The answer to the question posed by the article's title, "Should California Put Its High-Speed Rail Project on Hold?" is no.
It should be terminated. Look, as you read the article, note that there is more of a preoccupation about "what-if-they-don't-finish-what-they-start" than ever before.
The rail authority claims that it will start in the Central Valley and grow the system, like the growth of a Giant Sequoia tree in California. However, most of the media are now contemplating the likelihood of a Plan B, truncated version, for which the rail authority has nothing on paper, or even as an intention.
The rail authority has persistently ignored risk-management, thereby putting their project at enormous risk. They are hurtling toward a brick wall (no more funding) like an express train, pretending that the wall will be dismantled just in time (getting further funding). Big mistake.
Some people say, start in the population regions, and at least build something useful, even if it never becomes actual HSR. Meanwhile, the orthodox HSR advocates go along with the rail authority and say that building it in the Central Valley is just the right thing to do for starters. Either way, it's not that simple a choice.
There are reasons for starting in the low population region, and there are reasons for building "commuter" segments in the population centers. But, in both cases, the consideration that the rail authority will start, blow through its cash and then grind to a stop, has become a serous likelihood. In that case, kill the project now, before there is a need for any Plan B. That is pretty much what the LAO report has suggested.
Both options, starting construction in the middle or starting at the ends of the rail system, because they will be 'the end of the line,' not the beginning, should not even happen. If building high-speed rail systems in the US have not had a cost-benefit analysis from the FRA yet (they haven't), and they won't get one now, that's for sure, it shouldn't happen. The DOT in Washington should put a halt to the program and California should put a halt, not a hold, on its HSR project.
Any of the sections intended to get built now will be unnecessary and a huge waste of funding resources better dedicated to crisis issues which abound in California. We don't need a useless 100 miles of track in the Central Valley; track that will cost around $6 billion or more.
We don't need new and additional fast commuter rail in the population areas until we have comprehensive plans about how those trains are to be integrated into the regional public mass transit system. Oh, and the city alternatives are financially out of reach for the rail authority anyhow since they don't have sufficient funding for any of that. That's a primary reason for starting in the Valley where the per mile costs are lower and there's less political resistance (yet).
That leaves only one conclusion, given the absence of a Plan B that's affordable and usable. Don't even start. Here's another reason. The entire HSR system in California, fully operating, will take at the very least ten years to complete. By then, it will have cost way north of $100 billion. And the system will be obsolete. (No, it's nothing like the Interstate Highway system to which it is always compared.)
Furthermore, the vast population explosion we are constantly promised may not take place; and if it does, it certainly won't be the population that can afford those top of the line, expensive train tickets to ride on a luxury train.
Building just a few pieces makes no sense whatsoever. Building the whole thing also makes no sense since it's far too expensive to build and operate, and it won't have adequate/justifiable use.
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http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/05/23/should-california-put-its-high-speed-rail-project-on-hold/
HIGH SPEED RAIL
ONGOING DEBATES
Should California Put Its High-Speed Rail Project on Hold?
Posted on Monday May 23rd
by Eric Jaffe
California’s fast train recently got a $300 million boost from its federal friends, but the high didn’t last long. Soon the state’s high-speed rail authority drew criticism by announcing it would reconsider the agreed-upon route of the planned line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Now an independent report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office suggests the authority may be unfit to handle the project at all:
We have concluded that the current governance structure for the project is no longer appropriate and is too weak to ensure that this mega–project is coordinated and managed effectively. …
[W]e recommend that the Legislature remove decision-making authority over the high-speed rail project from the HSRA [the high-speed rail authority] board to ensure that the state’s overall interests, including state fiscal concerns, are fully taken into account as the project is developed.
In addition to new leadership, the report recommends a full reconsideration of where construction should begin. The report suggests starting with a line stretching outward from a major city, like Los Angeles, so that if all goes wrong a commuter line can at least be salvaged from the effort.
Present plans call for the first segment to be built in the Central Valley, between Fresno and Bakersfield — prompting cries that taxpayers are funding a “train to nowhere.” Many of those cries have come from the Washington Post, which sees the new report as a chance to abandon the project altogether:
Fifteen years have passed, and millions of dollars have been spent on studies since the state first passed a law creating a high-speed rail program. Yet after all that, no one really knows whether it’s worth doing. If no one has come up with a convincing rationale by now, maybe there isn’t one.
California’s own newspapers adopted a more measured response. The San Francisco Chronicle acknowledged the wisdom of postponing construction to consider some aspects of the line more thoroughly, but still concludes that canceling the project would be a “myopic mistake.” Similarly, the Los Angeles Times believes the project’s “benefits still outweigh the costs” but embraces the recommendation of a new starting point:
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 a change might make sense to writers in Los Angeles or San Francisco, but others who have followed the project closely defend the Central Valley as a logical starting point.
Yonah Freemark writes that the idea of starting construction in Los Angeles “misunderstands the value of high-speed rail.” Without the speedy stretch of track in the center of the state, writes Freemark, the system would be reduced to a “series of improved commuter lines.” The California High-Speed Rail blog, which calls the Central Valley “the spine” of the project, makes a similar point.
If California truly wants a statewide rail system, then reconsidering the starting point of its fast train is a very slippery slope. At best it undermines billions in federal funding secured by the project to date; at worst, it represents an attempt by the state’s two chief cities to exploit federal money for what amounts to a local project. Such a move would also set up the system for a Florida-like failure.
After all, Florida’s abandoned fast train was ultimately intended to be statewide as well, but a chief criticism of the Tampa-Orlando opening segment was that the distance between those cities, just 85 miles apart, was not great enough to compete with car travel — thereby reducing it to a monorail for Disney World. The distance from Los Angeles to Anaheim (home, of course, to Disneyland)? About 25 miles.
