CARRD

HSR meetings heat up as budget vote nears

Rita — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:19:33 +0000

A marathon 6-hour joint Senate hearing on high-speed rail was held yesterday, May 15, with a surprise visit by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg. The LAO, State Auditor, and 3 members of the Peer Review Group attended. Topics included the lack of a management team, federal strings and unstable funding sources. Although the Senators continued, through this series of hearings, to try to draw answers from the HSRA to determine whether and how to get the project on a better track, Senator Steinberg pushed to make a $6 billion funding decision next month, saying that “all the facts are pretty well known”. (At approximately 4:42:00 of the video link below.)

CEQA was discussed (4:14:00). In response to Sen. Simitian’s question, “Is there going to be a proposal in the foreseeable future to provide some sort of environmental adjustment in an effort to accommodate the project, and if so, will I be hearing about it now and not after budget actions have been taken?” HSRA Chair Dan Richard said, “It’s possible. It will depend on the outcome of the discussions that we have with the environmental community.”

Video: http://calchannel.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=7&clip_id=374

MP4 video: http://media-05.granicus.com:443/ondemand/calchannel/calchannel_604aa0a5-fccd-4dc6-b869-21b56f2fdf67.mp4

MP3 audio: http://media-05.granicus.com:443/ondemand/calchannel/calchannel_604aa0a5-fccd-4dc6-b869-21b56f2fdf67.mp3

The OCTA Board also discussed high-speed rail at their board meeting on Monday, May 14. Their discussion revolved around the lack of a credible funding source and whether the state should accept the limited federal funds which dictate a poorly located initial operating segment which does not provide connectivity compared to filling the Bakersfield-Southern California gap. They agreed unanimously to draft a letter to the appropriate authorities which captures their discussion.

CARRD transcribed this important meeting; their thought-provoking discussion is a must-read.

Transcript: http://www.calhsr.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/OCTA-Board-Transcript-5-14-2012.pdf

Audio: http://octa.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=417

HSR agenda item #27 starts at 1:49:30.

For reference, the Governor’s May Revise budget for the HSRA can be found at http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/Revised/StateAgencyBudgets/2000/2665/department.html.

Can the HSRA meet their 2:40 travel time promise?

Nadia — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:20:52 +0000

At the High-Speed Rail Authority’s board meeting last week, the Board and public were told that under the Phase 1 Blended Plan the travel time between SF and LA could meet the Prop 1A requirement of 2 hours and 40 minutes. A slide in this presentation reinforced the statement.

However, in the supporting documents for the Revised Business Plan, the travel time was demonstrated to be 3 hours for the same Phase 1 Blended conditions.

We have two points to make: first, that these travel times are unrealistic given the route and project specifics as described in the Revised Business Plan – meeting Prop 1A’s travel time requirements will be challenging if not impossible under this revised plan. Second, that the Board and the public are given a different set of ‘facts’ from the supporting analyses is disturbing.

The graphics might be hard to see, so here’s CARRD’s one-pager on this problem.

If you want to understand why sharing tracks for 50 miles with a local rail service that makes frequent stops could affect travel times, look at the Caltrain Blended Plan study available here.

Latest Business Plan – Where’s the beef?

Nadia — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:43:30 +0000

The highly anticipated Revised Business Plan for the California High Speed Rail project will be approved by the Authority at their board meeting in less than 48 hours but the Authority has still not posted the supporting documents for this plan.

CARRD has been urging the Authority to release this information since last week and in an email to the Authority, we wrote in part:

“This plan is going to a board vote in less than 48 hours, yet presumably board members – and certainly the public – do not have access to these important additional materials. Without them it is impossible to accurately evaluate the Business Plan. We reiterate our concern about the board voting on a multi-billion dollar project without access to supporting information. It is difficult to have confidence in their vote under these conditions.

There is also the obvious transparency problem of not making these materials available to the public in a timely manner. CARRD has repeatedly made this request to you and to the Chair and select board members, and cc’d our state reps. It is troublesome that we find ourselves continuously in this role of asking for a minimum level of transparency that should need no prodding. The board’s rushed vote with incomplete data is equally disturbing. ”

While we await the release of these key documents, here are some initial thoughts on the business plan.

CARRD initial thoughts on Revised 2012 HSR Business Plan – Where’s the Beef?

Substantive changes in Business Plan warrant recirculation for comment

Nadia — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:24:49 +0000

There have been at least two recent media reports describing substantive changes to the upcoming 2012 Business Plan.

We look forward to seeing how public input was incorporated to the plan.

Given the media reports on apparent substantive changes, CARRD is recommending that the Authority consider issuing a second draft plan to give both the public and the Peer Review Group a chance to review the changes and offer their insights.

We think it is prudent to take an extra month or two on a 100 year project to get this right.

See our letter to the board here.

State Auditor issues report and NY Times: Room for Debate Op/Eds

Nadia — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:34:24 +0000

By now, you have likely heard that the State Auditor has issued its latest report on the California High Speed Rail Authority.

The full report is available at: http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2011-504.pdf

We recommend reading the long version (always!) as it provides much greater insight into the problems resulting from too many consultants and not enough staff that CARRD has been highlighting for years.

Also, don’t miss the NY Times piece called Room for Debate.

The NY Times poses the question: Does California need a high speed rail line, ultimately connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles? Can the state afford it?

