Will news about the California bullet train’s cost overruns and

These are the key questions prompted by a concession that some Republican state lawmakers gained in return for helping Gov. Jerry Brown keep alive the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions cap-and-trade program until 2030. The provision could eventually end the state’s high-speed rail project, leaving a massive white elephant in the agricultural fields of the Central Valley. Or the concession could end up yielding a second vote validating a project first approved by state voters in 2008.

The concession – secured by Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley – places a constitutional amendment drafted by Mayes before state voters in June 2018. If passed, it would lead to a one-time up-and-down vote in the Legislature in 2024 on whether to continue allowing the use of cap-and-trade revenue to fund the project. But the threshold wouldn’t be a simple majority. A two-thirds vote would be required to allow continued use of the funds – presumably giving GOP lawmakers a prime chance to pull the plug.

So far, the funding has been substantial in one sense but marginal in the big picture of trying to pay for a $64 billion project. After the fifth year of cap-and-trade distributions, about $1 billion has gone to the California High-Speed Rail Authority, with another $500 million expected this fiscal year. But it is considered crucial because it is the only new funding source Brown has found for the project, which has been unable to gain outside investors because of rules banning public subsidies for bullet-train operations.

Rail authority chair Dan Richard says he isn’t worried about a public veto in seven years: “By 2024, we’re going to be deep into construction. We’re going to be on the verge of opening the first service. We’ll be seeing Google and others making massive investments in areas around high-speed-rail stations. The case will be there for the importance of continued funding,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The authority’s 2016 business plan said the state expected to have $21 billion in hand from state bonds, federal grants and cap-and-trade funds to build a segment from San Jose heading south.

Feds expect cost overrun of 48% or more on first segment

But Mayes and other GOP lawmakers are betting that from here until 2024, the bad news about the project will never stop.

Lawyers for the Central Valley farmers and the government and civic officials they represent in lawsuits against the state government like to point out that – apart from court victories allowing the project to continue to spend public monies – there has been no substantial encouraging news about the project in years.

In January, the Los Angeles Times reported that it had obtained a confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis that predicted a cost overrun of 48 percent or more on the initial 118-mile segment in the Central Valley. What the Brown administration has been saying would cost $6.4 billion is instead likely to be $9.5 billion to $10 billion, federal officials warned.

The idea that voters will be pleased with what they see in 2024 could be difficult to square with what rail authority officials told a visiting congressional delegation in August 2016: that construction is expected to stop in the middle of an almond orchard 30 miles northwest of Bakersfield when the money runs out.

This is contrary to promises made to voters in 2008 to get them to provide $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the project. They were guaranteed no construction would begin until the state could guarantee its initial segment would have financial viability without any more train tracks being laid.

Four months after then-California High Speed Rail Authority Chief Executive Jeff Morales told authority board members he was moving on and two months after Morales made his decision public, the agency overseeing the state’s $64 billion bullet train project hasn’t settled on his successor.

In 2012, four months after Chief Executive Roelof van Ark abruptly left following two stormy years, Morales already had the job. This time around, the same speedy selection process seemed likely. The RT&S transportation industry website reported after Morales’ decision was announced in April that the board was likely to have his replacement approved before Morales’ final day of June 2.

But the CHSRA board met in closed session on the succession issue on May 10 and June 14 without reaching a decision. The rail agency’s number two job – deputy chief executive – has also been vacant since Dennis Trujillo left in December.

The empty slots atop the CHSRA power structure come at a critical time.

According to a federal report prepared under the Obama administration, the state’s high-speed rail project is already seven years behind schedule and on its way to having a 50 percent cost overrun on the $6.4 billion, 118-mile first segment now being built in the Central Valley.

The project also continues to face legal challenges which argue that it violates the terms of Proposition 1A, the 2008 ballot measure providing $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the project. The rail authority has won most recent judgments. But opponents remain confident they eventually will prevail because of a 2014 state appellate court ruling that held the project still was subject to a financial “straitjacket” that would require it to show short- and long-term financial viability without public subsidies before the project could significantly proceed. The project’s struggle to attract private investment shows that at least in the private sector, there are many doubts that the bullet train could operate successfully without such subsidies.

Obama administration rules could haunt project

But the election of Donald Trump as president in November also has led to a huge new headache for CHSRA. All 14 California House Republicans have urged Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to reverse Obama administration actions that loosened federal rules to give California access to about $3 billion in federal dollars for the project.

