The Burlingame Voice

High Cost Rail, Part 13 - The State Auditor Speaks

 

The State Auditor’s report on The California High Speed Rail project, released yesterday is titled -

High-Speed Rail Authority:

It Risks Delays or an Incomplete System

Because of Inadequate Planning, Weak Oversight and Lax Contract Management

 

Now isn’t that what throngs of California residents have been saying all along?  Thank you to the State Auditor’s office for extricating itself from the glare of politics that surrounds this current Authority Board to recognize the disaster of this run-away train.

 

The report goes on to site the CHSRA’s funding as flawed with plans to spend 2.5 times more money than available through 2013.  It questions the Authority’s assumption that $17-$19 Billion will be provided in Federal Funds over the project build when there is no additional planned Federal money.  It details misuse of public funds by the Authority to buy, for example, $46,000 of furniture for one of its contractors.  Do you think I could get them to spring for a new couch for my living room?!?!  The Authority paid $4M in contractors invoices without inspecting the work and paid another $268,000 for tasks not included in the contractors work plans.

 

Read all about it in the San Francisco Chronicle, link below, as well as the San Mateo County Times, Los Angeles Times, Modesto Bee and most other California newspapers. 

 

Auditor faults state's high-speed rail agency

 

School Budget Outlook

The S.F. Examiner has a front-page article today that revisits the school budget trends and their causes.  Reporter Mike Aldax begins with

For public schools in San Mateo County — an economically diverse region where the richest and poorest cities often share a border — the recession has created two main characters: The have-nots and the have-less.

No matter where your child is being educated on the Peninsula — whether at the most- or least-funded school — you’re getting less than you would expect.

Of the county’s 23 school districts, about a dozen — many of those in wealthier areas — rely most heavily upon local property taxes to pay for teachers and classroom supplies, a source that has plummeted in most cases due to the housing crisis and related factors.

Also in today's Examiner, a guest columnist named Josh Barro of the Manhattan Institute notes his recent report that

scrutinizes the financial statements of 59 pension plans covering most of the teachers in the United States.  We applied private-sctor-style standardds to their estimatew of future liabilities, and adjusted their asset values to fully reflect the drop in stock prices the past two years.

The results aren't prettty.  Applying more realistic standards, these plans are $933 billion short of the assets needed to cover their promises to retirees, or more than $18,000 per public school pupil.

On the bright side, the BHS Panther Postscripts alumni publication that just came out carries a note from Principal Chris Holleran that notes

Some modernization projects are wrapping up including the cafeteria, gym lobby, and small gym.  The next projects include a new vocational tech/art building and renovation of the theatre, larget gym, and locker rooms.

So, do B'game parents feel that "you are getting less than you would expect" as Mike Aldax writes?

High Cost Rail, Part 12. New Thinking?

Much of the discussion about High Speed Rail centers on route alternatives. Pacheco vs. Altamont, East Bay vs. Peninsula... All worthy discussions. However, some alternative thinking on the subject has barely even had its surfaces scratched.

For example, many rail experts believe, and have for some time, that the new generation of technology emerging for rail is not exclusively electrification but a hybrid locomotive capable of toggling between electric power and diesel, much like our Hybrid passenger motor vehicles function today. There has been no investigation or discussion about this possibility. Its relevance is in direct proportion to the alternatives of deep tunneling and its feasibility. 

Another discussion took place for about 2 minutes recently. The premise is to make the system more economically sustainable. Take a look:

Bay Health

It is always interesting to see what our elected officials choose to make as their priorities.  The weekend Daily Post reports on Congresswoman Jackie Speier's weekend visit

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, was in South San Francisco yesterday to announce the introduction of a bill to the U.S. Congress that would spend $1 billion to restore and clean up the San Francisco Bay.

The bill...would give the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about $100 million annually over a 10-year period to fund projects that would restore the health of the Bay, which as been harmed by pollution, invasive species and the loss of wetland habitat.

