned rail system, are seeking stimulus money for links for Palmdale, Calif., Los Angeles and Anaheim. The logical next step would be to work on a track between Victorville and Palmdale, a process that could take years since it would require an environmental assessment.

But because the California group is pressing ahead on the Palmdale link, there’s optimism that there would be a coordinated effort to speed up a Victorville-Palmdale route.

Still unclear is the source of funding for DesertXpress, which intends to get its construction capital from the private sector.

• Maglev: Whereas DesertXpress appears to be “on track,” the vague plans to build maglev from Anaheim to Vegas are facing a bureaucratic hurdle that shows no sign of resolution:

Last July, the Federal Railroad Administration approved the Nevada Transportation Department’s scope of work for the use of $45 million authorized by the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users legislation. Cummings said required matching funds have been committed by American Magline Group and the money would be used to obtain environmental approvals, raise construction spending and begin work on the Las Vegas-Primm segment.

The state Transportation Department is awaiting the issuance of a contract by the Railroad Administration, and in August Administrator Joseph Szabo wrote a letter to Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, a key member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, indicating that the contract would be issued “very soon.”…

The Transportation Department and Cummings haven’t heard anything from the Railroad Administration since.

Although the explanation for the delay is unclear, Senator Harry Reid switched his support last June from maglev to DesertXpress. There’s no evidence that Reid is holding up the maglev contract, but neither is there any evidence Reid is working to release it. I’m OK if this contract is never bid – maglev is worth studying, but there’s no need to proceed with any actual plans, and construction of Anaheim-Vegas maglev remains far in the distance.

• Monorail: Finally, the article talked about the Vegas monorail, which might not seem relevant to California HSR – until you read what the article has to say about the monorail’s financial situation:

The only good news about the monorail is that it makes enough money to pay for all its operational expenses. But the bad news is that it can’t pay the debts on the money borrowed to build the 3.9-mile system. That point was driven home Jan. 13 when the monorail company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to reorganize its finances.

This is similar to Taiwan, where HSR has no problem covering its operating expenses, but is having significant problems paying back the cost of construction. Further, the Vegas monorail is complicated by poor route choices made to satisfy NIMBYs – which included the all-powerful casinos:

The only good news about the monorail is that it makes enough money to pay for all its operational expenses. But the bad news is that it can’t pay the debts on the money borrowed to build the 3.9-mile system. That point was driven home Jan. 13 when the monorail company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to reorganize its finances….

Monorail spokeswoman Ingrid Reisman said the focus of the monorail is to operate the system as efficiently and as effectively as it can. That doesn’t include any kind of plan to extend the monorail to McCarran International Airport, which, most critics agree, would make the system far more functional and possibly build enough ridership to make the debt payments.

But for now, survival is the objective, not growth, and construction isn’t in the cards. That’s unfortunate, since I have long maintained the reason the Las Vegas Monorail isn’t successful is because it’s a transportation system that isn’t finished yet. The airport link is the crucial piece that isn’t in place….

People complain the monorail route is along the back side of the properties on the east side of the Strip; Broadbent was hoping to route it down the center of the Strip, but met resistance from casino companies. Critics also complain the monorail doesn’t go to the airport or downtown; Broadbent wanted the train to go to both places but didn’t have the financial support to pull it off.

Compromise molded the monorail route to what it is today. Now, Las Vegas is living with that compromise.

What does this mean for California HSR? I think it’s pretty clear. For the system to be financially viable, we have to build the route that was promised to voters in November 2008 – SF Transbay Terminal to LA Union Station and Anaheim RTIC via the Caltrain corridor, and the downtowns of Gilroy, Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield. We need to resist the temptation to make “compromises” in the route in order to mollify this or that NIMBY group or because of funding shortfalls. If we don’t have the funding to build it out completely, then we need to go out and get it, without hocking the system to private investors the way Taiwan did.