Rep. Jeff Dunman, R-Turlock, and his colleagues have focused their harshest fire on a 2012 decision that gave the state the go-ahead to spend about $200 million in federal funds but not have matching state spending. The decision went against longstanding Washington precedent.

Withdrawing all federal funding could also be justified by citing the Obama administration’s 2009 regulations for projects that were to be paid for or partly paid for with money from the economic stimulus bill passed a month after President Obama took office. The Federal Railroad Administration rules said projects that didn’t demonstrate “reasonableness of financial estimates” and “quality of planning process” would get no funding.

That’s the same agency which recently concluded the project was seven years behind schedule and on course for a 50 percent cost overrun on its initial segment

The California High Speed Rail Authority board’s next meeting is July 18 in Sacramento.

But it seems safe to say the rail authority didn’t expect implacable, unyielding opposition from this group: Wealthy equestrians. For months, they have targeted plans to put the tracks for high-speed rail in parts of the San Fernando Valley that are beloved by horse owners and riders.

Attempts to reassure the equestrians that the effects would be minimal blew up in the rail authority’s face in March. The authority touted a study from the San Jose State-based Mineta Transportation Institute that said the bullet train would have little effect on horses and riding along the Tujunga Wash and other communities in the Santa Clarita-Sunland area.

Leaders of the equestrian communities in the north San Fernando Valley —  home to an estimated 10,000 horses — dismissed the report as untrustworthy because rail authority Chief Executive Jeff Morales and former bullet-train board member Rod Diridon serve on the institute’s board.

Bullet-train board chairman Dan Richard further undermined confidence in rail authority claims at a March public meeting when he noted that in Europe, cows have become used to the noise of passing bullet trains. The comparison of cows to horses — considered an unusually high-strung animal — prompted laughter and disbelief.

‘Environmental justice’ move not paying off

The bullet-train route was changed in ways that outraged equestrians in response to criticism that previously planned routes would bisect working-class, largely Latino communities in more populated parts of the San Fernando Valley. Richard likened this decision to “environmental justice” at the March public meeting. But the route change hasn’t won much praise from opponents of the previous alignment, who still see the bullet train as more trouble than it is worth.

Now rail authority officials find themselves caught in an unexpected crossfire from both wealthy and working-class critics in the San Fernando Valley. A recent Los Angeles Times story treated the rich equestrians’ grievances with the same sympathy that previous coverage had shown for protesters from Pacoima and Sylmar:

Dale Gibson grimly shook his head, his white cowboy hat blocking out the bright afternoon sun.

“How about this mess,” he said, walking through his Sunland ranch in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Gibson, a rodeo cowboy and stuntman who has performed in more than five dozen films, was pondering the prospect of 220-mph bullet trains rocketing about 100 feet from his competition arena along the Big Tujunga Wash. He boards about 100 horses on 5 acres and, on many days, is out teaching children and actors the finer points of riding.

“It would be like trying to ride your horse down the runway at LAX,” Gibson said. “We will be done.”

Study seeing minimal effect widely ridiculed

Meanwhile, the Mineta Institute study’s findings continue to draw mockery from equestrians who see it as confirmation that they’re not being taken seriously. The study stated that compared to humans, “horses are somewhat deaf.”

The assertion outrages Gibson who, to prove his point, made a kissing sound to a horse about 50 feet away. The animal raised its head. “Does he look deaf to you?” asked Gibson, who serves on the Los Angeles Equine Advisory Committee.

“Deaf?” he said. “I don’t think so.”

That’s also from the recent Times account.

The only conceivable way to placate both the equestrian community and residents of San Fernando, Sylmar, Pacoima and neighboring towns is to build a 20- to 24-mile segment of the bullet train underground. But given that studies suggest it costs nine times as much to build underground tracks as above-ground tracks, that could balloon the cost of the estimated $64 billion project by at least $20 billion.

The state government presently doesn’t have enough money to complete the project’s initial $21 billion segment in the Central Valley. The prospect it may have to spend far more than expected to bring the bullet train to the Los Angeles region could make it even more difficult to attract the private investors that the rail authority has been hunting for without success since 2008.

Under previous plans, the route linking the Los Angeles area to the Central Valley, Silicon Valley and San Francisco would either have bisected the heavily populated parts of the San Fernando Valley, cutting through Sylmar, Pacoima, Santa Clarita and San Fernando, or gone through a more rural part of the San Fernando Valley, affecting thousands of acres of equestrian lands and estates.