The article concludes with

She said the reasons to restore the Bay include preserving the $8 billion tourism industry in the surrounding cities, and that "this area is ground zero for the sea level rise thru climate change."

I'm just not so sure about this billion considering the state of things in the Bay Area.

Oldest Profession

The Saturday edition of the Daily Post reported this lose-lose proposition

More prostitution stings could be conducted after an upset customer called Burlingame police after apparently being swindled by a hooker he found online.

Capt. Mike Matteucci said the man found her on xxx website, a Yelp-like website where people can find and review prostitute services.  When the man and the prostitute met up Thursday at the Crown Plaza Hotel on Airport Boulevard, the prostitute allegedly ran off with his cash.

He then call the police wanting to let police know that "there's a lady out there ripping off clients," Capt. Mike Matteucci said.

We pause here to ponder whether his call was or wasn't a commendable public service act?

High Cost Rail - Part 11 Your Turn

Tomorrow, April 26th at 5pm, your opportunity to comment on the EIR that set Pacheco Pass as the preferred route into the Bay Area expires.  If you think this is a bad idea--and if you live in B'game IT IS A BAD IDEA, then please send your comments to the HSRA.

Our local activists at HSR-PREP suggest that you use a modification of their sample letter at http://hsr-prep.blogspot.com/  and:

Submit it to the HSR Authority in one of 3 ways:

• Email to: [email protected].  Include this subject line: Bay Area to Central Valley Revised Draft Program EIR Material Comment
• Fax to: (916) 322-0827
• Mail to the address on the letter .

You have all day Monday so please put fingers to keyboards and make your voice heard.

Electric Train Set.....up?

The San Mateo Daily Journal has a brief review of Caltrain's budget and revenue forecasts.  I'm not sure I believe this

Revenue is projected to increase 49 percent by 2019, while operating costs remain flat. The commuter railroad

But this appears to be the rationale for thinking operating costs can remain flat

With a new, modern electrified system, by 2019, the additional subsidy needed to balance the budget would be 45 percent less than today.

I'm going to look for more details since that is where the devil will be found.

High Cost Rail, Part 10. An academic review.

What High Speed might look like based on The High Speed Rail Authority's specifications.

The following is a look at High Speed Rail by David Levinson, of the University of Minnesota. It seems to be a good, short synopsis of all the issues surrounding this issue. It contains much attribution, scroll all the way down, making his take on it less emotional than some who have been reporting on it.

California's High Speed Rail: Some facts.
The proposed California High Speed Rail line would be more expensive than every other active HSR proposal in the country put together. While subsidized by everyone who pays the regressive sales tax, its users would have a higher than average income, so it is a subsidy from the poor to the rich. It would cost about $600-$1000 person or $2000-$3000 per California household before a single trip is made. This money could support about 20,000 teachers or police perpetually. For every $1 spent by the passenger, it would entail $4 in public subsidy, twice the annual expenditure of the State Transportation Improvement Program
Costs
While it is too soon to know for this system, cost estimates have already doubled. Forecasts of demand for transit are typically 25-50% too high. Estimates of costs for major infrastructure are significantly off, for instance the cost of the Denver Airport tripled from beginning to end. (See: Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition by Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, and Rothengatter or Mega-projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment by Altshuler and Luberoff)
Technology  Conventional High Speed Rail is basically 19^th century technology spruced up; there is no reason to expect that it won't work technologically.

