How Dumb Democrat Run California's Bullet Train Went Off the Rails

[ratman]

America’s first experiment with high-speed rail has become a multi-
billion-dollar nightmare. Political compromises created a project so
expensive that almost no one knows how it can be built as originally
envisioned.

Construction of the California high-speed rail system is costing about
$1.8 million a day, according to projections widely used by engineers and
project managers.Credit...Ryan Young for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — Building the nation’s first bullet train, which would
connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, was always going to be a formidable
technical challenge, pushing through the steep mountains and treacherous
seismic faults of Southern California with a series of long tunnels and
towering viaducts.

But the design for the nation’s most ambitious infrastructure project was
never based on the easiest or most direct route. Instead, the train’s path
out of Los Angeles was diverted across a second mountain range to the
rapidly growing suburbs of the Mojave Desert — a route whose most salient
advantage appeared to be that it ran through the district of a powerful
Los Angeles county supervisor.

The dogleg through the desert was only one of several times over the years
when the project fell victim to political forces that have added billions
of dollars in costs and called into question whether the project can ever
be finished.

Now, as the nation embarks on a historic, $1 trillion infrastructure
building spree, the tortured effort to build the country’s first high-
speed rail system is a case study in how ambitious public works projects
can become perilously encumbered by political compromise, unrealistic cost
estimates, flawed engineering and a determination to persist on projects
that have become, like the crippled financial institutions of 2008, too
big to fail.

Proposed California High Speed Rail
The California bullet train’s route from Los Angeles to San Francisco,
traversing the state’s mountain ranges and its Central Valley, is shown in
a dark black line. The route was selected over proposals that would have
roughly followed the I-5 and the I-580 highways between Southern and
Northern California. The light gray line shows a proposed second phase
that would extend the system to San Diego and Sacramento, though it has
not received environmental approvals or funding.


Sacramento

80 MILES

NEVADA

San Francisco

Stockton

Modesto

Merced

San Jose

Madera

Gilroy

Fresno

Kings/Tulare

PHASE 1

CALIFORNIA

Bakersfield

Palmdale

Burbank

Los Angeles

Riverside

Anaheim

PHASE 2

San Diego

Source: California High Speed Rail AuthorityBy The New York Times
A review of hundreds of pages of documents, engineering reports, meeting
transcripts and interviews with dozens of key political leaders show that
the detour through the Mojave Desert was part of a string of decisions
that, in hindsight, have seriously impeded the state’s ability to deliver
on its promise to create a new way of transporting people in an era of
climate change.

Political compromises, the records show, produced difficult and costly
routes through the state’s farm belt. They routed the train across a
geologically complex mountain pass in the Bay Area. And they dictated that
construction would begin in the center of the state, in the agricultural
heartland, not at either of the urban ends where tens of millions of
potential riders live.

The pros and cons of these routing choices have been debated for years.
Only now, though, is it becoming apparent how costly the political choices
have been. Collectively, they turned a project that might have been built
more quickly and cheaply into a behemoth so expensive that, without a
major new source of funding, there is little chance it can ever reach its
original goal of connecting California’s two biggest metropolitan areas in
two hours and 40 minutes.

When California voters first approved a bond issue for the project in
2008, the rail line was to be completed by 2020, and its cost seemed
astronomical at the time — $33 billion — but it was still considered
worthwhile as an alternative to the state’s endless web of freeways and
the carbon emissions generated in one of the nation’s busiest air
corridors..

Fourteen years later, construction is now underway on part of a 171-mile
“starter” line connecting a few cities in the middle of California, which
has been promised for 2030. But few expect it to make that goal.

Meanwhile, costs have continued to escalate. When the California High-
Speed Rail Authority issued its new 2022 draft business plan in February,
it estimated an ultimate cost as high as $105 billion. Less than three
months later, the “final plan” raised the estimate to $113 billion.

The rail authority said it has accelerated the pace of construction on the
starter system, but at the current spending rate of $1.8 million a day,
according to projections widely used by engineers and project managers,
the train could not be completed in this century.

“We would make some different decisions today,” said Tom Richards, a
developer from the Central Valley city of Fresno who now chairs the
authority. He said project executives have managed to work through the
challenges and have a plan that will, for the first time, connect 85
percent of California’s residents with a fast, efficient rail system. “I
think it will be successful,” he said.

