Your California high-speed choo-choo update

The breathless lede to this linked article from the Associated Press regarding a suit filed by Central Valley landowners back in 2011 may certainly turn out to be a big fat nothing-burger if the past conduct of the state’s political power broker establishment is any indication. However, for whatever it’s worth…


No money? No problem:

A Sacramento County judge dealt a major blow to California’s high-speed rail project Friday, ruling the agency overseeing the bullet train failed to comply with the financial and environmental promises made to voters when they approved initial funding for the project five years ago.


Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny said the California High-Speed Rail Authority “abused its discretion by approving a funding plan that did not comply with the requirements of the law” and has failed to identify “sources of funds that were more than merely theoretically possible.”


However, he declined to halt funding for the project, saying it wasn’t clear he had the discretion to do so and he’ll hold another hearing to determine what happens next. A date hasn’t been set.


The 2008 initiative, Proposition 1A, required the rail authority to specify where the funding would come from for the first operable segment of high-speed rail and have all the environmental clearances in place. Kenny said the agency did not comply with either of those mandates, but Proposition 1A appears to leave it up to lawmakers to decide whether the funding plan is sufficient to warrant funding.


The office of Gov. Jerry Brown, who has championed the project, directed inquiries to the rail authority. Dan Richard, the Brown-appointed chairman of the authority’s board, said work on the project will continue until the judge determines the remedy.

You just saw the nothing-burger, there, did you not? Judge said he will leave it up to the lawmakers to figure their way out of this legal and financial conundrum and rail honcho Richard says this is all back on the judge. In the meantime, nothing to see here, all ahead, full, because…

Central Valley landowners and the Kings County Board of Supervisors argued in their 2011 lawsuit that the $68 billion high-speed rail plan did not meet the promises made to voters when they approved selling $10 billion in bonds for it.

However, the lawsuit was filed in 2011, before the authority revised its business plan to scale back the cost and revise the planned routes, and high-speed rail officials believe many of the arguments made in court no longer apply to the project.

What is meant by “revised its business plan to scale back the cost” is to eliminate the funding of the infrastructure required to power the rail system and to eliminate the funding for the actual choo-choos. No lie, gang. This is how you get a project that was advertised as costing in the $33-40 billion range when high-speed rail was put on the ballot back in 2008 to the current $68 price tag when estimates for a fully functioning rail system has been put in the $100-120 billion range.


Of course lawsuits mean nothing when you just start making up stuff along the way.


It gets better, though. In order to qualify for $3.3 billion in federal stimulus money, the first 130 miles of track have to be built (between Madera and Fresno) before 2017, a construction pace whereby the consensus has been described as “unprecedented”. Of course, the state has said they will tap into that $3.3 billion before and/or during the construction of that initial stretch of steel in violation of the law.


Again, probably another nothing-burger as the Obama administration will claim extremis, executive privilege, gridlock, newly-found constitutional powers as they have done in the past to throw more money into this black hole.


It must be fun being a statist and having that ability to suspend disbelief and simply ignore budgetary math and the rule of law.


While people like Elon Musk are truly getting outside the box with privately-funded 21st century ideas like Hyperloop, we’re going to be spending in the neighborhood of $100 billion on 19th century technology.


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Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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We held off on running with the following regarding the state of California’s insistence that it did not need federal funding for its high speed rail project just yet. Obviously, having secured roughly just $2-1/2 billion via publicly-approved state bond sales of the $68 billion needed overall (which will certainly be much, much more as that total doesn’t include the cost of the actual trains or for actually electrifying the project), California is, no doubt, going to come hat in hand to DC at some point to get funding to get this Brown-doggle completed.


From Politico:

California’s landmark high-speed rail line won’t require cash from Congress for at least two years. But at some point, it will.

That’s the message the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s leadership team is sending to Washington about the massive $68 billion project set to break ground this year.

The planned statewide system is short about $60 billion, some of which will undoubtedly need to come from Congress. But CEO Jeff Morales and Chairman Dan Richard — in Washington last week for meetings during the U.S. Conference of Mayors — told POLITICO they didn’t come to the capital with hat in hand.

“We don’t need new federal money for about two more years,” Morales said during an interview at the Capital Hilton. “We’re not here asking for a new round of funding right now. Having said that, we do need — over the long run — some form of ongoing stable federal support.”

With Republicans in control of the House, there is scant hope of getting any federal scratch until, at least, January of 2015 at the earliest.

But there is something else going on here, something much more pedestrian than the political make-up of the legislative body in charge of this nation’s finances as a reason to not seek federal funding.


Cue the other shoe: they don’t yet own a single parcel of land on which to build.


From the L.A. Times:

Construction of California's high-speed rail network is supposed to start in just six months, but the state hasn't acquired a single acre along the route and faces what officials are calling a challenging schedule to assemble hundreds of parcels needed in the Central Valley.

The complexity of getting federal, state and local regulatory approvals for the massive $68-billion project has already pushed back the start of construction to July from late last year. Even with that additional time, however, the state is facing a risk of not having the property to start major construction work near Fresno as now planned.