Now the rail authority proposes to instead mostly tunnel under valley communities. Two of its proposed new routes would see the bullet train go underground south of Pacoima and come out north of Santa Clarita. A third, more conventional route would still go above-ground through Lakeview Terrace, Shadow Hills and Sun Valley.

The change initially drew an ecstatic response from one local official. San Fernando Mayor Joel Fajardo called the revisions “absolutely phenomenal” in an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News just after learning of the changes.

But as more information came out, others were far more skeptical. At a San Fernando Valley Council of Governments meeting on Thursday, critics offered many objections. The new route would still have what were deemed unacceptable impacts on Shadow Hills and Sun Valley. A Santa Clarita official said that while the new plan was a big improvement, his city’s position remained that the bullet train should be underground the entire 40 miles-plus from Palmdale to Burbank, not just the approximately 22 to 24 miles from north of Santa Clarita to south of Pacoima. Environmentalists also said the new routes would likely harm two endangered species in the Angeles National Forest.

Underground tunneling: $1 billion a mile?

Rail authority officials provided no detailed information on another aspect of the proposed change: how it would affect the cost of the $64 billion project. Under previous routes, there would have been the need to have about 20 miles of the bullet train go underground. The new plan would only add a few more miles underground. But since it would require going under heavily populated areas — in addition to still having to go through mountains — that would likely add to the complexity of what the Los Angeles Times has described as “the most ambitious tunneling project in the nation’s history.”

By some accounts, underground systems cost about nine times as much as above-ground rail per mile. Details matter with individual projects — cost of land, difficulty of engineering, how many changes must be made to limit effects on the public, etc. A 2013 survey found underground railroad construction costs ranged from $357 million per mile in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to $960 million per mile in Singapore.

The Southern California tunnel seems likely to have a price tag on the high end. If it were to match the price in Singapore, that means at least $21 billion would have to be spent to go from north of Santa Clarita to south of Pacoima — about a third of the tab for the entire project. If the entire Palmdale-to-Burbank route were underground, that would mean at least $38 billion would be needed.

The rail authority is now preparing for construction of the first segment of the bullet train from the Central Valley to Silicon Valley. Plans for the first link to go from the Central Valley to San Fernando Valley were dropped by the state in February, mostly because the new plan is cheaper and would likely face less local criticism.

The state is still struggling to identify how it will come up with funds to build a statewide project; private investors want revenue guarantees that are illegal under state law. Lawsuits also question the project’s legality. The state Legislative Analyst’s Office also recently weighed in with a report saying it was difficult to gauge bullet-train progress because the rail authority keeps making major changes in its plans.

Rail authority board chairman Dan Richard described the change in plans as being driven by practicality: Having the first segment go from Kern County to San Jose instead of Fresno to Burbank allows the authority more certainty in being able to complete an initial segment. The old plan was for a difficult, partly mountainous 300-mile route costing $31 billion. The new plan is for a flat 250-mile route costing about $20 billion.

This allows for “a transition from planning and initial construction to being able to stand up and say we have federal funding, bond money, cap-and-trade revenue, and that those funds are sufficient for us to build, open and operate the first real high-speed rail leg in California,” Richard said at the news conference announcing the changes.

L.A.-area route risked mass political defections

But there is also evidence that the rail authority feared that if it continued with the original plan, it would face a political Waterloo. The state project had already lost the crucial support of some Los Angeles-area politicians and risked losing far more — starting with state Senate President Kevin de Leon and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.

In 2014 and 2015, throughout the San Fernando Valley, grass-roots opposition to the state’s planned route built steadily. Some Latino activists said the bullet train’s effects would be so harsh on working-class minority communities that it should be a civil rights issue because the train and its 20-foot-high sound wall would bisect the San Fernando Valley in a way that would disrupt traffic, business patterns, schools, transit and everyday life.

At a May 2015 town-hall meeting, rail authority officials heard impassioned pleas to take their project elsewhere.

“Our community’s history has been riddled with displacement. My family has all its roots here. I want my grandchildren to grow up here, understanding how great a place it is. We like where we live,” testified San Fernando resident Genaro Ayala, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

But at that meeting, Richard downplayed the impacts to the crowd. Lou Correa, a veteran Democratic politician from Orange County appointed to the rail authority board in March 2015, said he detected “NIMBYism” in the complaints. That sparked a furious response from local residents, who said that rich communities used similar tactics to block projects they didn’t like, and that it was outrageous for anyone to suggest opposition was reflexive instead of driven by concern about impacts on their neighborhoods.

