High-speed rail campaign begins

The campaign for Proposition 1A, the $9.95-billion high-speed rail bond, now has a website, Californians for High-Speed Trains. It says the train would "take travelers from the Bay Area to Southern California in 2+ hours, with stops in every major city on the way."

The actual figure the campaign touts elsewhere on its website is that it would take 2 hours, 38 minutes from San Francisco to Los Angeles. That means the train has to travel an average speed of 163 mph while navigating through urban corridors and traveling up and over mountains.

Meanwhile, the fund-raising committee for the campaign is also called Californians for High Speed Trains, and as of Tuesday evening, it was reporting about $130,000 in contributions, according to the Cal-Access state database. The largest corporate donation was $30,000 from Parsons Brinckerhoff, the New York-based engineering and planning firm. It even got a photo of a bullet train that occasionally pops up on its home page.

Another group, called the Assn. for California High-Speed Trains, has kicked in $24,000. It's a consortium of engineering and construction firms, according to the list of companies on its website. The list includes IBI Group, CH2M Hill and Hatch Mott MacDonald.

The campaign also received more than $50,000 from a previous high-speed rail fund-raising committee, which in turn received money from another committee called "Californians for Clean, Safe, Reliable Water." That committee has reported donations going back to 1999 and 2000, and the list of contributors comes mostly from the world of agriculture. This isn't unusual at the state level -- committees shift money between themselves all the time, whether or not that's what the donor intended.

Regular Bottleneck reader Dana Gabbard also found a website devoted to opposing Proposition 1A, from a group calling itself Derail. It features a very funny cartoon of a bullet train eating money. The group says it consists of people who live near the Caltrain rail corridor in the Bay Area. The California High-Speed Rail Authority wants to use that corridor to connect San Jose to San Francisco.

--Steve Hymon

Comments

[Morris Brown]

I am a founder of DERAIL 501(c) public interest corp. and administer the website.

www.derailhsr.com

The site has tons of information on this project. What has just been added is a link to the just released due diligence study from Wendell Cox and Joseph Varnich, both noted transportation experts. Every voter should read this independent study of this project.

[Dana Gabbard]

Gregory, this project has been in the pipeline for 15 years. We are not going to stop it again to pursue some fantasy private financing based on fantasy liability reform. The whole purpose of the bond is to prove to private investors that the state is serious and committed to the project. The bonds will make the kind of investment you want possible.

Hey, if you want to help someone get private funding contact the maglev Orange Line people, the poor deluded souls...

http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_10474171

[Gregory]

Despite the fact (or maybe because of!) that I am a rail fan, this sounds like the wrong way to do this. In short, I don't trust any California government agency to do a project of this magnitude in an efficient manner. Maybe what's really needed is an overhaul of our liability laws so that the project would be attractive to a for-profit consortium.

[Robert Cruickshank]

If I may, I have been running the California High Speed Rail Blog (cahsr.blogspot.com) since March, and I've got over 150 posts explaining the benefits of the high speed rail system as well as commentary on the politics and campaigns surrounding Prop 1A.

I'm not getting any money from anyone to run the site. It's a labor of love. And I daresay it's one of the best, most active sources of information on the HSR project. Even the "DerailHSR" folks frequent the comments.

You mentioned "average speed," Steve - it will run slower than 163mph in the urban areas and top out at 220mph on the rural stretches. And it's going to go under the mountains, not over them, in tunnels. Good roundup of the "campaign" websites though!

[SKD]

The German-built trains in China that use regular tracks can exceed 250 mph, but are slowed down to 220 mph for passenger comfort. I am sure the travel time will be roughly two hours from LA to SF, when they eventually build this system.

The whole issue is why is it taking so long to do this?
California should have been on the cutting edge of high-speed trains two decades ago. Iran and Vietnam will complete their high-speed rail systems before California even gets started on theirs.

[spokker]

Oh no, the mean train is going to eat all our money :(

[Lance]

Derail? Follow the money on this one! I'll bet it leads right to the airport! You know those people that use so-o-o much fuel. Or perhaps that smell is oil. Anyway it stinks. It seems trains don't use much fuel for what they carry. They even can be electric!

[BOB2]

Steve,

Mr. Kopp and his claims about the HST get more grandiose with every press release. So now where going to have a 350 mph train, to make all those stops, and get to LA in 2 hours?

I, like probably a majority of Californian's, will put a clothespin on my nose to keep out the stench of CHSRA and its insider clique, and vote for the bonds. We need to invest in our rail passenger systemts more than ever..

Your list of contributors, a who's who of the well connected CHSRA insider firms, is another reason to pass reform legislation and take rail passenger development away from Kopp and the dubious CHSRA, and put it into a responsible state agency, accountable to the taxpayers, not the contractors.

BOB2