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

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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So, it begins. Four years after the voters of California said, "You know what we really need right now? (sorta) High-speed choo-choos", Governor Brown got the bond purchasing ball rolling last Wednesday.

Gov. Jerry Brown gave his approval Wednesday to spending billions of dollars in government money for a high-speed rail line that still faces major funding, environmental and political challenges before it could connect Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Brown was at historic Union Station in Los Angeles to celebrate the project and sign a bill authorizing California to begin selling $2.6 billion in bonds for construction of the initial 130-mile segment of the bullet train in the Central Valley. The move allows the state to tap $3.2 billion in federal funds for the project.

However, most of the money for the $68 billion project linking the two major cities has yet to be identified.

California voters approved $10 billion in bonds for the project in 2008, and the state's business plan calls for some backing from private investors and for a private operator to run the system without a state subsidy.

Supporters say it's rarely known upfront where all the money for such massive transit projects will come from.

News flash: We're no longer "upfront" anymore. We're 4 years into this thing and the charlatans running this show can't identify a single private investor.

The Democratic governor signed the bill, SB1029, at a carefully staged event where cheering politicians and unionized construction workers provided a striking contrast with the political fight last month in the state Senate, where the plan narrowly survived.

The first segment of the line will be financed by taxpayers, and Brown said there was strong interest from private companies in financing the rest of the project. He didn't provide any specifics on possible investment or name any of those firms.

"Private investment will come in the second phase," he said. "Private investment has worked in Europe, and it will work in this project."

The business plan by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is overseeing the project, relies on the private sector to "design, build, operate, and maintain a high-speed rail system that is funded by a combination of government investments and future revenues that support the investments of capital from the private sector."

Officials at the authority were unable to identify any future investors and instead released a written statement from Chief Executive Jeff Morales.

Here's where things go a little wonky: the firm that built the French rail system, SNCF, offered to come in and assist the California rail authority in designing the rail system as well as assisting in attracting potential private operators. Competent rail builders with some good ideas and a fresh set of eyes that might be able to bring in some people who would want to run this thing should it ever get built - sounds like something the rail authority might want to take advantage of. Of course, they were pretty much dismissed out of hand.

From the L.A. Times:

The approach, the French company said, would help the California High-Speed Rail Authority identify a profitable route, hold down building costs, develop realistic ridership forecasts and attract private investors - a requirement of a $9-billion bond measure approved by voters in 2008.

But SNCF couldn't get its ideas - including considering a more direct north-south route along the Central Valley's Interstate 5 corridor - out of the station.

Instead, the rail authority continued to concentrate planning in the hands of Parsons Brinckerhoff, a giant New York City-based engineering and construction management firm. Although they have occasionally consulted with high-speed railways, officials decided that hiring an experienced operator and seeking private investors would have to wait until after the $68-billion system was partially built. Last week, the state Senate approved - by a single vote - $8 billion to get construction underway.

"It's like California is trying to design and build a Boeing 747 instead of going out and buying one," said Dan McNamara, a civil engineer who worked for SNCF's U.S. affiliate. "There are lots of questions about the Parsons Brinckerhoff plan. The capital costs are way too high, and the route has been politically gerrymandered."

In order to reduce the cost of this project, Governor Jerry Brown took an axe to it cutting even providing electricity to power the trains on the initial set of tracks in the Central Valley. The Japanese company, Shinkasnsen, that operates the bullet train in that country was scared off by one of the cost-cutting measures: employing a "blended" approach whereby the high-speed choo-choos would, at times, use existing freight and passenger rails. This has tacked an hour on to the projected L.A. to San Francisco route; from just under 2 hours to now just under 3.

Scaring away builders and potential operators while not even having the ability to power that which you intend on building. Not bad for a cool (for now) $68 billion.

This is unfathomable. At the state level, never have we seen politicians so willfully throw around such a great amount of money for such dubious benefit.




We leave you with this bit of agitprop from the state's high-speed rail authority:

Hey, San Diego, there are currently no plans nor money to extend that rail line down here. And if it ever did, you're not going to Orange County and L.A., you're going to freaking Riverside and San Berdoo. Same goes for that bustling Merced to Sacramento corridor - it doesn't exist.

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Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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Oh, California high-speed choo-choos, we just can’t quit you as we are hopelessly addicted to wasteful and completely counterproductive public works projects. You keep this up and you just might supplant 2009’s $780 billion American Recovery Act aka Porkulus as #1 in our hearts.


The level of corruption, deception, mendacity and willful suspension of disbelief contained herein makes this probably a done deal.


No new breaking news with respect to California’s high-speed rail project but sometimes it’s good to see where things stand, particularly in light of some legal setbacks suffered the project at the hands of Sacramento Superior Court Judge, Michael Kenny earlier this past year.