This public anger has translated into political support. As CalWatchdog reported last year, many public officials have been sharply critical of much or all of the project. The most prominent initial opponents included Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, and Rep. Judy Chu, D-El Monte, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who represents much of the affected part of the county, and San Fernando Mayor Pro Tem Sylvia Ballin and Councilman Jaime Soto. Now the list also includes elected leaders from Sylmar, Santa Clarita, Shadow Hills, Lakeview Terrace and other Valley communities. In December, Assemblywoman Patty Lopez, D-San Fernando, dropped her official support.

Did Rep. Schiff pressure Obama administration?

Schiff is the heavy hitter of the crowd because of his willingness to use his good relationship with the Obama administration to pressure the federal government, the state government’s de facto partner in the high-speed rail project because of $3 billion-plus provided in federal funds and because of the many federal regulatory approvals still needed.

A year ago, for example, he made headlines in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys when he ripped the National Parks Service for delays in completing promised studies involving the Angeles National Forest. That led the Save Angeles Forest for Everyone group, known as SAFE, to urge Schiff to pressure federal officials to seek changes in the bullet-train route, starting with plans for a mountain tunnel.

It’s not known what, if anything, the veteran Democrat did. But the California High Speed Rail Blog, home to the project’s most ardent defenders, expressed deep concern in January 2015 that Schiff’s opposition to the state’s plans “is going to make it very difficult for such a tunnel to be built. Other Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation will likely defer to Schiff on this, leaving the CHSRA with even fewer allies for a tunnel in the unlikely event they chose that alternative.”

However it came to pass, Schiff got his way, and, for now, his district is safe from disruption.

Buying land for California’s bullet train remains a slow and contentious process for the state’s high-speed rail agency — but the state’s top rail official said this week he doesn’t expect any “significant” project delays as a result.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority must still acquire rights to nearly 1,000 land parcels in the Central Valley for the first leg of the 800-mile rail network, expected to one day stretch from Sacramento to San Diego.

As of July, it had legal possession of just 300 of the 1,277 necessary parcels for the initial Merced-to-Bakersfield line. This 130-mile portion has been called the “backbone” of the project.

The first 29 miles of that leg is expected to be built by the end of 2017 or early 2018, rail officials said this week.

The agency would need to significantly quicken its pace to open its initial operating section, from Merced to Burbank, by the authority’s estimated 2022 time-frame.

Jeff Morales, the rail authority’s CEO, said in an interview on Wednesday that acquiring land is “a big, big focus.”

In the meantime, he said, construction crews will work at key points along land already acquired until the authority obtains the rest.

“We don’t see a significant impact” to the construction timeline, Morales said. “We built in contingencies.”

Still, Morales said, the authority will issue a revised construction timeline for the first 29 miles this fall. He said that revision should better match up construction work with land recently acquired, but added that he does not expect it will push back the initial project’s end-date.

First stretch under construction

Heavy construction started in Madera in June to build the first of 16 concrete footings for an elevated rail bridge over the Fresno River. That work is part of the Central Valley’s first 29-mile stretch, from Madera to Fresno counties. But even for this earliest of projects, the state has just 223 of 543 parcels needed for construction, which is expected to be complete in 2017.

Landowners have alleged the authority’s property agents are using pressure tactics to speed up the process. They’ve also said they’ve received low-ball offers.

Rail authority officials said this week they’re committed to improving the process and making fair offers. Morales said the authority plans to train and retrain its right-of-way consultants, streamline its internal processes and add more staff.

The state’s pace of acquiring land has picked up in recent months. In March, for example, it had legal possession of just 139 parcels.

“We’re seeing an uptick,” Morales told an authority finance committee on Tuesday in Sacramento. “We do expect, based on specific changes we’ve made, the pace to pick up over the next few months.”

The state has also sped up its use of eminent domain.

In July, it listed 159 parcels under “parcel to condemn,” or to take following a fair market offer. That’s up from 33 under the same listing in March.

Use of eminent domain

In an interview after Tuesday’s board meeting, Dan Richard, chairman of the rail authority’s board, said the agency wants to avoid eminent domain as much as possible. That’s because the associated legal process can take longer than negotiating directly with a landowner, Richard said.

