Menlo Park City Council Email Log<BR>: High Speed Blogs Within B

Date: Mon Mar 24 2008 - 14:53:04 PST

From: Martin Engel To: city.council@menlopark.org

	From: Martin Engel 
	Subject: High Speed Blogs Within Blogs
	Cc:
	Bcc:
	

	InsideBayArea.com

	High-speed hijinks

	The Capricious Commuter

	
	

	March 21

Article Created: 03/24/2008 02:36:49 AM PDT

You know people are getting excited about high-speed rail when legislators from Palm Desert are turning up in Japan, as I learned in an editorial from the Desert Sun (www.mydesert.com):

"Sen. Jim Battin, R-Palm Desert, and Assemblywoman Bonnie
Garcia, R-Cathedral City, are part of a delegation visiting Japan over the Legislature's spring break this week. They are using campaign funds - not public money - to pay for the trip.

"We're having a hard time seeing how a trip to Japan will make
them better state lawmakers or benefit their constituents."

That difficulty comes from the fact that both legislators, who are going to see Japan's fabled Shinkansen high-speed rail system, are terming out and there's little chance that either of them will have a chance to introduce any legislation on the subject.

Not to mention, their constituents would have to travel all the way to Riverside to ride high-speed rail if such a system ever gets built.

I've also heard about Bay Area legislators making trips to Japan and France to see what successful high-speed rail looks like, but knowing that the Bay Area would be the primary beneficiary of California's high-speed rail system makes such trips easier to justify.

The question weighing on the minds of bullet train aficionados these days is, will California also have a fabled bullet train or just a bullet train fable?

Busily working on a Bay Bridge story today, I was forced to brush off a call from a California Public Interest Research Group rep. She wanted to see if I wanted to do a story on college students spending spring break on a whistle-stop tour via car and bicycle to promote HSR.

I looked on the calendar to see where they were going to have informational meetings, ceremonial bike rides to planned station locations and the like.

Here we go ... Monday in San Francisco at UN Plaza with Aaron Peskin. That's a key spot, to be sure. OK, San Jose with the mayor and Rod Diridon, member of the California HSR board and tireless advocate. Makes sense. Sacramento, where the money is. Stockton, Fresno, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego...

Absentmindedly, I looked for Oakland on the agenda.

Oh, right. There won't be a stop here. Well, maybe they could bike to the ferry, and catch a ride to San Francisco.

And when you get right down to it, the same decision that cut Oakland off the high-speed map also assured that places like Stockton and Sacramento wouldn't be getting much use out of the system any time soon.

The CalPIRG lobbying effort seeks to educate Californians about the system and November's scheduled ballot measure that would authorize the sale of nearly $10 billion in bonds to get the $40 billion system started.

Yesterday, I received a particularly enjoyable commentary from Martin Engel of Menlo Park, the last person in the Bay Area who would ever vote for a high-speed rail bond measure.

He brought up the subject of education cuts:

"The state has an $8 billion budget deficit.
"Solution? Cut $5.5 billion from the school and college budget.
"We're cutting $5.5 billion from the state budget, but ... we're
going to vote to pass a $10 billion bond issue to build a high speed luxury train?

"Will this be the state with the high speed trains and the low
speed schools?

"Not that our school systems are in such great shape anyhow.
"$10 billion as a down-payment for a train we don't need.
"What the hell are people thinking?
"Where is the outrage?"

I responded that there's little chance that the bond will pass, even if it doesn't get removed from the ballot first to make room for another budget bailout measure.

Engel believes that voters will get a snow job "about this miraculous train that won't cost anyone anything" except $50 a ticket.

But as cool as it might be to zip down to Bakersfield at 200 mph, I just can't see it happening. Passing the $20 billion transportation bond required a unified campaign by the governor and legislative leaders to sell it to voters. In a year when those folks are pleading poverty, it's just not gonna happen.

California High Speed Rail Blog/Robert Cruickshank

	SUNDAY, MARCH 23, 2008
	Capricious Thoughts
	

	Pantograph Trolleypole in the comments on the last post pointed

me to The Capricious Commuter's thoughts on high speed rail. This person blogs for the Contra Costa Times, and is very down on our high speed rail plan. His post follows a very typical pattern of the dying print media: pooh-pooh some activists (in this case CALPIRG and their HSR spring break), then lament that government didn't produce perfection, and then dig up some libertarian gadfly who is not representative of public opinion to show how that public supposedly thinks. And ultimately all the post shows is how prevalent fundamental misunderstandings about HSR are in our state's media. The post closes with this:

In fact, the Sacramento Bee reported yesterday that the HSR bonds currently have 58-32 support. More on this in the next post.

The problem with this framing is it assumes HSR is just some ultra-cool toy that only a few railgeeks and engineers will love. But that ignores some very important context. Taken a look at oil prices lately? Or studied up on peak oil? What that means is by 2018, when the system is slated to open, it is going to be extremely expensive to fly or drive from the Bay Area to LA. The expense may even be prohibitive for most Californians.

Even if one wanted to deny peak oil, the way some used to deny global warming, we are then left with the fact that to handle the expected increase in passengers, we will need to spend nearly $80 billion to expand airports and freeways. HSR serves the same passenger demand for half the cost. Wouldn't that be a smart investment?