From the Sacramento Bee:

Officials overseeing California's $68 billion high-speed rail project have taken pains in recent weeks to assure the public that construction plans are moving ahead, characterizing a series of recent setbacks as "a bump in the road."
That optimism comes despite recent court rulings against the project, creating confusion about the bullet train's prospects.

A Sacramento County judge rescinded the rail authority's funding plan, forced it to show how it will pay for the first 300 miles of construction and rejected a request from the authority that would allow the state treasurer to sell $8.6 billion in bonds.

But members of the California High-Speed Rail Authority board seemed undaunted during their December meeting. They praised staff for filling key positions at the agency and pointed to a nearly $1 billion construction contract signed in 2013 as evidence of progress.

It is duly noted that this contract award was to Tutor Perini-Zachry-Parsons, a politically-connected firm where the rail project’s very own acquisition rules were summarily thrown out the window to make way for TPZP.


But let’s talk about funding, shall we?:

Republicans in Congress have vowed to block any further funding for the rail line and will hold a railroad subcommittee hearing in January to investigate the state's spending of $3.3 billion in federal funds that are supposed to be matched by the state.

Rail authority board Chairman Dan Richard has said California has an agreement with federal officials allowing it to spend the federal money first while the state bond money is in limbo. Richard said officials hope to have shovels in the ground in the Central Valley in January or February and projected that the federal money might last through "late spring."

This “agreement” with the feds is in direct violation of the 2008 ballot initiative language that paved the way for the project and which is the subject of another lawsuit. One can see the trickle-down effect of the “We Can’t Wait” mentality affected by the current administration which is strongly supporting the choo-choos when the rule of law is concerned.


Judge Kenny’s rulings did not stop the project from moving forward, so where do things go from here?:

Rail officials appear poised to deliver a new funding plan to their own high-speed rail board for approval, while the plaintiffs who sued believe the plan needs to go before the state Legislature, which approved a 2012 funding bill that squeaked through the Senate with only one vote to spare.

"I think there was a lot of assumptions by my colleagues when we voted that there was a pretty good chance of getting more federal funds and a pretty good chance of getting private funds, neither of which has materialized," said Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, who voted against the 2012 legislation.

This logic baffles us. From where exactly did he think that private funding was going to materialize when there was and is nowhere near the demand to project any sufficient amount of funding?


But the project has many, many powerful friends including the Governor who is banking on choo-choos to be his grandest legacy as our former Seminary dropout rides off into the sunset.

Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, remains a strong supporter of high-speed rail and has appointed top advisers to the board, including Richard. Democrats also control both houses of the state Legislature and many of them are supportive.
If a new vote is needed, some might be wary of funneling money to a massive project that appears on the ropes, especially in an election year.

"The climate has changed in the last year. You might see people in the Legislature saying, 'We should cut our losses and just move on,'" said Brady, the attorney representing Kings County plaintiffs.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a Bakersfield Republican who has sought to block federal funding for the project, said now is a good time for Brown to reflect on his high-speed rail dream and back out. He said it's becoming clear that "it will not fulfill the promises made to voters."

This. Will. Not. Happen.


More legal wrangling is in the offing this year and we will continue to keep you posted with respect to any and all goings of our beloved California high-speed choo-choos.

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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 California high-speed choo-choo update

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Another day and another round of bad news for high speed choo-choos here in California. Well, to be precise, it's not really more or new, just news that we've known now broken down in a different way that basically illustrates what a disaster this all will prove to be.

What we do know is that if the first 130 miles of track to be built (between Bakersfield and Fresno) is not completed by September of 2017, the project faces the loss of federal funding. That first section of track is expected to cost $6 billion, so on a per day basis that means that $3.5 million every calendar day in resources would have to be spent on that portion of the project.

If you are asking yourself what could possibly go wrong, you would not be alone.

If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law.

The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding. It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included - the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

Over four years, the California High-Speed Rail Authority would need as many as 120 permits, mostly from a tangle of government regulatory agencies not known to rush their business. It would need to acquire about 1,100 parcels of land, many from powerful agriculture interests that have already threatened to sue. And it would need to assemble five teams of contractors with giant workforces positioned from Fresno to Bakersfield, moving millions of tons of gravel, steel rail and heavy equipment across the valley.

Again, it has never been made clear to us if the estimated cost of the high-speed rail project takes into account the eminent domain compensation paid out to land owners whose property lies in way of the track. There has been a suspicious lack of discussion in what we see as a deal-breaker area. That amount alone may total in the tens of billions.


More from the article:

Even if the authority avoids any delays, its ability to complete the first construction section on time will require a breakneck pace of activity.

"It is a very aggressive plan," said Manuel Garcia, associate director at the Construction Industry Institute affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin. "It does appear that it will be a challenge."

