Last week, while many of us were occupied with beating back the flawed ridership report, we got some bad news from Congress as well. The House Subcommittee on Transportation voted to fund only $1.4 billion for high speed rail in FY 2011, below the $4 billion they approved last year and below the $2.5 billion that was ultimately approved for FY 2010, although $400 million above President Obama’s proposed $1 billion amount. This came at the same time as the subcommittee increased highway spending by a whopping $4 billion above the president’s recommendation. The subcommittee also failed to properly fund Amtrak, including the investment in new fleet vehicles.

The National Association of Railroad Passengers slammed the move:

“When you have multiple objectives, it makes sense to give priority to programs that address them,” said Ross Capon, president of the National Association of Railroad Passengers. “We appreciate that the subcommittee has strengthened passenger train investment compared with the Administration’s budget request, but the rail levels fall short when considering the sharp growth in proposed highway investment and the public interest in promoting transportation that is energy efficient and environmentally benign and which gives Americans expanded travel choices that they want and need. Today’s action is the first step in a long process, which people interested in balanced transportation investment should work to influence.”

In short, Congress isn’t stepping up to lead the push for more HSR funding. Sure, many members of Congress wrote to the president in April to call on Obama to lead the push for a permanent HSR funding source, which he ought to do. But Congress needs to at minimum sustain the level of HSR funding approved in the 2010 budget for 2011 and future years. Moving backward like this, especially to waste more money on highways, isn’t a smart move – especially when 25 states submitted HSR funding applications, indicating nationwide interest in HSR money.

While we remain confident that we can get the money back later on in the process, it’s another sign of Washington D.C.’s failure to provide for long-term project development. Mike Signer writes about this over at the Huffington Post today, calling the US a “nation of pilot projects”:

That two solar plants are heralded as helping America “win the race for a clean economy” is the same pattern we’ve seen elsewhere in the collision between the clean economy campaign and today’s toxic budgetary and political environment. We saw the pattern in high-speed rail. As PPI’s Mark Reutter has noted, the administration announced $8 billion in stimulus funds that would go to a handful of projects. But without additional administration pressure, those funds are only being followed by $1 billion of congressional authorization. As 100 members of Congress wrote the president recently, “[G]iven budget constraints, we cannot continue to rely on general authorizations and appropriations to finance high-speed rail. We need to identify a dedicated revenue source for high-speed rail, and we need your help to do that.”…

The ambitions are noble and the rhetoric stirring, but the question is whether we really are shaping a future here — or just a set of ambitious but singular pilot projects.

Yes, there is too little money in annual authorizations for serious infrastructure. But as infrastructure expert Norm Anderson has recently written for PPI, “The financing issue — not a surprise for anyone in the infrastructure business — is the number one problem facing the industry.”

This is all the more reason the administration should follow the stirring rhetoric about competitiveness and “writing our destiny” by creating a new institution, such as an infrastructure bank of the type proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and supported by the president in the past, that would create a long-term funding source and the energy for true national policy.

A national infrastructure bank would be an excellent solution to these issues, along with direct, long-term federal direct grant funding to HSR and other passenger rail projects.

The alternative is that the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress will leave a lot of pilot projects across the landscape that were promising, but were never completed or never led to the kind of long-term infrastructure development because both the White House and Congress got cold feet because of misguided, Hooverite concerns about the deficit.

I’m still confident that Congress will eventually approve a long-term funding source for HSR. But this backsliding isn’t helping matters. We’ll need to redouble our efforts to ensure that Congress remains committed to finishing HSR, and not just tantalizing us with a glimpse of what could be.

Well, we could see this one coming from a mile away. The Peninsula Cities Consortium, after spending the better part of a year criticizing the HSR project, is now calling for it to be suspended, despite the will of the voters, including at least 60% of Peninsula residents, for the project to go ahead, and despite the enormous costs of suspending the project. From the Sacramento Bee:

Five cities on the San Francisco Peninsula called today for suspending planning for the state’s high-speed train project until vexing environmental and economic issues are resolved.

