Two articles, both related to federal funding and what may happen this year.
Here's my position on this. I have pretty much given up hope of having any resolution for HSR to come from Sacramento. Both the Legislature majority and the Governor are Democrat. They are all determined to bring federal dollars into California, regardless of the purpose or efficacy of the programs for which the funding is intended.
While I'm not optimistic, I am hopeful that the new Republicans in Congress will -- Carpe Diem -- seize the day. They have said they will seek to rescind any unspent ARRA funds, including those earmarked for HSR. If that's unsuccessful, they will certainly constrain any future HSR funding availability. If they do this, it will go a long way in restricting further HSR development in most states and particularly in California.
The HSR program and Vision, in my mind, deserves to have a stake driven through its evil heart. That may be too much to ask for from Washington, and I'm certainly not expecting any help from any part of our state government. Even most of our local so-called HSR opposers and local electeds are waffling about this project. All those avid HSR supporters that bandy the term NIMBY around as if there has been an alien NIMBY invasion of the Earth, are grossly exaggerating the amount of opposition this project is receiving.
About Ken Orski's editorial, the second article, below.
Orski is well worth reading about HSR. Even though I may disagree with him about one point or another, I still believe him to have a good grasp of the situation at the national and political level, as well as at the state level. (I wish he were correct when he says, "The high-speed rail program, with its relatively small political constituency and modest grass roots support, . . . . " I have to beg to differ with him, since I believe the support for HSR is huge, both at private corporate levels such as among developers and the rail industries and the Unions, and among the majority of Democrats at the various political levels.)
I realize that this is a lot of reading, but it cannot merely be summarized in a glib sentence or two. We are wrestling with a hugely complex problem and need to understand it in as much detail as possible. For example, you may ask what we in California should care about high-speed rail at the national level or within the other states.
Please note how Illinois continues to be on the receiving end of HSR funds, even though they have no HSR plans; they merely intend to upgrade to their existing Amtrak system. What is that about? Is the Obama White House favoring Illinois since that's where key players, beginning with the President, come from? LaHood and Szabo are also from Illinois. Rahm Emanuel, former WH chief of staff, is now running for Mayor of Chicago. What's my point? The Administration is willing to spend "high-speed rail" funds even if there's no high-speed rail on the horizon; in short, this money is political pork. It's not about the train; it's about the money!!!!!
We should also care about this because the funding source for making this project possible in California is in Washington, and what the other states are doing affects this project and us profoundly. Note that the two Governors' decisions in Ohio and Wisconsin made it possible for the CHSRA to extend the Central Valley rail corridor further south, almost to Bakersfield, because they were granted an additional $600 million that those two states had rejected.
Stay fully informed.
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http://www.joc.com/government-regulation/dot-stimulus-payouts-reach-246-billion
DOT Stimulus Payouts Reach $24.6 Billion
John D. Boyd | Jan 4, 2011 3:13PM GMT
The Journal of Commerce Online - News Story
•Washington | Government + Regulation | United States
Department obligates $1 billion more of Recovery Act funds
The Department of Transportation pushed the level of its payouts from the 2009 economic stimulus package to $24.56 billion through Dec. 24, and obligated more than a billion dollars of remaining funds in the latest week.
The figures, listed on the Obama administration's Recovery.gov Web site, show the DOT reimbursed states nearly $1 billion in the first three weeks of December for transportation project work they had completed.
That also came as Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a series of agreements in recent weeks that can put more stimulus money to work on projects ranging from intermodal corridor programs for CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway in the East, to a complex track separation project for BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad in Southern California that can help the big container ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which became law Feb. 17, 2009, the DOT could spread $48 billion among states for a range of infrastructure work, mostly roads and bridges but including airport and transit aid, inter-city passenger rail development and special grants for freight or commuter projects the DOT deemed of special national or regional importance.
It reimburses states once work is complete, so payout level has now gone past the halfway mark as thousands of projects have wrapped up. Thousands more are under way, but others are waiting for federal and state agencies to conclude detailed negotiations.
As 2010 was ending and a budget-cutting Republican majority was about to take control of the House of Representatives, the DOT has been pushing to wrap up implementing contracts to formally obligate more of the remaining money. As of Dec. 17, it had obligated $40.8 billion, near the same level it has maintained in recent months and $7 billion short of its total, but by Dec. 24 it had finalized agreements that raised it to $42 billion.
That included a deal with Illinois and UP that cleared the way for the remaining $1.1 billion of a total $1.2 billion grant package the DOT previously approved for passenger rail upgrades on UP tracks between Chicago and St. Louis. UP has already been doing a lot of work on some of that route, including signal and track improvements, to get the route ready for what will eventually be an Amtrak corridor with top speeds of 110 mph. [edit. See further discussion of this in Ken Orski's article, below.]
Most of the remaining $6 billion in unobligated DOT stimulus funds falls under the intercity passenger train program, and some GOP members of Congress have suggested they may try to halt that spending.
-- Contact John D. Boyd at jboyd@joc.com.
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Vol. 22, No. 1
January 5, 2011
The Uncertain Future of the High-Speed Rail Program
An Editorial Point of View
The Illinois Department of Transportation has reached a cooperative agreement with Union Pacific and Amtrak that permits the release of a $1.1 billion federal high-speed rail grant to the state of Illinois to fund passenger rail improvements between Chicago and St. Louis. The agreement was proclaimed by state and federal officials as "historic" and hailed as "one giant step closer to achieving high-speed passenger service between Chicago and St. Louis." But stripped of its rhetoric, the announcement only reveals how exaggerated that claim in fact is and how cost-ineffective and wasteful the Administration's "high--speed" program is turning out to be.
