Senator seeks to revamp rail authority leadership

And now, a word from the irascible, cantankerous curmudgeon:

While there is a lot of enthusiasm and support for this effort by Senator Lowenthal — SB517 — I regret to say that I don’t share it. His intention is to replace the existing Board of the CHSRA, and re-locate that Board within the Department of Business, Transportation and Housing.

Here’s why I object to it.

1. I don’t want this project managed by anyone else. I don’t want this project to exist.

2. I do not believe that this project can be “done right,” as Lowenthal and many others of us believe. Therefore, it doesn’t matter who manages it.

3. There are mistaken assumptions in the idea that a new, professional management team will do what we HSR critics want, and not do what we don’t want. That is naive on our part. It’s not the way the world works.

4. What we have now is a chaotic, fumbling, pretentious group of amateur public relations misfits who can only mis-manage this HSR project. They stick their foot in it, daily. That, in fact, is to our advantage in seeking to terminate this project entirely.

5. A management team acceptable to us could very well create a rail route and alignment that we don’t want. Then their credibility will remove our basis for further complaining.

6. It is foolish for us to believe that a more professional group of managers will take us more seriously. There is no basis for them to do that. We are the amateurs; they are the professionals. Their job will be to create the most cost/effective HSR project on budget and on time. Our local needs could well be an interference with these goals of the new management group. Only now, we have no one to turn to for support of our continued dissatisfactions.

7. If we seek to terminate this project, as I do, then leaving this presently existing team of incompetents in place serves our purposes. They manage to shoot themselves in the foot in a new way every week. Our intentions benefit from their disastrous performance.

8. The sponsor of this legislation, Alan Lowenthal, wants this high-speed rail project in California, as does Joe Simitian. Some of us don’t agree with that. We don’t want the project at all; anywhere. That’s the whole point of the blog: http://high-speedtraintalk.blogspot.com/

Therefore it is not in our interest to upgrade the management team in order to mitigate the mistakes, lies, and bad judgements of the current rail authority.

9. We want the project terminated, not the management team upgraded. I believe the opportunity for termination is now greater than ever in Washington. Persistent local fumbling will only support our case.

10. Lowenthal doesn’t see this project as a boondoggle. I do, as do many others. Boondoggles remain so regardless of how they are managed.

Where does Martin live? Next to the Caltrain right of way. He listens to loud horns and diesel engines running on tracks at grade creating a barrier right through the middle of Menlo Park. The dangerous status quo for some odd reason is fine with him. Most of us want something better.

The issue, my dear Felton Gables friend from across the other side of the tracks, is being avoided here with an innuendo ad hominem attack that ignores the point of this thread.

Shall we stick to the issue, please?

What Lowenthal, doubtlessly with good intentions is providing, is an opportunity to save the project for California. He is a high-speed rail supporter, as is Simitian. They want to remove the thorns in their side, like Van Ark and the rest of the HSR clowns. But they do want the train built.

And that’s the dividing line here. You are either on one side or the other.
There are many so-called objectors in Palo Alto and Menlo Park who want the train “done right” by which they mean, build their way; their route, their alignment. But, they do want the train. Trench, tunnel, stop in San Jose, go up 101, go Altamont, etc. etc.

Been there; done that. Now I’ve moved on. There is more than enough empirical data that tells us that building this train in California – UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES – is a very bad idea, not only for us on the Peninsula, but for all Californians.

Please read the critical assessments that are now available everywhere. Become informed not by smoky, romantic promises and visions of a vague future, but take a hard look at the realities of costs, benefits, and unanticipated consequences when the rail authority, whoever it will be, start digging holes.

The current Board has been lying about everything. But, a new Board telling the truth will not make the train project any more palatable. The facts about it won’t change. $100 billion for goodness sake. It will be an obsolete technology in 10 years. It will devastate the environment, urban and rural. You already know all this, don’t you?

This issue is much larger than the problems on the Peninsula. This project will irrevocably damage California and further burden its foundering economy.

You, your children and their children will be in hock forever, subsidizing the running of a train for the few riders it carries, and paying the interest on the loans. It shouldn’t happen at all. It costs too much and will do too little, except harm.

Fixing the Board by replacing the bad boys with good ones is no solution to this problem.

Read this blog, and keep up with what’s actually going on.
http://high-speedtraintalk.blogspot.com/

Oh, and by the way, do you have a real name? Or are you embarrassed?

A reconsideration of Senator Alan Lowenthal’s legislation, Senate Bill 517, which seeks to can the CHSRA

While this is not new news any longer, it’s more important than I first thought. Indeed, I was dismissive of this step and argued in this thread why it was underwhelming.

I apologize and have changed my mind. It is important and here’s why. It’s a dramatic step by Alan Lowenthal, a leading Democrat. I don’t have to belabor the fact that the Democrats in California are dedicated HSR supporters. That’s true at the state and at local levels. (People like me are statistical outliers; Democrats who oppose the train.) While Lowenthal has no intention of terminating the HSR project, he is without doubt absolutely fed up with the disgraceful behavior of the CHSRA Board. That’s why he is really going out on a limb to have them discharged and replaced. That’s politically risky for him.

So, what’s good about that? While the problems with the mismanagement, incompetence and deviousness of the rail authority has become well-known in California, it has been assiduously ignored by the US Department of Transportation and the FRA.

They have tossed a number of earmark-like funding awards our way (primarily for political reasons) regardless of the shenanigans and hanky-panky of the rail project’s managers in our state, as if that didn’t matter to the Democrats in Washington. You would think that if the Mafia had come to California to build a high-speed rail brothel for $100 billion dollars, the DOT would also have funded them with start up funds. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.

The point here is that Lowenthal’s legislation — SB517 — is the most definitive expression of concern about a project that certainly should oblige the federal government to reconsider it’s awards. I mean reconsider on the merits, not the Republican intention to terminate on sheer cost grounds for deficit reduction purposes. With this bill, we have the State Legislature saying that, although they continue to support HSR development, they reject the developers.

Since California has received the largest portion of federal largesse, presumably based on the compelling case made by the CHSRA in Washington, wouldn’t you think that a thorough re-examination of what the feds. believed they were doing is now called for? Hasn’t this become a problem for the DOT Inspector General?

The litany of CHSRA problems identified by government agencies in Sacramento, as they say,is as long as your arm. The Legislative Analyst Office, the Inspector General, the State Auditor, the rail authority’s own peer review committee, all very unhappy with the way this project has been managed, or, more correctly, mis-managed. And now, after endless State Senate hearings with endless conflicts, demands, and failure to meet those demands, the Legislature has had enough.

Attention Democrats in Washington, take a good, hard second look at what you are funding. If you don’t, it will be perceived as your failure and become your embarrassment as we enter the 2012 election season. All this is great ammunition for Republicans. And Lowenthal’s bill puts a cap on it. What California is hereby saying is we want the train and the money to build it, but we don’t have anyone who can do this right and we’re firing the guys who have been screwing it up. This should raise even cynical Washington’s eyebrows.