It hopes to begin making purchase offers for land in the next several weeks. But that's only the first step in a convoluted legal process that will give farmers, businesses and homeowners leverage to delay the project by weeks, if not months, and drive up sales prices, legal experts say.

One major stumbling block could be valuing agricultural land in a region where prices have been soaring, raising property owners' expectations far above what the state expects to pay.

"The reality is that they are not going to start in July," said Anthony Leones, a Bay Area attorney who has represented government agencies as well as property owners in eminent domain cases.

State high-speed rail officials say it won't be easy, but they can acquire needed property and begin the project on time.

"It is a challenge," said Jeff Morales, the rail agency's chief executive. "It is not unlike virtually any project. The difference is the scale of it."

Under a deal worked out with the Obama administration, federal funding is contingent upon completing the first 130 miles of the project in the Central Valley by 2018, a schedule which would require burning through $3.6 million of the projected budget every day.

What the project now faces is an array of legal, bureaucratic, engineering, logistical and eminent domain challenges that makes the sunny face put on the project by Governor Brown and project officials appear farcical.


Dig this:

Indeed, the rail authority's formal right-of-way plan indicates it does not expect to acquire the first properties until Sept. 15, despite other documents that indicate construction would start in July. Rail officials said they padded the schedule to avoid claims for additional payments by construction contractors should land not be available by July.

This is also known as lying.



The General Accounting Office (GAO) has estimated that of the 400 parcels of land in way of the initial stages of construction of the project, about 100 of them were at risk of not being available at the time of construction. A gut feel tells us that is a conservative estimate.

And where market values price Central Valley acreage at $28,000, the high-speed choo-choo honchos have only budgeted values at $8,000/acre.

In summary, the mess that is California’s high speed rail project keeps getting hotter and hotter.

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Your California high speed choo-choo update

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We've written at length on the challenges faced by California's high-speed choo-choos, primarily on the fiscal end of things where Governor Brown has purposely and cynically de-scoped the project to get the price tag from the $100 billion range to merely $68 billion (as advertised at time of inception $33 - 40 Bil) by carving out the electrification and the whole actual choo-choos parts.

As engineers, we've touched on, in general terms, the logistics and civil engineering challenges also posed by employing 19th century technology and expecting 21st century results. The biggest physical hurdle the choo-choo project will face and what jumped out at us as obvious when we first heard about the project was how was the trans-peninsular range of the Tehachapi Mountains going to be negotiated.

The video below is a a great illustration of a Southern Pacific freight train slowly making its way around the Tehachapi Loop between L.A. and Bakersfield at a speed of 10-15 mph, essentially traveling a mile or so and making up absolutely zero ground over land.








You see, a steel on steel mode of transportation is terribly inefficient on grades and, in fact, as the Loop makes abundantly clear, the rule of thumb for gradients is to not exceed 1% elevation change. Would high-speed train technology make anything different. Possibly but from strictly an intuitive standpoint, probably not much. (Traveling at 40-50 mph would be a quantum improvement over the freight speeds but still a snail's pace by high-speed standards.)


$68 Billion in and we have before us yet one engineering/logistics challenge out of possibly many more no one really thought through before this project was put on the ballot back in 2008.



H/T: Leslie at Temple of Mut

Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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First, a seemingly unrelated bit from the biggest dingbat to ever wander the halls of Congress:


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Of course, that was Speaker Pelosi who obviously had no clue herself what was contained within ObamaCare but just wanted it passed, dammit, legislative niceties, aside.


It seems not really knowing what's actually inside big, grand statist legislative schemes is catching because the affliction has appeared to hit the California high speed rail project as well.

Boston had their Big Dig and it's becoming evident the good people of San Franciso (of whom we can say: couldn't happen to a more deserving lot) have got one of their own.

From the SF Gate:

Now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation to allow the state to spend billions on high-speed rail, Bay Area residents had better brace for the real ride - a push for $650 million in toll hikes and new San Francisco taxes.

That's how much will be needed to help pay for a tunnel to connect the Transbay Terminal to the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets.

As it turns out, none of the $2.5 billion in tunnel costs were included as part of the narrowly approved high-speed-rail deal.

It's up to the locals to make the tunnel happen. If they don't, the $68 billion high-speed-rail line from Los Angeles will dead-end several blocks from downtown proper.

Building the tunnel will put San Francisco in competition with those hoping to finish BART to San Jose - both projects will be tussling for $1.8 billion that the federal government will direct to the Bay Area in the coming years.

Just for work to start on the 1.2-mile dig through the heart of the city, however, the Bay Area has to come up with its own $650 million. The current plan is to raise $300 million from higher bridge tolls and $350 million in San Francisco sales-tax dollars.

"That's a reasonable estimation," said spokesman Randy Rentschler of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

José Luis Moscovich, executive director of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, said city voters could be asked for the $350 million as part of an overall transportation-tax extension within the next two years.