If the rail authority runs into technical problems, legal disputes, permit delays or political roadblocks, it could end up building less track and potentially leave an uncompleted project, according to warnings contained in its own business plan. If the project blows past the federal deadline, for example, the flow of money could be stopped. And the scramble to meet that deadline could lead to construction problems and drive up costs.

Please stop us at any point when this does not stop resembling an absolutely unpassable minefield.

Rail officials, putting on a brave face, point out that the Bay Bridge project will have a "burn rate" of $1.8 million/day once it completed in 2013 but, of course, that is just over half of the required burn rate of the high speed choo-choo project.

And what does it say of this grand statist make-work scheme that it's success is measured in how much money they can blow through on a daily basis rather than meters of track laid?


Back to the article:

John Popov, a construction expert at Parsons Brinckerhoff, a consulting firm working with the rail authority, said he believes the project can be completed on time. Popov calculates that the job will spend $2.7 million per day, which excludes the cost of land acquisition, environmental work, management oversight and reserves. But construction experts say that including all of its costs, the authority would spend $3.5 million per day. Popov added that the authority is considering whether it can legally shift as much as $1.3 billion of work past the 2017 deadline, an option that has not been vetted with the Legislature.

(italics, ours)

That still doesn't answer our question if land acquisition is even in the overall budget. We're leaning "no" but we could be wrong.




And dig this:

The rail authority has just 37 employees and has been operating for months without a chief executive, a deputy chief executive or a chief financial officer. It also has no single executive overseeing construction, which outside consultants say is needed.

"You have 37 mere mortals who have never done anything like this before," said Robert Bea, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a retired UC Berkeley professor of civil engineering and director of the National Science Foundation's project on California's transportation infrastructure. "They need God, because he's the only one who can handle this management challenge."

Forget "God is my co-pilot" or "My boss is a Jewish carpenter", we'll hook up the rail authority employees with "God is my CEO and CFO" bumper stickers.


Want more?

A final environmental report on about half of the 130-mile project is uncompleted and months behind schedule, forcing the agency to start work initially on a 29-mile section from Madera to Fresno and hope that it can get the review problems with the rest of the line cleared up later this year.

In a status report this month, Mark Ashley, a senior vice president with the rail authority's consultant T.Y. Lin International Group, noted that the project has identified 25 issues in the Merced-to-Bakersfield construction plan as high risk or very high risk and that the project is now nine months behind schedule in securing official approval from the Federal Railroad Administration.

Oh, and here's some more discussion regarding land acquisition:

"Fresno to Bakersfield is going to be really tight," Ashley said. The acquisition of land is facing problems, including slow progress in getting agreements with freight railroads, he added. "It is dicey right now whether that is going to hold up our construction or impact our schedule."

Given the deadlines both past due and imminently looming, you think land-holders might have some leverage in which to squeeze the rail authority and by extension, the state and by further extension, the tax payers?



Please link to the article for more dreadful expectations regarding the bid process and how potential contractors are scared to death because of the faltering start high-speed choo-choos have got off to.

As you all know, we have been following this thing since it was a proposed bond issue back in 2008 and where we urged our readers to reject the ballot measure because there was simply no need for high-speed rail in California. Now that we know what a god-forsaken disaster this thing already is before a single length of track has been laid down (see also: ObamaCare) we would've been even more vociferous in our opposition to high-speed choo-choos.

But like the State Water Project back in the 70s, Governor Brown has hitched his wagon to an astronomically expensive public works project of highly dubious need and value and such is the ideological rigidity of big government statism that he just can't shake bad habits.

Next stop... Madera?

California's high-speed rail system will be getting underway in America's vegetable basket.

So now we know, if it begins, it will be “in the heart of the state’s Central Valley.”

The California High-Speed Rail Authority Board today picked the starting location for the first 65-mile stretch of track in the Los Angeles to San Francisco rail system. LA to San Francisco would be a 418-mile rail trip. The time is expected to take 2 hours, 27 minutes, according to the Rail Authority's website.

Construction will start north of Fresno, near Madera, and include the construction of two new stations – one in downtown Fresno and the other east of Hanford – continuing to Corcoran, north of Bakersfield, according to the Rail Authority.

This segment will use about $4.15 billion of the available $4.3 billion to build the two stations, acquire rights of way, construct viaducts, prepare the site, grade, restore vegetation, build rail bridges, realign roadways and relocate existing railways and utilities.

The choice of the Central Valley was hardly a surprise. The Federal Railroad Administration issued a mandate in October that directed that all current federal funding for the project be dedicated to a portion of the project in the Central Valley.

several other sites were considered, says the Rail Authority, but none would spend out as much of the funding as this one.

Let it be known that travel time from San Diego to San Francisco via air is about an hour and a half.

As laid out in the video below, this notion of needing a high-speed rail here in California always had more than a whiff of snake oil and boondoggle about it.

