The CHSRA would have you believe that fatal accidents have never occurred with high-speed trains.  That is not correct.  Just Google this to learn about it.  The fact is that accidents can and do happen.

In this case in Germany last evening the train was an express, not a high-speed train.  It collided with a freight.  Could that happen here, in California?

High-speed rail must not be built anywhere near freight rail. . . EVER!  Not in the same corridor; not in proximate corridors.

Freight trains do derail and tumble all over a rail right of way. We've seen dozens of photos of such events in the newspapers and on TV.  Needless to say, HSR goes very fast.  Their interaction would be horrific.

We are also assured that this can't happen because of positive train controls.  I would respond by saying that a zero-defect system is theoretical, not real.

Where was all that highly touted positive train control (PTC) made by Siemens that the Germans are famous for?

==================================


Emergency staff work at the scene of the accident early on Sundayhttp://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/01/29/german.train.collision/index.html?hpt=T2

Police: Train collision in Germany kills 10

By the CNN Wire Staff

January 30, 2011 12:27 a.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

10 killed and 43 injured in train collision in eastern Germany

The accident occurs near the town of Oschersleben in Saxony-Anhalt

The cause of the crash is unknown

Germany

(CNN) -- Ten people were killed and 43 were injured, 18 seriously, when two trains collided in eastern Germany late Saturday, a Magdeburg Police spokesman said.

The crash between a regional HarzElbeExpress passenger train and a freight train occurred less than two miles from the nearby town of Oschersleben shortly after 10:30 p.m. local time.

Portions of the train burned in the snow for about two hours.

Video showed rescue workers and investigators combing the wreckage and overturned cars.

Officials said many passengers were thrown from the train after the incident. The cause is unknown.

Investigators and emergency crews were at the scene early Sunday.

Is HSR for the classes or the masses? See China.

I don't read the Hindustan Times that often, but here is an article about rail travel in China that is dated tomorrow, January 30.  You can't get more current than that.  This article is about taking trains in China and how much fun it is. 

To begin with, we are talking about four times more people than live in the US.  1.5 billion.  And, China, for all it's rush to economic success and burgeoning wealth, remains a poor per capita country with an average income of around $5,000.   That's why they make all our stuff for cheap.

Therefore their need for public transit, both inner- and inter-city, is absolutely immense.  By comparison, the US is barely settled.  While China rushes to pour its newly acquired billions into not only rail, but highway, airport, automobile and aircraft construction, it can barely meet the overwhelming demand.  We are in a situation nothing even remotely close to that.  Nor will we be. China is in the midst of its Industrial Revolution.  The US is struggling in a post-Industrial phase of its evolution.

As you know, the Board members of the CHSRA have taken many luxury junkets to various high-speed rail countries, including China.  These tours are sponsored by the countries and their national industries that build these trains, in the hope of winning a fat contract from the rail authority.  Do you believe that our Board members were ever exposed to the harsh realities described in this article?  When Mr. Diridon proclaims how wonderful elevated trains are by citing examples in China, and I'm sure he had several trips, I have to wonder on what planet he exists on and how remote from reality he is.

Clearly, high-speed rail is as much a luxury for the upper classes in China as it will be here in the US.  That is what this CHSRA Board wishes to construct.  And, it is aimed at the upper class potential rail riding population whose favor they curry.

There have been many comments in the press about how President Obama neglected a single mention of poverty and the growing number of poor people in the US, and what our government should be doing to help them.  Yet, he enthusiastically advocates high-speed rail as a panacea for the economic retardation of the US vis-a-vis other countries, such as China. The ironies of all this should escape no one. 

HSR is not for the poor or even for the working class of Americans or Chinese.  HSR is for the well to do in both countries.  What kind of country devotes its resources for the classes at the top to the neglect of the classes at middle and the bottom?

This is a question appropriate for Democrats -- the party of the working person -- such as myself. Why are we not supporting urban and regional commuter rail development that benefits most of our working population?  Why are we supporting the creation of a devastatingly expensive inter-city luxury train that will only benefit those who can afford the premium tickets and who least need it?  Does the corporate managerial class require more transit options?  Are their Gulfstreams insufficient?

Please let us be as realistic as possible about the potential market for high-speed rail in the US.  Who will be the customers?  And who will not be customers?  When considered in this light, it is a shameful prospect.