The date for when the Legislature and voters would be asked to approve another $1 toll hike to raise the $300 million in tunnel money is a bit more elusive. Although acknowledging that toll money would be needed for a San Francisco tunnel, Rentschler says there are no plans on the boards to seek an increase.

Even if all the money does come through and the tunnel gets dug, High-Speed Rail Authority boss Dan Richard says, the bullet train won't arrive in San Francisco until 2028 or so. Until then, the tunnel would be used only by Caltrain.

(italics, ours)

$650 million for a pie-in-the-sky project that may or may not get there by 2028. That's just how we do things in California and, in particular, Ms. Pelosi's district.

This West Coast big dig has a ring of familiarity to it. We're pressed for time but we'll check the archives as we have a sneaking suspicion that this is not breaking news rather something folks have been aware of for quite some time. We'll get back to you, accordingly.



A special h/t to Silvio Canto who turned us on to this via The American Thinker

Your (California) high-speed choo-choo update

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We had to cut short a post of a couple of days ago regarding California's high-speed rail system and the absurdity of the "alternate" use of the same for fear of sending our readers into a irreversible state of depression.

Having had a couple of days of rest and recovery, let's tread forward together in a slow and orderly fashion and pick up where we left off at the same linked article from the L.A. Times.


Certainly, Jerry Brown is under pressure from Big Labor, Big Green and Big Construction to begin building this monstrosity but what is the form of the pressure he is receiving from Washington D.C. and their partial funding of the project? In response to changing construction plans so that the high-speed rail system could be built first in urban areas* where it might actually be used instead of the Cental Valley:

At a recent hearing by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in Washington, key California legislators asked if the construction plan could be changed. But Joseph Szabo, the Obama administration's chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, said California has no flexibility to rethink the project.

"The ability to shift dollars is not there," he said.

Kind of like interior design decisions that cannot be changed when you made the decision to let the in-laws help out just a little too much with the down payment on the home. That skin in the game that was so welcome at the time has now become a mill stone.



Tax-dodging billionaire, Warren Buffet has been in the news of late for the windfall he stands to gain from shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline project as oil from the North Dakota fields (now the nation's fourth biggest oil producer and climbing) will have to be shipped southward on old slow freight trains. Burlington-Northern trains. Burlington-Northern trains that happen to be owned by Berkshire-Hathaway, Buffet's firm.




Now, back to California:

Roelof van Ark** , the project's chief executive, insists the bullet-train corridor will not become a white elephant.

He has conceded, however, that re-routing Amtrak would be relatively expensive for the benefit.

The federal government has set aside $108 million to link the high-speed segment to the track used by Amtrak, which it shares with freight hauler Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. High-speed rail officials say that's enough for the job.

But a number of rail experts said that more money will be needed to integrate the two systems, and it's unclear how the financially struggling Amtrak system would pay any difference.

(as if you needed the italics)



We almost feel sorry for Jerry Brown. We thought his pragmatist-centrist I'm just too old to give a damn campaign approach was brilliant and would strike a tone with indies and moderates. But here we are: he has allowed himself to be painted into a corner by a progessive coalition of labor unions, greenies, big city mayors and a corrupt adminstration pursuing a two-pronged attack of their unsustainable green agenda and a crony capitalism that is staggering in both its size and sheer audacity to build the greatest boondoggle known to mankind and which will ultimately define his political legacy.






* Also a dubious plan as San Francisco and L.A. both have light rail systems making high-speed choo-choos in those same areas completely redundant.


** Our German scientists are better than their German scientists. Sorry, it was just too easy.

Your (California) high-speed choo-choo update

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It's almost getting too easy but when you make a committment to cover perhaps the greatest public works boondoggle in history, you soldier on oblivious to the repetitive drumbeat of redundant bad news. Ah, but this is a little different because not only is the primary usage of California's high-speed rail system an all-time bad idea, the alternate plan for the system is an atrociously criminal waste of tax-payer dollars as well. Yes, folks, it's a two-fer.

When the Obama administration gave California $3.4 billion in startup money for a high-speed rail system, it insisted on a guarantee that the project would not become a white elephant -- something critics could brand as a train to nowhere.

The first section of track had to run down the spine of the Central Valley and have another use, should the rest of the bullet train project collapse.

Those requirements are now at the center of an intensifying political battle, waged by critics who say the state's fallback plan to use a 130-mile stretch of track for slower Amtrak service is a sham because there's no guarantee the national rail service will ever use it.

Amtrak said it has no agreement to operate on the track and has not analyzed the possible negative effects on one of its most successful rail lines. Still, the California High Speed Rail Authority has estimated 45 minutes could be shaved off Amtrak's current service between Bakersfield and Merced.

Wait, what?

There is already an existing Amtrak line?

Why, yes there is...

(please click to enlarge in case you can't make out that blue line running through the middle of the state)

So, when the train to nowhere doesn't get up and rolling, using Amtrak choo-choos on the high-speed rail line... when they have existing tracks was the alternative plan? That was the big idea?