The demand by the Peninsula Cities Consortium – Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame and Belmont – follows a report by the University of California’s Institute of Transportation Studies that’s highly critical of the High-Speed Rail Authority’s projections of ridership on the proposed bullet train that would link Northern and Southern California.

I am shocked, shocked to hear that the PCC would seize on the flawed Berkeley ITS report to use to justify their demand to stop the HSR project.

Seriously, this move should be no surprise to anyone following the project. PCC members, including Palo Alto Mayor Pat Burt and Menlo Park Mayor Rich Cline, have been using an unrepresentative planning process to ignore the widespread public support in their communities for HSR and advance their own anti-HSR agenda. Pat Burt called for project planning to be suspended all the way back in January.

The cost of this move would be enormous. Despite the fact that the cost of both borrowing and construction are at their lowest in decades, and despite high unemployment on the Peninsula, and despite the availability of federal stimulus funds, and despite the need to provide sustainable, affordable passenger rail service to promote economic recovery, the PCC apparently believes that everyone can afford to not build the HSR project until it is done exactly the way the PCC wants – which is apparently “not at all.”

This is made worse by the fact that the PCC statement is based on flawed principles:

In a statement issued July 6, the five cities – Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Belmont and Burlingame – announce, “High speed rail should be built right or not at all. By ‘right,’ we mean that the rail line should integrate into our communities without harming their current livability. The best design and community values, rather than finances, should determine the alignment.”

In other words, these cities, among California’s wealthiest, are saying they want the rest of the state to pay for their gold-plated trains. Although the current plans do call for the tracks to be integrated into the community and enhance livability by reducing traffic, reducing noise, and reducing the number of suicides and deaths along the tracks, the PCC has been taken over by a small and unrepresentative group of homeowners who are convinced, against the available evidence, that the HSR project will undermine their property values. These NIMBYs believe it is the job of everyone in California to subsidize their already-considerable property values.

Unfortunately, the PCC takes a disingenuous approach to the issue of planning and cost:

PCC Chair Richard Cline, mayor of Menlo Park, explained that the five cities are concerned that key problems with the project may not be resolved because of the intense pressure being exerted by the Authority’s desire to qualify for federal stimulus funding. Construction needs to begin on the project by September 2012 and finish by September 2017 in order for California to qualify for a $2.25 federal grant.

There’s no argument that there are some issues that need to be resolved, and CA4HSR has identified several of them. But those can be addressed without undermining the project in this fashion.

“Common sense is absent from the high speed rail discussion. Right now the Authority plans to select a final alignment and release its draft environmental impact report by December of this year under an extremely rushed project schedule that is dictated solely by the desire for federal funds,” Cline said.

This is not true. There is plenty of common sense in the HSR discussion. But the PCC has shown a systematic desire to undermine that common sense in the interests of slowing or stopping a project they don’t like. The project schedule is not “extremely rushed” – it is a sensible and standard timeline used across the state. Federal funds are important – without them the trains cannot be built, and the Peninsula will continue to stagnate in the depths of a recession.

He added, “The project is suffering from an enormous credibility problem, due to its widely criticized business plan, faulty ridership numbers and the absence of funding to carry out the project statewide – let alone offer realistic alternatives for the section planned on the Peninsula. There also is no stated plan for paying to operate high speed rail once it is built, and we fear local taxpayers may be left holding the bag.”

This is also untrue. It is as if Cline called someone a liar and then told the press “that person has been accused of lying.” The ridership numbers are not faulty – the Berkeley ITS report did not say that – and there is a stated plan for paying to operate HSR once it is built. Cline may not agree with the business plan, just as he may not agree with the project, but his disagreement alone does not invalidate either the plan or the project.

As to “local taxpayers left holding the bag,” Cline instead seems to believe that Californians as a whole should be paying for the gold-plated system that his city wants. This does not strike me as appropriate.

Cline explained, “Our cities have been frustrated with the Authority’s inability to answer questions and a contradictory message that we should select the alternative we most prefer while, at the same time, being told by board members that our cities will have to pay for anything other than the cheapest alternative.”