“But Main Street’s still all cracked and broken!”

"Sorry, ma, the mob has spoken"

Eh, unfortunately that "mob" was the California voter who approved this dubious enterprise back in November of 2008 via the initiative process.


H/T: Instapundit

Constitutional republics are, like, hard

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One in a series where we call out the ignorant, feckless and malevolent enemies of the Republic.




Ray LaHood is not fit to serve as this nation's Transportation Secretary as per Ray LaHood himself as will be ably demonstrated in the following paragraphs:

Echoing the laments of pundits like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood argued Saturday that China outpaces the United States in building major transportation infrastructure like high-speed rail because of its authoritarian system and because the Chinese don't have the Republican Party holding up progress.

"The Chinese are more successful [in building infrastructure] because in their country, only three people make the decision. In our country, 3,000 people do, 3 million," LaHood said in a short interview with The Cable on the sidelines of the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival on June 30. "In a country where only three people make the decision, they can decide where to put their rail line, get the money, and do it. We don't do it that way in America."

That is what apparently passes for an "idea" at this Aspen Ideas Festival which, coincidentally enough, is host to a film festival prone to the same sort of revolutionary ideas.

And, as if LaHood remembers that people might actually re-print his words, he gets back on the democracy reservation.

LaHood said that despite this, democracy is still preferable. "We have the best system of government anywhere on the planet. It is the best. Because the people have their say," he said.

Before promptly wandering back off, again.

During his conference session at the festival, LaHood blamed Republicans in Congress, especially the Tea Party freshman class elected in 2010, for the relative lack of progress in moving forward with high-speed rail even though the administration has obligated more than $11 billion to the effort.

"Two years ago, between 50 to 60 Republicans were elected to the House of Representatives to come to Washington to do nothing, and that's what they've done and they've stopped any progress. Those people don't have any vision about what the government can do. That's been a real inhibitor in our ability to think outside the box and think big," he said.

"We used to be No. 1. We're not No. 1 anymore. We're No. 23," he continued. "Previous generations have always left something to the next generation. We owe it to the next generation to leave them something. We shortchange the next generation if we don't leave them high-speed rail. That's our obligation."

Oh, we're leaving future generations something alright and it starts with $16 trillion in debt and 4 soon-to-be-insolvent entitlement programs. Buck up, Ray, baby - you all are leaving future generations one a hell of a legacy.

We'd like to take this moment to recognize the Democrat-controlled do-nothing Senate that hasn't produced a budget in over 3 years and its do-nothing majority leader, Harry Reid, who refuses to take up the 15-20 jobs-related bills that have been sent over from the House in the past year and a half.

And likening his vision for what a government can do to one that enforces a one-child policy via forced abortions and sterilizations cements LaHood's hack status within the administration and proves, with LaHood being appointed Transpo Secretary by G.W. Bush, that sad-sack statist thinking cuts across party lines.

Back to the article:

LaHood boldly predicted in his remarks at the conference that 80 percent of Americans will be connected with passenger rail within the next 25 years. He said that this will be accomplished through a series of commitments by the federal government, state governments, and the private sector.

"That's how they did in Europe, that's how they did it in Asia, and that's how we will do it in America," he said. "There's no turning back on this. We're not going to turn back. And you know why? Because that's what the people want. That's why... there's no stopping high speed rail."

Where? Where are these people that want high speed choo-choos, Ra?y Probably the same people that want nothing to do with a privately-funded infrastructure project like the Keystone XL pipeline.

LaHood heavily criticized the governors of Wyoming and Florida, who have rejected federal attempts to move forward with high-speed rail in their states, and he fought off a heckler from California who said that high-speed rail was not a wise investment of taxpayer money.

High speed rail in Wyoming... let that image sink in for a moment.


More from this clown:

"Doing nothing is not acceptable. Don't be coming here and telling me it's not acceptable if you don't have an alternative. It's coming to California," LaHood exclaimed. "All the studies show, if you build it they will come."

Another lesson in constitutional republics: in a political vacuum, doing nothing is neither acceptable nor unacceptable. Given the context and in this current environment, however, we happen to think that doing nothing is infinitely more acceptable than the alternative but Roy doesn't like that so he's going to whine about the checks and balances, separation of powers and our system of electoral politics that were built into the constitution.

Memo to Ray LaHood, you petulant, whiny-ass, little brat: go out and campaign for your side, make sure the President gets re-elected and take back the House so you can get as close to the one-party bliss of China that is legally allowed in this country and then you can build your g-dm'd high speed choo-choo system out in the wilds of Wyoming with money we don't have and for a people that don't want it.

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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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In two separate rulings on Monday, the same judge dealt potential death blows to California's beleaguered boondoggle, the largest public works project in American history, California high-speed rail.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A Sacramento judge on Monday tore up California's funding plans for its bullet train project in separate orders that could force the state to spend months or years redrawing its plans for the $68 billion rail line.