And what of this 45 minute time saved? We're not rail engineers
but what of these high-speed rail tracks? Are they magic tracks?


And dig this:

Officials note that the state has invested millions of dollars to improve the San Joaquin Valley line and build ridership (ed. note: read: subsidies) , which now ranks among Amtrak's five most traveled routes.

One would not be mistaken if one felt that this alternate plan was not too well thought out.

If you think we are being a tad too critical, you are probably correct. After all, how much flexibility towards alternatives and other uses can you have when you go all $120 billion in on 19th-century technology. We totally get it.


There's much, much more to this article upon which we want to comment but we think we are all at our digestible limit for the time being.

Your (California) high-speed choo-choo update

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In the middle of an article comparing Spain's high speed rail system and California's in today's San Diego Union-Tribune was the following paragraph:

It's in dispute whether the rail line even brings in enough money to pay for its operating costs -- as California has promised to do. Still, Spain plans further spending, although the economic downturn and the addition of some unsuccessful lines may slow that down.

Why is it in dispute? Would the question of a private enterprise like Exxon-Mobil or Barnes and Noble being able to cover their operating costs ever be in dispute?

And that's part of the problem with massive public works projects like California's proposed high-speed choo-choos. Whether or not the system will be able to generate the ridership to cover operating costs will always be in dispute as long as the actual operating costs are masked by layers and layers of tax-payer subsidies as will most likely be the case here.




And here's Walter Russell Mead chiming in on high-speed choo-choos:

California’s bullet train is going off the rails, and the overseers are running for cover. The WSJ reports that Roelof van Ark, the chief executive, and Thomas Umberg, the chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority, announced they will step down from their posts as the odds against the project grow longer.

The highly indebted, cash strapped state has commitments of $3.3 billion of federal money in hand against the roughly $100 billion that the train is now estimated to cost (the price will certainly go even higher). Voters authorized almost $10 billion in bonds in a referendum, but that was when the train looked much cheaper and more federal funding was available. Since then the cost estimates more than doubled to $99 billion, ridership estimates have been slashed indicating that the completed system will require unending subsidies, and Congress has stopped voting new funds for high speed rail.

To make matters even worse, the federal funds that are available can only be used for a “spur” out into the Central Valley, rather than the main line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The “spur” is the least needed, least wanted and least useful part of the system and will never generate significant traffic. There are, in other words, federal funds to help with the part of the system that nobody really wants, and the heavily indebted state must find at least $70 billion to fund the rest.

(Please click to enlarge. Note that cost estimates you hear for the system do not even include the cost of extending the rail past Orange County and down to San Diego.)



Yet against every sober assessment of the high-speed rail system, Governor Jerry Brown has damned the torpedoes and is full-steam ahead towards political suicide and the fiscal ruination of California in order to stay in the good graces of a progressive coalition consisting of the Obama administration, construction labor unions, environmentalists and big city mayors.

We don't want to build a privately-funded pipeline that will bring a proven energy source from a friendly country and which will create thousands of construction jobs but we have a ruling class that is more than willing to sink upwards of $120 billion of tax-payer money on a train to nowhere.

Crime, smog, traffic, graffiti and all they have to show for it is their crappy newspaper

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One in a series that takes a look at what's going on up at the L.A. Times.



Alternate headline: The L.A. Times confronts intellectual bankruptcy




After admitting there is no money to build the high speed choo-choo system here in California and admitting that the initial section of tracks out in the Central Valley would be "costly train to nowhere" while also acknowledging that the section of tracks to be built first was purely a political obligation, the statist cheerleaders at the L.A. Times editorial board insist the project go on because, in their closing argument, the high-speed choo-choo system here in California would be just like the Egyptian pyramids or something:

Worthwhile things seldom come without cost or sacrifice. That was as true in ancient times as it is now; pharaoh Sneferu, builder of Egypt's first pyramids, had to try three times before he got it right, with the first two either collapsing under their own weight or leaning precipitously. But who remembers that now? Not many people have heard of Sneferu, but his pyramids and those of his successors are wonders of the world.

Granted, this was in Saturday's paper but did they think no one was reading?


We're not sure invoking two massive failures because of shoddy engineering is anyway to promote the largest public works project in United States history. The ol' third time was the charm will not inspire tax-payer confidence

And who remebers that now? Hardly not the souls of the slave labor that built the pyramids.

And we missed the ballot language back in 2008 touting the high-speed rail system as any sort of "wonder of the world".

But the L.A. Times does have a point regarding the similar and only utilitarian natures of both the pyramids and California's high-speed rail system: one housed dead pharoahs and the other most likely Jerry Brown's political legacy.





In all our years of reading the Times, we have never seen used such a ridiculous and amaterish analogy in an Op-Ed piece. Un. Real.

Your (California) high-speed choo-choo update

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Built into the legislation that authorized the first $9 billion dollars of bonds to be issued to build California's high speed rail system and which was approved by voters back in November of 2008, was an advisory panel known as California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, ostensibly an independent watchdog group for the project.

