Reflections Following the Senate Hearing

I think TRANSDEF is onto something that no one else is stressing: Because of the way Proposition 1A, AB 3034, was written, there can be no project without private capital and/or a huge federal commitment.

So far, the Authority has been allowed to frame the consideration of its plan, which makes it seem reasonable. Here's why it is necessary to pull back and look at the bigger picture:

The strictures of AB 3034 prohibit the very kind of incremental improvements that would be most sensible (and which are standard practice everywhere else in the world): building a HSR-compatible but unelectrified connection between Bakersfield and LA and improving the bookends to enable shared use. Doing all this would demonstrate the ridership potential of decent train service, which would allow an entirely different kind of discussion--a grounded one, rather than a theoretical one--of a statewide HSR system.

Instead, AB 3034 demands a quantum leap to HSR. A state-funded project simply cannot accomplish that heavy a lift. Because AB 3034 prohibits operating subsidies, massive capital is needed assemble a system attractive enough to generate an immediately profitable level of ridership. An incremental approach simply can’t get there.

I think HSRA has been heading in the wrong direction for years, and has now reached the end of that road. The fundamental flaws are evident for everyone to see: I think Mike Brady’s
lawsuit is correct in asserting that the Central Valley project, is ineligible for bond funds, because it lacks a Usable Segment. (The HSRA’s response was to try to get the lawsuit thrown out.)

It is clear to me that, to start the project, the Authority should have asked private operators what it would take to get them to invest in a statewide system--and then focused on determining whether a PPP was feasible. Building an AB 3034-compliant system on its own was never a possibility. It’s hard to imagine an Authority management incapable of figuring this out.

HSRA wasted hundreds of millions planning a system that can never be built. We have to wonder what they were thinking... In situations like this, one starts with the standard questions “What did they know?” and “When did they know it?”