===============================

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Half-of-China-on-the-move/Article1-656279.aspx

Hindustan Times

Reshma Patil,

Sunday, January 30, 3011

Beijing, January 30, 2011

Half of China on the move

The last ticket sold out as Chen Weiwei shuffled to third in queue at an eastern railway station where he waited for 14 hours from January 17-18. The enraged migrant stripped in the biting cold and stormed the station director's office to become an overnight national sensation.

Seven hundred million migrants, half the people of the most populous nation, are going home to wait for the lunar year of the rabbit. About 230 million, 12.5% more than last year, are boarding trains ahead of China's most politically charged holiday.

Outside the Beijing railway station, an unstoppable surge of passengers bending against the minus ten degree wind is on the move heaving suitcases, sacks and plastic paint cans stuffed with clothing in the largest annual migration on the planet. “Keep going straight!” passengers shouted as they were separated.

Women pressed against the walls peddled notebook-sized folding stools. For tens of millions boarding trains with supplies of instant noodles and roast duck, a ‘standing ticket’ and a 10-yuan (R70) stool will be their seat on journeys that may last three days across the world's fastest growing high-speed rail tracks.

“Even a fat person can sit on this,” said saleswoman Wang Juan.

During a 40-day peak that strains Chinese transport to the seams, migrants will make 2.85 billion journeys by road, rail and air for ritual family reunions with dumplings, firecrackers and red lanterns for the spring festival — chunyun — on February 3.

This year, China will invest $106 billion in railways and 70 inter-city projects, the People's Daily announced recently.

The mega investment is an irony for Sun Liyue, 33, who is not taking the train from Beijing to Xinjiang in the remote northwest because the 900-1,200 yuan ticket (R6,300-8,400) is pricey for a salesman's salary. "I have gone home twice in the past 15 years,'' Sun told HT. "The train ticket is really expensive and hard to get.''

“Returning home for spring festival, a long-standing tradition in China, now appears to be an unaffordable luxury,” said a recent Global Times editorial.

Software professional Zhao Shan, 29, would wake up at 6am and queue 'cold and hungry' for three hours for a ticket on the train to Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia, where her family will welcome the rabbit around a blaze of piles of coal. "I waited 15 days for one ticket,'' she told HT.

By 2010, China had 91,000 km train tracks compared to India's denser network of 63,327 km. It's still not long enough, but questions are being raised. Does China need more bullet trains or more affordable slow trains?

The latest launch of a Shanghai-Chengdu high-speed train where the best berth costs as much as an airline ticket immediately sparked a backlash against bullet trains.

The Chinese railroad will stretch to 120,000 km to its farthest borders and beyond to Singapore, and Vietnam, in five years. By 2012, China will have 13,000 km high-speed rail tracks, up from 8,358 km today, already the world's longest network. By 2015, the high-speed tracks will double to 16,000 km.

In June, the 33-billion-dollar 1,318 km Beijing-Shanghai bullet train will be launched a year ahead of schedule and just three years after Beijing rolled out its first 30-minute bullet train to Tianjin. Shooting at 380 kmph, the Beijing-Shanghai train will cut the 10-hour journey to under five hours. The world's fastest long-distance bullet train connecting southern Guangzhou with central Wuhan is not yet a year old and Chinese engineers are planning trains topping 500 kmph.

The masses are not marvelling at the rail revolution. "High-speed trains can't help relieve the stress on the railway system during this peak travel season as high-speed rail prices are unaffordable to migrant workers, and fast trains skip many small stations where their homes are located,'' said the People's Daily.

Authorities are aware that a ticket scramble and snowstorms can spark mass protests against the government policies and income inequalities. "If Chen could get a ticket by going naked, I will seriously consider doing the same thing next year,'' migrant worker Gui Yi, 24, told the China Daily.

In a mood to appease, President Hu Jintao has made a publicised visit to a low-income housing community.

India does not plan to build high-speed rail before 2012. The challenge, from China’s experience, is pricing a ticket.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/656279.aspx

© Copyright 2010 Hindustan Times

The Trains in Spain Fail Mainly in the Plains

Let's hear no more nonsense about how high-speed trains will have a major positive impact on unemployment and be a benefit to the economy.  Spain has a now famous high-speed train which can claim, among its achievements, a major reduction in air traffic. Environmentalists will claim that's a big benefit.  However, reduced air services also means increased unemployment for the air carriers as well as decreasing revenues.  The growth in one industry that competes with another means that the other will experience the opposite of growth; stagnation or decline. Indeed, the HSR promoters cite such data with pride.