But there are growing doubts among key Democratic leaders in the
Legislature — historically the bullet train’s base of support — and from
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has been cautious about committing new state
financing. As of now, there is no identified source of funding for the
$100 billion it will take to extend the rail project from the Central
Valley to its original goals, Los Angeles and San Francisco, in part
because lawmakers, no longer convinced of the bullet train’s viability,
have pushed to divert additional funding to regional rail projects.

“There is nothing but problems on the project,” the speaker of the State
Assembly, Anthony Rendon, complained recently.

The Times’s review, though, revealed that political deals created serious
obstacles in the project from the beginning. Speaking candidly on the
subject for the first time, some of the high-speed rail authority’s past
leaders say the project may never work.

Unless rail authority managers can improve cost controls and find
significant new sources of funding, they said, the project is likely to
grind to a halt in future decades.

“I was totally naïve when I took the job,” said Michael Tennenbaum, a
former Wall Street investment banker who was the first chairman of the
rail authority 20 years ago. “I spent my time and didn’t succeed. I
realized the system didn’t work. I just wasn’t smart enough. I don’t know
how they can build it now.”

Dan Richard, the longest-serving rail chairman, said starting the project
with an early goal of linking Los Angeles and San Francisco was “a
strategic mistake.” An initial line between Los Angeles and San Diego, he
said, would have made more sense.

And Quentin Kopp, another former rail chairman who earlier served as a
state senator and a Superior Court judge, said the system would be running
today but for the many bad political decisions that have made it almost
impossible to build.

“I don’t think it is an existing project,” he said. “It is a loser.”

The 2-hour, 40-minute Dream
Although it comes more than a half century after Asia and Europe were
running successful high-speed rail systems, the bullet train project when
it was first proposed in the 1980s was new to America, larger than any
single transportation project before it and more costly than even the
nation’s biggest state could finance in one step.

The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex. SNCF, the
French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and
Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a
contract to help develop the system.

The company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a
focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast
aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF.?

The company? ?pulled out in 2011.

“There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was
very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which
was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them
build a rail system.”

Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018.

The goal in California in 2008 was to carry passengers between Los Angeles
and San Francisco in 2 hours 40 minutes, putting it among the fastest
trains in the world in average speed.

The most direct route would have taken the train straight north out of Los
Angeles along the Interstate 5 corridor through the Tejon Pass, a route
known as “the Grapevine.” Engineers had determined in a “final report” in
1999 that it was the preferred option for the corridor.

But political concerns were lurking in the background. Mike Antonovich, a
powerful member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, was among
those who argued that the train could get more riders if it diverted
through the growing desert communities of Lancaster and Palmdale in his
district, north of Los Angeles.

The extra 41 miles to go through Palmdale would increase costs by 16
percent, according to the 1999 report, a difference in today’s costs of as
much as $8 billion.

“I spent my time and didn’t succeed. I realized the system didn’t work,”
said Michael Tennenbaum, the first chairman of the rail authority 20 years
ago. “I just wasn’t smart enough. I don’t know how they can build it now.”
Credit...Tracy Nguyen for The New York Times

According to interviews with those working on the project at the time, the
decision was a result of political horse-trading in which Mr. Antonovich
delivered a multi-billion-dollar plum to his constituents.

“I said it was ridiculous,” said Mr. Tennenbaum, the former rail authority
chairman. “It was wasteful. It was just another example of added expense.”

The horse-trading in this case involved an influential land developer and
major campaign contributor from Los Angeles, Jerry Epstein.

Mr. Epstein, who died in 2019, was a developer in the seaside community of
Marina del Rey who, along with other investors, was courting the Los
Angeles County Board of Supervisors for a 40-year lease extension on a
huge residential, commercial and boat dock development.

Mr. Epstein was also a member of the rail authority board, and he became a
strong backer of Mr. Antonovich’s proposal for a Mojave Desert diversion
on the bullet train.

“The Palmdale route was borne of a deal between Epstein and Antonovich,
absolutely,” said Art Bauer, the chief staff member on the State Senate
Transportation Committee, speaking publicly on the matter for the first
time.

“If I get my lease, you get my vote was the deal,” Mr. Bauer said. Though
Mr. Epstein was only one member of the board, his lobbying of other board
members proved critical, he said. “Epstein got the votes. The staff didn’t
get the votes. The staff didn’t want to go that way.”

The desert route “sacrificed travel time and increased the costs,” and
opened the door to “a whole series of problems” that have become only
clearer as time has gone on, he said. “They betrayed the public with this
project.”

A similar assessment was made by Hasan Ikhrata, a former executive
director of the Southern California Association of Governments, the giant
regional planning agency that helped build powerful support for the bullet
train.