In 2008, California voters authorized nearly $10 billion in bonds for the bullet train project by approving Proposition 1A. The ballot measure said the network would link the state’s urban centers from Sacramento to San Diego, with the San Francisco to Los Angeles connection serving as the central line. Cost estimates for that central line have ranged as high as $96 billion, but were revised downward in recent years to $68 billion.

At the authority’s finance committee meeting, board members urged rail authority staff to find ways to improve and speed up land acquisition. But given the complexities of the project, they said they remained realistic about how quickly the authority could move.

“Major government infrastructure projects all have issues. What we’re trying to do is stay ahead of the issues and correct the issues,” said Tom Richards, the board’s vice chairman and a Fresno resident.

“I don’t think anyone thought this was going to be easy, so I guess we’re all right,” added Mike Rossi, also a board member.

Contact reporter Chris Nichols at chris@calwatchdog.com or on Twitter @ChrisTheJourno

These developments put project supporters on the spot in two different ways.

The Los Angeles hearing suggests attitudes about the bullet train in Los Angeles County are moving against the project. That’s what happened in Silicon Valley, where voters supported Proposition 1A in 2008 to provide $9.95 billion for a statewide bullet train system but shifted to intense opposition when the real-life effects of building a high-speed rail system through wealthy communities triggered a powerful, well-financed campaign to force the state to back off.

This and $30 billion in cost savings led Gov. Jerry Brown and the rail authority to adopt a “blended”plan in which high-speed rail would extend from Fresno to northern Los Angeles County, with slower rail on each end connecting riders to downtown San Francisco and downtown Los Angeles, respectively.

But after the rail authority decided last year to accelerate construction in Southern California, community opposition began to build. This has helped fray the loose coalition of the region’s politicians who have long supported the idea of a bullet-train system but are uncomfortable with the emerging specifics.

Is Antonovich’s proposal actually a ‘poison pill’?

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich — who once lobbied to make sure the bullet train’s route went through his district — now is the leading proponent of minimizing disruption to his district by tunneling through the San Gabriel Mountains for the train’s 15-mile Palmdale-to-Burbank link. Given that this would add billions of dollars in construction costs to a project that already can’t identify how it’s going to pay for its first $31 billion segment, that’s close to asking the rail authority to do the impossible. Such “poison pills” are one way for politicians to oppose a project in indirect fashion.

Antonovich’s 2014 proposal, in turn, led to concerns in January from two other elected Democrats who previously backed the bullet train project enthusiastically. This is from the Los Angeles Business Journal:

Rep. Adam Schiff came out in opposition on Thursday to a proposed alignment of the state’s high-speed rail project that would require a tunnel beneath the Angeles National Forest – damaging chances the plan will be carried out.

 

In a letter sent this month, Schiff, D-Burbank, and Rep. Judy Chu, D-El Monte, told California High Speed Rail Authority Dan Richard to scrap any consideration of a route under the San Gabriel Mountains between Palmdale and the San Fernando Valley because it would be harmful to the environment.

Wealthy environmentalists don’t like Antonovich’s plan. But some poor and middle-class homeowners of the San Fernando Valley don’t like the rail authority’s alternative, and they depict their fight as akin to David vs. Goliath. This is from Glendale resident Stephen Mills’ letter in Friday’s L.A. Times:

California High Speed Rail Authority board member Lou Correa said that he detected “a little bit of NIMBYism” regarding the reaction to bullet train plans. He should get used to it.

 

Affluent neighborhoods have successfully fought intrusive development that would have affected their quality of life, and now working-class neighborhoods are doing the same.

How much is CA project an Obama priority?

Meanwhile, in Washington, the House’s action to pull back federal funds from the state’s high-speed project may prove as consequential as the developments in Los Angeles County. The provision was included in the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for fiscal 2016, a multibillion-dollar measure that includes many provisions the White House supports.

If the Senate approves this funding bill, would President Obama actually veto it in the name of preserving federal grants to an embattled, increasingly unpopular project that would help only one of the 50 states?

That’s not clear. Doing so would likely prompt a sharp reaction from the Washington Post’s editorial page. It has long been a harsh critic of California’s project.

A 2011 editorial, headlined “California’s high-speed rail system is going nowhere fast,” noted that the state “hasn’t credibly identified a source of funds for the system” and questioned Gov. Jerry Brown’s enthusiasm for the project.

