High Speed Rail and Public Private Partnerships in California: A Shotgun Wedding?

Amazingly, I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. While I believe in contracting out, I'm not big on P3. They're fundamentally different. I don't mind competitive bidding as far as companies who want to build it, but P3 would involve leasing the land, which provides the state a windfall now (probably why Arnold likes it), but we'll be paying through the roof for years after in order to use HSR.

I'm not voting for the HSR bond. I have said why many times before: the bond is too premature. The $9.95 billion is an arbitrary number, and we haven't obtained the bidding, commissioned the engineering, etc... first. Back in the Pat Brown days, we did all those things, and then borrowed only what was necessary to finance it.

If you've ever wondered how government's predicted costs end up to be half of what it actually is, that's why! The HSR will probably cost $80 billion at least, but the state isn't accurately estimating the full cost, nor how it will get all the money necessary. I see no reason the HSR will get built even if this bond passes. Before borrowing money from our grandchildren, the least they should do is what I've described here

Before we all buy the "Monorail" in the Simpsons episode and soak the taxpayers...

Show me HOW-HOW exactly you will get a 200MPH train to go through Soledad Canyon and over Tehachapi Pass where current track speeds are as slow as 20-25MPH.

In these locations of steep grades and sharp curves, the ultimate one being caused the "Tehachapi Loop" where trains do a 360 degree climbing/decending circling turn at 20MPH, I suspect the egineering to "straighten out" the track and shallow the grades would be COST PROHIBITIVE.

Not to mention the co-location of the San Andreas Fault!!!

The high speed rail website DOES NOT say how to build in these locations either. Probably wants the $$ before the reality of cost overruns really kicks in.

In it's current form, this is a really DUMB IDEA.

I too have a big problem with a $40 billion (or $80 billion) pricetag. Talk about sticker shock !

We could have HSR in California within our lifetimes if CHSRA, their consultants and politicians wouldn't keep gold plating this project.

We need a HSR bypess line between Fremont and Santa Clarita via the I-5 corridor (to connect with existing networks in L.A. and the Bay Area). Not a 200 mph BART line in a ditch through Plamdale, Bakersfield and Fresno.

There could be 3 hr. end to end trip times (comprable with flying) between L.A., S.F., Sac. or Fresno by using the existing lines to feed the HSR segments. We do not need to double the price to provide Fresno and Palmdale with 1.5 hr. service.

Build it incrementally, starting with a new line from the edge of L.A. to the edge of the Bay Area for the express trains. The local trains to Central Valley trains could use it too and achieve major time savings.

That's how they do it in Europe where they know what they are doing. The current over-priced proposal may have to go down before we can build something that is affordable.

Transit Planner:

But everyone knows this project is not about providing needed transportation. Its all about giving San Jose, San Francisco and Anaheim anchor points with tons of money to pour into their coffers.

There is no real congestion along I-5; we don't need a rail link from north to south.

From the CHSR own website, what they are out after is 450,000 new jobs in the central valley and 300,000 man years of construction jobs.

Where do they think they are going to get 119 million passengers per year to ride and make this economically feasible. We built a good highway system, and people are going to continue to use it.

I have great difficulty in understanding people who oppose to the energy efficient, safe, reliable transportation system.

Shell Oil Company is predicting that after 2015 supply of cheap oil will no longer keep up with demand. The year of 2015 is only 7 years away. All American will greatly suffer from the lack of cheap oil. My guess is that after 2015, prices of not only oil but all other things will go up steady, i.e., INFLATION. Monetary value will decrease very quickly. Probably the dreadful inflation would not be understood by most Americans because very few had such inflation before.

So don't take negatively but start thinking about how to conserve oil. The high speed train is one of ways but it takes to build far longer than 7 years. So we have to start conserving oil by other ways immediately.

Like you and your readers, I too am a believer in California progress. One of the areas of progress in which I believe is the creation of a sophisticated regional and urban mass transit system for two population centers: The greater Bay Area, now called a super-region going from Sacramento in the north, into the tri-valley, and south to Monterey. The other region is the Los Angeles Basin, going east as far as there are population centers whose residents commute or could commute into business centers throughout greater LA.

This is not the place to trot out details, facts and figures, about population sizes, costs, demography, and existing transit, or lack of transit issues.

What we are advocating is a multi-modal (not rail exclusive), comprehensive network that is highly integrated, that has major arterials and a vast network of “capillaries.” With extensive bus use, flexibility can be sustained as population regions wax and wane. The most outstanding virtue or characteristic of this system is convenience. That means ease of use, point to point speeds rivaling or exceeding private automobile use, clean, safe and comfortable vehicles, and connectivity as close to door-to-door as possible.

It includes automobile use as and wherever necessary, including parking availability, as well as enabling walking and biking for those willing and able. It is possible to elaborate on the features of such a system in far greater detail.

Now comes the hard part. What California doesn’t need is rail north-south connectivity. Even if it did, it would be very far down on the priority list, which rates the regional mass transit systems much higher. The fact is, north south transit in the air or on the highways is not gridlocked. That is only the rhetoric of the train promoters.

Furthermore, the train in question will be a – let us not mince words here – a luxury train for the well-to-do, for professionals in suits and for tourists headed for Disneyland; in short, a train the government has no business building. It will not be, indeed, CHSRA has made every effort to avoid its being, a commuter train system. They will leave that to others.

The eventual $40 billion, which will become $100 billion as everyone who has done their homework already knows, would be far better spent on the two population regions’ transit needs; not on a pork-barrel boondoggle like this train.

P3 has been a disaster for our community in Ventura County. We bid a new sewer plant using this formula and we ended up with $100 a month sewer bills. Any opportunity for local jobs was lost as we entered into a 20 year contract with American Water(owned by German Corp., RWE). Almost $250 million will be removed from our community of 15,000 in the next 20 years. How does this help the City or the State of California? It didn't have to be this way but the marketing and political power of these companies coupled with the support of the Governor will be devastating.

My beef with the HSR as proposed is that it is too much a political delivery and not enough based on what a wonderful form of transit a High-Speed Rail can and should be. The California HSR as presented to us clearly wants to deliver too much to too many locations, and I predict therefore that it is going to be slower than presented to us, and attracting fewer people than expected. Some economic reasoning is in place to make some adjustments, such as I present on my PPP (with moving visuals to make it more fun than the average PPP), located at : http://www.pentapublishing.com/online.html

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