spacer
Donate Image

Your Donations Count Donate Graphicat the Westside Observer!

High-Speed Train
Billions and billions later, high-speed trains connecting SF and LA are still not guaranteed

Mea-Culpa: California's Elusive High-Speed Rail System

•••••••••• April 2023 ••••••••••

In a December 6, 1962 speech in New York City, then Assistant Secretary of Defense stated: “I think the inherent right of the Government to lie to save itself when faced with nuclear disaster -- is basic.” The California High Speed Rail Authority’s Northern California Regional Director Boris Lipkin in the San Mateo Daily Journal’s November 17, 2022 edition applied such falsity doctrine to that failed project. (I have publicly pleaded guilty of creating such state body with 1996 legislation as a then state senator.)

quotes

The project cost for the non-high speed rail portion in the Central Valley increased last month to $35.3 billion from $25.2 billion. It obtains money from a cap-and-trade program which adds 23 cents to every gasoline gallon besides the state’s 53.9 cents tax per gallon.”

Critics have charged that California’s once highly-publicized electrified high-speed rail project is now a chimera or, worse, a tax-eating boondoggle. A November 17, 2022 letter to the editor from the California High Speed Rail Authority’s Northern California Regional Director in The Daily Journal denying such failure reminded of a wry witticism: “Exaggeration is a blood relative to falsehood and almost as bad.” This high-speed flack, paid with taxpayer dollars, accused me (whose legislative authorship created the Authority and enabled his subsequent flackery appointment) of “factually inaccurate statement . . .”. Instead, he declared that 119 miles of high-speed track are honestly “already under construction . . .”. Yet after I requested, pursuant to the California Public Records Act: “All current contracts now in effect for construction of track from Merced to Bakersfield and Coachella and Wasco” the Authority’s Public Records Administrator informed me last January that “. . . the Authority . . . has no records responsive to this request.” That means no construction contract has been let!

The Authority hasn’t even acquired by eminent domain or owner agreement all land parcels needed for project construction. At the end of January, the Authority’s honest Public Records Administrator stated that total parcels delivered were 2,167 “compared to an estimated 2,305 parcels needed.” Environmental clearance for the promised San Francisco to San Jose, San Jose to Merced, Merced to Fresno, Fresno to Bakersfield, Bakersfield to Palmdale, and Palmdale to Los Angeles segments have been obtained, but there’s no funding to build. (Did I hear “idle gesture”?)

Of total authorized Authority positions (429), 328 are filled. The remainder are vacant. The legislature last year finally allowed sale of the remaining $4,200,000,000 general obligation bonds authorized by taxpaying voters in the November, 2008 election, but the Public Records Administrator advises that no records of private investment in the project from 2009 until 2022 exist. The Authority admits the project will cost $77,000,000,000 - $113,000,000,000. Where’s the money for even a diesel system duplicating Amtrak service in the Central Valley, much less true high-speed electrified trains? That’s right: the 119 miles from Merced to Bakersfield will accommodate only diesel trains, not electrified.

Fresno Station
Amenities for Frassno Station site include safe and well-traveled spaces for food vendors, bicycle repair stations and parking, shade structures for visitors, Wi-Fi access, public art installations, blue light emergency phone towers and sufficient lighting to ease safety concerns.

The project cost for the non-high speed rail portion in the Central Valley increased last month to $35,300,000,000 from $25,200,000,000. It obtains money from a cap-and-trade program which adds 23 cents to every gasoline gallon besides the state’s 53.9 cents tax per gallon. Moreover, President Biden’s Department of Transportation denied last month a $1,300,000,000 requested grant for the project, deeming it not “cost effective.” (The only construction to date consists of bridges and viaducts which State Senator Brian Jones of San Diego asserts should in the Central Valley should be demolished if they can’t “repurposed.”)

The remaining project mavens seem to have a reverence for the truth. They always keep a respectable distance from it!

Finally, the Authority claims “. . . the project will not run diesel trains . . .” and is “already electrifying the Caltrain corridor . . .” The 2008 $9,950,000,000 state bond issue included $950,000,000 to connect regional train systems like Capitol Corridor, Caltrain and Metrolink (in the L.A. Basin) to high-speed rail. The Authority instead is spending $775,000,000 in bond proceeds to electrify Caltrain. Caltrain constitutes regional rail service of about 45 miles limited to one set of tracks, not the needed two if true high-speed trains ever operate on the Peninsula and doesn’t under state law need to pay all operating expenses from farebox revenue; High-Speed Rail does, per the voter-approved 2008 bond issue. It’s impossible for it to do so in the Central Valley competing against Amtrak in small cities. It’s not building tracks from San Francisco to Los Angeles as promised voters in 2008. It’s building a diesel train system (actually only from Coachella to Wasco in Kern County). As the Authority claims, “electrified rail” is in California statutes, but neither Caltrain nor Metrolink is required by state law to be electrified. High-speed electrified rail’s California future doesn’t now exist, the 2008 ballot vision stained by subsequent misleading of California voters under post-2008 leadership which manifestly can’t contradict facts. Close the project and convey remaining bond proceeds equally to Caltrain and Metrolink with statewide voter approval.

Quentin Kopp is a former San Francisco supervisor, state senator, SF Ethics Commission member and retired Superior Court judge who was president of the California High Speed Rail Authority governing board, 2006-2008..

April 2023


Have Your Say

More Trending Articles



Wolf in sheep's clothing

Sowing Discord

by Julie Pitta

Big money ‘neighborhood’ groups step up their campaign of take-over tactics in 2024 elections.

Check it out

Popular bay view

Say NO to expanding yacht harbors for the wealthy

by Evelyn Graham

Rec and Park’s plan expands access for the privileged few bupkis for the rest of us.

Check it out

New proposed site

New proposed location for Ocean View Library is ideal

by Glenn Rogers

Few were surprised when Supervisor Safai learned the library was not to be built in the Greenbelt — he feared the worst. No library at all.Since 2023, the Library Commission has been considering 466 Randolph Street, where the I.T. Bookman Community Center and the Pilgrim Community Church are located.

Check it out

SF from Alameda Point

San Francisco. In Alameda? Wait, what?

by David Osgood

When the runways for the Alameda Naval Air Station were extended out into the bay—using dredged bay fill, the same way Treasure Island was created — they crossed over the city line. The federal government apparently didn't know or care.

Read More ...

Man in Wheelchair

San Franciscans need nursing home care

Will Laguna Honda Admissions Start Soon?

by Dr. Teresa Palmer

The survey attests to a quality of care that is higher than in for-profit private nursing homes. But there are ongoing problems.

Read More

PARKING CONTROL

parking tickets for RVs on Winston

RV residents on Winston Drive face uncertain future

by Thomas K. Pendergast

A four-hour parking limit is going to make things even more difficult for RV residents.

Check it out

© 2023 Westside San Francisco Media. No portion of the articles or artwork may be republished without expressed consent. Legal disclaimer.