The rail route “was not based on technical and financial criteria,” Mr.
Ikhrata said.

In a recent interview, Mr. Antonovich, now retired, said there was no
connection between Mr. Epstein’s support for the Palmdale route and his
own support for the lease extension in Marina del Rey. “Jerry played a
role in promoting Palmdale,” he said, but “they were two separate breeds
of cat, the Marina and the desert.”

There were plenty of reasons for routing the train through the two desert
cities, where more passengers could board, he said, and it was only
natural that his constituents would want to see benefits from a bullet
train. “We wanted to share all that stuff.”

The dogleg from Burbank to Palmdale was never without advantages. For one
thing, said Mr. Richards, the current rail authority chairman, the direct
route through the Grapevine would have had higher land acquisition costs
and faced opposition by a major landowner. After the decision was made,
Mr. Richards said, a follow-up study validated the choice.

But it has presented a complex engineering challenge, requiring 38 miles
of tunnels and 16 miles of elevated structures, according to environmental
reports.

And it introduced a fundamental conflict that has dogged the project. If
the train was to rush passengers between the state’s two urban hubs almost
as fast as they could fly, how much speed should be sacrificed by turning
it into a milk run across the huge state?

Then came the decision to start building a train between Los Angeles and
San Francisco that reached neither city.

A Bullet Train for the Farm Belt
The idea of beginning construction not on either end, but in the middle —
in the Central Valley, a place few in Los Angeles would want to go — was a
political deal from the start.

Proponents of running the rail through the booming cities of Bakersfield,
Fresno and Merced cited a lot of arguments: The Central Valley needed
jobs. It would be an ideal location to test equipment. It would be the
easiest place to build, because it was mostly open farmland.

But the entire concept depended on yet another costly diversion.

Instead of following Interstate 5 through the uninhabited west end of the
valley, the train would travel through the cities on the east side — more
passengers, but also more delays, more complications over acquiring land,
more environmental problems.

Rail authority leaders said starting the bullet train in the center of the
state reflected a decision to make sure it served 85 percent of the
residents of California, not just people at the end points. Running it on
the east end of the valley, they said, would ensure that it served
existing cities; building on empty farmland would encourage new sprawl.

“The key to high-speed rail is to connect as many people as possible,” Mr.
Richards said.

The rail authority spokeswoman, Annie Parker, said studies in 2005 showed
that building along the east side of the Central Valley provided better
and faster service, though it was 6 percent more expensive. In any case,
she said, the current route is what voters agreed to in 2008 in a $9
billion bond authorization.

Gov. Jerry Brown, center, surrounded by construction workers and elected
officials after signing a bill authorizing initial construction of the
high-speed rail line in 2012.Credit...Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

State senators were under pressure to endorse the Central Valley plan, not
only from Gov. Jerry Brown but also from President Barack Obama’s
transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, who came to the state Capitol to
lobby the vote.

The Central Valley quickly became a quagmire. The need for land has
quadrupled to more than 2,000 parcels, the largest land take in modern
state history, and is still not complete. In many cases, the seizures have
involved bitter litigation against well-resourced farmers, whose fields
were being split diagonally.

Federal grants of $3.5 billion for what was supposed to be a shovel-ready
project pushed the state to prematurely issue the first construction
contracts when it lacked any land to build on. It resulted in hundreds of
millions of dollars in contractor delay claims.

“The consequence of starting in the Central Valley is not having a
system,” said Rich Tolmach, who headed the nonprofit California Rail
Foundation that promotes public rail transit and was deeply involved in
the early days of the project. “It will never be operable.”

Which Path Through the Mountains?
More political debate ensued over what route the train would take into the
San Francisco Bay Area. The existing rail corridor through Altamont Pass,
near Livermore, was a logical alternative. The French engineering company
Setec Ferroviaire reported that the Altamont route would generate more
ridership and have fewer environmental impacts.

An artist’s rendition showing the bullet train passing through Altamont,
Calif. Some officials question whether the project will ever be completed.
Credit...Reuters

But as with so many decisions on the project, other considerations won the
day. There was heavy lobbying by Silicon Valley business interests and the
city of San Jose, which saw the line as an economic boon and a link to
lower cost housing in the Central Valley for tech employees. They argued
for routing the train over the much higher Pacheco Pass — which would
require 15 miles of expensive tunnels.

In 2008, the rail authority issued its record of decision.

“It absolutely has to go through Pacheco and up through San Jose,” Mr.
Richards said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-
politics.html