Those who argue for implementations that compromise the planned and promised route are the ones putting the project in financial jeopardy, and it’s therefore up to them to find the funding for their pet route or tunnel or station design.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two from Berlin:

And from Lambeth Road in London:

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

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

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

One key ingredient in the Obama administration’s effort to carve out a stronger federal role in local planning, of course, is the still-stalled six-year federal transportation bill. And Osborne — seemingly aware of the value of that legislation in removing longstanding obstacles to coordination — told the TRB meeting that “Capitol Hill has asked DOT to craft its own version of a transportation reauthorization bill,” according to ClimateWire.

A legislative outline from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who spent much of 2009 urging lawmakers to put off discussion of the next six-year bill until 2011, would be an undeniable boost to Democrats who have long urged the administration to play a more active part in solving the puzzle of long-term financing.

But the political hurdles to enacting a new federal transport bill this year remain steep, as ITS America President Scott Belcher remarked in one of today’s TRB conference sessions.

“Everybody wants to get past the elections” before passing new long-term legislation,” Belcher said, “and they want to get past the election because they don’t want to raise taxes.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi herself echoed this at the Detroit Auto Show earlier this week:

Well, there certainly has been advocacy for such a position [raising the gas tax]. It does not, certainly, have a majority in the Congress of the United States at this time. So we want to approach this in a way that is comprehensive, that certainly keeps in mind of concerns of the consumer, the concerns of the industry, and of the environment. This is not to say one idea is better than another — it’s just to say that at the present time, there are other initiatives that we have.

Pelosi wasn’t quite clear here – is the problem in the House? In the Senate? Or both? My guess is it’s both the House and the Senate, as conservative and Blue Dog Democrats are likely shying away from something that can easily be spun by Republicans as somehow damaging to voters.

But the logic of putting this off to 2011 doesn’t quite hold up. It’s unlikely that Democrats will maintain their 60 seats in the Senate, and so far they haven’t gotten serious about eliminating the filibuster. Democrats are in much better shape in the House, where there will be some losses but not enough to put Pelosi in any serious jeopardy of losing her majority (most losses will be among right-leaning Blue Dogs from the South).

And of course, the partisanship matters, because the Republicans will never vote for a tax increase, even if it is sensible and fiscally responsible policy. The best time to move on this would have been in 2009, not 2011, when Congress will be freaking out even more strongly about the deficit and when Obama will likely want to play things safe in advance of his reelection bid in 2012.

Which is unfortunate, since transportation policy is one area where a new direction is desperately needed and wanted. Many in Congress want to use the gas tax and the transportation bill to help encourage more sustainable and denser communities, partly as a strategy to address the climate crisis and reduce dependence on ever-rising oil prices. 2008 demonstrated that there was broad support for such a shift. But some states and some Senators refuse to accept that the status quo is dead and must change – the story of 2009, as we saw on a wide range of issues.

Anyone who thinks that the 20th century model of sprawl and reliance on gas-guzzling cars is still viable is nuts, and not paying attention to reality. Unfortunately Congress remains in the grip of exactly that kind of thinking, at least in enough numbers to block meaningful action. One of the top priorities for California HSR advocates in 2010 must be to push Congress to get off its ass and pass a good transportation bill that, among other things, includes a robust, stable, long-term funding source for high speed rail.

Or maybe that was The Godfather, Part II, I can’t remember.

Looking at the LAO document, I’m surprised by how unsurprising it actually is. This is their first take on the 2009 Business Plan, which they said was much improved upon the 2008 Business Plan. But the LAO document focuses on the negatives, which was probably to be expected. There are three specific areas the LAO was concerned about in the 2009 Business Plan: risk, timelines, and funding.

For a project that is still very much in development, especially in terms of the full funding, none of that should be a surprise. The 2009 Business Plan is a snapshot of a project in evolution. Any expectation that all the financial details would have been ironed out in a year is absurd and unrealistic, but then, HSR often gets burdened with absurd and unrealistic expectations, particularly from skeptics and critics. Certainly the things the LAO points to deserve resolution, and we fully expect they will be resolved. But to use this report, as some want to, as evidence of a flawed project is itself a flawed analysis.

Let’s have a closer look.

