Here are some letters from the Contra Costa Times and the LA Times. Most of the towns of these letter writers for the CC Times are in the suburbs of the Bay Area.
The last few are from Los Angeles.
Their collective message is clear and unambiguous. California's population is concentrated in the Bay Area inland and up toward Sacramento at the northern end, and from the Los Angeles Basin inland and down to San Diego at the southern end of the state.
Shouldn't that be where public mass transit gets developed? The higher the population concentration, the greater the demand for transit. There can be no greater waste of taxpayer dollars than connecting the two population regions while neglecting those regions themselves. And, not merely connecting them with rail, but with the most expensive, luxurious rail money can buy.
How outrageous is that!!
What is now needed is for everyoneone of us in this state to write similar letters to their newspapers. More is better. At some point these will reach critical mass. When the newspapers are flooded with such letters, they will be obliged to publish ever more of them.
Our elected officials read the papers. They want to get re-elected.
This is bound to eventually influence the editorial position, since these papers depend upon circulation and therefore on all the letter writers voicing their public opinions.
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Contra Costa Times Sunday Forum: Forum writers think high-speed rail a waste of money
Letters from our readers
Contra Costa Times
© Copyright 2011, Bay Area News Group
Posted: 05/21/2011 04:00:00 PM PDT]\
Huge mistake
High-speed rail would be a huge mistake for California and an unending tax burden.
HSR loses money everywhere in the world. There is not one system that has paid back its initial investment, and there never will be. There is no prospect of raising $100 billion to build the system, and no way to pay the money back. You can build several new airports for $100 billion, and they don't lose money.
HSR will not relieve urban congestion, because congestion is not caused by long-distance travel.
HSR trains are not "green" if they are empty. California's geography is simply wrong for HSR. Our major cities are too far apart, and there is nothing in between but hills that will cost billions to climb. I am not interested in detouring through Fresno on the way to Los Angeles.
Any infrastructure project will create jobs. But high-speed rail technology comes from Asia and Europe, and that's where the best jobs will go.
Our parks are closing, our schools are firing teachers, our freeways and roads are falling apart, and our transit systems are broke. If we have $100 billion, let's spend it on what we need, not on a money-losing toy.
Dan Smith
Moraga
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Boondoggle
Heck no! Can nobody cut off the head of this snake? The latest is a report from the Legislative Analyst's Office that "found that the California High-Speed Rail Authority's management was inadequate to guarantee that the rail's first phase ... would be developed successfully." That's just the first phase. What about the rest?
From the very beginning, everything about this boondoggle has been wrong. The initial cost estimate has already risen by 57 percent, and they haven't driven a spike yet.
The authority said the system would carry 94 million passengers a year. That's nearly three trips for every man, woman and child in the state and more than 15 times the number who fly the route each year.
They said the fare would be $55. Experience with successful trains in France and Japan put the figure closer to $200; more than twice the cost of airfare. I could go on, but you get the idea.
The Bay Area News Group should take this crusade on like it did government payroll information. With its help, you and I must demand from our legislators in Sacramento that they kill this monster before more millions are wasted.
Pat Tuohy
San Ramon
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Wrong project
What did high-speed rail buy with the $10 billion approved by taxpayers? There have only been plans for:
A segment from nowhere to nowhere, with no expected passengers.
Noisy elevated tracks on the Peninsula, which local residents object to.
More funds -- about $50 billion -- for a train that will take passengers from airlines, unless you believe propaganda that traffic between SFO and LAX will double by the time HSR is working, ignoring a possible state "double dip" recession.
Even if you believe all their lies, HSR success depends on taking business travelers away from airlines. HSR success will end SFO-LAX airline business.
But, airlines know there is no chance HSR, moving at half the speed over a longer distance, will be viable. Gov. Jerry Brown must declare: "no train subsidies." That will end this nightmare.
What we do need is high-speed cargo rail between Oakland and the Midwest, with an initial destination in Chicago. That would lower production costs. More than 90 percent of cargo containers returned from the East Coast were unloaded on the West Coast. Faster deliveries at less cost help most national factories. If nothing is changed, nothing will change.
Michael F. Sarabia
Concord
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Not needed
Apparently, we don't need high-speed rail. Businesses are leaving the state fast enough already.
