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Let’s Get On Board With High-Speed Rail

Let’s Get On Board With High-Speed Rail

Practically every wealthy nation today is making major investments in building high-speed rail networks to transport their people: Japan, Canada, France, Russia, India, England, Morocco, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Italy, China, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Brazil, Germany, South Africa, Turkey and more. But not us, the wealthiest nation, with dozens of cities dotted across a continent with millions of people who need fast, convenient rail connection.

Why are we stuck in traffic on roadways and runways and left with a pokey, out-of-date rail system while nations with a small fraction of our resources — such as Morocco, Poland and Turkey — are cruising on HSR networks? Because our leaders sold us out to corporate hucksters who fed us ideological lies. Their fairy tale was that mass transit is creaky, inherently inefficient, and socialist — and that Americans deserve the independence that comes from a one-person-one-car doctrine.

As early as the 1930s, giant corporate consortiums formed to buy out more than 100 of America’s very effective networks of streetcars and interurban train systems. Not to run them, but to rip out the tracks and pave over the rail right-of-ways to make roads. Likewise, corporate profiteers mounted a new offensive in the 1990s to undermine the higher-speed potential of Amtrak’s Acela trains, hiring such Koch-funded front groups as Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and Reason Foundation to spread hokey “analyses” that brand Amtrak as a slow train to collectivist hell. They also bought trainloads of politicians, who’re still promoting the fabricated studies and talking points of the corporate-cabal to derail HSR proposals.

Despite attempts to kill the notion of a national passenger rail system, trains are only getting more popular. Here are just a few things that HSR would offer our county:

–HSR construction creates a start-up economic boom (from the manufacturing of trains and equipment; the construction of everything from bridges to stations; the installation of high-tech control systems; the generation of renewable energy to power the electric engines; the development of new businesses to serve rail passengers, and more) and would be a sustained source of good, permanent jobs running and maintaining the network.

–HSR is a boon for passengers, providing a competitive alternative to airline rip-offs and traffic congestion. Travellers get access to more cities, safer and more comfortable rides and the ability to work or just relax on the road.

–HSR trains are powered by electricity, thus they substantially reduce consumption of grossly polluting fossil fuels.

–HSR crisscrossing America would be a monumental achievement by and for our people, on a par with the 10-year moon-landing effort launched by President Kennedy or the interstate highway system initiated by President Eisenhower. It would be a history-making project, worthy of a nation with unsurpassed wealth and under-used talent. Creating such a treasure for future generations would re-engage our people’s can-do spirit, and it just might rekindle some sense of national unity.

The U.S. is in the caboose of transportation innovation because special-interest politics continue to thwart our national will, leaving you and me with a rickety, malfunctioning rail system that is a national embarrassment. It’s unforgivable that corporate and political leaders have intentionally failed to maintain, much less improve, the quality of America’s rail infrastructure for future generations. And the cowardice of Congress critters, who take special-interest money to oppose the best policies for the common good, is not only shamefully corrupt; it’s a firing offense.

That’s where we come in. High-speed rail offers such huge benefits for us that we need to push it to the center of our policy demands, especially with a national election cycle already on us. To learn more, contact the National Association of Railroad Passengers (www.narprail.org) and US High Speed Rail Association (www.ushsr.com).

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM

Photo: Rich via Flickr

California’s Bullet Train Might Rank Among Cheapest In The World

California’s Bullet Train Might Rank Among Cheapest In The World

By Ralph Vartabedian and Dan Weikel, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Riding California’s bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco would cost “about $50 a person,” supporters wrote in ballot arguments seven years ago when voters approved billions in funding for the project.

In the years since, the state high-speed rail agency has projected the fare would be $83, $105 and, most recently, $86.

The current estimate would be one of the world’s cheapest high-speed rail trips on a per-mile basis, assuming that it reflects a typical fare between downtown stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco, a Los Angeles Times analysis found.

As a practical matter, no one can say how much an end-to-end ride on the bullet train would actually cost if and when the system becomes fully operational, a milestone the state expects to reach some time in 2028. At that point, ticket pricing will be set in consultation with a private company hired by the California High-Speed Rail Authority to operate the system, said rail agency Chief Executive Jeff Morales.

Fares will be one of the most important factors in the decisions that millions of travelers will make when choosing to fly, drive or ride the bullet train. And they are central to revenue calculations for a system that by state law must operate without a taxpayer subsidy.

Morales and other state officials say the system will quickly become profitable. But critics and some experts warn long-range financial and ridership forecasts can be unreliable, and the high-speed train could prove to be a financial yoke on the state.

“Any time you are trying to project more than five years out, you are just spitballing,” said Lisa Schweitzer, a University of Southern California associate professor in transportation and urban planning. “So many things can change dramatically in five years.”