I know, you will say that if it wasn't for the HSR miracle in Spain, things would be even worse.  That is, as always, a specious argument.  And I really don't want to hear this same tiresome claim from train advocates in California.  Here is the case made by these rail promoters.  We must spend multi-billions to build a train that will employ millions of construction and permanent employees, thereby both reducing unemployment, and pumping all those billions into the struggling California economy.  This is the Democratic Party mantra.

Let's just say, don't be so sure.

William Grindley's extensive documentation has made it clear that the assumed net benefits of high-speed rail will be negative.  All the inflated promises about employment gains are grossly exaggerated and the economic impact has yet to be demonstrated, and is, in fact extremely difficult to demonstrate.

We are now reading about cities on high-speed rail lines who experience financial growth vs. cities that don't have the trains or the growth. Take that information with a grain of salt. Correlation does not prove causality.  

While we won't prove that the Spanish HSR line has done nothing to improve the economic picture in Spain, the rail supporters can't prove that it has, or at least that it prevented it from being worse.  Rail advocates have often drawn parallels between California and Spain.  They may be more correct than I have given them credit for. 

=========================================== 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110128/bs_afp/spaineconomyunemployment;_ylt=AnFr04ZvkYi1haI6FhzIrCmoOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTE2bWZsdGExBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bl9wcmludHBhZ2UEc2xrA2JhY2t0b3N0b3J5h

Spain jobless rate surges to 20.33 percent

by Katell Abiven

Fri Jan 28, 12:29 pm ET

MADRID (AFP) – Spain announced Friday its jobless rate surged to a 13-year record above 20 percent at the end of 2010, the highest level in the industrialised world, as the economy gasped for air.

It was more bad news for an economy fighting to regain the trust of financial markets and avoid being trapped in a debt quagmire that has engulfed Greece and Ireland and now menaces Portugal.

Another 121,900 people joined Spain's unemployment queues in the final quarter of the year, pushing the total to 4.697 million people, said the national statistics institute INE.

The resulting unemployment rate was 20.33 percent for the end of the year -- easily exceeding Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's target of 19.4 percent.

Spain appears to be stuck in a rut of staggeringly high levels of unemployment.

After posting a jobless rate of 18.83 percent in 2009 and now 20.33 percent in 2010, the government is forecasting 19.3 percent for 2011 and 17.5 percent in 2012.

The Spanish economy, the European Union's fifth biggest, slumped into recession during the second half of 2008 as the global financial meltdown compounded the collapse of a labour-intensive construction boom.

It emerged with tepid growth of just 0.1 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and 0.2 percent in the second but then stalled with zero growth in the third.

Zapatero has said the fourth quarter will show positive growth which would pick up steam in 2011 but he warned that job creation would be "far from what we need and desire. It will be slow and progressive."

Labour Minister Valeriano Gomez said Friday that the latest jobs figures were typical for the period and did not interrupt "a path of progressive improvement" from the depths of economic crisis.

Last month the government announced it was scrapping a 426-euro ($568) monthly subsidy for the long-term unemployed as it cuts spending to slash the public deficit and ease fears that it will need an EU bailout.

The government forecasts a 0.3-percent drop in growth this year will be followed by an expansion of 1.3 percent in 2011.

Madrid estimates 70 percent of the two million jobs which were lost in Spain since the start of the economic downturn were directly or indirectly related to the construction sector.

Last year the government introduced a hotly contested labour market reform that cut the country's high cost of firing workers and gave companies more flexibility to reduce working hours and staff levels in economic downturns -- changes that it argued would boost job creation.

Spaniards see unemployment as Spain's biggest problem and one in two, 49.8 percent, fear the jobless situation will get worse, a poll published by the CIS research firm this month showed.

The Workers' Union (USO), a medium-sized union, called on the government to focus on employment instead of pushing through reforms raising the retirement age from 65 to 67.

"There is no point guaranteeing the future of pensions if there is no work," it said in a statement.