Judge Michael Kenny rejected a request from the California High-Speed Rail Authority to sell $8 billion of the $10 billion in bonds approved by voters in 2008, saying there was no evidence it was "necessary and desirable" to start selling the bonds when a committee of state officials met last March.

He said the committee was supposed to act as "the ultimate 'keeper of the checkbook'" for taxpayers, but instead relied on a request from the high-speed rail authority to start selling bonds as sufficient evidence to proceed.

In a separate lawsuit, Kenny ordered the rail authority to redo its $68 billion funding plan before continuing construction, a process that could take months or years. He had previously ruled that the authority abused its discretion by approving a funding plan that did not comply with the requirements of the law. The judge said the state failed to identify "sources of funds that were more than merely theoretically possible."

Judge Kenney ruled that the Rail Authority in having completed environmental clearances for only 28 miles in the Central Valley violated the terms of Prop. 1A (the approved proposition of 2008 that got the wheels moving in this whole sorry mess) that required all the environmental clearances be in place as well as specifying the sources of funding for the first operable segment of the high speed line.


They've had about 5 years to secure clearances for the first 28 miles of track. It doesn't take a math major to extrapolate the lengthy time frame it's going to take to secure the rest of the clearances for the distance between LA and San Francisco.


Back to the article:

Still, Kenny stopped short of blocking the project altogether, and rail authority officials characterized Monday's rulings as a setback rather than a fatal blow.

"Like all transformative projects, we understand that there will be many challenges that will be addressed as we go forward in building the nation's first high-speed rail system," authority board Chairman Dan Richard said in a written statement.

This may not be a death blow but these two rulings definitely put high-speed choos on the ropes. And there may not ever be a death blow, per se, rather death by a million cuts.


We already know that the official estimate of $68 billion was accomplished in disingenuous fashion by Governor Brown’s people, slashing the electrical infrastructure and the actual choo-choos from the project (another violation of Prop. 1A). What happens when that bit of budgetary chicanery is made fully public? What then? Where will the money come from to finish the job?


And what of the other suits that are still pending? And remember, the environmental and logistical delays being experienced already by this project are occurring on what should be the easy part of this. It’s the flat, relatively sparsely populated Central Vally not the Tehachapi Mountains nor the congested Bay Area or L.A. Basin.


Brown’s in-state allies and the statist acolytes both in California and across this country are playing a waiting game and hoping to establish just enough forward momentum and progress that the project becomes terminal and can no longer be walked away from regardless of the absolute financial black hole it becomes… and it will.


Short of a radical re-structuring of the current one-party rule that currently exists in California, count on Cali’s high-speed choo-choos to be far and away the most disastrous public works program this country has ever seen. In a sense, it already is.

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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Out in the California's Central Valley where the first leg of California's high-speed rail system will be built, ground hasn't yet been broken but engineers be engineering and even this seemingly unobtrusive activity of civil engineers in shirt-sleaves and white hardhats walking around with clipboards is already grating on the locals.

Truth be told, you'd probably be pretty chapped also once you learned your business would be leveled or that you would be losing farmland as sacrifices to the public works gods of Sacramento and Washington D.C.



From ABC News:

Five years ago, California voters overwhelmingly approved the idea of bringing a bullet train to themost populous U.S. state. It would be America's first high-speed rail system, sold to the public as a way to improve access to good-paying jobs, cut pollution from smog-filled roadways and reduce time wasted sitting in traffic while providing an alternative to high fuel prices.

Now, engineering work has finally begun on the first 30-mile (48-kilometer) segment of track here in Fresno, a city of a half-million people with soaring unemployment and a withering downtown core littered with abandoned factories and shuttered stores.

Rail is meant to help Fresno, with construction jobs now and improved access to economic opportunity once the project is finished. But the region that could benefit most from the project is also where opposition to it has grown most fierce.

cI just wish it would go away, this high-speed rail. I just wish it would go away," says Gary Lanfranco, whose restaurant in downtown Fresno is slated to be demolished to make way for rerouted traffic.

Such sentiments can be heard throughout the Central Valley, where roads are dotted with signs such as: "HERE COMES HIGH SPEED RAIL There goes the farm." Growers complain of misplaced priorities, and residents wonder if their tax money is being squandered.

Aaron Fukuda, a civil engineer whose house in the dairy town of Hanford lies directly in one of the possible train routes, says: "People are worn out, tired, frustrated."

The article goes on to make a false comparison between the bullet train's advertised 2 hr. and 40 minute travel time from L.A. to San Francisco and the 6 hours that it would take to do it by car. For years, we have been saying that California already has form of "high-speed rail" and it's called commuter flights which will do the L.A.-SanFran trip in about 45 minutes.