The billion dollar program of improvements, to be completed by 2014, will enable "higher-speed" trains to travel between Chicago and St. Louis, a distance of 284 miles, in 4 hours and 32 minutes, cutting present trip time by 48 minutes according to the announcement. As the Springfield Journal Register pointedly observed, that is 22 minutes longer than the trip time of 4 hours and 10 minutes promised in the original grant application and in a White House press release announcing the project last January.
Currently Amtrak operates passenger service between Chicago and St. Louis at an average speed of 53 mph. The announcement is silent about the expected increase in average speed when the project is completed but our calculations show that the planned track upgrades would raise average speeds to roughly 63 mph. In other words, the billion dollar project will result in increasing the average train speed merely by 10 miles per hour.
From what we can read between the lines, Union Pacific drove a hard bargain as a condition of signing the cooperative agreement. "Our priority in working out this agreement," the company‚s CEO, Jim Young said in a prepared statement, "was to protect Union Pacific‚s ability to provide the exceptional freight service our customers need and expect. ... This agreement allows us to deliver on those customer commitments." The message is clear: UP‚s freight operations will take precedence over passenger rail operations. The route, we are told, needs to accommodate as many as 22 freight trains a day ultimately.
Union Pacific also seems to have won out on another contentious issue. The cooperative agreement is silent about any penalties the railroad might face if on-time performance standards for passenger service are not met ˆ a condition that the Federal Railroad Administration had insisted upon in its initial (and later withdrawn) guidelines concerning the terms of the cooperative agreements.
The Illinois announcement, released two weeks before a new Congress takes office, was meant to give a boost to a program that by all accounts is barely limping along. The record speaks for itself.
Item: Two major high-speed rail projects ˜ in Wisconsin and Ohio˜ have been cancelled by the incoming governors because of an excessive cost burden the operation of the new rail services would have imposed on state taxpayers.
Item: The Florida Tampa-to-Orlando high-speed line is still in doubt as Gov. Rick Scott ponders the project's cost and financial impact. His verdict is due in February but, with Florida's budget deficit at $3.5 billion, the Governor says all state agencies, including the Department of Transportation and its Florida Rail Enterprise, will have to justify every penny they want to spend. This involves a state match of $280 million plus future operating costs of the high-speed passenger service. The 84-mile line with its four stops has been described by TIME magazine's Michael Grunwald as having the feel of a "glorified Disney shuttle" --- too short and too slow to earn the distinction of a bullet train. As one bus industry executive observed, this is a market more suitable for a "Megabus"-type of intercity luxury bus service which could be provided at no cost to the Florida taxpayers. We think the Governor would be well advised to consider the express bus alternative before embarking on a $2.7 billion rail project.
Item: The California high-speed rail program, with its starter line in the sparsely populated Central Valley, has been dubbed as "the railroad to nowhere." "It defies logic and common sense to have the train start and stop in remote areas that have no hope of attaining the ridership needed to justify the cost of the project," U.S. Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) wrote in a November 30 letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Thanks to an additional federal grant of $616 million, part of the funds previously allocated to the states of Wisconsin and Ohio, the originally planned 65-mile line "from nowhere to nowhere" would now be extended from the tiny town of Borden north of Fresno to Bakersfield, a city of 339,000 in the southern portion of the valley. Although the California High-Speed Rail Authority views this as only a first step in "a continuous process which should logically lead to the completion of the whole network" connecting Los Angeles with Sacramento and the Bay Area, that vision leaves many observers unconvinced. As a Wall Street Journal editorial concluded, "a realistic concern is that the state will have to terminate the project after completing the first segment because the feds and private investors won't pay to finish it." (WSJ, December 11, 2010). The price tag to complete the system is estimated at $43 billion. Strong community opposition at both ends of the line may also prove to be an obstacle to building the full network.
Item: a number of HSR cooperative agreements (NC, NY, MI, WA, IA) remain stalled in contentious negotiations with the affected Class 1 railroads which object to burdensome conditions and requirements desired by the government, such as mandatory automatic train control and penalties for not meeting on-time performance.
Given this state of affairs, it‚s not surprising that the Administration would wish to portray the Illinois project as a "giant step forward," hoping to build political momentum behind the program and refute the widely held impression that the high-speed rail initiative is on its last legs.
Whether the program can regain momentum, will depend largely on U.S.Congress. To the incoming Republican lawmakers, eager to make good on their promise to cut federal spending, any unspent HSR funds will present a tempting target for rescission. As of January 1, 2011 only $4.23 billion of the $8 billion in ARRA funds were obligated according to the Federal Transit Administration (
As for future funding, an early test will come when the President submits his FY 2012 budget proposal in early March. Will his budget request contain funds for high-speed rail and what will the Congressional reaction to it be? "Predictable revenues rather than undocumented 'needs' will dictate the level of future transportation budgets," a senior congressional aide told us, suggesting that spending for programs that "aren't working" (his words) will need to be cut and investments prioritized so that the Highway Trust Fund can remain solvent. The high-speed rail program, with its relatively small political constituency and modest grass roots support, and with little to show for in terms of concrete accomplishments or demonstrable benefits, will be at a severe disadvantage when competing for limited resources against highways and transit in future congressional appropriations. Adding to the uncertainty facing the HSR initiative is Congressman Mica's announced intent to revisit the program and refocus it in ways that, in his words, "makes sense."
As Congress heads back to Washington this week and with Republicans poised to take control of the House, high-speed rail advocates will have little to cheer about.
Kenneth Orski
Editor/Publisher
Innovation NewsBriefs
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