The Burlingame Voice

High-Cost Rail - Part 147 Partially Pulling the Plug

Yesterday's big news that Gov. Newsom has a new, much smaller approach to high-speed rail was welcomed in many quarters--including this one.  I toasted him with a lovely California cabernet last night--and that is a rare occasion indeed.  Common sense seems to have prevailed at least partially.  I say "partially" because some confusion still remains regarding what the Gov. really meant and how he will stick to it as the details of The Money become clearer.  The post below has some of the direct quotes in the comment section.  My first-glance quick list of money issues that remain are:

--Is the Caltrain electrification funding still available?  It appears so since Newsom mentioned the "bookend" funding which fits Caltrain.  The Daily Journal editorial shows the size of the need writing "Those who are familiar with the nuts and bolts of Caltrain electrification may be concerned that a refocus of the high-speed rail project on the Central Valley may mean that a $713 million commitment toward the $2 billion local project would evaporate."  Caltrain brass quoted in Railway Age state "The Caltrain Electrification Project is currently under construction and is scheduled to be complete in 2022. Last year, the State increased its commitment to the electrification of Caltrain service when it awarded an additional $165 million to support the purchase of additional electric trains. Caltrain is currently working to complete the Caltrain Business Plan".  Unlike HSR, electrification is popular to the extent the general public understands it, so here's hoping for enough money to finish.

--To keep building the Central Valley sliver that Newsom is still committed to he will have to hold onto the federal money.  His quote about not wanting to send it back to Donald Trump may or may not be wishful thinking.  Expect some legal wrangling over whether a short bit of track constitutes performance.  If the remaining federal funds are clawed-back, then the whole scheme collapses including the bit about continuing to do the environmental review of the longer section.  At least one state legislator noted that continuing the environmental review leaves property owners in limbo potentially for decades.

--If you want to get really train-geeky, here is a detailed piece titled California HSR: Seven Deadly Mistakes that goes into all sorts of the funding and approval mistakes that have doomed this boondoggle from the beginning.  #3 is my favorite and we knew this from the get go:  CHSRA then made a broader leap for the remainder of the funding, saying that its finance team “anticipates that the commitment of state and federal dollars will attract private sector funding.”  The other six are equally damning.

California taxpayers can mark Feb. 12, 2019 as a day that may have saved their bacon for another campfire like pensions, "affordable housing" subsidies, "free health care" or any number of other Newsom priorities.  But for now, B'game can rejoice that a vision of trains blasting through town at grade at 110 mph, interspersed with more Caltrain and freight trains, purporting to be faster, safer and cheaper than flying has passed with Jerry Brown's tenure. 

High-Cost Rail - Part 146 Newsom's Decision Time

We touched on Gov. Gavin's dilemma back in November just after the election.  Now, two months in with a budget sort of laid out, many pundits are thinking it is decision time on high-speed, high-cost rail.  A certain Brooklyn bartender who has made it to Congress lumps high-speed rail in with a number of other high-cost ideas, but Newsom is perhaps a bit more astute than that.  Here is one pundit quoting two others on the prospects for California

However, campaign promises are easily forgotten. As are responses intended to keep local folks happy. This is the same politician, after all, who said in 2015 that if he became governor, he’d probably kill two of Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature projects— high-speed rail and the Delta water tunnels.

Will the real Gov. Newsom please stand up?

I ask because longtime Newsom and Capitol watcher Dan Walters visited Fresno on Monday and told a room filled with Rotarians and their guests: “I have a hunch it is going to die. Newsom is not so enamored of the bullet train.”

Wrote Gabriel Dillard of The Business Journal: “There was a gasp in the room of Fresno community leaders … .”

I called Walters seeking the context of his remarks. He said that he expects only the first segment of high-speed rail to be completed, leaving the Valley with a souped-up version of Amtrak. But he put the odds of the line going from Bakersfield to the Bay Area as less than 50-50.

Click through for the rest of the piece by Bill McEwen especially where he notes some powerful California Dems are starting to get cold feet.  The Fresno mayor demonstrates the exact wrong thinking on any giant capital expense when he says "we’re too far into it, I think, for the state just to walk away".  Figure less than 10% of the total final cost has been spent--that is a sunk cost and better to not sink the whole state.