And dig this:

Political and financial compromises led officials to scale back plans that now mean trains will be forced to slow down and share tracks in major cities, leading critics to question whether it will truly be the 220-mph (355-kph) "high-speed rail" voters were promised.

If by "compromise" they mean they compromised the original content of the project, then yes, they compromised the hell out of it. With cost estimates coming as high as $120 billion, Governor Moonbeam's boys took hatchets to the project to get it to the more palatable $68 billion (original estimates when this turkey was put on the ballot back in 2008 was in the $32-40 billion range). Of course, that $68 B gets you only the tracks. No powering infrastructure. No gates. No actual choo-choos.


And it is imperative that they blow through $2.2 billion by 2015 or they lose out on $3.2 billion of federal money. We think they've got it in them. It's the government we're talking about after all.



And as we referenced earlier there is a very human emotional toll that high-speed choo-choos is exacting that sounds like very much like the L.A.'s Metropolitan Water District Owen's Valley land grab nearly 100 years ago:




I

n the Central Valley, there is intense distrust of the authority, which has started buying up property, land and businesses, some of which have been in families for generations.

At the dimly lit Cosmopolitan Cafe, office workers line up alongside farmers and paramedics to order sandwiches as waitresses expeditiously call out order numbers. Four decades' worth of memorabilia and yellowing newspaper restaurant reviews line the faux-wood walls in the space that Lanfranco has owned for most of his life.

Lanfranco says the sum he was offered to buy the property does not come close to replacing the space he owns, debt-free. The adjacent parking lot — a rare commodity — is packed with pickup trucks and cars each day at lunchtime. Lanfranco declined to say how much he was offered, and the offers are not public record.

"It's not like it's just a restaurant that I've owned for a couple of years and now I can just go replace it. It's something that I've put the last 45 years of my life into," the 66-year-old says.

His is just one of hundreds of properties the state needs to buy for the rail project or seize through eminent domain if they cannot reach a deal. Many owners are resentful after years of what they say have been confusing messages and misleading information.

All this to secure the legacy of an old washed-up governor. Heckuva job, California!

Your California high-speed cboo-choo update

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So it's massively over-budget. So, it's massively behind schedule. So, it's got a politically-connected head of the rail commission that came straight from the head offices of the project's largest contractor and who is going to grease skids and twist arms both in Sacramento and D.C. in order to get this thing done.

You aren't worrying about any of that because, despite all these apparent difficulties and obstacles, you could still comfort yourself with the fact that in your frequent trips from San Diego* Orange County to Fresno, you were doing it in an environmentally-responsible manner or something.

But as we are finding out, when it comes to navigating one's way through the labyrinth of the modern statist regulatory regime, rules are for the little people.

The Brown administration is preparing a proposal to limit environmental challenges to California's high-speed rail project, heightening legal standards under which a court could block construction.

The proposal could shield the $68 billion project from court-ordered injunctions that might otherwise be issued under the California Environmental Quality Act. Except in the most serious environmental cases, the proposed legislation would let construction proceed while the California High-Speed Rail Authority fixes any environmental flaws identified by a judge.

The proposal is likely to be considered by the Legislature this month or next. Environmentalists expected to be briefed by administration officials on the plan next week.

(italics, ours)



As could be expected the Green lobby is less than impressed:

"I don't imagine that we're going to see something next week that will make us want to embrace these exemptions that they're going to be proposing," said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California.

Phillips said the rail authority's concern about environmental challenges slowing the project is misplaced.

"Environmental review is not going to slow this project," she said. "What's going to slow this project is ineptitude by the high-speed rail authority, and that's what we have seen, at least in the last four years."

In addition to raising standards for blocking construction, the proposal would make it easier for the administration to modify parts of the project without re-doing its overall environmental review.

In a vacuum, we don't really have a problem with what the rail authority is doing. However, it begs the questions of why it is these considerations are not granted to other projects and if what the rail authority will "fix" are really consequential environmental infractions.

Of course, you all know the answer to that. This project is on everyone's radar and the political will at the state and federal level to get this thing built will be unmatched by anything we've seen in our lifetime, at least with respect to a public works project.

We continue to marvel at the statist web of rules and regulations that run counter to the big green dreams of the very same statists who put them in place.

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Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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It must be comforting for statists to know that defenses of their failed
progressive policies and programs like the Affordable Care Act and
California's high-speed choo-choos no longer contain any of the old fig
leaves about controlling costs, granting equal access or how good this or
that will be for the environment. No, the mask has fallen, gratefully
so, and now our big government betters can finally admit to their core
philosophy and that's an undying love for authoritarianism.