Speed
HSR is slower than air travel in the main Bay Area to Los Angeles market. While proponents claim fewer delays at train stations than airports, that assumes lessened security precautions. Rail systems are at least as vulnerable to terrorism as air systems (See Madrid 3/11.)
Congestion
The HSR system will take less than one lane of traffic off the major North-South highways. Airports will soon have extra capacity as they increase operations in bad weather with instrumented flight controls.
Energy
A study of BART (Lave 1976) estimated that more energy was used to build the system than will ever be saved by it.
Environment
Other modes are steadily getting cleaner, for instance fuel cell powered vehicles will emit only water and carbon dioxide. Any benefits from HSR depend on unproven forecasts. The energy for HSR must come from somewhere, if electric than probably coal or nuclear, both of which have some problems.
Planning and Urban Design
BART has not been particularly successful at attracting development outside of downtown San Francisco, why would HSR? It is likely that HSR will promote sprawl into the Central Valley.Advocates of rail (traditionally urban subways and light rail) claim that new rail will result in the redevelopment of "good neighborhoods" around the stations. This is true to a limited extent (e.g. in San Francisco and selected other stations, such as Rockridge), but not universally. Rail tends to promote dispersion ... park and ride lots promote what those advocates would consider "bad neighborhoods", i.e. auto oriented suburban neighborhoods, enabling people to live very far from the central city (Dublin, Pittsburg etc) and still work downtown. We can hypothesize that HSR will promote even more "bad neighborhoods", particularly in the central valley, as people choose to live 100 miles from the city and use HSR to commute into San Francisco and Silicon Valley.Downtowns as a share of regional jobs have been declining steadily for 50 years. Hence any system focused on downtown is serving yesterday's travel demand pattern rather than tomorrow's (unless it can reverse the trend, which is rather like tilting at windmills). There is little evidence that new rail starts do much to reverse the trend.
Alternatives
What is the best use of $20,000,000,000 to $30,000,000,000 ? For that amount of money it would be very easy to provide improvements to air travel into the central valley, along with many other things. HSR is the least cost effective way to provide transportation services between the Valley and the coastal cities.
Who's Behind It
There has been significant lobbying for HSR by Engineering Consultants, Construction Companies, Rail Car Manufacturers, and Local Developers. Many of the companies involved are foreign owned and controlled, including those that built the money-losing systems in France and Japan. The commission has visited these systems on foreign junkets. There is also some nostalgia on the part of train buffs and those yearning for a simpler time.

References and full article can be found here.

Two groups. No pitchforks or torches, but lots of angst.

At last night’s city council meeting, there were two important discussions, both filled with more emotion than facts.

The first was an opportunity for residents to begin to wrap their heads around the possible impacts that high speed rail will have on Burlingame.

The second involved the concept of merging police services with our neighbor to the north, San Mateo.

A summary of the high speed rail discussion would yield that all of the speakers were gravely concerned about the impacts of the project both on their individual property and to Burlingame as a whole. Consensus was that the High Sped Rail authority has not done a good job at outreach and education.  The speakers were almost entirely those who lived East of the tracks with a few living close to the tracks to the west.

The idea of merging police departments was met with opposition from all of the speakers. The speakers, however were made up of active and retired Burlingame Police Department employees.

Both of the issues center around funding or the lack thereof.

High Speed Rail doesn’t, according to the speakers, have adequate funding to do it right and hiring an interim Police Chief rather than utilizing the current interim Chief doesn’t make economic sense either, according to many of the speakers.

One speaker asked why the citizens of Burlingame have not been asked what they think about merging police departments or hiring an outside Police Chief? Some speakers asked why the high speed rail authority didn’t have any answers to the questions posed by citizens and council 

The two groups were eerily similar in their postures.

Although there is no photo of the standing room only meeting, you probably get the picture.

 

 

Calpain Threat

I don't want to overemphasize things like this from the SF Examiner

A suspicious package was found at a train station in Mountain View on Monday, just hours after a bomb scare was called into Caltrain.

In the earlier scare, no bomb was found after a threat that was called into Caltrain at 2:45 p.m. disrupted rush hour traffic for hours. Full service was restored by 5:30 p.m.

because things like this happen often enough in a variety of venues, but I just can't get over the thought that if we really do build a High-cost Rail system in California wouldn't it instantly surpass the Golden Gate bridge as target No. 1?

If we think about Madrid, London, Moscow and the earlier threats in the NY subway, it just seems like the High-cost Rail Authority should be planning some pretty extensive terminal security as well as planning the actual routes.  Am I paranoid or is this just common sense knowing what we know from the last five years?