A BART Non-answer

I'm catching up with the January issue of the free San Francisco magazine that magically shows up in the mail every month.  It's often worth a quick read and can venture south of EssEff once in awhile like four years ago when we were deemed Utopia-qualified.  This month has a piece profiling the newly-elected BART board member, Janice Li.  Her claim to fame is as a bicycle advocate.  She also "still thinks it is scary, weird and absurd to be an elected official".   But somehow she has the elected official's non-answer answer down pat as seen here:

Q:  Riders south of San Francisco don't get to vote for BART elected officials, even though there are BART stations there.  Is that a good idea?

A:  There are two sides to the San Mateo problem.  Some people say that the people who live there aren't paying their fair share.  Others say that they are losing out because they have no representation.  I'm not totally sold that BART should even have a voter-elected board.  It's extraordinarily rare.

If you are waiting for the rest of the response, join the club.  I'm not feeling super confident about the future direction of the Caltrain and high-speed rail connections at the intermodal station in Millbrae.  You?

Higher-Cost Rail - Part 145 Newsom's Dilemma

The Chron is covering yet another audit report on the ballooning costs of Jerry Brown's train to nowhere.

Pushing to break ground on California’s high-speed rail project before critical planning for the Central Valley line was in place drove up its cost by $600 million, with that “flawed decision” potentially increasing the price tag by another $1 billion, state Auditor Elaine Howle said Thursday.

And more financial problems are looming for high-speed rail. The state could lose $3.5 billion in federal grant money if the first segment of the line is not completed by December 2022 as planned, Howle warned in a report. The auditor’s office said to meet that deadline, the pace of construction must double over the next four years.

Incoming Gov. Newsom will have an early decision to make come January as he has a number of other big ticket items on his plate of promises.  And his dilemma is how to split this baby

Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom has been less enthusiastic about high-speed rail than Brown, saying he would focus on completing the portion from the San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area before deciding whether to make a push to Los Angeles.

Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, a critic of the rail project, said the report shows that high-speed rail is “dead in the water.”  “There will never be a completed track from the Bay Area to Los Angeles,” Patterson said. “This project cannot be revived in its current state, and this audit is further proof that the best we can hope for is a rump railroad running from Bakersfield to Madera.”

The problem is a "rump railroad" - great term which I will adopt-- is not what the original Proposition promised and thus likely illegal.  It's really time to stop pouring good money after bad and dump the rump.  Will Gavin have the guts to do it?

High-Cost Rail - Part 144 Revolving Door, Reduced Expectations

The revolving door at the High Speed Rail Authority continues to spin.  As a member of the Community Working Group (courtesy of the city of B'game), I got an update from the Northern California HSR Authority team last night.  There were a lot of new faces from a year ago including a new Regional Director (Boris Lipkin) and a new Project Manager (James Tung).  But the working group attendance was sparse to say the least.  I am using the term "update" loosely, since there is not a lot of news and very little of it is good for the Peninsula, taxpayers or people looking to go somewhere at high speed.  There were some other attendees who appeared interested in handouts for of all things, "affordable housing" from the HSR money train.

Decisions that are still pending include whether to have passing tracks from 9th Ave in San Mateo south to Whipple with all that implies for taking property and whether to build a viaduct in the South Bay to get to Diridon Station more easily.  The big kicker was an apparent lack of progress on how to get through Pacheco Pass via tunnel.  It's estimated to cost from $6-9 billion, but the engineering studies have yet to start.  And the extension to the Transbay Terminal is totally in limbo as SF Supe Aaron Peskin considers withholding funds until project management improves.  And anything south of the metropolis of Bakersfield just doesn't get mentioned.  But the gravy train continues to ladle out money at least until the election in two weeks.  Even if Newsome wins the governor ship as expected, he may have to flip-flip a third (or is it fourth?) time and kill HSR in hopes of paying for even 10% of what else he says he wants to do.  Here is the new team for Norcal.

And here is the timeline that still shows "Valley to Valley", i.e. Silicon Valley to the Central Valley up and running by 2029.