If supporters of the project thought this panel to be an Amen Corner for high-speed choo-choos then they found themselves to be sorely disappointed this past week.

In a scathing critique that could further jeopardize political support for California's proposed $98.5-billion bullet train, a key independent review panel is recommending that state officials postpone borrowing billions of dollars to start building the first section of track this year.

Gov. Jerry Brown has said he will ask the Legislature in the coming months to issue the first batch of $9 billion in voter-approved bonds for a high-speed rail network that backers say will create jobs, help the environment and transform the state's economy.

But in a report Tuesday, a panel of experts created by state law to help safeguard the public's interest raised serious doubts about almost every aspect of the project and concluded that the current plan "is not financially feasible." As a result, the panel said, it "cannot at this time recommend that the Legislature approve the appropriation of bond proceeds for this project."

Although the panel has no legal power to stop the project, its strong criticism, coupled with recent polls showing public opinion has shifted against the proposal, is giving some key political leaders pause.

"The peer review group report raises important issues for the Legislature to weigh as we consider any appropriation for the project during this year's budget process," said the leader of the state Senate, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), a longtime supporter of the program.

The project has won major support from organized labor, some big-city mayors and many state lawmakers. But Tuesday's report adds to a string of negative assessments from the state auditor, the state inspector general, the legislative analyst, the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies, as well as the transportation committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

So what did this panel that includes private-sector financial experts, a University of California dean of engineering, a former Caltrans director and a local government representative find wrong with the project? What didn't they find wrong?

The expert panel asserted that the plan to start construction between Chowchilla and Bakersfield does not meet requirements approved by voters. Their report also found ridership estimates are unverified, construction costs may exceed the current $98.5 billion estimate, and the state agency overseeing the project lacks adequate management resources.

Left unsaid in the article was the fact that the initial funding to put down the rails in the Central Valley will cover just that, the rails. No transmission grid to get power to the trains, no lights and crossing gates and not even any actual trains.


And, oh, by the way, the project has no money...

Most problematic, the report said, is the lack of certainty about funding the balance of the project once the state exhausts the $9 billion in available bonds and $3.3 billion in federal grants. Congress has eliminated future funding for the project, and Republicans are attempting to freeze funds already granted.

The fact that the funding plan fails to identify any long-term funding commitments is a fundamental flaw in the program," the panel said. "We cannot overemphasize the fact that moving ahead on the high-speed rail project without credible sources of adequate funding … represents an immense financial risk on the part of the state of California."

About every single group in this state that has taken a sober look at the high-speed rail project has pointed out serious flaws in the project, a fact that will not deter the faith-based believers in high-speed choo-choos who believe that the money for this project which may cost as much as $120 billion dollars will appear on the backs of unicorns bounding over rainbows to be delivered to Brown's Folly office in Sacramento.

Brown's office signaled that the governor isn't likely to be swayed by the panel's findings. "It does not appear to add any arguments that are new or compelling enough to suggest a change in course," said Gil Duran, Brown's press secretary.

Because why should the fact that there is simply no money for this project distract one from having the Obama administration and Big Labor urging you to stay the course on this disaster?

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Your (California) high-speed choo-choo update

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The city fathers of Bakersfield, in the portion of the state where the initial tracks will be laid down, in a symbolic vote, voted 6-1, against the California's high speed rail. They employ the logic that a) the state and the feds don't hsve the money, b) when those two entities don't have any money, they start looking at cities and counties for the money grab and c) they won't be able to actually use the high speed choo-choos for years and years.

The Bakersfield City Council Wednesday joined the growing chorus of opponents demanding that the high-speed rail project be scrapped.

The council voted 6-1 to say "no" to the California High-Speed Rail Authority's plans to build the project in pieces, with an unusable segment under construction in the San Joaquin Valley for the next 10 years.

The council's move was virtually identical to a unanimous vote by the Kings County Board of Supervisors in October that disapproved of any possible route through Kings County.

In a blistering presentation to the council by City Manager Alan Tandy that echoed an equally harsh staff report, Tandy said the project's proposed path would destroy key landmarks in downtown Bakersfield, operate no trains for the foreseeable future, be overseen by Authority officials he said have failed to respond to Bakersfield officials, concerns over a period of 18 months and worsen the state's existing fiscal crisis.

At potentially $120 billion dollars for the project... there's no money but Tandy knows that's not going to stop this thing.

"When the state has fiscal crises, they turn predatory to cities and counties to cover their excess spending," he said.

Tandy attacked the argument that the project would bring needed jobs, saying that it would be better to create employment by improving run-down streets and roads in Bakersfield and Kern County.

This fiscal black hole effect was precisely the fear of a Democratic lawmaker, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal of Long Beach:

"My fear is that with (an uncertain) price tag and no dedicated revenue stream, any money we do get will go to that project, to the detriment of the state's existing transportation systems,"

But whom thought that plunging head-long into the project was a good idea anyway. Sigh.

