…Or at least that’s what the folk at the California Rail Foundation are claiming in their latest newsletter. The article says:
HSRA is believed to have asked the Governor to block the Caltrans submissions because most of the Caltrans projects were shovel-ready, and therefore had a better chance of obtaining funding than did the Authority’s less defined projects.
The Governor’s decision means that California would discard most projects that could actually go out to bid in the near-term, to benefit $4.5 billion of high-speed rail applications that have much longer timelines, and are unlikely to meet the 2012 deadline. It is yet to be seen whether California’s gambit for over half the Federal ARRA stimulus funds will be at all successful.
Key phrase: “is believed to…” I think at this point you have to take any news on HSR from the California Rail Foundation with a grain of salt. They were part of the unlikely alliance between NIMBYs in Atherton and Menlo Park and transit advocates TransDef, Bay Rail Alliance, and the Planning and Conservation League that sued the high speed rail authority (and essentially lost) over the allegedly corrupt selection of the Pacheco allignment, so their views of the authority have been skewed, to say the least.
Nevertheless, the fact that the Capitol Corridor’s funding proposals were left out of California’s $4.7 billion application for HSR stimulus funds will have a dramatic effect on the future of the Capitol Corridor. The vast majority of the $500 million that the Capitol Corridor applied for would have improved tracks between Oakland and San Jose to allow for nearly all trains to travel to San Jose (current track usage and configuration limits Oakland-SJ trips to only about half of all Capitol Corridor trains, and creates an unnecessarily slow trip). Upgrading this corridor is essential for the Bay Area’s and Northern California’s regional rail network (especially with Bart to San Jose delayed past 2025), and its very hard for the Capitol Corridor to find funds to pay for these upgrades in the first place.
It’s a shame that the Capitol Corridor’s projects weren’t included in the HSR application, but I have a feeling there’s more to it than the California Rail Foundation’s distorted account. The Capitol Corridor is definitely not HSR, and while it could have potentially qualified for traditional passenger rail upgrades in the HSR stimulus, the governor and California state government were without a doubt focusing on jumpstarting the HSR project rather than other conventional rail projects.
For more information on this subject, be sure to read the California High Speed Rail Blog.
2 responses so far ↓
Gary Patton // October 5, 2009 at 9:11 pm |
It appears to me that both the California Rail Foundation and the author of this article basically agree on the facts, but simply disagree on whether the governor did the right thing. No fingers should be pointed on either side.
On the basic point made in the article, the author says: “It’s a shame that the Capitol Corridor’s projects weren’t included in the HSR application, but while [the Capitol Corridor] could have potentially qualified for traditional passenger rail upgrades in the HSR stimulus, the governor and California state government were without a doubt focusing on jumpstarting the HSR project rather than other conventional rail projects.”
The Rail Foundation says: “HSRA is believed to have asked the Governor to block the Caltrans submissions because most of the Caltrans projects were shovel-ready, and therefore had a better chance of obtaining funding than did the Authority’s less defined projects.”
In other words, both the Rail Foundation and the author agree that the governor and state government made a strategic call not to advance Capitol Corridor projects in this federal grant application, even though they were more “shovel ready” than the HSR projects, in order to “focus” the state’s plea for federal funding on the HSR project.
The difference is only about whether this was a smart strategic call, and that is obviously something that remains to be seen. But there is no disagreement that improving the Capitol Corridor would have brought short term, immediate service improvements that are both necessary and important, and there is no doubt that the promise of the HSR system is still just a promise.
Daniel // October 5, 2009 at 9:44 pm |
You’re right Gary, I think the California Rail Foundation is absolutely right on the importance of improving basic intercity rail in California. My criticism of them was how they tried to spin California’s HSR stimulus application as a corrupt maneuver by the CAHSRA based solely on their own biased speculations. The CRF and TransDef have some great ideas, but they’re stubbornly trying to block progress on the HSR issue just because their favorite alignment didn’t win.