That is not a contradictory message. It is consistent – if the cities prefer a more costly alternative, they should pay for it – and it is also realistic considering the need to exercise fiscal responsibility on this project.

Instead, the five PCC cities say high speed rail should be part of a comprehensive regional public transit plan and that the California High Speed Rail Authority should:

* Provide a valid business and financial plan that supports the full range of alternatives proposed and satisfies the requirements of the state Legislative Analyst’s Office

This is already under way.

Demonstrate to state leaders that the plan will not require operating subsidies from local taxpayers in the future

This has already been demonstrated.

Provide ridership studies to support the project that are validated by an independent peer review body that is responsible to the state Legislature

Next time, let’s select a peer review body that is not headed by a known project critic, shall we?

Increase and enhance local Caltrain service and improve Caltrain infrastructure as a condition of using the Caltrain corridor

This definitely needs to happen, but it has been inherent in the proposal all along. The PCC could help by brokering meetings between CHSRA and Caltrain staff. Instead they appear to prefer sniping from the sidelines.

In the statement, the five cities also ask that local communities be empowered in the decision-making process by giving transportation goals and community goals equal weight, and by affirming that the best design with the least impact on communities, rather than finances, will determine the alignment chosen for each section of the rail line.

But who defines “community goals”? A small and unrepresentative group of NIMBYs? These nebulous “community goals” cannot be allowed to undermine a statewide project of this importance. And unless these cities plan to pay for the project, they cannot seriously expect the state of California or anyone else living in it to agree that cost should be no object.

They ask for sufficient time to evaluate proposed alternatives and environmental impacts and to carry out the Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) community consensus-building process. While high speed rail officials have endorsed using CSS for the Peninsula section of the project, Cline noted, “CSS is not working. The sped-up timeline for the project has short-circuited and compromised this very thorough eight-step process.”

From my perspective, the PCC has not been willing to participate in CSS in a truly open and engaging fashion. Their frequent statements against the project undermine the spirit of CSS.

The cities also ask for funding that “will allow the full range of alternatives to be considered without expecting local cities to contribute substantially to the cost” and request reimbursement for city expenses related to evaluation of project proposals.

Again, the PCC – which includes some of the state’s richest cities – wants everyone else to pay their bills.

Cline credited the PCC for calling attention to many of the problems with high speed rail that the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state Auditor’s Office and numerous state legislators are now focusing on. “Congresswoman Anna Eshoo said it well in a recent editorial,” Cline noted, “when she said, “The High Speed Rail Authority has to hit the reset button, improve its reputation and assuage Peninsula residents, who have every reason to fear that this project will be a nightmare.”

In fact, the PCC is the source of many of these claims that have been regurgitated without question by these offices and individuals. So it’s disingenuous for the PCC to cite those as independent validators when the PCC itself has generated much of what those “validators” have said.

Once again, we see the PCC acting in an inappropriate manner, unrepresentative of their constituents who still support HSR, and willing to undermine the project and saddle everyone else in California with the costs of either their gold-plated preference, or the cost of delaying the project, or the cost of not having HSR at all.

To be clear, I’m not opposed to a tunnel, never have been. But we’ve never seen any clear business plan for how it will be paid for come from the PCC. In fact, while the PCC is levying charges at the HSR project, those charges can be turned right around on the PCC:

• If cost is to be no object, how will costs above the current budget be paid? Where is the financing plan for this?

• If federal stimulus money is abandoned as the PCC proposes, how will that funding gap be closed?

• What is their justification for making the rest of California pay for the preferences of five of California’s richest cities?

• Can the PCC specify “community values” that are to be used in the planning?

• Will the PCC support a truly inclusive community outreach process, or will they continue with their unrepresentative and exclusive process?

It is very unfortunate that the PCC has chosen to take the path of obstruction, when a path of collaboration remains open to them. But then, the path of obstruction is the one you’d expect a group that has never really supported HSR to take.

