Bullet Train Turns Out To Be Shooting Blanks

Is California coming to its senses? Well, I wouldn't go that far, but it does appear it is having flashes of sanity. One of the federal government's pet projects, supported by the Democratic legislature in California, is a high-speed train running from San Francisco to Los Angeles. OK, no cracks about out of the frying pan and into the fire.

In 2008, the voters of California were still on their "unlimited resources, unlimited spending, unlimited taxes, green weenie" trajectory. They approved a nearly ten billion dollar bond measure to create and fund a High-Speed Rail Authority. Meanwhile the Democrats in Washington DC are pushing their initiatives to throw good money after bad on green highway schemes, plug-in cars, and high-speed transit to get people out of their cars and into the cattle cars. California legislators are so adept at spending other people's money, that when a number of states recently rejected federal highway funds, the solons stood outside the hallowed halls of Congress and the White House and begged that those rejected funds be funneled to California for their lithesome Lionel.

A combination of the realization that the rail project is already exceeding the original estimates by more than double (for a reduced project), the market and housing crash, and the unseemliness of begging Washington for mo' money, mo' money has resulted in a backlash against Euro-style transit schemes. The voters are coming back to consciousness and are saying that they don't care if France, China, Germany or Timbuktu have high-speed rail--we're going to cling to our guns, our Bibles, and our automobiles. The home of the freeway is no longer willing to be the home of the giveaway.

In response to a public outcry (with words like "we can't afford this goddam thing, and we don't want it anyway"), Republican Assemblywoman Diane Harkey horrified the green weenies and feeders-at-the-public-trough Democrats by giving a major speech regarding the bullet train. "We're de facto bankrupt. We're trying to issue bonds for public works in the billion-dollar range and having problems getting any takers, and our rates are sky-high for municipal debt. Is issuing more debt (including taking matching funds from the feds) for high-speed rail a priority when competing for scarce resources for education, water, and local transportation?" Harkey is no amateur politician making a political point. She spent thirty years as a successful executive in corporate financing and banking before being elected to the Assembly.

Stanford Business School, the Rail Authority, and Silicon Valley members of a study group all reached the same conclusion: the plan as originally laid out would now cost $66 billion, or about $52 billion if drastically cut back to a point where only Los Angeles and San Francisco would have train stations. A nearly-identical result was attained by an independent group called Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design (CARRD).

Silicon Valley executive William H. Warren adds ridership to the stew. "The real problem is, how will the legislature know they have a ridership estimate they can believe in--there is no track record of such estimates being correct. The idea of doing a small project and seeing if they can validate a smaller forecast before moving on to the full project is not an idea they (the Democrats and bullet-train enthusiasts) seem to be able to understand." Warren is being charitable. Cal-Train and Amtrak have regularly overestimated ridership and income by factors of three to four times. Investors back off when it becomes apparent that every single ride is sooner or later going to have to be subsidized by government money since the projects will never even come close to showing a profit.

To add to the Authority's woes, many former supporters are now opponents of the whole damn mess. Environmental Impact Reports were jury-rigged to show that the impact of such a high-speed system would be minimal. In fact, they will require huge disruptions to the roadway environment, along with considerable movement of residences, residents, and businesses to accommodate a system that is quite a bit more damaging than a traditional rail system. Even relatively low-speed trains such as those on the Cal-Train routes have an abysmal safety record resulting in a death or injury on their right-of-way two or three times a month. Now imagine that train barreling at you at 200 mph.

With major Bay Area and suburban Los Angeles communities objecting to nearly every facet of the project now, the Authority has switched its emphasis to the financially hard-hit Central Valley (hard-hit because of other government green weenie schemes) for early development. Important San Francisco peninsula cities such as Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto (where Stanford University is located) have sued the authority on environmental grounds. Figuring that they've already ruined the environment in the Central Valley with their "fish, not agriculture" programs, they might as well get started on major portions of the roadway between Bakersfield and Fresno so that when the ship hits the sand, they can say that "all that work and job-creation would be wasted if we stop now." One critic calls that "the rail to nowhere ploy."

Madera County Supervisor David Rogers was very blunt in his criticism at the Assembly hearing. "I regret to tell you that despite all our hard work and good will, the High-Speed Rail Authority has disregarded all our offers and ideas, given us lip service to placate our reasonable demands, and blatantly and arrogantly ignored us (Note: Madera County is one of the Central Valley areas that the Authority wants to start building in)." To an Assembly that included several Democrats nodding in agreement, he went on to say: "The Authority is a master manipulator pitting Central Valley city against city, county against county, farmer against farmer, by dangling promises of maintenance jobs and temporary construction jobs in front of our impoverished region."

It remains to be seen how this power-grab and forced compliance will ultimately shake out. There is considerable opposition to the project, but it tends to be less organized and more fragmented than the spendthrift green weenie public transportation crowd. Maybe what is really needed is not a bullet, but a wooden stake and a gravedigger's shovel.

Note to our readers: Today is my next-to-youngest granddaughter's birthday party, and she wanted to have it at a family Pizza place. Hmph. But that means we'll be trekking down to the bright lights of Bakersfield, and won't be back 'til afternoon Pacific Time. Please feel free to comment, and I promise I'll respond as soon as I get home.