The California High-Speed Rail Authority http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/ , the government agency behind Proposition 1A on the Nov. 4 ballot, has a slick multimedia campaign on its website promoting the ballot measure.
For those who don't know, the proposition asks voters to authorize the state to borrow $9.95 billion to fund the partial cost of a high-speed rail system to connect Northern and Southern California. The trains on the system, proponents say, will reach 225 mph.
The rail authority's website has a six-minute video http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/gallery.aspx touting high-speed rail systems from around the world. There is a nifty feature http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/map.htm that simulates trips. You can click on a starting point _ let's say San Francisco and an ending point _ let's say San Diego _ and it will tell you how long the trip would take and how much it would cost.
San Francisco to San Diego would take 3 hours and 56 minutes and cost $70, so the website says. Sounds good. Maybe too good to be true.
I like the idea of hopping on a bullet train, instead of catching a flight, to visit my folks in the Bay Area, but I have a lot of misgivings about Prop 1A.
Here are my concerns:
1) According to the Legislative Analyst's Office, a nonpartisan source, the $9.95 billion would have to be repaid over 30 years at an average cost of $647 million a year. http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/ballot_source/Propositions.aspx
2) The $9.95 billion is just the down payment. Building the entire system is estimated to cost $45 billion. That figure in all likelihood will grow, given the tendency of large-scale public works projects to exceed cost estimates.
3) Let's say that the system gets built. Maintaining it and running it can cost more than $1 billion a year.
4) In the age of terrorism, how can a rail system that has hundreds of miles of tracks be secured?
As it is California is broke. I can't see the state taking on billions more in debt. Voters also have to ask themselves this question: can the money be better spent on other investments?
How about funding more or better incentives for homeowners and businesses to install solar panels on their roofs? How about funding infrastructure to pipe recycled water to golf courses, parks and other places. How about using the money to improve local transit? Most everyday driving is short-distance travel within a city.
There is no guarantee that if you build it, Californians will use it. You know how much we love our cars.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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1 comments:
First, railroad is infrastructure. And just as there is no free lunch, neither is there free infrastructure. It's a given that this bond measure amounts to a down payment on the building of a high-speed rail system. The question that needs to be asked is whether California can afford NOT to build it.
For any transportation system to be successful long-term, it needs balance. For years, California's transportation net has been unbalanced, in favor of the automobile and the airplane. Some would say it's been unbalanced in favor of the oil, airline and highway construction lobbies, but I digress.
We've long known the state is too auto-dependent, but in truth, it also is too air-dependent for moving people up and down the state. The cost of gas has made driving prohibitive for many people, and cutbacks in routes and flights by the airlines have made flying within California almost nightmarish for anyone not flying to a major point. Priced the flights between LAX-SAN lately? The shock may kill you.
What all of that implies for California business is a lot of lost productivity and added expense.
The terrorism question is a red herring. How do you protect a rail line against terrorists? How do you protect a freeway against terrorists, or a high-rise (I think we already know the answer to that one)? Should we shrivel up, roll into a ball and die because the potential for terrorism exists? Blind fear does not become a great nation.
There's something else: The terrorists out there, at least the Islamic extremists, don't think as we do. They don't select their targets simply to kill Americans en masse. Their preferred targets are globally recognized symbols of American wealth, political influence and military power -- the Pentagon, US embassies, a Navy warship, the World Trade Center. All high-profile symbols. A passenger train just doesn't carry the same appeal.
There is another factor looming offshore -- literally -- that shortly will make California's freeways an even more difficult place to be.
We already have a high number of big rigs on the highways. They worsen traffic and accelerate the wear and tear on the highways themselves. We've already seen a major increase in truck traffic with the opening of US highways to Mexican trucks under NAFTA. But there's another wave of big rigs soon to be hitting our roads.
Container ships are growing almost exponentially in size, and California's major container ports, Long Beach and Oakland, are gearing up to accommodate them. What does this mean to you? Just this:
Instead of ships arriving with 3,000 or 5,000 or 7,000 containers at a time, you shortly will be seeing ships in port with 10,000 to 12,000, and even larger ones are on the boards. These aren't just containers; they're the trailers in the tractor-trailer rig. And you soon will be competing with them for lane space on the Interstates.
A high-speed rail line will never replace cars or airplanes, nor it is meant to. But it can give us that balance we need to make the movement of people up and down the state a lot more safe, efficient, comfortable and cost-effective than it is today.
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