According to official ridership estimates, between 18 million and 31 million passengers annually will board the train in its early years. And the project’s most recent business plan predicts that by 2030, two years after L.A.-to-San Francisco service begins, ticket sales will hit $2 billion annually, or roughly $700 million a year more than operating expenses. Even at the low end of ridership projections, state officials say, revenues will more than cover operating costs.

The current $86 fare is calculated in 2013 dollars based on a formula that prices tickets at 83 percent of average airline fares to help attract riders. The rail fare is an average that includes economy and premium seats, nonstop and multi-stop trains, as well as last-minute and advance purchase tickets. A premium, same-day nonstop bullet train trip would cost more than $86.

But compared with current average prices on high-speed rail systems in Asia and Europe, $86 would be a bargain, equating to about 20 cents a mile or less, the Times review found. The analysis was based on a 438-mile route in the mid-range of what state officials expect the final alignment to measure.

The average fare on Italy’s 434-mile bullet train from Milan to Salerno was 25 cents a mile. The fare on China’s 809-mile line between Beijing and Shanghai was 22 cents per mile. China discloses little about its high-speed rail finances and many academic and transportation experts say it heavily subsidizes its fares, as do many other foreign operators.

The French bullet train from Paris to Lyon is often cited as a line that is profitable, but it has a fare of 52 cents a mile. The German bullet train from Hannover to Wurzburg charges 46 cents a mile. The price comparisons were based on tickets purchased at least one week in advance, averaged over various times of the day and classes of service.

On the East Coast, Amtrak’s Acela system, the closest thing to high-speed rail now operating in the U.S., charges an average of about 50 cents a mile for the 454-mile trip between Washington and Boston.

Louis Thompson, chairman of a state-created review panel for the bullet train project, said California’s projected fares are low by world standards. Thompson’s panel is pressing the state to clarify how fares and other key business decisions will be made in the future.

The authority expects to generate additional revenue from leasing its right-of-way to utilities, advertising and concession fees at stations. But some outside experts questioned whether California’s bullet train fares will be able to cover the system’s full operating costs, as state officials maintain.

“The train will lose money and require a subsidy,” said Joseph Vranich, former president of the national High-Speed Rail Association. “I have not seen a single number that has come out of the California high-speed rail organization that is credible. As a high-speed rail advocate, I am steamed.”

William Grindley, a former World Bank executive and an opponent of the project, has warned the system will fail financially unless demand skyrockets and ticket prices increase sharply. “Can the proposed California bullet train break even? The answer is unequivocally no,” he said.

With Stanford University management professor Alain Enthoven and Silicon Valley financier William Warren, Grindley wrote a 2012 report — updated last year — that concluded the system would require “a subsidy forever,” in the range of $123 million to $1 billion or more annually.

Morales, the rail authority’s chief executive, said past analyses by Grindley’s group have been wrong and included errors in computing the operating costs of foreign systems. He declined to elaborate, but said his agency’s ridership forecasts have been vetted and approved by a panel of outside experts, chaired by Frank Koppelman, an emeritus professor at Northwestern University.

In a series of reports, the panel has praised the ridership estimates, calling them “commendably high quality” in one report, and urging improvements other times.

“When we say we can hit the break-even point, we have a lot of reliability in the statement,” Morales said.

The ridership estimates have fluctuated significantly over the years, at one point reaching a high of 117 million annual passengers, several times the current estimate.

Shortly after the ridership figures were updated last year, a problem was found with the complex mathematical model used by Massachusetts-based Cambridge Systematics, a state consultant. It predicted more short trips than seemed logical, according to Cambridge. One example: The model suggested travelers would drive from Sacramento to downtown San Francisco and board a bullet train for the airport. Koppelman’s panel agreed to an adjustment and urged Cambridge to develop a new version of the model.

Even if the projections aren’t entirely accurate, bullet train proponents argue, the system represents an important investment in the state’s future mobility. California’s population will continue to grow, they say, increasing the need for an expanded transportation network and greener alternatives to the automobile and jetliners.

By 2040, 77 percent of bullet train riders will come from personal vehicles and 16 percent from buses or conventional rail, the state estimates.

While officials have based projected fares and a promised top speed of 220 mph on the need to compete for air travelers, only a small fraction of passengers — about 6 percent or 2.3 million riders — would be diverted from airlines.

Last year, about 10.7 million people flew between the five airports in Los Angeles and Orange counties and the three airports in the Bay Area, one of the nation’s most competitive markets, according to federal figures. Recently, one-way fares between L.A. and San Francisco have been as low as $68, but can exceed $200 for next-day travel.

Koppelman said that although it would be a small fraction of the bullet train’s projected ridership, shifting even 25 percent of air travelers to high-speed rail, as the state projections suggest, would be a significant achievement.

However, like other experts interviewed, Koppelman said even the best ridership projections are only estimates. “People don’t realize how difficult these things are and how many things can change that aren’t in the model,” he said.