But first let's take the opening paragraph of this article penned by Tom
Zoellner an associate professor of English at Chapman College up in Orange
County for the Los Angeles Times:

Who doesn't love a train? Who cannot fail to be seduced by the most
appealing vehicle in human history - the rail-induced sensuality of "Brief
Encounter," the desperate heroism of engineer Casey Jones, the creative
muscle of the Big Four railroad barons, the plucky fortitude of Thomas the
Tank Engine and the Little Engine That Could, all wrapped up in gleaming,
rocking steel, punctuated by a high, lonesome whistle?

How can we harsh this when this is pretty much the defense of high-speed
choo-choos we would expect to be given by an English major, a major of which
qualifies him to speak expertly on the most expensive public works project
in U.S. history.


Back to the article:

And yet California voters have been expressing morning-after regrets since
they voted for Proposition 1A, which promised them a bullet train from Los
Angeles to San Francisco. Backers said a Concorde-like fuselage would rocket
us to the Bay Area in 21/2 hours and for the low, low fare of $55. A
Disneyland ride for grown-ups! And did we mention that it's carbon-friendly?

Invoking an amusement park is a charming touch but what is the inherent
advantage to a 2-1/2 hour trip when the flight from L.A. to San Francisco is
less than half that. 2-1/2 hours on anything, be it Space Mountain or It's
a Small World is about 2-1/4 hours too long.

The carbon-friendly claim is
dubious at best. The raw material manufactured and transported way out
there in the Central Valley (where the first leg of the project will be
built) will not be delivered on the backs of unicorns and, further, this
claim appears to be blissfully ignorant to the fact that the overwhelming
source of electricity is still coal and fossil fuels and will remain so for
the foreseeable future.



More Zoellner:

The reality has proved more problematic. The California High-Speed Rail
Authority stumbled first by promising a smooth construction schedule and a
$32-billion price tag. The ensuing lawsuits and engineering revisions have
fouled up the timeline and bumped up the price to the current reckoning of
$67.6 billion (and it'll probably be more expensive than that). The rail
authority's latest business plan assumes ever more riders and ever less
revenue but still suggests the project will ultimately be self-sustaining.

Zoellner misuses "probably" for "will" because as we all know that $68
billion price tag is only for laying down the tracks and does not even include the
stations/depots, electricity-delivering infrastructure or even the
choo-choos themselves.


Zoellner then goes on to bemoan the rapid drop in
popularity of the project over the years. There is a simple reason for
this: the rail authority lies. They lie about the cost, they lie about
the projected ridership, they lie about private funding of the project and
they lie about how the construction contractors are chosen. They are liars.
We simply don't know what other term to use. Please get back to us if you
have a better one.

Before getting into the litany of real world problems faced by high-speed
choo-choos Zoellner offers up this gem:

And yet lessons from around the world provide some hope that this romance
can be saved. High-speed rail systems generally cost far more than was
promised, take longer to build than is logical, have multiple construction
headaches and require tempestuous adjustments along the way. But once all
the drama is over and the engines are keyed, high-speed trains mostly do
outstanding work.

Admittedly, when defending the indefensible, falling back on romance is our
go-to as well.

But here is where all pretenses of legality, abiding by the rule of law and
general western-recognized trappings of a constitutional republic are cast
aside because, dammit, what we really need is some authoritarian
muscle-flexing:

Not enough Mussolini. This is an unattractive lesson: Big trains like this
get built with an autocratic touch. Japan's Shinkansen train went online in
1964 after enormous domestic resistance only because of the bluster and
persistence of an all-but-forgotten bureaucrat named Shinji Sogo, nicknamed
Old Man Thunder by his underlings.

So far in California, the high-speed rail authority has hemmed and hawed
more than blustered. It planned for an early groundbreaking, to create a
physical reality that would be hard to stop, but that's been a no go. Gov.
Jerry Brown's two-fisted support for the bullet train, and his idea of
diverting carbon cap-and-trade revenue for high-speed rail, is the kind of
sharp-elbowed move that may be the only way a project like this could ever
get built.

The biggest persistence question is this: Will there be U.S. presidents for
the next 15 years who, like Obama, will keep stimulus money flowing for the
project, even through flying flak?

Will there be a president whom for the next decade and a half will keep
throwing tens of billions of dollars into a public works black hole because
of a combination of political expediency (CA's elite statist class has gone
all in on high-speed choo-choos - their very credibility counts not on this
thing actually working, only that it gets built) and a religious-like
fanaticism towards Keynesian economic stimulus.




As we alluded to before, when you are at the end of your rope and you have
nowhere else to turn, a good bet to rally the troops is to invoke Thomas the
Tank Engine and a brutal 20th century fascist dictator who was allied with
one of the most evil regimes known to mankind. Hey, we didn't go Godwin's
Law, Zoellner did.


We imagine there was a sigh of relief when Zoellner typed Mussolini:
There, I said it. It must feel good to out yourself with respect to a yen
for unbridled and un-checked top-down authoritarianism as it's a
characteristic we've known about the liberal-left for years now.



