Just downloaded and read a document produced by the Congressional
Budget Office in 2003.
Title: The Past and Future of US Passenger Rail Service. Written by a
large number of economists, transportation specialists and
researchers, it has serious credibility because they are independents
with no axe to grind.
<http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4571&sequence=0>

It's mostly a discussion of AMTRAK and provides information for
Congress to choose options about its future, based on its past.
However this document discusses national passenger rail service in
the US more generally and even looks at high speed rail. Having read
it, I would say that one has to understand a lot more than what we
are being told by CHSRA and its promoters.

Basically, the report looks at the economics of passenger rail
service. Here's the first quotation from the preface: "The review
suggests that there are only limited conditions under which passenger
rail service in the United States could be economically viable
without subsidies." So, point number one is that the CHSRA, which
claims it will achieve not only profitability in its operations, but
be able to pay back all the bond loans, will in fact be permanently
dependent upon tax based government subsidies.
The history of rail in the US indicates that passenger rail has never
been profitable and will never be.

One of the biggest cases for HSR that the advocates make is comparing
our lack to the European and Japanese successful experience with rail
and HSR. Here is what they say:

"Passenger Rail is a much larger component of intercity
transportation in some nations than it is in the United States.
France, Germany, and Japan, for example, have convenient high-speed
trains that whisk passengers between major cities in comfortable,
reliable cars. What accounts for the differences in passenger rail
between other countries and the United States?

Geographical factors and government policies are the main source of
those differences. European countries and Japabn are more compact
than the sprawling United States, making intercity travel by rail as
fast as travel by air. In addition, those nations' governments have
promoted passenger rail through various policies, including:
*Direct government subsidies of passenger rail
*Government subsidies of local mass transit
*Steep taxes on gasoline
*Protective policies toward airlines
*Government regulation of safety"
pg. 28

One of the key issues that they stress is this: "For trips longer
than 300 miles, air travel almost always wins out. . ." They make
this point frequently. In other words, California's 700 mile HSR is
economically too long and will need to be permanently on a government
"heart-lung" machine to keep it alive.

I hope to provide other selected key quotations from this document
(which is 40 pg. long) and discuss them in future emails.

Why is this important to all of us? This is not going to go away.
The California newspapers have one or two articles each week
promoting the high speed train, proclaiming what huge benefits it
promises for California. Over the next year and a half, if the
Governor does not actively "kill" CHSRA, and if the '08 bond issue
passes, this project will become a fact and the following will happen:
1. It will run up the Caltrain rail corridor;
2. There will be at least four tracks, not two;
3. ALL intersections will be grade separated;
4. The rail corridor will be widened and electrified;
5. Trees along both sides of the corridor will be removed;
6. There will be extensive eminent domain adverse "takings" of
private property;
7. The entire Peninsula will become -- for many years -- a rail
corridor construction site; and
8. Cities like Menlo Park will be divided in two and, trust me on
this, there will be a "right" side of the tracks and a "wrong" side
of the tracks.

Also it will cost all of us more -- much more -- than anyone can imagine.

Watch your in-basket for more information about inter-city rail
travel in the US and what it means for us in California.

M

-- 
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Martin Engel
1621 Stone Pine Lane
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650:323-1670
martinengel@earthlink.net
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