Comments on the Alternatives Analysis for the San Francisco to San José segment of the HSR project were due on June 30. As Rafael mentioned in the comments to yesterday’s post, a number of cities along the route have submitted their comments, including Mountain View and Redwood City. Like those of other cities along the route, these comments focus on preferences for specific implementations and structures.

Californians For High Speed Rail submitted our draft comments as well, as you can see in the embedded document below. In it, you can see that CA4HSR chose to focus on bigger-picture issues, primarily the lack of coordinated planning between the CHSRA and Caltrain, and some assumptions about the project that are worth revisiting for this corridor. Our goal is to support the construction of a passenger rail corridor that meets the needs of both high speed rail and Caltrain, while allowing for some freight service.

We generally did not make comments on specific alignment issues, such as tunnels vs. trenches vs. above-grade structures, preferring to instead emphasize the need for better coordination among the agencies and pointing out specific areas where that coordination needs to improve.

CA4HSR AA Comment Letter – SF to SJ AA Report

Also included in that file is the letter CA4HSR submitted to Caltrain and CHSRA board members several weeks back, calling attention to these coordination issues. We have heard very favorable responses from members of the Authority about our letter, and Caltrain is still in the process of drafting its own response.

It’s our hope that as in other places on the HSR corridor, the San Francisco to San Jose corridor can be planned and built with the maximal level of coordination between the CHSRA and other local agencies to ensure the best experience for future riders of the system – the people whose needs are the most important in this process, and the people whose voice is so far getting lost amidst the NIMBY ruckus.

Another holiday weekend, another trip to Orange County, another time I desperately wish for HSR. Those who doubt the public desire for HSR probably haven’t driven across our state lately. The Berkeley ITS study made much of the cost comparison between driving and taking HSR; yet apparently they didn’t consider the time comparison. 7 hours in a car versus 2-3 hours in a train (depending on destination) leaves the train looking a hell of a lot better, especially in a digital age. And I’m sure that the parents among us can explain why it’s vastly preferable to spend just a few hours on a train as opposed to most of your non-sleeping day in a car with a toddler.

On the drive back to Monterey today, my wife and I decided to break things up with a stop in Santa Barbara, a town my wife had never actually been to (multiple trips through it on Highway 101 notwithstanding). We wound up parking a block away from the Santa Barbara train station, and as we walked toward State Street and the beach, we saw Pacific Surfliner #763 arrive at the station and disgorge a big load of passengers, who promptly headed toward the shops and the beach.

Those passengers and local businesses know well the benefits of passenger rail service, and would likely all immediately and instinctively understand the benefits of a train that was nearly three times as fast as the Surfliner, a train with frequent service that was rarely, if ever, delayed.

Unfortunately, there remain many people in California who refuse to look at HSR’s global success or at California’s own passenger rail success (the Surfliner is a wildly popular train, second busiest in the Amtrak system, and the Capitol Corridor is the third busiest with a record of reliability and high ridership). Instead they remain absolutely convinced, for reasons that we may never know, that HSR will be a failure in California. And some of them seek out evidence to confirm this pre-existing conclusion.

That description seems to fit State Senator Alan Lowenthal. Longtime readers of this blog know that we’ve been very critical of the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee for his repeated statements that obfuscate the truth about the HSR project. He claims to be an HSR supporter, but this appears to be merely the case so he can criticize and undermine the project without being seen as an outright opponent, in which case his criticisms could be more easily dismissed.

One of his most notorious anti-HSR statements is his frequent assertion that HSR ridership numbers “don’t pass the smell test”. Lowenthal made these statements often in late 2009 and early 2010, without offering any evidence to back them up. It was an entirely inappropriate thing for a state legislator to say, but Lowenthal not only went ahead with it, but he got his colleagues to order the Berkeley ITS ridership report partly on the basis of his claims. That shouldn’t be seen as a coincidence – Lowenthal must have known that Samer Madanat, lead author of the study, was an HSR critic based on the flawed report he wrote last fall. It seems plausible to believe Lowenthal handpicked Madanat to lead the ridership report on that basis.