Several council members said they admired the vision of high-speed rail, but couldn't in good conscience support the plan because of the amount of borrowing it would require in a state already in a deficit crisis.

"Sacramento continues to look at local governments as the piggy bank to fund their out-of-control projects," said Councilman Russell Johnson.

Alas, the grand statist vision of public make-work projects will never yield to the realities of fiscal sanity.

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Video clip of the day

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Reason.tv takes a look a public transportation and specifically light rail in LA.

17 miles in only 78 minutes!

Hooray subsidies!

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Yet another high-speed choo-choo update

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Bush-appointed Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was up on the Hill yesterday, shilling for yet another administration boondoggle in high-speed choo-choos. Let's have a listen:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood confronted congressional Republicans for their objections to President Obama's high-speed rail initiatives Tuesday, telling them they should get on board with the president's rail push because their criticisms have been misguided.

“We are right at the point where we were when they started the interstate system,” an animated LaHood told lawmakers, drawing a parallel to the development of the federal highway system. “We are not going to be dissuaded by critics."

Or by the fact that we're the brokest nation on the planet for that matter.

Skepticism was evident in the title of Tuesday’s hearing by a subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which was to examine “mistakes and lessons learned” from Obama’s rail efforts. 



But LaHood, a former Republican member of Congress plucked from retirement by Obama, conceded no mistakes in his testimony.

He obviously has not heard of "California".



We should pause temporarily to state we are not opposed to high-speed rail in absolute terms rather opposed to high-speed rail where it doesn't make a whole lot of sense as in areas of this country where the population centers are more spread out like here on the West Coast. Where might high-speed rail make a lot more sense? How about the Northeast Boston-NYC-DC corridor. Maybe we should start there, see how things go and apply lessons-learned to other portions of the country to build this system when we have the money.

Or not.

Shuster and other Republican House members have suggested that Obama erred by not focusing his high-speed rail effort on the populous Northeast region of the country, where rail is most popular. 



But LaHood refused to agree that high-speed rail could only be successful there. 



“We believe there are other places in America,” he said. “There are other places where people want to have a train to ride. We are not going to invest every dollar in one part of the country. That's not fair.”



Fair. That's an interesting concept to employ when talking about the sensible expenditure of tax-payer dollars.

Republicans have criticized a high-speed rail proposal in California, which has received more money from the Obama administration than any other project, 
for everything from its cost to the planned route of the railway.



LaHood pushed back at those arguments on Tuesday. 



“If you don't like the places a high-speed rail is proposed to go in California, you need to talk to the people in California who've been working on high-speed rail for 15 years," he said. “This is not a result of President Obama or Secretary LaHood drawing [routes] on a map.”



Yeah, why are they blaming LaHood? Similar to Steven Chu, the Energy Department Secretary who is in charge of that department's green energy loan program, LaHood is simply in charge of throwing money around and shouldn't be held accountable for displaying a bit of intellectual curiosity before sinking billions of dollars into doomed-to-failure projects.

Democrats on the panel Tuesday backed LaHood, arguing that it did not make sense to concentrate high-speed rail in the Northeast. 



“I'm not interested in throwing money away," Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said, but he added quickly that he did not want to focus only on the Northeast, "where, last time I checked, populations were declining compared to the West,” he said. 



“We spent 70 years ignoring and destroying the rail system in the U.S.,” DeFazio said. “We're only in the second year of trying to rebuild it.”



LaHood agreed, saying he asked to speak to the panel Tuesday “because high-speed rail is a signature initiative of this administration.”



“You may not believe it, but the people want this,” he told the committee.







There is a scene in the movie Color of Money where Fast Eddie walks into a dingy pool hall (is there any other kind?) with his young protege' (Tom Cruise) and his girlfriend. Eddie (played expertly by Paul Newman) pauses, looks around and asks somewhat rhetorically, "Do you smell that?" Cruise's character, Vinny, replys, "Smell what?" Vinny's girlfriend responds dismissively, "Money".

Well, we know what we smell and it smells like pork.




The President doesn't want to allow a pipeline to be built that would create jobs plus provide an increasing degree of energy independence from friendly oil in Canada and he sics his NLRB on Boeing for having the temerity to desire to open a plant in right-to-work South Carolina but he is perfectly willing to spend money we don't have on a half-baked nation-wide high-speed choo-choo system that is experiencing massive cost over-runs before the project is really even off the ground. Economic illiteracy doesn't begin to describe this mentality rather ideological zealotry.

Your (California) high-speed choo-choo update

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It's going to be free! Just like health care...

Nah... just kidding. Wanted to sucker you into thinking there was some actual good news before letting you down gently.

Actually, this one falls under the category of, well, duh.


But before that, where do we stand?: We have a public works project that is projected to grow to potentially $120 billion making it, by far, the most expensive tax-payer funded program in the history of the brokest nation on the planet which is a tad higher than the original $33-$45 billion estimate given to the program when the project was voted on by Californians back in 2008.