Al Sartor
Walnut Creek
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Dumb idea
No! It was dumb in November 2008, and with an out-of-control state budget today, it is still dumb, with high unknown costs.
The Chinese built their Beijing-Tianjin line at a cost of $46 million per mile. Union labor in California is more than in China. We have greater environmental implementation costs and controls.
We do not have the government control China has to push through high-speed rail.
In California, every mile will be litigated. We would be lucky to build at $460 million per mile. At that cost, 100 miles would cost $46 billion, more than the High Speed Rail Authority's high cost estimate of the total system.
The federal government's offering funds on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, which could lead to hasty decisions to get funds that need to be matched.
The state legislative analyst concluded the governmental structure of the $43 billion project is too weak to manage development.
With weak management, no clear-cut need for the project, unknown costs and the goal of implementing the first profitable high-speed rail system in U.S. history, this is a project to put on a railroad siding.
Gregg Manning
Clayton
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Costly fantasy
Thank you for the editorial on May 17 regarding the foolishness of California's proposed high-speed rail system.
I was dumbfounded in 2008 when I learned the majority of California voters were in favor of the high-speed train. Here we are, three years later, still without a clue as to how to proceed with this rail system that we don't need and only a very small group will use, but will continue to be a tax burden to the entire state for years to come.
California needs to get it's priorities in line and stop fussing over an absent-minded high-speed fantasy.
Angela Hiteshew
Concord
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Rail folly
Thanks for the intelligent editorial that details the folly of high-speed rail. With our infrastructure crumbling around us and all of our immense economic problems, it is nothing short of mind-blowing that the electorate thinks this is a good time to put $9 billion of seed money into this pipe dream.
Tony Gillman
Lafayette
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Unrealistic
Over the past two weeks, the N.Y. Times, Wall Street Journal and our own Times have strongly debunked high-speed rail in California and urged our state legislators to kill the project now.
Besides the estimated $42.6 billion (maybe as high as $67 billion) cost, the latest concern highlighted by the WSJ is the rail authority's estimated annual operating budget of $1 billion, which the state Legislative Analyst's Office calls shaky at best.
When the cost overruns occur (as they always do), the state must make up the gap with the inevitable subsidies (think Amtrak and U.S. Postal Service). This does little to instill confidence in private investors whose lack of support will bury this project.
This is a massive big-money play by the unions and politicians. Our state does not need the "Train to Nowhere" anymore than Alaska needed its bridge.
We can use the scarce state funds allocated to this project in much more effective ways. I hope the optimistic bias for high-speed rail has morphed into reality and our legislators can take the same responsible approach as Florida and politely return the federal funding and let Corcoran focus on farming.
Mark Zuercher
Orinda
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And here are several letters from the LA Times. Same theme. I'm particularly impressed with the suggestion in the first letter that Diesel trains pull the high-speed rail cars (and their locomotives?) from the Central Valley, starting at the northern end of the rail line to San Francisco, and the southern "end" of the rail line to Anaheim. I can't wait to get that concept into the HSR suggestion box.
These letters are in response to the May 16th editorial, which you can find in these earlier blog entries.
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In 2008, Californians voted for a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, not local commuter rail improvements, to which The Times suggests some of the federal money for high-speed rail be redirected.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority is starting in the Central Valley because of geographic and financial realities. It is hardly a "train to nowhere."
Bullet trains will be able to slow at the northern end and continue to the Bay Area and Sacramento behind a diesel locomotive on existing tracks as an interim solution. This gets us closest in the least amount of time to a viable, statewide high-speed service.
Roger Rudick
Los Angeles
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We all know that the lure of billions in federal dollars is irresistible, just like free samples from a drug dealer. We need to kill this project before billions more taxpayer dollars are wasted.
At a time when existing infrastructure is falling apart due to less money for maintenance, and our educational system is being savaged for the same reason, how can we think of burdening the future with the cost of a system that not enough people would use? Is it insanity or just stupidity that propels this project onward like a runaway train?
Murry I. Rozansky
Chatsworth
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Your editorial didn't address one question: whether we are capable of completing such a project in our lifetime.
I live near the 405 Freeway and have watched in wonder and amazement as attempts have been made to widen the freeway.
If it takes many years to widen a couple of miles of freeway, how long will it take to build a high-speed rail system hundreds of miles long?
David Amitai
Los Angeles