Eight policemen were slightly injured in Madrid late Thursday in clashes with demonstrators protesting the planned pension reforms.

Several people were also arrested after the clashes, which began after protesters set fire to three rubbish containers in the central Puerta del Sol area of the city, the centre-right newspaper El Mundo said on its website.

•Copyright © 2011 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

The latest words of wisdom about HSR from Rod Diridon

First of all, what is proposed in this article hasn't happened yet.

Second of all, it's not good news. The issue is the coming of high-speed rail on the Bay Area Peninsula, specifically on the Caltrain corridor.  It's a very complicated situation and we won't get into the Byzantine details here now.  However, the anticipation of high-speed rail on the Caltrain corridor has already had a major deleterious effect on property values up and down the Peninsula near the railroad right of way.

Will this possible one year delay make any difference?  Certainly not. So long as this project hangs over the heads of the residents and businesses along the corridor and beyond, the anticipated impact on all the cities along the rail corridor won't go away.  Some politicians on the Peninsula have been pushing the rail authority for such a delay, but the ostensible benefits are illusory.

Indeed, it is to the CHSRA's advantage to slow down this work.  Why?  Because they are under enormous pressure to complete sufficient engineering design and CEQA EIS/EIR certification for the intended Central Valley sections.  They need to put more staff to work to meet the required deadlines of the Federal Railroad Administration in order to remain eligible for the funding that will make this Central Valley construction possible.  Therefore, pulling staff and resources off the Peninsula work, gives them an advantage to complete the required work for the Central Valley.

There's also reckless chatter about two tracks rather than four tracks.  Please, please promptly put that notion out of your minds.  If the rail authority proceeds with its plans to electrify the current two track Caltrain corridor, there is without doubt a hidden agenda.

This two-track myth is the Caltrain/HSR camel's nose in the tent.  Once HSR has made any imprint on the corridor, they will never leave. Caltrain has been dying in eager anticipation of such a move. We on the Peninsula will be its victims. 

There's confusion about this two-track promise.  Many of us on the Peninsula see that as a kind of victory.  No four track expansion; only the same two tracks we have now.  Isn't that much better than four?  

The answer is NO. It's wishful thinking. What such a perception of appeasement conceals is that they will be taking permanent residence on the corridor, and once there, will expand their intentions to four-track elevated structures.  Don't believe it?  That's because you've turned off your crap-detector, the most valuable analytical tool you can have. 

As you can see, although he no longer serves on the CHSRA Board, we have not heard the end of Mr. Diridon.  He's still out there, promoting his boondoggle.  He still spreads his words of wisdom up and down the Peninsula like peanut butter on bread.  When he waxes eloquent about the wonders of the Chinese HSR "miracle," my stomach tightens with fear and anxiety. Note also his shoving of elevated structures down our collective throats.

We must not be seduced by such pallid palliatives as design delays or a false two-track promise.  Think about this maxim:

"The most cynical interpretation of any political situation invariably turns out to be the most accurate."

 Let me leave you with this thought from Rod Diridon:  "He addressed concerns about the design of the tracks that will run through urban and suburban areas, and said the most attractive system is an elevated design like the one in China."

Any questions?

=====================================

http://menlopark.patch.com/articles/peninsulas-high-speed-rail-project-level-eir-could-be-delayed-2

Peninsula's High-Speed Rail Project-Level EIR Could Be Delayed

Former rail authority board member Rod Diridon announced the news.

By Laura Dudnick | 

January 28, 2011

California High-Speed Rail Authority staff members could have up to another year to complete the Peninsula segment of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR), due this spring.

Staff members are expected to recommend to the high-speed rail board next week that the report be delayed for as much as a year, former board member Rod Diridon told Belmont city officials Thursday afternoon.

The EIR was initially due last December but was pushed back until the spring, he said. 

Diridon, executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University, whose brother, Tom Diridon, lives in San Carlos, spoke to Belmont's high-speed rail ad hoc committee and city officials at Belmont City Hall to address concerns and questions the city has with the multi-billion-dollar project.

The staff will likely recommend the EIR be delayed to allow more time to look into a number of matters that still concern Peninsula city leaders, residents and business owners, including looking into a two-track system through San Mateo County instead of a four-track system.

The two-track system would allow Caltrain, which is expected to be electrified with funds from high-speed rail, and the high-speed rail trains to run on the same tracks, Diridon said.