“The coordinated protest,” noted the Los Angeles Times, “presents a potent political challenge as state officials push to speed up construction of the $68-billion system in densely populated Southern California.”

For the beleaguered train project, championed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the turbulence reflected just one more round of defiance, building steadily across the Golden State as communities come to grips with the disruption it will bring.

Public outcry

“About 150 residents and city officials from communities and cities such as Santa Clarita, San Fernando, Acton and Sylmar spoke for a total of six hours during public comment to tell the eight member board about the potentially devastating impact the project could have on their area,” as LAist observed. “According to the analysis, the track just within that segment could affect 20,000 homes, 47 schools, 48 churches and 25 parks when completed.”

The crowd presented the High Speed Rail Authority with “complaints about potential harm to groundwater and home values, hints of lawsuits to come and indignation that the government wasn’t listening to the people it serves,” the Associated Press reported.

The meeting — L.A.’s first in two years — followed on last month’s acrimonious hearing in San Fernando. There, “elected officials joined residents in confronting state officials, going so far as to set up their own public address system in the auditorium to express their grievances,” according to the AP.

With controversy swirling around the train, already beset by delays and challenges, officials took a conciliatory but vague approach to the criticism. “High Speed Rail Authority Chair Dan Richard asked for patience among the protestors, saying it was still early in the process and they would continue to work with the community to analyze all options before making a decision,” noted Southern California Public Radio. “He said they are not at this time considering any routes other than the ones presented in recent weeks at community meetings.”

Unpopular choices

Were public opposition to push the Authority away from the San Fernando plan, officials falling back on other plans would confront outrage from different quarters. “The other three options all involve tunneling under the Angeles National Forest,” as the LA Weekly reported. “Environmentalists, equestrians and other activists hate this idea. Even though the train would run underground, there will have to be multiple access points, both for maintenance and in case of emergency.”

“Even worse, running the train through the Angeles National Forest would, according to environmental activist Kristin Sabo, endanger the region’s water supply, since it would cut through the San Fernando Groundwater Basin, one of the few sources of water DWP owns and therefore doesn’t have to buy.”

Funding at risk

At the same time, Republicans in Congress have pressed ahead with a fresh round of concerted opposition to the pricey bullet train, which still relies on Washington dollars. As CBS Sacramento reported, the Authority “may soon not be able to spend federal funds on the project under its current $3 billion matching grant with the federal government.” House Republicans voted through a new measure that would wipe out the agreement struck between the Authority and the Federal Railroad Administration — if the Senate opts to go along.

“This amendment would have no material impact on California’s high-speed rail program, even in the unlikely event that it is enacted,” said Richard, according to CBS. Although Hill watchers have not anticipated a swift Senate shift away from funding the train, if the situation in California continues to sour, that calculus could change.

“You up??” he asked his press secretary, Evan Westrup.

Nearly 45 minutes later, Westrup sent Brown and first lady Anne Gust Brown a copy of a Washington Post story on California’s high-speed rail project.

They needn’t have worried. This long Jan. 5 story by Post national reporter Reid Wilson appears to be the one Westrup sent the Browns, and it largely accepts the governor’s characterization of the project’s relative progress and downplays legal challenges.

The groundbreaking “really marks the transition from all the planning and appropriations and legal challenges and the design work to continuous construction,” said Dan Richard, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the project’s governing body. “It’s a significant milestone.”

Financing problems were acknowledged, at least.

Even with the legal and political victories, the funding structure is incomplete. Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond aimed at funding the initial construction of the rail project in 2008, by a slim five-point margin. The Obama administration added another $3.2 billion in federal grants, and the legislature agreed in 2014 to provide funding through cap-and-trade taxes on greenhouse gases, which will add another $250 million to $1 billion per year.

Still, that means the rail authority will have about $26 billion at best, less than half the estimated total costs.

Touting the Japanese financing model

But the reporter’s lack of background on the issue led him to accept uncritically Richard’s theory about how the project could be partially funded.

Richard, chairman of the rail authority, said his agency doesn’t expect federal funding in the next four to five years. He pointed to Japan, where nearly a third of funding for high-speed rail projects comes from real estate development near rail stations.

But the state government needs the money up front, not after the system is up and running — specifically $31 billion for the initial 300-mile operating segment, per a Superior Court ruling that Attorney General Kamala Harris chose not to appeal.