Also, funding for the initial set of tracks to be laid down out in the Central Valley covers only that.... the tracks. No transmission lines, no crossing gates, no signals, no actual choo-choos.

So, with that, what are all the obstructionists bitching about now? Perhaps that the project doesn't meet the funding provisions spelled out in the ballot language?

The state's legislative analyst says California's plan for a $98 billion high-speed rail system to connect Northern and Southern California does not comply with some parts of the 2008 ballot measure voters approved to provide the seed money, providing the latest obstacle for the embattled project.

It says Proposition 1A required rail officials to identify all sources of committed funds for a usable segment of the line and to clear all environmental requirements before the $9 billion in bonds could be sold.

With federal funding for high-speed rail drying up and speculative financing for many of the rail authority's plans, the analyst's office said it is increasingly likely that the stand-alone, 130-mile stretch planned for the Central Valley "may be all that is ever built."

"It is highly uncertain if funding to complete the high-speed rail system will ever materialize," the report said.

Awesome.

High-speed rail authority officials have conceded that much of the funding for future segments remains speculative, but they hope to attract private investors after initial segments are built.

With cost estimates tripling and quadrupling in just 3 years time, what private investor is going to dump his money into this turkey?

"My fear is that with (an uncertain) price tag and no dedicated revenue stream, any money we do get will go to that project, to the detriment of the state's existing transportation systems," said Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach.

With so much political capital and standing riding on high-speed choo-choos, the rail system as an infrastructure black-hole, sucking up any and all money around it, is a shrewd observation by Lowenthal... but screw it, let's do it anyway.

Still, she said high-speed rail promises "extraordinary benefits such as jobs, private investment and economic growth that has to be considered," according to comments reported by the San Jose Mercury News. She is chairwoman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, which held a hearing on the rail project Tuesday.

And finally:

The high-speed rail commission had said in its report that while the $98 billion price tag is high, the state otherwise would need to spend more than $170 billion in upgrades to the state's transportation infrastructure to accommodate future population growth. That would include wider freeways, more airport gates and upgrades to commuter trains and tracks.

The analyst's report does not go into details but calls that comparison "very problematic." It notes that the state will still need to maintain its existing infrastructure, fund urban transit and increase capacity on freeways to address higher demand.

You know, infrastructure that people are actually going to use.



A complete lack of funding doesn't appear to be slowing this thing down so high are the stakes and the reputations both at the local and state as well as the federal level that are tied to this spectacularly ill-conceived and thus far, ill-executed project.

Your high speed choo-choo update

High speed choo-choo trains here in California confront the glaringly obvious: no money.

Bulk of high-speed rail costs could fall to state

As California prepares to commit tens of billions of dollars to an ambitious high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Southern California, Congress' political will to provide the bulk of the funding is disappearing, leaving the possibility that the state could end up stuck with a crushing financial burden.

State voters have agreed to issue more than $9 billion in bonds to build the system, but that's a fraction of the $43 billion projected tab for the initial phase. And those costs could swell to $65 billion or more, by some estimates.

Should federal funds dry up after the scheduled start of construction next year, the state could be left with no more than an unfulfilled dream and some tracks in the Central Valley.

"If the federal government and private investors are not going to provide funds, and California is broke, why would it take on an enormous new commitment?" asked Martin Wachs, a Rand Corp. transportation expert and former director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies.

Why, indeed because with its current make-up, fat chance of any federal tax dollars being squeezed out of Congress.

And doesn't the following prove that, for some people, it's not about dollars and sense but rather an ideological struggle.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairwoman of the Senate panel that funds transportation, lashed out at cuts to high-speed rail proposed by House Republicans at a hearing earlier this year.

"We are at a pivotal moment in our national transportation policy," Murray said. "But the recent focus in Congress on budget cuts has created a race to the bottom that makes it difficult to continue those investments."

Pivotal moment? Missed that memo, Patty. To quote KT: "Are there any businesses that aren't expanding because they can't get their goods from point A to point B? Any? "

If CARB (California Air Resources Board) continues on its current jobs-killing trajectory, we may have to answer in the affirmative.

And dig this:

And the plan would require some ambitious engineering. Tunnels would stretch miles. Trains would soar over cities atop viaducts six stories tall. Three mountain ranges would be crossed. The zigzagging route would gobble up homes, businesses and farmland.

For a state that brings conventional construction projects to a grinding halt at the sight of an endangered African dung beetle, forgetting a moment about the cost, does this project have an ice cube's chance in hell of even being completed given the logistical challenges inherent to this project? And this doesn't even account for the bazillion eminent domain cases that will have to be worked out.

We continue to be bemused by the regulatory regime imposed by the statists that will prove to be the death of the statists favored pork projects.

Proponents are arguing for the state to not worry about future funding and launch the rail program with $6.3 billion the authority can immediately use, $3.5 billion of it from prior federal grants and $2.8 billion from the state bonds approved in 2008. That's enough money to start construction next year on an initial 140-mile segment from south of Chowchilla to north of Bakersfield. California is required to spend the federal money by 2017, meaning construction would have to start in 2012.