"This could make all the difference between having the project and not having it," said Bill Dawson, a member of Belmont's high-speed rail ad hoc committee. The committee is comprised of local residents and business owners who investigate the potential impact of high-speed rail on Belmont.

"It's a game-changer," Dawson said. "People are worried about having four tracks. The right-of-way in Belmont is wide enough to accommodate four tracks, but many oppose four tracks, because it widens the right-of-way."

The Federal Railroad Administration two years ago ruled on particulate applicability, which allows for the use of a two-track system, Diridon said.

After playing a slideshow of background information on high-speed rail, Diridon fielded questions from members of the audience.

He addressed concerns about the design of the tracks that will run through urban and suburban areas, and said the most attractive system is an elevated design like the one in China.

"The most attractive and the most modern system is now the Chinese system," Diridon said. "Seventy percent of the Chinese system is aerial. The preference around the world is for an elevated structure. Once in awhile you have a tunnel, but the cost of a tunnel is four to six times more expensive."

He added that the Peninsula shouldn't hold out hope for a tunnel system.

"If we build a tunnel down the Peninsula, we’re going to have the build the tunnel for Sanger, and Cochrane, and the other Central Valley cities," Diridon said. "That’s the law. If we don’t, the project will be stopped by legal action."

Holding out for a tunnel would significantly delay the high-speed rail project, he said.

"If you hold out for a tunnel, I think what you’ll do is delay the project on the Peninsula maybe forever," Diridon said. "Because I don’t think you can build a tunnel."

Building HSR: If the law gets in the way, change it. Right?

Yes, indeed.  Those nasty environmental protection laws sure get in the way when you want to plow a multi-billion dollar project through every town that stands in the way.   "No," is their answer to the question in the headline for this editorial in the Boston Globe.  

According to the rail advocates, more funding is not enough.  We also have to get rid of any and all legal protections that citizens have fought for so hard for against  corporate and government interests. 

Sorry. If we are a nation of laws, we had better respect them, particularly if they constitute safeguards against the imposition of the will of the few against the many. 

We can read such editorials as this one proliferating, since Boston now begins to smell fresh blood from Washington and the promise of funding for a northeast corridor high-speed train.   

Those vested interests are the ones that cry 'foul' when environmental regulations constrain their pollution, contamination, and destruction. We will lose profits, they proclaim. They are the ones who seek ever greater eminent domain freedoms to take, or 'take down' whatever stands in their way. 

I am not sympathetic to this obsession to eliminate regulations.  These environmental protections were placed there in the first place to give all the rest of us a voice in what corporate, banking and industrial interests want to impose upon us at our expense.  We insist on protections of both the natural AND urban environments. 

It makes me cringe to read about the envy of centralized economies such as China who have been ramming mega-infrastructure projects through cities for decades.  The famous -- or should I say notorious -- Three Gorges Dam in China caused the destruction of dozens of towns and villages, and displaced tens of thousands of people.  

But, you say, it was for the good of the nation.  What kind of a nation sacrifices the well-being of its citizens for some "greater good?" Totalitarian nations.  Nations that are based on denying individuals any voice in how they are governed. In this article, France and China envy is grossly misplaced in making this argument.

We can see the endless pressures to by-pass CEQA laws in California for the sake of pushing this project through wherever the rail authority choose to go.  Protest to such plans is ridiculed and the protesters are dismissed as nuisances and cranks.  HSR promoters are so smitten with their rail vision that to ask for the application of the law is perceived as an affront.  I consider that a fascist mentality.

We are not a monarchy; we are not a centralized economy.  We are already beset by far too much unregulated control by large corporate and financial powers that are free to impose their will upon us.  We have a duty and obligation to defend our legal protections.

That is what is quintessential about the American Dream; not altering laws to permit the recklessly building more trains.

 ==============================

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_angle/2011/01/high_speed_rail.html

Obama wants more funding for high-speed rail, but is money enough?

January 29, 2011 10:55 AM

By Alan Wirzbicki

More federal money for high-speed rail may be on the way — but does the law need to change for such big projects to get built?

After handing out $8 billion in stimulus money for high-speed rail, President Obama called for more funding for fast trains during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, a proposal Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson praises on the op-ed page today.