The only good news of late is that the Western U.S. earthquake warning system is plodding along so that by 2029 when a high-speed train goes off the tracks it will do so at a slower speed.

High Cost Rail - Part 143 $27M per Day

Not much else to add besides what the LA Times is reporting on burgeoning expenses that aren't even burgeoning enough

LOS ANGELES —The California bullet train project has cost state taxpayers an average $3.1 million a day over the last year —a construction spending rate higher than that for the Bay Bridge, Boston's Big Dig or any U.S. transportation project in recent history.

But still it's not enough, planners say.  In order to hit its 2033 deadline and $77 billion budget, the California High Speed Rail Authority will have to increase daily spending by up to nine times over the next four years or risk putting the already-delayed system further behind.  Russell Fong, the authority's chief financial officer, acknowledges the goals will be difficult to achieve.

Still, officials said they are beginning to ramp up spending, and the estimates were officially adopted by the rail authority board in its 2018 business plan.  But outside infrastructure experts question whether the $27 million-a-day outlay necessary under the plan would even be possible.

"That burn rate is ludicrous," said civil engineer James Moore, director of the University of Southern California's transportation engineering program. "It is so far outside standard experience that it doesn't make sense to assume it will occur."

"Outside standard experience".  I like that and will use it going forward.

Quelling the Infernos

The headlines are burning up with reports of numerous wildfires all over the state.  Today's headline notes that Gov. Brown thinks we are in "uncharted territory".  That's only because he has been ignoring the obvious precedents that have peppered his whole time in office including the Tubb's Fire of last year that should have been a third or fourth wake-up call.  Luckily some state Senator from Orange County that I have never heard of, John Moorlach, has a firm grip on the obvious as noted in this piece in the SF Chronicle.  I'll chop it down to the essence, but you can read through it at your leisure while you ponder the foothills and Mills Canyon as the potential next hotspot while also pondering that the B'game Fire Dept. is doing its part to help up north by sending some of our team elsewhere--just like they did last year.

    3 practical steps to reduce wildfires in California

1. We should revisit Senate Bill 1463, which I authored in 2018 but was killed in committee even though no one testified in opposition to it. Called “Cap and Trees,” it would continuously appropriate 25 percent of state cap-and-trade funds to counties to harden the state’s utility infrastructure and better manage wildlands and our overgrown and drought-weakened forests.
2. We should stop funding the high-speed rail project with cap-and-trade dollars — $621 million this year, according to the analysis of the fiscal 2018-19 budget by the Legislative Analyst’s Office — and divert it to protecting our forests.  Some of this may involve prescribed burns in our forests, as authored this year in Senate Bill 1260 by my Democratic colleague, Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara. 
3. Where such burns are impractical, such as around homes and developed property, we can employ mechanical thinning. 

Moorlach also notes

A single forest fire can release four or five times as much greenhouse gas than are reduced by a year’s worth of government-regulated industry and personal vehicles emission. Oddly, the California Air Resources Board doesn’t even count wildfire greenhouse gases in its carbon-reduction reports.

With the Ferguson fire (Yosemite) nearing 60,0000 acres burned, I'll bet that estimate is way low.  #2 is so obvious that I hope even Gavin Newsom gets it.......

High-cost Rail Part 142 Losing Steam

Yesterday's Daily Post recapped a recent LA Times - USC poll that shows high-speed rail losing steam in the court of public opinion.  When asked the question with the context of the costs doubling to $77 billion and the schedule stretched to 2033, 49% said they would halt construction.  "A sizeable 19% did not know what to do about the problems".

The new poll shows Bay Area voters are the train's strongest supporters.  Just 27% of poll respondents in the Bay Area said they would stop the project with 41% in Los Angeles and 56% in San Diego and Orange Counties and 64% in the Central Valley.

9% of respondents had not heard about the high-speed rail project!  I wonder what the percentages would be if they asked even better questions like "If the budget has tripled to $100+ billion and there is still no engineering plan to safely traverse the Tehachapi Mountains and the train is likely to be on-balance damaging to the environment?

Most of you have probably already voted (postmarked by next Tuesday) but if you haven't yet, here is a reminder of where the gubernatorial candidates stand on HSR.