Inadequate and Incomplete Discussion of Risk. The plan’s discussion of risk management is significantly inadequate, lacking any description of mitigation processes or detailed consideration of many key types of risk.

No Risk Management Strategy. The plan contains no discussion of the authority’s plans or processes to (1) identify potential threats or (2) manage, respond, and mitigate those threats. The plan only states that the authority “believes it is aware of all existing threats and is taking the appropriate steps to prevent or mitigate those threats.”

Unknown Confidence in Projections. The plan does not provide any numerical ranges nor confidence intervals for projections contained in the plan (such as cost, revenues, or ridership). Without this information, the risk of not realizing the forecasted ridership, revenues, or costs is unknown.

Inadequate Discussion of Key Types of Risks. The plan contains no detailed discussions or consideration of even the most significant risks to the project, such as ridership and funding.

The LAO goes on to mention specific risks of low ridership and low funding. Are we to believe that the CHSRA erred in not discussing these in great depth?

I don’t think so. Sure, a detailed discussion such as the LAO wants might be worthwhile and I suspect we’ll see that in the 2010 Business Plan. But we don’t need that data to understand these risks, which are inherently political risks.

The main risk is that the CHSRA will not get sufficient federal funding. That’s a very real possibility. President Obama is throwing away political capital by the day and Congress is becoming an institution incapable of action. Every sign we’ve seen from the federal government in 2009 was encouraging, but it’s true that there is a risk that the climate may change and HSR might not get the funding it needs.

In that case, the HSR project has much bigger problems than a lack of “confidence intervals” in the Business Plan. Without full federal funding, the SF-LA project isn’t going to happen. Pieces will be built, and it’s unclear what that would look like. Should the CHSRA address that issue in its Business Plan? Probably. Is it fatal that they didn’t? Not really. Again, we know that federal funding is make-or-break, and we don’t need a Business Plan to tell us that. If it’ll make the LAO happy, go for it, but I’m not going to worry about it, since we’re already well aware of the importance of ongoing federal support.

The LAO also criticizes the timeline:

Uninformative Timeline. The program management and project delivery timelines contained in the plan are very general and provide little opportunity for increased accountability. There are few deliverables or milestones included against which progress can be measured.

Inconsistent Order of Events. Because the timelines in the plan are so general, it is unclear in what order various events will occur. For example, regulatory approvals are expected by 2018 but procurement is scheduled to be complete by 2014. This could mean the train technology and rolling stock will be procured before regulatory agencies approve their use.

Is the timeline vague? To some degree, yes. That’s partly because the final decisions on project implementation haven’t yet been made. Once they have been, then it is absolutely the right time to begin holding CHSRA accountable on that front.

As to the issue of procurement and regulatory approvals, sure, the CHSRA ought to be clearer on that point too. But that’s a bit of nitpick in the bigger picture.

Finally, the LAO closes by saying “Funding plan uncertain; appears to violate law.” Oooo! Strike the jarring chord, CHSRA is in trouble now!

Or is it?

Operating Subsidy Necessary for Private Funding. The Proposition 1A bond measure explicitly prohibits any public operating subsidy. However, the plan expects the following items to be funded by the private sector.

Revenue Guarantee. The plan assumes some form of revenue guarantee from the public sector to attract private investment. This generally means some public entity promises to pay the contractor the difference between projected and realized revenues if necessary. The plan does not explain how the guarantee could be structured so as not to violate the law.

Operations Insurance. The plan anticipates the cost of insurance for operating the system would not be borne by the private operator. If the public sector pays for insurance, that would constitute an operating subsidy in violation of Proposition 1A.

Putting a ban on operation subsidies in Prop 1A was immensely stupid, but I guess we have no choice but to live with it. Still, this doesn’t scare me.

Why? Because it all comes back to the issue of private funding. And as we’ve been discussing since the 2009 Business Plan was released, there was a genuine issue with the level of private funding anticipated. You can indeed get more private funding by giving them a public backstop, a guarantee that the public will bear the risk. If that violates Prop 1A, then I think that’s cause for celebration – the role of private funding should be minimized here, and the public should be paying most if not all of the construction cost.