But some rail advocates have argued that simply funneling more federal largesse into rail isn't enough. Building a high-speed network in the United States, they suggest, may also require the politically tricky task of altering the environmental laws that have often made building new train lines so difficult.

In California, Robert Cruickshank wrote in 2009, a plan to build a high-speed line between San Francisco and Los Angeles that had already lined up more than $9 billion in financing had to grapple with state laws empowering a handful of wealthy communities to hold up the entire project. (Since 2009, California High-Speed Rail has acquired both more money and more problems.) Nationally, Robert Goodspeed wrote, the process for planning and siting rail lines is "dysfunctional."

Tension between the nation's long-term environmental priorities and local concerns is familiar to Massachusetts from the Cape Wind saga. Despite the clamor on the national level for more green energy, environmental laws enacted in response to planning excesses of the 1950s and 1960s can slow projects to a crawl: Cape Wind took nine years to win permits.

Which is why on high-speed rail, comparisons to countries like France and China that only take financing into account can be misleading. France's government has strong central planning authority; China's government is a dictatorship that can build wherever it wants. At the least, debate over the future of high-speed rail in the U.S. may need to take into account why it's more challenging here.

"Reckless Rail," a HSR editorial from the Press-Enterprise

Several of my colleagues sent me this article this morning.  It's quite good.

However, it comes with a poll, seeking our opinion on what we want done about high-speed rail.  The questions range from "Go ahead with the construction as currently planned," all the way to "Pull the plug on the entire project."  Currently the results indicate that 16.33% want the project to go ahead, while 63.27% want the plug pulled on the entire project.

Before you start popping Champagne corks, you should know that those percentages are based on 8 and 31 votes respectively at the time I saw this.  Polls, most polls especially like this one, are not worth very much.  

The rail authority has launched several such polls, which in politics are called 'push-polls' since they word their questions along the lines of "When did you stop beating your wife?"  If you see what I mean.  Needless to say, the rail authority polls told them exactly what they want to hear; that everyone in the Universe loves high-speed rail and that the rail authority should spend all the tax dollars they can get their hands on.

So, while we can safely vote on this poll but ignore the results, the article itself makes really good points. Not that there's anything new here.  We've been saying most of this in this blog a number of times.  However, here it is very well said, and the bottom line is. . . . . the bottom line.  The finances.  

As a nation, we have grossly over-spent on our credit cards and are now in very deep debt.  But, that basic fact is ignored by greedy ambitions to spend even more borrowed dollars on something we don't need and can't afford.  If you're in a very deep hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. 

Contrary to Democrats' thinking on this, California cannot afford the "free"so-called stimulus funds from Washington which, for this project, has a whole cat's-cradle tangle of strings attached to it that will tie this state down into even more debt than most of us now understand. 

So, stop already!  Pull the plug!

==================================

http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/editorials/stories/PE_OpEd_Opinion_D_op_29_ed_highspeedrail.1a7ef71.html

Reckless rail

08:29 PM PST on Friday, January 28, 2011

The Press-Enterprise

California cannot build a bullet train on wishful thinking. So the state should apply the brakes to its high-speed rail project. Pushing ahead with plans disconnected from financial and political reality invites disaster, not progress.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority plans to start construction next year on a 120-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Fresno. By 2020, the $43 billion rail line is supposed to link Los Angeles and San Francisco, whisking riders up and down the state at speeds up to 220 mph.

Thank you, we have already counted your vote.

But troubling financial questions threaten to derail those plans, which should wave a warning flag in front of this speeding project. Finishing this high-speed line requires money the agency does not have -- funds that look increasingly unlikely to materialize.

So far, the state has landed more than $3 billion in federal funds, and has money from a $9.95 billion rail bond California voters passed in 2008. But no one knows where the remainder of the $43 billion cost will come from.

The rail plans, for example, call for $17 billion to $19 billion in federal money to pay for the bullet train. But counting on more federal money is a hail-Mary play, given the political trends in Washington.

The Republicans who now control the House want to cut federal spending, not pony up additional billions for dubious rail projects. The Republican Study Committee, a group of 175 House Republicans, last week unveiled a plan to trim federal spending by $2.5 trillion over the next decade. 

Among the cuts: a $2.5 billion annual savings by scuttling money for high-speed rail.

