Let's start right in by saying that we totally disagree with this Los Angeles Times editorial. Their advocacy for continued support of the California high-speed rail project has no substantive basis.
Let me put this more bluntly. Whoever wrote this editorial knows next to nothing about this project, getting many of the facts wrong (It's not between Borden and Corcoran any longer, it's not a $43 billion price-tag any longer, it wasn't the Rail Board's decision to start in the CV, etc.). But, that's not important.
However, they are wrong with their conception that while the California project has been grossly mismanaged (and that's correct) it should be done over by somebody else, and should be built, along with all the other HSR trains that will "crisscross the nation." Presumably, it will therefore never again be mismanaged.
I don't want to get into a litany of why the LA Times gets it so wrong. That has been the entire point of these blogs. There is an ocean of dis- and mis-information out there. But their notion that "we can and should do it better" is so erroneous that we need to state categorically that it cannot be done better; that it is doomed to be done the way it is now being done, because conceptually, high-speed rail for our state, or for our nation, is an obsolete, redundant transit modality that is totally unnecessary, even if it were to be built by stingy nice guys who don't lie and cheat.
The LA Times fails to grasp the real politics of this enterprise; that is, it's not about the train. It's about political pork, claiming to benefit the economy, the environment and the country, when it will do none of those things. It's about Democrats winning the elections in 2012 with slogans about winning the future (with other countries' technologies).
Vast multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects may be behind us. We recently learned that we will no longer be building large dams, like Hoover or Grand Coulee. We, in the US, are done.
The Chinese just built their Three Gorges Dam and like everything else they do, it's the biggest in the world, producing the greatest amount of electric power in the world. But, remember, they have, by far, the largest population in the world as well. They are about to build mega-cities from the ground up four times the size of New York City. We may well be moving beyond all such grandiose, single infrastructure technologies. Our future networks will be virtual.
The LA Times is, unfortunately, caught up in times past and can't see the future.
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latimes.com
Editorial
California's high-speed train wreck
The state's plan to build a bullet train has become a monument to the ways poor planning, mismanagement and political interference can screw up major public works. We can do better.
May 16, 2011
California's much-vaunted high-speed rail project is, to put it bluntly, a train wreck. Intended to demonstrate the state's commitment to sustainable, cutting-edge transportation systems, and to show that the U.S. can build rail networks as sophisticated as those in Europe and Asia, it is instead a monument to the ways poor planning, mismanagement and political interference can screw up major public works. For anti-government conservatives, it is also a powerful argument for scrapping President Obama's national rail plans, rescinding federal funding and canceling the project before any more money is wasted on it.
We couldn't disagree more. We pointed out back in 2008, before voters approved nearly $10 billion in state bonds to fund the project under Proposition 1A, that it would be more expensive and difficult to build than its backers were letting on. But we endorsed it anyway because of the economic and environmental benefits the train could bring. The benefits still outweigh the costs, and none of the $43-billion project's troubles are insurmountable. Fortunately, a report last week from the state Legislative Analyst's Office offers strong recommendations for getting the system back on track.
The train's biggest problems can be laid at the feet of the High Speed Rail Authority, which is overseeing its construction. Inexperienced board members appointed by the governor and Legislature on the basis of political patronage rather than expertise have made a host of poor decisions. Not the least boneheaded of these is the board's plan to take a circuitous route from Los Angeles to Bakersfield by veering through Palmdale and Lancaster. Compared with the more direct route along Interstate 5 through the Grapevine, this would add 30 miles to the trip plus $1 billion in construction costs, and make it all but impossible for the train to meet its promised travel time of 2 hours and 40 minutes from L.A. to San Francisco. The legislative analyst calls for slashing the authority's proposed budget for next year by $185 million and eventually eliminating it, transferring the bullet train's oversight to another agency. We heartily agree.
Not all of the bad decisions can be blamed on the rail authority. To qualify for federal funds, planners had to agree to break ground by 2012. With political battles raging throughout the state over routing decisions, federal officials deemed that the only segment that would be ready for construction so quickly was in the sparsely populated Central Valley. As a result, the bulk of the $3.5 billion kicked in by the Obama administration must be spent on a train running between the tiny towns of Borden and Corcoran.
Ridership on this initial segment would be slight, making it impossible to operate the train without taxpayer subsidies. Yet under the terms of Proposition 1A, the state can't issue bonds to pay for the project unless it has been demonstrated to be self-sufficient. What's more, if federal and other funds for further construction dry up, California could end up with an expensive train to nowhere.
The only practical way out of this mess is to follow the legislative analyst's advice and start over, renegotiating terms with the federal government and building the initial segment in a more populous area, such as between San Francisco and San Jose or between Los Angeles and Anaheim. That way, even if the rest of the line is never built, we'd still end up with a heavily used urban rail line. Such renegotiation could jeopardize federal funding and delay construction, but the needless haste created by Washington's arbitrary deadlines have resulted in mistakes that could be extremely costly.
Obama's inspiring vision of a nation crisscrossed by bullet trains, providing cleaner, safer and cheaper competition to airlines and reducing reliance on gas-guzzling automobiles, is in serious jeopardy as a new Republican majority in the House looks to slash his funding plans. In this environment, California is a test case for whether high-speed trains can succeed in the U.S. — and so far, the state is failing the test.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