Here again I’d welcome more clarity from the CHSRA, but I don’t see this being any big surprise, we’ve known that we want to minimize private funding, so we ought to go out and do that.

They go on to question the assumptions of federal funding:

Federal Funding Expectations Highly Uncertain. The plan assumes between $17 billion and $19 billion from federal funds by 2016, or nearly $3 billion per year for the next six years. In comparison, over the past five years California has received roughly $3 billion per year of formula funding for the state’s entire highway system, which is primarily funded through federal gas tax collected in the state

This is really misleading. HSR is a special project and is not at all going to be comparable to the $3 billion per year we get in highway dollars. That latter money comes decades after the federal government spent billions to build interstate freeways here, on a 90-10 match. If all goes according to plan, long-term HSR funding in a new Transportation Bill could be as much as $10 billion per year over the next six years. It is entirely plausible that California, with the most advanced plan and with a sizable state match, will get 1/3 of that money. To assume HSR funding would be treated in Congress like highway money is simply ignorant. You’d think the LAO would know better than to make such a basic mistake.

So has the LAO found some faults with the 2009 Business Plan? Absolutely. Should those flaws be addressed? Of course. Are those flaws surprising? Not really, not for a project still in evolution. Should we be scared? I don’t see why we should be. The LAO’s report on the 2008 Business Plan was damning, but that didn’t hurt the HSR project or CHSRA in any obvious way. The legislature is going to continue to support HSR, and while the usual HSR deniers are going to find ways to use ANY problem to argue that the whole thing is a bad idea, we know better than that.

That all being said, the LAO document is itself incomplete, and not just because it’s their own first draft. They discuss ridership risk, but don’t acknowledge that other HSR systems around the world have had no problem generating ridership or operating surpluses. The LAO – and certainly uninformed legislators like Assemblymember Joan Buchanan – seem to want to compare HSR to AC Transit, even though the comparison is rather deeply flawed. The California HSR plan should be compared to other HSR systems around the world, not to a local bus service.

More fundamentally, their analysis falls into the usual trap of assuming that the cost of doing nothing is zero. It’s not. What are the risks to California if we do NOT build HSR? What are the risks to the budget from declining gas tax revenues? What are the risks to the budget of the impact of global warming and dependence on fossil fuels? Has the LAO considered the tax income to the state that would be generated by spending on HSR construction?

If the LAO plans to analyze HSR in isolation, instead of in context, then their analysis isn’t worth very much. Just as the LAO wants a better Business Plan from the CHSRA, we too want a better analysis of that plan from the LAO.

Curt Pringle and Mehdi Morshed from the CHSRA are slated to speak, as is a representative from the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The LAO will be giving their first official comments on this business plan, which ought to be interesting.

• 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.

The letter says that the SF terminus of the high speed rail project must be the Transbay Terminal, as was written in the voter-approved Proposition 1A. What the letter does NOT say is where exactly the Transbay Terminal should be. You’ll remember that back in September the AG’s office supported the CHSRA’s position that it was appropriate, even necessary to study the Beale Street alternative.

From the SF Chronicle story:

But that measure leaves wiggle room because it “does not define the Transbay Terminal,” Sproul wrote.

“We believe that the voters intended to include (although not necessarily be limited to) the site of the” planned Transbay Transit Center since that is where the existing Transbay Terminal is located, Sproul wrote.

She went on to say that the high-speed rail authority is not obligated to approve a terminal project that conforms precisely with what Transbay officials are planning.

The terminal could include “alternative configurations,” like some aspects of the Beale Street option, but those “cannot supplant the Transbay Terminal as a San Francisco terminus,” she wrote.

It’s not just Senator Feinstein and TJPA officials who are upset that the Authority won’t just accept the existing TBT plan. Residents in the nearby Rincon Hill neighborhood worry about the demolitions that would be required for a Beale Street alternative. Unlike the Peninsula NIMBYs, who are misleading the public about loss of housing, the Beale Street terminus actually would lead to the loss of housing – about 300 units:

With right-of-way issues, more than 1,800 residences would be impacted, said Supervisor Chris Daly, who represents the district.