High-cost Rail Part 141 Gubernatorial Candidates

The Chronicle has done the public a service by getting each gubernatorial candidate to state his or her position on high-speed rail.  With some waffling aside, the responses are enlightening.  Remember, this is at least $100 billion dollars of taxpayer money regardless of whether it comes from bonds, pollution credits, federal funds or whatever scheme comes next.  So here with a couple of my comments in italics is the Chronicle's reporting.

Travis Allen:  There would be no place for high-speed rail, which he calls “the train to nowhere,” in Gov. Allen’s California.  “I’d defund high-speed rail and return the money to the people of California,” he said. “But I’d leave what’s up there now as a monument to Jerry Brown’s folly.”

John Chiang:  Chiang sees it as a way of uniting California.  High-speed rail “can connect the people getting STEM degrees at UC Merced with jobs at Google and other technology companies” in Silicon Valley or Southern California, he said.  Finding the billions needed to complete the project is key, Chiang admitted. (From the guy who is state treasurer!) “If the Central Valley to Santa Clara was the only leg, people would be investing in it, because it connects (affordable) homes to jobs,” he said. “That piece has to be built.” (Never mind that building half the system would be illegal because it violates the original Proposition).

John Cox:  Cox opposes what he calls “the crazy train” and has promised to stop construction if he’s elected. The project “is a monument to corruption,” Cox said, arguing that it shouldn’t have been built down the middle of the Central Valley, where its right of way has claimed farmland and businesses and provoked a flood of lawsuits.  “Why not put it down the middle of Interstate 5, where we already have the land?” he asked.

Delaine Eastin:  Eastin admits to mixed feelings about the rail plan and argues that she — and the state — have higher priorities.  “I’m a fan of the concept, but I don’t want to see general obligation bonds used, since they make everything more expensive,” she said.  If there were an identified revenue source for the project, she would be more supportive, Eastin said.  (IHOP's waffles aren't as good as this).  One way to raise money for high-speed rail, she said, is with an oil severance tax on companies that extract fossil fuels, something the state has been talking about — and rejecting — for years.

Gavin Newsom:   While Newsom has become less enthusiastic about the project as the schedule has lengthened and the price tag has grown, he still wants the rail system built.  (Flip-flop alert) Connecting the Central Valley to Silicon Valley could be a huge boost to the state’s economy, he says. Extending bullet trains to Los Angeles “is a question of resources,” but “if we get the first phase done, we can develop the technology and get the private sector involved” in a Southern California expansion.  (The technology is 30+ years old and fully-developed).

Antonio Villaraigosa:  Villaraigosa calls it essential to California’s economic development.  The rail system will “connect the two engines of the California economy,” providing the coastal giants with a link to the affordable housing in the Central Valley and allowing valley residents access to the good-paying jobs on the coast, he said.  The changes in the rail construction plan and the more realistic funding figures have made a difference, Villaraigosa said. “I’m for it now.”  (What changes in construction plans and funding figures?  What planet is this guy from?)

There you have it.  Pretty much straight down the party lines with the candidates who need union funding and votes being cautiously for it amid a bit of hand-waving.  And those that know they will get neither union money or endorsements are clearly ready to kill the boondoggle.  Any questions?  The primary is June 5th via all mail-in ballots in San Mateo County.

Honoring a Mentor

The City Council honored local activist and frequent mentor to other activists, Charles Voltz, last Monday night at the council meeting.  The list of Charles' notable contributions in the Proclamation are long and deep--from co-founding the Washington Park Society with Dan Anderson to the Citizens for a Better Burlingame (CBB of Safeway fame--read the 74 posts here) to High-speed Boondoggle and several groups in between.  As an active Rotarian and man-about-town, Charles has epitomized the type of civic engagement that helped Burlingame through some very tough issues--and he will continue to do so because that is the kind of guy he is.  Several people, including several council members, noted that Charles is generous with his time and knowledge when mentoring people.  It was great to see him and his significant other Mary Hunt honored at a council meeting.  You can watch the accolades on the City website here.  And here is Charles with Mayor Michael Brownrigg who put the ceremony together and ran it with panache.

Charles Voltz and Michael Brownrigg