If California governor, Jerry Brown forges ahead with this high speed choo-choo project look for that useless 140 mile stretch of track left to rust out in the middle of the Central Valley to acquire a new name: Brown's Folly.

Your high-speed choo-choo update (UPDATED)

(please scroll down for update)


Like the Sun rising in the East...

Building tracks for the first section of California's proposed high-speed rail line will cost $2.9 billion to $6.8 billion more than originally estimated, raising questions about the affordability of the nation's most ambitious rail project at a time when its planning and finances are under fire.

A 2009 business plan developed for the California High-Speed Authority, the entity overseeing the project, estimated costs at about $7.1 billion for the equivalent stretch of tracks. Officials say those estimates were made before detailed engineering work and feedback from communities along the proposed route.

The latest estimates are contained in two environmental impact studies that were shared with The Associated Press before their public release on Tuesday.

The truly scary part of this continuing sad saga of high speed trains here in California is that the "first section" that has been under-estimated, on the conservative side, to the tune of the entire federal Cash for Clunkers program ($3 billion), is that they underestimated the easy part of the track-laying.

If the powers-that-be are underestimating what it's going to cost to lay tracks between the sprawling metroplises of Borden and Corcoran out in the middle of the Central Valley, just wait for the budget-busting fun to begin when it comes time to sharpening the pencil up over mountain passes into Los Angeles and right-of-ways in and around San Francisco. What could possibly go wrong?

We've had ourselves quite a few completely senseless boondoggles over the past few years, but if California's high-speed choo-choo endeavor stays on its current trajectory (and it's early, gang) then it may prove to be the queen-mother of all boondoggle debacles. And we're looking at you, ethanol.



(UPDATE #1) We are gladly liberating what B-Daddy shared in the comments section.

Matt Groenig: pork buster?

Your high-speed choo-choo update

Paging Thomas Friedman, paging Thomas Friedman.


So, if an epic near-miss at a nuclear reactor in Japan appears to doom the future of nuclear power, should a terrible high-speed train accident doom the future of high-speed trains? No. But it doesn't mean that high speed trains are not a fantastically bad idea, either.

With all the other horrible events of the weekend, China's high speed rail crash sort of faded into the background. But the toll is horrific: 43 dead, and hundreds more injured after one high speed train ran into another. Critics, such as Michael Sainsbury of The Australian, are now arguing that this is the result of cut corners in the construction process:

China's decision to build a $400 billion, 16,000 km high speed rail network in the space of a few years was initially greeted with awe at their commitment to winning the future, and laments from the usual suspects that America could never do something this fantabulous. Then the network was forced to slow the average speed of its bullet trains down due to safety concerns; lower-than-projected ridership caused big deficits; and the head of the rail ministry was removed in a tawdry corruption scandal.

That's good ol' one-party technocratic autocracy for ya? And that's China and their system that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is so enamored of.

In a sense, we should be glad that we can't do something that fantabulous here in this country as it's going to take that same sort of can-do, one-party technocratic autocracy to get anything built here in the States given enviromental regulations and required impact reports as well as the gazillions of eminent domain issues that will need to be resolved.

Unfortunately Fortunately, that's not the way the system is wired here in our representative republic where the electorate may display a tendency from time to time to throw out the bums who would skirt the law and trample rights in the name of shiny, rest-of-the-world-approved technology.

Maybe it's time to realize, with our system of governance, our infrastructure (a pretty damn good interstate system that we use extensively and plentiful commuter and cross-country flights) and the population dispersal of our country (what may work in the D.C.-Boston corridor is not going to work on the West Coast) that high-speed choo-choos just are not a good fit for us.

It's cool. Let's work on something else, like teleporters.


P.S. We continue to luxuriate in the irony of the regulatory and environmental regime erected by the statists which may be the largest hurdle for them to achieve their favorite form of transportation.

Transportation of mass destruction

Warning: scheduled post. More death and mayhem may have occurred on L.A.'s light rail system between posting this and its appearance here.

On Jan. 6, 2003, Jacek "Jack" Wysocki rolled his Ford truck into the path of a Metrolink train traveling 79 mph. The 63-year-old driver was killed along with one train passenger; two train cars derailed and flipped, injuring 20 other Metrolink riders.

Exactly three years later, 76-year-old Maureen Osborn was killed after turning in front of a Metrolink commuter going 75 mph. Osborn's car was dragged a third of a mile before the train could stop.

244 deaths and hundreds of more non-fatal injuries in 15 years.

We think we have a workable model here. "Death Panels" via bad engineering, denial and negligence. One covers their bases more completely when approaching things in the comprehensive manner favored by Metrolink of Los Angeles.

Read more of this below-the-belt cheap shot (but below-the-belt never the less) expose' from the L.A. Times, here.

P.S. A Google image search for "train wrecks" also resulted in the following:



Both would suffice.