The proposal has drawn sharp criticism from Rincon Hill residents, who say it has cast a pall over already diminished property values.

“If I lost my job today, I would have to sell my unit,” said Jamie Whitaker, a neighborhood blogger who lives in one of the buildings under the cloud of demolition. “If I did, it wouldn’t be worth much.”

If that’s necessary for a good and effective TBT project, I’m OK with that, but the fact that there really will be significant housing loss with a Beale Street terminus means that neighbors and SF officials have a pretty strong incentive to fight the CHSRA on this.

So what does the new AG ruling accomplish? Well, it rules out the notion that CHSRA could move the SF terminus to 4th and King. Although this isn’t specifically mentioned, it also implicitly rules out the notion promoted by some of the Peninsula NIMBYs that they can just stop the HSR route at San José Diridon.

But beyond that, it doesn’t help resolve the basic tension between the city of SF/TJPA and CHSRA. It’s a tension that may not be resolved until a new CEO comes on board at the CHSRA, one that might not share Quentin Kopp’s and Mehdi Morshed’s opposition to the current TJPA project.

The underlying question from the perspective of passenger rail advocates is still which solution is better. In two posts this week at The Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark argues that the Transbay Terminal should either include a new BART tube or another heavy rail technology in order to serve the Geary corridor in SF, provide more capacity across the Bay, and serve the Emeryville/West Berkeley corridor up to El Cerrito along the current Capitol Corridor route.

Still, with SF sticking to the existing TBT design, produced through a fairly intensive planning process, and with CHSRA sticking to its own desire to study Beale Street, and with the AG office siding with CHSRA at least on their right to study Beale Street, I’m not seeing this getting resolved anytime soon. The worst outcome would be if the TBT project went ahead without the train box – what would be the point? – but unless political leaders are willing to broker a solution, that may well be what happens.

Morshed announced his decision in a letter sent today to Board Chairman Curt Pringle. The 72-year-old leading advocate for high speed rail projects across the country plans to step down March 31.

Morshed wrote in the letter that the 2008 passage of a $9.95 billion bond to fund the project and the Obama administration’s support for high-speed rail assured him that the proposed 800-mile track linking Southern California to the Bay Area and Sacramento will become a reality.

Morshed’s resignation letter can be read here. One passage is especially worthy of quotation:

During the past 11 years the project was declared dead many times. Annually we were prepared to close the office. Sometimes, the objectives are so noble and so compelling that it can survive numerous hardships. This is one of those.

Well said.

Jeff Barker explained to the Sac Bee the next steps for the CHSRA:

“We’re going to search for someone who has managed and delivered large public construction projects, preferably someone with rail experience,” he said. “Someone who knows California, as well, although that’s not a necessity.”

I’ll ask again: Bob Doty?

Morshed has a long background in California high speed rail. In 1982-83 he helped oversee Governor Jerry Brown’s first, halting effort to bring bullet trains to the state. When the project was revived over a decade later, Morshed was hired as the Authority’s executive director in 1998, and has overseen the project’s development ever since.

Morshed says he’s leaving because he’s accomplished his primary goals of getting the bonds approved by voters and brining federal funds to the project. It does seem like a good time to retire – he is 72, and can be sure that his absence won’t leave the project any weaker.

And it might make it stronger. Morshed did great work in getting HSR this far, but may have begun to reach the limits of his effectiveness. Anna Eshoo was notably annoyed with his engineer’s approach to HSR at the Menlo Park, and Morshed hadn’t been experienced at delivering a project like this to completion. New skills of capital project management are needed, and so this is a fitting time to bring those skills to the HSR project.

I for one would like to thank and congratulate Mehdi Morshed for his service, for his great work at the Authority, and wish him a good retirement. I also think it’s time we start talking about who we think should fill his shoes.

One thing we’ve already heard is that the board is going to hire a CEO “with experience delivering large public projects” according to the CHSRA on Twitter. Paging Bob Doty? Or is there someone else out there that you all think we should recommend to the board?