LA Times Angles for High-Speed Rail As ‘Jobs’ Program

What a train wreck. The Los Angeles Times is touting how California’s high-speed rail project “trains workers and provides thousands of jobs in the Central Valley.”

You read that right. They finally admit that it’s just a union jobs program. We’ve been saying this since it was evident back in 2010 when California politicians made it clear they were desperate to build any part of the California High-Speed Rail system in order to get their hands on $3.5 billion in federal stimulus money, I reported. “Even then the plan is looking more like a whack-a-mole game. But every hole that is plugged, every detail that is softened or tweaked, and every cost estimate that is changed causes a bigger problem. The cover-up is worse than the original crime.”

“It is important to remember that high-speed rail is not really about achieving sexy world-class transportation for the purpose of serious people moving. It’s just a pipeline project for grabbing big money. Because of the illegitimacy of the project’s intent, the mole could be permanently whacked, and leave California taxpayers holding the bill.” That was in 2012.

In 2012, the then-latest revised business plan was reduced to $68 billion from $98.6 billion by expanding the 130-mile line from Fresno to Bakersfield, to Merced to San Fernando Valley, for a 300-mile segment.

We have been talking about the Merced to Bakersfield rail line since 2012 – more than 12 years.

And the original bond requirements were already being illegally altered.

HSR officials were talking about electrifying only some of the track, and using pre-existing Amtrack rails. “Instead of building costly new raised viaducts and underground tunnels, the high-speed trains would run where possible on existing lines, such as Caltrain’s Peninsula infrastructure,” the San Francisco Examiner reported in 2012. But existing track cannot accommodate the 200 mph speeds. The altered business plan make this just a train, not high-speed rail as was required by Proposition 1A, the 2008 ballot initiative authorizing the train.

Officials and politicians created an even larger problem than the growing dissent by the voters. They were violating important mandates in the 2008 law, and could have pulled the plug on high-speed rail, or at the very least, reduce the amount of indebtedness. Article XVl of the California Constitution authorizes the Legislature to do either.

Proposition 1A, $9 billion in bonds for high-speed rail, included numerous mandates, none of which can be legally bypassed on the way to building the massive train system.

Top on the list is that the rail system must be high-speed. “Electric trains that are capable of sustained maximum revenue operating speeds of no less than 200 miles per hour,” the law states. However, much of the first segment between Fresno and Bakersfield is not high-speed; nor will high-speed be attainable in dense cities.

Yet, then-Rail Authority Chairman Dan Richard said at a legislative hearing that the Rail Authority “never intended, our business plan does not contemplate, that we would operate a high-speed rail system only in the Central Valley.”

But his statement ran counter to Proposition 1A.

What Voters Approved in 2008

* Prop. 1A stipulates 11 requirements that must be met before funds can be released for the construction of a “corridor” or “usable segment.” Specifically, some of these requirements include actual high-speed train service, ridership, revenue projections and planned passenger service.

* “The high-speed train system shall be planned and constructed in a manner that minimizes urban sprawl and impacts on the natural environment,” the law states. But the impact of the rail system may actually create suburban communities around train stations within reasonable distances from urban areas and higher employment areas.

The train system will also dissect both urban and rural communities which will be problematic, as well as a serious violation of the “natural environment.” The trains will travel through densely populated cities, but also through sensitive agricultural and natural areas in the state.

* The success of any legitimate transportation system must be based on connectivity. “For each corridor described in subdivision (b), passengers shall have the capability of traveling from any station on that corridor to any other station on that corridor without being required to change trains,” the law states. “Stations shall be located in areas with good access to local mass transit or other modes of transportation.”  This means that unless there are extensive connecting rail systems already in place in the high-speed rail destinations, cab companies, limo services and car rental companies should be lining up to rent space in the train stations. Commuters will not have the necessary train and bus systems to transfer to with the existing plan.

* The California High-Speed Rail Authority must have all of the funding ahead of time, before any construction starts on a new segment.

* The high-speed train system must operate on its own entirely, and in the black. That means operating profitably, and includes caveats of no government subsidy. The plan relies heavily on a projection of 100 million users by 2030, a notion that was created with manipulated data, and is absurd.

Even though voters were deceived by the ballot summary and language, the entire project has always lacked in private, public and debt funding to complete even the most minor operating segment.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs” was the campaign rally cry for Jerry Brown during his run for governor in 2010, and when he vowed his support for high-speed rail. He supported it so much the project earned the nickname the “Browndoggle.”

Brown continued to blindly support the rail plan, even as the High-Speed Rail Authority claimed that the project would create 20,000 jobs. However, a January 2012 report by the Assembly Republican Caucus found that there was evidence to prove that the rail authority overstated job creation by nearly 50 percent. “Even using the HSRA optimistic job creation estimates for Phase l, California investment will be about $1.96 million per job created, or $5.8 million per direct job created,” the caucus report found.

The rail authority must have used the New Math to calculate jobs. The HSRA claims that jobs are calculated in “job-years.” One year of full employment equals a job-year. Therefore, one person employed for 20 years counts as 20 “jobs” using this new math.

Notably, Jerry Brown was the Attorney General who wrote the misleading and dishonest ballot language, and then became governor who tried to shoe-horn high-speed rail in.

The law also calls for certified Environmental Impact Reports’s for each segment of the system.

Democrat Governors Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom, together with the Democrat supermajority in the California Legislature, allowed the High Speed Rail Authority to violate the mandates in the 2008 Proposition 1A law.

Newsom in his first state-of-the-state address in 2019 vowed to end high speed rail… until he obviously caved to the labor unions, and continued allowing spending-to-nowhere on the ridiculous project – a typical Democrat response prioritizing labor over the people.

And now we have the Los Angeles Times angling for the High Speed Rail as a “jobs” program.

Just imagine if California’s two recent deadbeat Democrat governors had put a fork in high speed rail and instead spent $100 billion into improving and updating the state’s highways, roads and bridges for auto traffic… issues California voters actually want.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) announced he will be “introducing legislation to end the failed California High-Speed Rail project, once and for all. My bill will make the project ineligible for federal funding so that our transportation dollars go towards roads and other real infrastructure needs.”

There is still time to stop this runaway train.