A huge hat tip to KT of The Scratching Post for giving us the head's up on this and the following commentary on the current state of California politics:






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Getting Derailed?

Now, we all know that ethanol is perhaps the greatest tax-payer-funded boondoggle of all-time but when all is said and done the high-speed rail projects both here in California and the nationwide system proposed by the President and championed by Vice President Joe "Choo-choo" Biden may be spoken of in similar reverential tones.

However, attempting to avoid that fate are some folks like the Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, who is rejecting federal money for a rail project linking Orlando and Tampa, stating quite simply that Florida can't afford the federal government's largesse.

Moments ago I spoke with u.s. transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to inform him of my decision. I appreciate the secretary’s efforts to work with us and I look forward to working with him in the future. #

My decision to reject the project comes down to three main economic realities: #

First – capital cost overruns from the project could put Florida taxpayers on the hook for an additional $3 billion.
•Second – ridership and revenue projections are historically overly-optimistic and would likely result in ongoing subsidies that state taxpayers would have to incur. (from $300 million – $575 million over 10 years) – Note: The state subsidizes Tri-Rail $34.6 million a year while passenger revenues covers only $10.4 million of the $64 million annual operating budget.
•Finally – if the project becomes too costly for taxpayers and is shut down, the state would have to return the $2.4 billion in federal funds to D.C.

(italics, ours)

Passenger revenue only covers 1/6th of the Tri-Rail budget? Yikes.

Historic cost overruns associated with high-speed rail projects, over-inflated rider projections and the potential of being left holding the bag if the project turned sour made this one a no-brainer for the governor.

This nod to fiscal sanity must be catching as the governors of both Ohio and Wisconsin have cancelled high-speed rail projects in those states.

Our blog-buddy, Harrison at Capitol Commentary has some thoughts on the matter as well, here.

Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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Since we didn't put our marker down, we can't take any credit for seeing this one coming but we really should've seen it such was the predictableness of it all.

In what looked like merely shuffling of the deck furniture when the California High-Speed Rail Authority swapped out HMFICs, turns out to be quite juicy if you're into political intrigue, arm-twisting, conflicts of interest and cronyism.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority on Tuesday named Jeff Morales, an executive for a contractor working on the bullet train project, as its chief executive, filling a position that has been vacant since early January.

Morales, a former Caltrans director, had been working on the project as an executive of Parsons Brinckerhoff, the project manager for the rail authority.

Morales, a 1983 biology graduate of George Washington University, was appointed Caltrans director by then-Gov. Gray Davis. Morales left Caltrans 31/2 years later when Davis was voted out of office. Morales has also served as executive director of the Chicago Transit Authority, the Obama transition team and former Vice President Al Gore's attempts to improve federal efficiency.

Of course, he did.

And what of the outgoing boss?

Morales will fill the job that was last occupied by Roelof van Ark, who had shunned the political aspects of his post and attempted to focus on the engineering challenges. But that approach led to a wholesale loss of confidence in the Legislature, and ultimately Gov. Jerry Brown asserted greater control over the project, jettisoning Van Ark in January.

For the largest engineering/construction project in this nation's history and all the troubles that have befallen it, the previous paragraph illustrates perfectly how it's no longer about building the skids rather greasing them.



Back to the article:

The hiring of Morales appears to further strengthen the ties between the rail authority and its top contractor, Parsons Brinckerhoff. The contractor, which was a major contributor to the 2008 campaign to approve a $9-billion bond for the bullet train, has hundreds of employees assigned to the project, compared with fewer than 50 for the authority.

Outside activists say that although Morales may be a good choice, they are increasingly concerned about the tight relationship the authority has created with Parsons Brinckerhoff and the larger revolving door between the authority and its contractors.

"Those lines are becoming more blurred every day," said Elizabeth Alexis, a co-founder of Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design.

(italics, ours)

... further strengthen the ties...

Yes, that would be one way of putting it.



Skepticism is bipartisan:

"The rail authority claims it conducted a nationwide search just to end up with an executive from its biggest contractor?" asked state Sen. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale). "How can we expect this insider to provide an independent review of the project, when he helped write the plan that's already doubled the cost to taxpayers? It's difficult to believe that Mr. Morales can be counted on to drive a hard bargain with the company that has been paying his salary."

Senate transportation committee Chairman Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said, "I am troubled by the relationship. It is hard to separate the conflicts."

Good god. Does this all stink to high heaven or what? Massively over-budget, massively behind schedule and massively understaffed so they do the only thing they can do at this point: they bring in a politically-connected fixer from the project's largest contractor to get this thing done by hook or by crook regardless of the shady appearances it bears.

Of course, they did. Of course, they did. And we never saw it coming. Shame on us.

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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.

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.