GETTING THERE FROM HERE - And the shots keep coming, to say nothing of the “bullet” points being thrown about on the future of the California High Speed Rail (CAHSR) Project.
Some hate the project, some love the project, and some are cautiously optimistic on whether Governor Brown can achieve an innovative (and expensive) project at a time when biting the fiscal bullet on education, health and welfare and other services remain unavoidable priorities during an era when pension reform, tax reform and budget-balancing are central to gubernatorial efforts in all 50 states.
Also weighing in on this hot-button issue are two of the most prominent journalists at the LA Times, Steve Lopez, and George Skelton.
I may not always agree with Lopez and Skelton, but their articles are not only timely but more informative and up to date than most articles I’ve read on the subject. In particular, they raise the profile of Dan Richard, the former BART official handpicked by Governor Jerry Brown to lead the CAHSR through these rough times and jumpstart the project in a more pragmatic and cost-effective direction.
And a pragmatic, cost-effective direction is exactly what the taxpaying public wants right now. After all, Governor Brown is arguing for increased taxes and has promised to cut spending big time if the voters reject those increased taxes.
Governor Brown has made some bold moves that have infuriated liberals and conservatives alike—he has abolished Community Redevelopment Agencies and advocated for pension reform (to the chagrin of affording housing advocates, public sector unions and Democrats) while also pursuing funding for the CAHSR project through the recently-passed (and GOP/conservative-despised) cap-and-trade plan.
So it’s safe to say that Governor Brown is, by and large, a man of his word and someone who (perhaps because of his advanced age, or perhaps because of his character), says what he means and means what he says.
So as the long knives are sharpened for the CAHSR proposal, from the many Californian cities to the state Legislature to the GOP-dominated House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., Governor Brown is virtually the last man standing in defending the CAHSR he pioneered when he was last governor decades ago.
Frankly, as a fiscal conservative who advocates transportation/infrastructure spending as the best way to strengthen a local economy, I wish him well. And as Lopez and Skelton have pointed out, there are credibility issues for Brown to consider, including:
1) The need to clarify and guarantee a lowered price tag. Those true believers who shrug their shoulders at the $98 billion price need to get over themselves. Seriously—get over your baaaaaad selves. Go to the church, synagogue, mosque, or other site of your choice and throw yourselves down before your Maker and beg for forgiveness in your callous disregard for promising $35 billion and doing a bait-and-switch to a $98 billion tag that virtually no voters would have approved.
To shrug off that price tag as silly is to shrug off the trillion-dollar (and growing) price tag of our foreign military ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Governor Brown, to his credit, calls that price tag “silly”, and wants to use rights of way and other cooperative efforts with local transit agencies to produce a much cheaper final project. To that end, firing the previous CAHSR leadership was a no-brainer.
Another goal should be to consider asking the voters to lower the speed of the CAHSR project enough to obviate the need for many expensive bridges and tunnels, and to obviate the need of the extra expense and energy needs of a high-speed train that might NOT be environmentally-friendly. Yes, a train that goes too fast might actually have a negative environmental footprint, and that should be a problem to both bean-counter and environmentalists.
2) The CAHSR project needs to be part of a comprehensive transportation project that is meant to blend in with and supplement the other transportation projects in our state—and that includes air, train and even car-based transportation. A CAHSR that is a stand-alone project will clearly come at the expense of other transportation projects (freeway widenings, the Wilshire Subway, the Foothill Gold Line, and light rail to LAX come to mind), and no one wants that.
Again to his credit, Brown (and his handpicked go-to guy Richard) are talking about teaming up with the successful Caltrain and Metrolink systems to build up those networks and enhance the access and ridership of urban riders most likely to use the CAHSR—which would be a good fiscal balance to the $2-3 billion in federal money for the Central Valley where the land is cheapest and the trains can first be tested (and to where the federal money has been mandated).
Furthermore, the private sector WANTS the urban ends of the line (San Francisco and Los Angeles) to be prioritized, particularly because the LOSSAN rail corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as the heavily-populated east Bay Area, are regions where rail travel is already a fairly commonplace occurrence. The private sector stands to run these lines once completed, so they would theoretically have enough skin in the game to plunk private sector funds to CAHSR.
3) Finally, there has to be buy-in from the airports and airlines, who (and many voters are as yet unaware of this) also receive public subsidies and tend to lose money on intermediate-length flights to Central California cities like Fresno and Bakersfield. Connecting Union Station and Burbank Airport to Palmdale Airport with a CAHSR line, coupled with an enhanced Metrolink connection between Ontario and Union Station, allows for a true regional airport network that relieves LAX from its central airline role.
Should the CAHSR have its fiscal footprint reduced, and should the CAHSR project be reinvented as an obvious and central cog of a statewide network—rather than as a fiscal boondoggle that would suck too many funds out of the rest of the state’s transportation budget and long-term goals—then Brown’s effort will come across as a brave and visionary move during rough fiscal times.
And Brown would come across as the true “last action hero” of Sacramento, rather than a governor obsessed with a project that the taxpaying public would prefer to just put down with the fiscal gun of the ballot box.
(Ken Alpern is a former Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Vice Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
Tags: Ken Alpern, bullet train, California bullet train, California High Speed Rail, CHSR, Jerry Brown, Steve Lopez, transportation
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 12
Pub: Feb 10, 2012