Why? So Lowenthal could set up the strawman he could then knock down. Lowenthal had no evidentiary basis for his claims about HSR ridership numbers “not passing the smell test,” but now he does. And once the study was released last week, Lowenthal wasted no time at all in using it to justify his attack on the HSR project.

Which is bad enough. Worse is that Lowenthal went FAR beyond the actual conclusions of the report to make accusations that even Madanat himself refused to make. Here’s Lowenthal quoted in Mike Rosenberg’s article on the ridership report:

“This is quite an indictment. Nobody was watching the store,” said state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, chairman of the state Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, which called for the report and has been overseeing the high-speed rail project. “It makes you think after reading this that they told (their consultants) that they wanted certain things to come out in a certain way.”

Make no mistake, Lowenthal is accusing the CHSRA of telling Cambridge Systematics to cook the books of the ridership study to produce the numbers the Authority supposedly wanted. This is an enormous charge, and if true would likely warrant a criminal investigation.

But Madanat explicitly disavowed that possibility. See Michael Cabanatuan’s article on the ridership report from Friday:

Madanat said, however, that the report’s conclusions and criticisms should not be seen as evidence Cambridge Systematics rigged its report to show higher ridership figures, as some high-speed rail opponents have suggested.

“This is the best firm in the business,” he said. “They have a reputation to protect. I would not say, and I would have a hard time believing, that they skewed the numbers. And there is no evidence of that.”

Unfortunately, some gullible folks fell for Lowenthal’s gambit – like Nathanael Johnson, the SF Gate blogger we discredited on Friday. Here’s Johnson’s update to his blog post from Thursday:

This is what sources have been muttering to me for a while now, but no one has wanted to come out and say it on the record. It’s probably a little more complex than this. First of all, there’s no “they” here. There are a bunch of different people facing various pressures – and placing different pressures on consultants. But it has been definitively demonstrated that planners usually understand which side their bread is buttered on, and frequently produce results that will keep the butter flowing (to extend the metaphor).

Wow. Just…wow.

That is an extremely unprofessional post. Johnson mentions unnamed “sources,” so we are unable to verify the veracity of who has been feeding him this information. I’ve heard the same things, but it always comes from HSR critics, many of whom post on this blog. I’ve never heard anyone actually involved with either the Authority or Cambridge Systematics make these claims. It is deeply irresponsible for Johnson to repeat this without evidence.

As you saw, Johnson then went on to slam the entire ridership modeling industry as being nothing more than a bunch of hacks paid to provide whatever numbers their clients want. This sweeping accusation is accompanied by no evidence whatsoever, just Johnson’s assertion that it has been “definitively demonstrated.” That claim needs more than just a “citation needed” tag – it ought to be stricken entirely by Johnson, who should know better than to toss around insinuations and blanket accusations like that.

But that’s the sort of thing that Lowenthal enables when he too tosses around accusations that he can’t or won’t back up with evidence. And he does this in the name of an ostensible HSR supporter, even though his statements and proposals tend to undermine the project.

There’s a name for this kind of behavior: “concern trolling”:

A concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the user’s sockpuppet claims to hold. The concern troll posts in web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group’s actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed “concerns”. The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group….

For example, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair accused a conservative New York Daily News columnist of “concern troll” behavior in his efforts to downplay the Mark Foley scandal. Wolcott links what he calls concern trolls to Saul Alinsky’s “Do-Nothings”, giving a long quote from Alinsky on the Do-Nothings’ method and effects:

These Do-Nothings profess a commitment to social change for ideals of justice, equality, and opportunity, and then abstain from and discourage all effective action for change. They are known by their brand, ‘I agree with your ends but not your means.’

Lowenthal appears to be the leader of the concern trolls, at least when it comes to California HSR. Unfortunately, he’s not just some random dude, but is the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, where he pledges to grill the Authority at a hearing this coming week. These hearings give Lowenthal power over the Authority. But it also raises a question about Lowenthal’s own long record of misleading statements against the HSR project:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?