I agree that the plan is imperfect. But as anyone who follows mass transit knows, the hardest part of a new system to build is the first line. Once that line is up and running it becomes MUCH easier politically to add new lines and extensions. Oakland may not be on the first line built. But it will likely be on the second or the third.

I do agree that the state budget crisis is going to cause difficulty for the bond vote. But I think he's also totally wrong in his framing of the matter. First, the HSR bonds do not come from the same funding pool as schools. Second, we can stave off the budget cuts to schools with some relatively easy and inexpensive revenue solutions - the only thing stopping this is Republican stubbornness. Third, an economic downturn and a fiscal crisis is actually a GOOD time to build infrastructure - the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges were, after all, built in the depths of the Depression.

We need to stop reacting to the state budget crisis as if paralysis is the only reaction. There is a growing movement and coalition determined to solve our budget shortfall this year. But regardless of how that turns out, we should not let a temporary crisis stop us from building a piece of infrastructure that is absolutely necessary for this state's economic survival in the 21st century. Not building HSR would be like not building the bay bridges or not building the State Water Project. It won't be an easy sell, but it is also a necessary sell.

In any case, this particular blogger doesn't seem to have much understanding of the ins and outs of transit funding, as shown by his rather dismissive and selfish comments on Capitol Corridor ridership (if you want more seats, we need to buy more cars, and the HSR bond would provide $950 million for such purchases). It would be bad enough if this was just some random blogger, but apparently the guy writes for the CC Times. I guess the best reaction is to echo UC Berkeley professor Brad DeLong's famous line, "why oh why can't we have a better press corps?!"

POSTED BY ROBERT CRUICKSHANK AT 10:17 AM COMMENTS: Martin Engel said...

Robert, I enter this debate with some humility and am willing to learn what I don't yet understand. To that end, I read your Sunday comments carefully.

Why "dying print media?" Is it your intent to belittle Capricious Commuter's comments by denigrating the medium in which he writes? BTW, he also, like you, writes a blog. "typical pattern?" "libertarian gadfly?" So far, your lesson to a student such as myself is that "Argumentum Ad Hominem" is the way to make your point.
Erik Nelson's (the Capricious Commuter) position regarding high-speed rail is far closer to yours than to mine. You are picking on the wrong guy. It's me you should be after. I think that the high-speed train project, as presently conceived, sucks. Nonetheless, as a progressive liberal Democrat, I'm at the opposite end of the political spectrum of Libertarianism.
You and I agree about "fundamental misunderstanding" in "our state's media." I find the media reporting on the HSR as not much more than the parroting of CHSRA press releases and their PowerPoint presentations. What I don't read in the press is a critical look at the endless understating of development costs and over-representation of performance outcomes, which emanate from the HSR promoters. You need to read Bent Flyvbjerg, an academic researcher, who demonstrates the universal prevalence of this practice. I bet you can yourself find endless examples to validate this point.
Unlike you and the rail advocates, I am very uncomfortable with 10 year long- range predictions in a world as volatile as this. We could get into lengthy discussion about commodity markets and oil prices, whether there is such a thing as "peak oil," the development of energy- efficient transit technologies, the cost of electric power, the ecological/environmental destruction by the construction process, and so on. What will be "extremely expensive" in 2018 is really an open question. What do you suppose that the declining value of the dollar, the skyrocketing costs of construction materials and process, the severe decline in credit, the transfer of wealth to overseas investors, etc. will look like by 2018?
You are quite right, that school funding and transportation bond funds don't come from the same line items on the budget. But, you well know that all municipal bonds are a debt, like a mortgage. The question then becomes, what should the state be borrowing money for. After all, bonds require interest payments to their purchasers and eventually repayment of the loan/principle itself. And, you certainly can't believe that this train, unlike any other in the history of the US, will generate enough revenue to make those payments. Therefore the money comes from where? You and me. More for trains, less for schools. Two pockets, same pair of pants!
Let me for the sake of this discussion agree with you about infrastructure investment as a way of boosting the sagging economy. In that case, why would we not prioritize our transportation needs? Both the Bay Area and contiguous central valley, and the LA Basin and populous points East, are in dire shape regarding urban and regional mass transit. Without great systems in both population centers, we will never get people out of their cars. That's where the transportation problems are, not on I- 5. The air carriers have not been complaining about air route gridlock. We need to put our money where our problems are, not build a rail system we don't need. For that matter, a freight rail system might go much farther to achieve the environmental goals we all seek, but that's another email.
Finally, let's talk costs. They now say $42 billion. We know, based on lots of other prior infrastructure projects, that this is not going to be true. So, let me ask you, is there an upper limit to the costs, in your mind; a point where you yourself will acknowledge that this is, indeed, too expensive? How about twice as much, say $80 billion? How about over $100 billion? Shouldn't you, as a train promoter, be honest and up-front about this? Right now, the CHSRA is playing a bait-and-switch game with the voters of California. "Hey, folks, it's only going to cost the state $9.95 billion." Diridon says it won't cost any additional taxes. Isn't that $9.95 billion a foot in the door? A camel's nose in the tent? What do you think?

MARCH 24, 2008 9:39 AM --

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

Received on Mon Mar 24 14:53:08 2008