Besides, the federal government has no money to waste on nonessentials. The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday that the federal deficit for the year will hit $1.5 trillion. A government essentially borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends should focus first on funding necessary public services -- and high-speed rail falls nowhere on that list.

The High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, an independent watchdog panel created by the 2008 bond measure, raised the same question last month. The review group said there was an "an air of unreality about a plan that includes $17 to $19 billion in 'free' federal funding from programs that do not yet exist." The panel also noted that without such an infusion of taxpayers' money, the $10 billion to $12 billion in private investment the rail line plans on was also unlikely.

And the panel also said that the project's doubtful passenger estimates call into question the rail line's "fundamental basis for going forward." Drawing sufficient riders is crucial if the system is to pay its own operating costs.

Those are not minor concerns, but rather crucial gaps in an expensive and risky proposition. The state should rethink this project. High-speed rail should not mean faster travel toward financial ruin.

© 2011 Enterprise Media • 3450 Fourteenth Street, Riverside, California 92501

President Obama's smoke and mirrors vision of HSR

I want to devote this particular blog entry to Ken Orski's latest discussion of what is being talked about in Washington about President Obama's comments about 80% of all Americans having high-speed rail access within 25 years.  

These dramatic promises have their roots in President Kennedy's historical (1961) requirement that we get a man on the moon in ten years.  That promise was made during the height of the cold war and the Soviet's launching of Sputnik.  As the rest of Obama's speech indicated, when he said this was our "Sputnik moment," high-speed rail was intended to be this Administration's space race.  We won it before and we will win it again.  

Let's just agree here that the space race was based on competition with the only other super-power on the planet in possession of launch-capable nuclear weapons.  Global peace was at stake with that race.

Getting to the moon itself was merely a demonstration of capability, a form of saber-rattling, and everyone knew it. 

With Obama's constant references to economic  competitiveness, the President was telling us that we are behind all the other high-speed rail operating nations and that we must get in front.  How that can be a worthy ambition, by buying high-speed trains from China or Europe, is a mystery.  And why we must have more toys than they do is also, frankly, silly posturing. The illogic is obvious; if we want to be more like them (with high-speed trains), how can we be any better than they are?  Where's that "innovation" dimension that the President called for?

Anyhow, Orski's Innovation NewsBrief summary of the annual Transportation Research Board meeting and discussion of high-speed rail promises bears close reading.

One point I want to raise here.  The rail advocates have one, presumably unimpeachable weapon in their armory; the California voters supported Proposition 1A, and therefore the State must have this project.  That central point of theirs needs to be examined much more closely.  

What was the language of Prop. 1A?  What was promised?  What were the costs?  What were the  benefits ? And, now, we should look at all the realities and what the rail authority has been saying about their project subsequent to the 2008 election.  What's now in the pipeline is not what the voters voted for.  They were scammed.

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INNOVATION NEWSBRIEFS 

http://www.innobriefs.com/ 

Vol. 22, No. 4

January 29, 2011

Notes from the TRB Annual Meeting

The Annual Meetings of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) have been a reliable barometer of the transportation community's interests, concerns and preoccupations of the day, and this year‚s meeting was no exception. Coinciding as it did with the President's State of the Union address and significant policy developments on Capitol Hill, attention of  the participants was focused more than usual on the political theater playing out in the nation's capital. Judging by the standing- room-only conference sessions and crowded committee meetings, three issues stood out as the focus of interest : the future of transportation funding, the outlook for the federal transportation program and the prospects for high-speed rail. In order to do justice to each of these topics, we will cover the Conference and related developments in two  installments. The first one (enclosed) deals with the High-Speed Rail program. The second Brief will cover discussions on Transportation Funding and the outlook for the Federal Surface Transportation program.

The President's Unserious Proposal

"Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail." With this ringing statement in his State of the Union address, President Obama injected new hope into the flagging spirits of high speed rail advocates. Predictably, spokesmen for industry associations, progressive advocacy groups and other stakeholder interests praised the President‚s goal as a symbol of his renewed commitment to support investment in infrastructure. But hardly any one we spoke to at the TRB meeting took the President‚s ambitious goal seriously.