There are 6 different perspectives, including CARRD’s. Be sure to read them all!

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/26/does-california-need-high-speed-rail

CARRD to Board: Postpone your vote on Grapevine

Nadia — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:04:35 +0000

CARRD send the California High Speed Rail Authority an email today asking them to defer their board vote on the “Grapevine” alignment.

Our message said:

“We are writing to urge the Board to defer a decision until additional analyses on these issues are provided:

1) Express route west of Bakersfield - Project EIR work has shown that the impacts to residents and businesses in Bakersfield are much higher than originally assumed to be. In accordance with this, the city of Bakersfield passed a “No-confidence” resolution. One likely result will be the consideration of at least express trains bypassing the city center. By observation, a west bypass would be a much shorter route via a “Grapevine” alignment.

2) Bear Trap Canyon alignment - The Bear Trap Canyon was selected by the original QUANTM study in 2002 and is shorter, straighter and presumably cheaper an faster to build. The study indicates that the reason for its elimination is the proposed Tejon Ranch project. We would note that the market capitalization of the Tejon Ranch company (which includes many other assets) is $500 million, significantly less than the cost savings from using such a route. Even if a decision is made not to pursue this alignment, the costs and engineering analysis should be presented and discussed publicly.

3) Sprawl - The potential sprawl impact of the two routes should be revisited. The conclusion in the analysis that faster service to Bakersfield would be more sprawl inducing than direct service to Palmdale is premised on the previous study’s conclusion that the Grapevine would offer significant time savings. If this is no longer true, this conclusion should also no longer hold. We would also note that the issues previously identified with the ridership model (de minimus amount of induced travel) will underestimate sprawl potential from a station like Palmdale.

4) Cost - Significant “risk adjustments” have been added to the costs for the Grapevine alignment but none at all for the Palmdale route. While the Palmdale route has gone through some additional scrutiny, it is also at an early stage and it is not credible that this analysis should be so lopsided. Indeed, once engineering got past the “program level”, the cost adjustments to Palmdale have generally been downward as cost savings were found as the route was further optimized. Why is this not a possibility as well for the Grapevine alignment? At a minimum, the Grapevine analysis should include both positive and negative “risk” factors.”

CARRD to testify at Congressional hearing

Nadia — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 03:36:35 +0000

We’re pleased to announce that Elizabeth Alexis of CARRD has been asked to testify at the hearing in D.C. next week.

The committee staff has produced a Briefing Memo that gives an excellent history of the project and has some relevant updated numbers. For those new to the project, this is a MUST READ!

The Briefing Memo is available here: http://transportation.house.gov/hearings/hearingdetail.aspx?NewsID=1475

For those interested in watching the hearing next week, here are the details:

Thursday, December 15, 2011

10:00 a.m. EST (7 a.m. PST)

2167 Rayburn House Office Building

Hearing of the Full Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, U.S. Rep. John L. Mica (R-FL), Chairman

California’s High-Speed Rail Plan: Skyrocketing Costs & Project Concerns

Live webcasts of this week’s hearings will be available at: http://transportation.house.gov

This past week, there was a Senate Committee Joint Hearing regarding the HSR business plan.

At the hearing, the Treasurer’s office report was presented. You can view the report here.

You can watch the December 5th hearing at www.calchannel.com. For those who don’t have time to watch the entire hearing, here are some YouTube clips:

Senator Simitian opening remarks 4:37 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zTp4yTvmao

Dan Richard (Authority board member) 9:51 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EoKzRy2Ks

Senator Lowenthal questions and long discussion 40:39 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA8BIi69xds

Senator LaMalfa 5:09 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Yxh8YbcOc

LAO report and discussion 35:26 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZw2tojhEyQ

Elizabeth Alexis (CARRD) 7:46 – http://www.youtube.com/user/derailhsr#p/u/8/mrWnwQuoryI

Senator LaMalfa 2 2:04 - http://www.youtube.com/user/derailhsr#p/u/6/mqdjmADJsgU

How conservative are the ridership forecasts?

Nadia — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:13:23 +0000

The ridership model is arguably one of the most important components of the recent business plan presented by the California High Speed Rail Authority.

So, how conservative are the ridership forecasts?

Here is a short report looking simply at the price of gas assumed in the model.

What did we find? Well, do you think $40 per gallon of gas is conservative?

Read our report and decide for yourself.

Legal concerns for the Initial Construction Segment and the Funding Plan

Nadia — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:32:50 +0000

CARRD sent a letter to the California High Speed Rail Authority Board and Chairman today outlining our legal concerns on two important issues: the Initial Construction Segment and the Funding Plan.

We are wary of intent to build an Initial Construction Segment (ICS) that does not specifically have an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) associated with it and that the Authority may have illegally certified the Funding Plan required by AB 3034 at their November 2011 Board Meeting.

The full letter can be downloaded here.

CARRD is requesting that the Authority take action to investigate these concerns.

2011 Business Plan preview and other documents

elizabeth — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:07:16 +0000

The California High Speed Rail Authority submitted a number of reports to the California legislature on October 14, 2011. These documents provide some hints as to what will be in their 2011 Business Plan.

CARRD’s comments on these documents are here.

CHSRA: Revenue guarantees and alternative funding plans

CHSRA: Feasibility of “shared track” solution in the Bay Area

CHSRA: Bakersfield to LA Communications Plan