One variable is how airlines, no strangers to price wars, might respond to new competition.

“It is a vastly important market to the airlines and one they have fought hard to establish,” said Robert Ditchey, a former airline executive and a co-founder of America West Airlines. “Somebody in that market is not just going to walk away.”

He also noted airlines offer numerous direct and frequent California connections that will be difficult for rail to match, among them Ontario to San Jose, Santa Ana to San Francisco and Burbank to Oakland.

Predicting how many travelers will leave private cars decades from now presents its own challenges. Fuel costs could rise sharply, pushing travelers to a fast rail option. Or the convenience of more efficient, possibly even self-driving, cars could entice people to use the road.

Just how many people drive between L.A. and San Francisco is itself an unknown, state transportation officials say. The full cost of operating a car over the 383-mile trip is about $222, based on federal government figures. But if drivers simply consider fuel costs, they would run about $65, based on the average national fuel economy of 24 miles per gallon and current fuel prices.

“With a family, it’s four train fares versus one car, and taking the train may require a car rental at the other end,” said Genevieve Giuliano, director of USC’s Metrans transportation program. “I don’t see high-speed rail as competitive in the family market.”

Questions about fares and ridership are likely to persist. But Thompson, the system’s independent review panel chairman, said the uncertainty has become less relevant, now that the state is committed to building the system.

“We will not know until late in the game how everything will turn out,” he said.

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: The Acela is the closest thing the United States has to high-speed rail. A high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco is planned for 2028. Ryan Stavely via Flickr

Lack Of Land Slows Work On California Bullet Train Project

Lack Of Land Slows Work On California Bullet Train Project

By Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — The Hollywood Inn, a shuttered nightclub in a run-down section of Fresno, has been demolished. A few miles away, an 80-foot-deep shaft to test soil conditions has been sunk into the banks of the Fresno River.

Officials say such activities, along with recent legal victories and new long-term state funding, show genuine progress on the $68 billion high-speed-rail project that would link the state’s major cities with 220-mph train service.

But the state has yet to start full-blown, sustained construction of permanent structures — including bridges, tracks, and train stations — at least partly because it lacks most of the Central Valley land needed for an initial 29-mile segment that will pass through Fresno. The state has acquired 71 of 526 parcels needed for the segment, about 13 percent of the total, according to figures provided by the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

The start of heavy construction is not only symbolically important but could help weaken political and legal opposition to the project. However, slow progress could threaten the state’s ability to meet funding deadlines.

Jeff Morales, chief executive of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said the agency has had to increase staff devoted to acquiring property. “We did get off to a slower start, but we are accelerating it,” he said, adding that he believes construction started last year when the authority issued a building contract for the first segment to Sylmar-based Tutor Perini Corp.

The state has the legal power to take property from farmers, homeowners, and businesses, but that process can be time-consuming. Morales noted that the rail agency is relying on a separate state entity, the State Public Works Board, to condemn property for the project where needed. The board said last week that it had taken initial legal steps to seize 19 parcels.

The authority, after missing earlier targets as far back as December 2012 to begin construction, is reluctant to say when full-scale work will start.

Among other things, Morales said, the authority wants to avoid gearing up major construction activity and then have to stop it because the state doesn’t have land required to keep going. The parcels now controlled by rail officials aren’t contiguous, limiting the amount of building currently possible.

“We are doing work as we can,” he added, citing demolition, soils analysis, and environmental work as among the pre-construction activities.

The start of major construction on a large public works project marks the crossing of a key political threshold. Martin Wachs, a UCLA professor emeritus of urban planning, recalled that legendary New York City construction czar Robert Moses once said that after the first stake enters the ground, it can never be pulled up.’

That dynamic is at work here, Wachs said. “Once the project is under construction, it has a different political cast,” he said. “The longer they wait, the more opportunity there is for people to try to block it.”

In general, Wachs said, starting construction without the bulk of the property needed for the initial section creates its own set of potential pitfalls, including protracted litigation over property that could bring progress to a halt. “The risks are substantial,” he said.

State officials have long said starting the project in the Central Valley would be easier than building in highly developed Southern California or the San Francisco Bay Area. “If this is less risky, imagine what a riskier location would be,” Wachs said.

Morales said the risks are manageable. “Claiming construction has been delayed is misleading and misses the point, which is that we are on schedule for completion,” Morales said.

Purchase offers to landowners began 18 months ago and have gone out slowly since. And a number of owners have rejected those initial offers, said Anthony Leones, a Bay Area attorney and specialist in condemnation.

In highway construction, all the property required is often in hand before the start of major construction, but experts say that those projects typically provide the building contractor with a completed design. The bullet train will be built under a method known as “design build,” in which a single contractor team designs and builds a project simultaneously.