"After listening to President Obama‚s remarks on high-speed rail, I am left with more questions than answers," observed Rep. Bill Shuster, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Railroads of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who addressed the TRB Committee on Intercity Passenger Rail. "These promises mean little and the White House knows it," observed a railroad industry consultant attending the meeting, "it's not within Obama's power to commit future Administrations and Congresses to this pipe dream." "The President is out of touch with reality; where does he think the money will come from?" was a succinct reaction of a former senior U.S. DOT official.

Lack of a Financial Plan

There is good reason for these expressions of skepticism. Although some likened President Obama's expansive vision to President Eisenhower's historic call for a 42,000-mile Interstate Highway network, there is a vast difference between the two initiatives. The Interstate Highway proposal was backed by a reliable and steady revenue stream in the form of a federal gas tax. The high speed rail goal lacks a financial plan. It is not supported by a dedicated source of revenue that could maintain the program on a self-sustaining basis over a period of years. Nor can the Administration count on borrowed money or annual appropriations out of general revenue in the current political environment in which deficit reduction rather than new spending is the top congressional priority. Calling expenditures on high-speed rail "investment" does not obscure the reality that we would be spending money that we do not have. As if to underscore this point, the Congressional Budget Office announced on January 25 that this year's federal budget deficit of $1.5 trillion will be the biggest one in history and the largest as a share of the economy since World War II. "Obama's proposal is likely to land with a dead thud on Capitol Hill," opined National Journal's transportation editor Fawn Johnson.

States' Ambivalence

A second reason for skepticism is the ambivalent attitude of the states toward high speed rail. As Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo, speaking at the TRB meeting, correctly pointed out, the high-speed rail initiative is a state-driven program. Hence, support of governors and state legislatures will be essential if the Obama vision is to succeed. But, as we have seen, several fiscally-strapped states (Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa) have declined to participate in the Administration's HSR program while Florida's Governor Scott still has to be heard from.

Other governors and state legislatures may well follow their example should they conclude that high-speed rail projects will burden their constituents with massive annual operating subsidies and possibly open-ended risk of construction overruns. The protracted and still inconclusive track-sharing negotiations with the Class 1 railroads [the major freight carriers] suggest that more than one state is having second thoughts about the wisdom of proceeding with these projects (at least on terms demanded by the Administration). About one-half of the dedicated HSR funds still remain unobligated according to the latest Federal Railroad Administration report.

Fred W. Frailey, a respected writer and commentator on the railroad industry and author of Twilight of the Great Trains thinks that enthusiasm for high-speed trains has peaked and is on the wane. 

Writing in the current (March) issue of TRAINS, Frailey says the collapse of support is not merely a partisan event. Election results suggest that the public was never really won over. Nor will the Association of American Railroads or its member railroads fight for HSR. "So anyway you cut it, the high-speed show is over," Frailey concludes.

A Fresh Congressional Posture

This does not mean that fast trains will have no role to play in America's future. There is a need to diversify travel alternatives in crowded travel corridors to accommodate future population increases. But, as a congressional hearing in New York City on January 27 made clear, federal efforts should be refocused on places where passenger rail investment is economically justified and where there exists a potential of sufficient ridership to attract private capital. As Congressmen Mica and Shuster correctly concluded, this means concentrating on the densely populated and heavily traveled Northeast Corridor with its serious air traffic congestion and well-developed urban transit distribution networks in major metropolitan areas.

A majority of the witnesses testifying at the hearing seemed to agree with the two congressmen. They included such influential advocacy groups as Building America‚s Future (Gov. Ed Rendell and Mayor Michael Bloomberg), America 2050 (Petra Todorovich) and U.S. High Speed Rail Association (Thomas Hart).

Thus, the need to involve the private sector and to focus on the Northeast Corridor as a matter of first priority could well emerge as the core elements of a new congressional posture on high-speed rail. Instead of lavishing money on projects in numerous states in an unrealistic and fruitless attempt to make high-speed rail accessible to 80 percent of Americans, Congress would use targeted financial incentives to attract private investment and encourage private sector involvement in a few corridors where high-speed rail service makes economic and transportation sense. The inducements could include long-term operating concession agreements, loan guarantees, tax credits, availability payments and other creative financing arrangements. Whether additional federal funds to bolster such a policy will be forthcoming in the deficit-conscious 112th Congress, remains to be seen.

Note: the NewsBriefs can also be accessed at <http://www.infrastructureUSA.org>

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