It’s interesting how East Coast reporters seem more likely than East Coast opinion writers to accept upbeat takes on the Golden State’s most costly infrastructure project. Both the Washington Post’s editorial page and Post editorial writer/columnist Charles Lane have expressed incredulity at the state’s handling of the project.

Failing the ‘best evidence’ standard

Here’s the opening of a tart Lane column from Jan. 9, 2012:

In announcing the appointment of a new economic adviser last summer, President Obama emphasized his commitment to fact-based policymaking. It’s “more important than ever,” he said, to get “recommendations not based on politics, not based on narrow interests, but based on the best evidence, based on what’s going to do the most good for the most people in this country.”

If only the president and his political ally, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), would follow that advice regarding their pet project for the Golden State: high-speed rail. No matter how many times they tout the mega-project as the job-creating wave of the future, they can’t change the mountain of evidence that high-speed rail is, in fact, a boondoggle.

You can read the whole Lane op-ed here.

A May 18, 2011, Post editorial — link here — was even harsher.

California may be about to spend a fortune to plan and build a stretch of high-speed track that would end up as a railroad to nowhere in the all-too-likely event that funding for the rest of the system never materializes. But the LAO, the state-level equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office, argues that the legislature should halt most further spending on the project and not start construction until the state can negotiate more flexible terms from the federal government and — crucially — relocate the first section to a route where a fast train would be economically viable even if the entire system never gets built.

There is a certain poignancy to the LAO’s plea for everyone to stop and think. The benefits of high-speed rail in California might indeed outweigh the costs, the LAO notes, but “at this time there is little reliable information to inform this decision.” Think about that for a minute: Fifteen years have passed, and millions of dollars have been spent on studies since the state first passed a law creating a high-speed rail program. Yet after all that, no one really knows whether it’s worth doing. If no one has come up with a convincing rationale by now, maybe there isn’t one.

Maybe this Post coverage is what made the governor anxious about the newspaper’s coverage of his project’s groundbreaking ceremonies.

It shouldn’t have. Multiple indicators have suggested both Harris and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom — the perceived rising stars of the California Democratic Party and the frontrunners to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer and Brown, respectively — want no part of the controversy-plagued $68 billion project.

In fall 2013, the attorney general declined to appeal a Sacramento Superior Court ruling that held the state could not begin spending state bond funds on the project until it had adequate financing and sufficient environmental reviews for the first 300-mile link of the project. Harris’ office filed a “remedies brief” responding to the ruling with no remedies. Instead, the brief argued it was premature to block the project — not that the judge was wrong about its fundamental inadequacies.

This led to an appellate court ruling that allows the state to keep spending federal funds and some state dollars for now but eventually will require the High-Speed Rail Authority to identify $31 billion in funding and to complete hundreds more environmental surveys than it’s managed to complete to date before it begins major construction.

Newsom: Financing plan doesn’t work

Newsom’s objections to the project don’t stem from its legal issues. The former San Francisco mayor’s reservations pertain to financing. This is from his interview with the L.A. Times in February 2014:

He thinks the bullet train’s financing is too risky and would drain money from other, more necessary infrastructure projects such as roads, transit and waterworks. …

Voters in 2008 authorized $9 billion in bonds to begin building a 500-mile high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, with later extensions to San Diego and Sacramento. That L.A.-San Francisco first phase was to cost $33 billion. The federal government and private investors, voters were told, would kick in the rest of the money.

But the state received only $3.3 billion from the feds and have repeatedly been told by Congress that there’ll be no more. Private financiers haven’t put up a dime. The projected cost has more than doubled to $68 billion. …

Says Newsom: “You’d be hard pressed to find a bigger champion of high-speed rail than me when the bond went to voters. I believed in it. But my current problem with it is the financing. I can’t in good conscience square what I was supporting then with what we’re doing today.”

He says Brown is confident the project eventually will attract private investment. “If so, that changes the game.”

“But absent something significant — and I mean, really significant — I can’t see supporting something that would come at such a high cost to other infrastructure. I don’t see how we could go forward. There’s got to be a different financing plan. Without it, the math doesn’t add up.”

Will governor call them names, too?

Brown’s go-to response has been to depict critics as people who are scared of change. In January, he said were they around when the Golden Gate Bridge was being built, they would have objected to that project as well.

But while Newsom’s general objections have been on the record for 14 months and Harris’ legal concerns have been on view for 20 months, the governor hasn’t commented on them specifically — preferring to speak broadly of bullet-train foes as “declinists.”