Contractor Tutor Perini will be using that approach, which allows more flexibility in deciding how to schedule work as land becomes available, said Will Kempton, former Caltrans chief and now executive director of Transportation California, a Sacramento trade group.

Ron Tutor, chief executive of Tutor Perini, said land acquisition is a key limitation in getting major work started. The starting date of construction is “entirely in the hands of the authority,” he said.

Tutor reiterated this week that land acquisition remains important, telling securities analysts in a conference call that he had started demolition and soil testing. “Further construction work along the 29-mile route will proceed in the coming months as access to the various land parcels is provided by the authority,” he said.

Although noting the authority has stepped up efforts to purchase property, Morales said the matter is not entirely under the agency’s control. “We don’t have the same authority that Caltrans has to acquire land,” he said.

The authority is planning to complete 130 miles of track from Madera to Bakersfield for about $6 billion. It must spend $2 billion in federal money, matched with an equal amount of state funds, by 2017 under the terms of a grant.

The state has set an aggressive construction timeline that would require spending $3 million to $5 million every calendar day, assuming construction starts this year, one of the fastest known rates of infrastructure spending in the United States.

The rail authority says it is up to the job and expects to meet the federal funding deadlines.

The challenges in assembling all the property for the 29-mile initial track section represent only a fraction of the task ahead for the full project, which will require purchasing or condemning thousands of parcels.

Two freight railroads with lines close to the bullet train route have not yet agreed to give up any property the state is seeking or provide permission for high-speed train structures to cross over their tracks. In formal comments on the authority’s business and environmental plans, they have said the project may interfere with their business. Burlington Northern Santa Fe in May described the rail authority’s plans to relocate its right of way as “notably deficient.”

Photo via Flickr

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Who Cares What Ideology Drives The High-Speed Train?

Who Cares What Ideology Drives The High-Speed Train?

In Texas, a private company wants to build a bullet train joining Dallas and Houston. In California, the state is raising its own billions to create a very fast ride between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Two very different ways to fund high-speed rail, but they have one thing in common. They bypass the thousand-car pileup that is Washington politics.

Perhaps it’s time for fans of high-speed rail to let some air into their thought box. Perhaps they should stop looking to Washington for direction and money. There are several routes to this destination, and who cares which ideology drives the train?

The drawbacks in counting on federal help for this undertaking are several. One is that most Republicans in Congress remain philosophically opposed to writing checks for such infrastructure. Another snag has been the Obama administration’s failure to smartly guide the $11 billion already committed to the cause since 2009.

That money has reportedly been spent hither and yon, not focused on those densely populated regions where high-speed rail makes the most sense. In the Northeast corridor — where super-expensive Acela trains sell out, despite not being super-fast — scant high-speed money has arrived.

California governor Jerry Brown is now thinking, “The heck with Washington.” He says that obtaining additional money to build the rail line is “well within the capability of the state of California.”

Yes, it can. In June, the Democratic Legislature agreed to fund the project out of the cap-and-trade program (for curbing carbon emissions). And in other good news, an appellate court recently overturned an earlier, lower court ruling forbidding California to sell $9 billion worth of state bonds for the project.

The main obstacle driving Brown away from a larger federal role has been a homegrown congressman — the new Republican majority leader, Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield. McCarthy has made it his sacred mission to block any more federal money for the California project.

“Republicans under Mr. McCarthy,” Brown said dismissively, “have decided that it’s better to treat high-speed rail as a political football than as a great civic opportunity.”

Brown continues to push the rail plan — and in the face of rising costs, raining lawsuits and tiring public opinion. Good for him. That’s the nature of doing big things. The Golden Gate Bridge was not built without pain.

In Texas, a company called Texas Central Railway envisions high-speed trains flying at over 200 mph between Houston and Dallas. We’re talking a 240-mile trip in less than 90 minutes. (The mostly flat landscape should help.) Lines could be extended to San Antonio and Austin in the future.

And — music to the ears of most Texans — the project is not being subsidized by either the state or the feds.

“We are a private company, employing a market-led approach,” Texas Central’s website says, employing all the right words. “Unlike other high-speed rail projects, we are not backed by public funds or your taxpayer dollars.”

The project would have major Japanese input in both investors and technology. Japan does know all about high-speed rail. And it can’t be coincidental that the company’s senior advisor, Tom Schieffer, is a former U.S. ambassador to Japan.

The shared virtue of both the Texas and the California approaches is that the backers don’t have to cut deals with powerful congressmen from sparsely populated districts, places not suitable for high-speed rail. Nor must they court Washington politicians hostile to public transportation.

Would a transcontinental high-speed rail system be a neat thing? Sure. But that’s not going to happen now. These two projects — despite the major difference in their style of funding — could be a start.

Is this any way to run a railroad? Yes and yes.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: loudtiger via Flickr

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