The Legislative Analyst’s Office released a terse analysis that depicted the latest business plan as vague, unsubstantiated and not credible – and then concluded with this bombshell:

“The Proposition 1A bond measure explicitly prohibits any public operating subsidy. However, the plan … assumes some form of revenue guarantee from the public sector to attract private investment. This generally means some public entity promises to pay the contractor the difference between projected and realized revenues if necessary. The plan does not explain how the guarantee could be structured so as not to violate the law.”

In an e-mail, a spokesman for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Jeffrey Barker, said the authority was responding to the criticism by putting together a business plan that “does not require government operating subsidies” and could comply with the wording of Proposition 1A by offering private investors a “ridership guarantee” instead of a “revenue guarantee.”

But a ridership and a revenue guarantee are the same thing because ridership times ticket price equals revenue. The Legislative Analyst’s Office told us yesterday that it agrees.

That’s been the giant fundamental obstacle ever since to the $68 billion bullet train project getting substantial private investments.

Meet the latest journo to fall for the CHSRA spin

Nevertheless, ever since then the bullet train folks have periodically gotten reporters around California to write stories about the much-improved prospects for private investment. The latest example came over the weekend, when Jessica Calefati of the Bay Area News Group managed to write a long article about, yes, renewed hopes for private investment without even mentioning the LAO-cited obstacle. Sheesh.

SACRAMENTO — On life support just a few months ago, California’s bullet train has been resuscitated.

Last week, demolition began in Fresno to clear the way for the first stretch of track. More significantly, private investors across the country and abroad are expressing new interest in bankrolling part of the $68 billion project.

The lawsuits that have stymied the plan aren’t yet resolved, but a budget agreement brokered by Gov. Jerry Brown that guarantees the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles rail line its first funding stream — one that leading economists say could reach about three quarters of a billion dollars annually — has emerged as a “game changer,” high-speed rail experts say.

Inking a deal that will send the project hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees collected from polluters is the signal the private sector was waiting for, according to formal letters of interest the state received last month. With only a fraction of the project’s funding in hand, the state needs private investment for about one-third of the final price tag to have any hope of completing the rail line.

In the past, rail authority officials have tried to confuse reporters by citing construction and project management companies’ interest in being contractors on the multibillion-dollar contracts that will be given out if the project goes forward as being tantamount to interest in investing it. Of course private companies want to get big contracts. That doesn’t mean they’re investors.

Look at the company’s website — it’s no investor

Dumb, de dumb dumb: That is just what’s happened again. Look at this paragraph from the BANG story:

But it’s significant that Vinci Concessions, a French company that is considered a world leader in developing highly technical high-speed rail projects, is one of the nine companies that eagerly wrote to California about the bullet train last month.

Groan. Look at Vinci’s website. Look at Vinci’s standard contracts. It is primarily a contractor seeking work from governments pursuing ambitious transportation projects. It’s not an investor.

It’s something the company makes clear in its key pitch:

VINCI Concessions is the leader in almost every joint venture it establishes and has demonstrated its ability to attract long-term investors.

It’s not the investor. It’s the allegedly shrewd project manager that allegedly can attract investors.

Back to you, Jessica Calefati. Back to you, California High-Speed Rail Authority. Back to you, Dan Richard and Jerry Brown.

Where are the investors who want to partner with California on the bullet train as opposed to being contractors on the bullet train?

They can’t cite any — because as the LAO noted 54 months ago, revenue and ridership guarantees are illegal under state law. And no private investor wants to partner with California without such guarantees.

I hope James Fallows, the respected East Coast journo who has come out as a CA bullet-train fan, sees this rank manipulation by the rail authority for what it is: confirmation he shouldn’t trust the rail authority.

So how about we let others join in the fun? What do the mainstream media have to say about my key three points?

Their conventional wisdom is a lot closer to my deep skepticism than to Richard’s rosy scenarios, that’s for sure.

Point 1: There are not nearly adequate funds available to complete the $68 billion project in the way promised to voters in 2008 who approved Proposition 1A, giving the bullet train $9.95 billion in state bonds as seed money.

As Politico reported on Feb. 8, this is already a huge legal obstacle based on Prop. 1A’s language — not a distant headache on the horizon.

Judge Michael Kenny ruled that the state could not sell future bonds to finance the first leg of construction until they redid the business plan to specify sources of funding “that were more than merely theoretically possible.”

As for the $250 million in cap-and-trade funds Gov. Jerry Brown secured for the rail project this fiscal year, as Associated Press noted on Jan. 14 …

It also is just a tiny fraction of the overall price tag for high-speed rail, currently at $68 billion.

And as the L.A. Times reported on Feb. 28, this appropriation is deeply unpopular with environmentalists — and it offers …

… significant legal risks. The state law that set up the limits on greenhouse gases and the cap-and-trade system calls for investments that will reduce emissions by 2020 to the levels that existed in 1990, some experts say. The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, noting the bullet train would not be in operation until after 2020, has questioned the legality of using the cap-and-trade funding  for rail construction.

As for Dan Richard’s claim that significant private financing is just around the corner, I await Dan naming a single company that would have any interest in partnering with the state of California on a multibillion-dollar project without revenue or ridership guarantees, which are banned by Prop. 1A. Dan won’t be able to because there aren’t any.

As for the notion that the federal government might foot nearly the entire bill for one state’s extremely expensive project –as some CA bloggers hope  — I can’t cite an MSM piece saying that’s not true, because it’s not even something the MSM considers in the realm of human possibility.

And, no, it’s not just those evil House Republicans who oppose further federal funding than the $3.5 billion the project has gotten so far. Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who is now chair of the Senate budget committee, came out as an opponent of federal funding for such projects in 2011.

Point 2: The legal challenges the project faces because of Prop. 1A restrictions are likely to be impossible to overcome.

Judge Michael Kenny didn’t just say that before construction began, the state has to have $31 billion in hand to build a “viable” first operating segment of 300 miles that could make money even if the full system was never completed. He said the state had to complete environmental reviews for all 300 miles. It’s not even one-tenth complete, with only 27 miles having clearances.

This is from the Hanford (CA) Sentinel’s reporting on Feb. 4:

Kenny also ruled that the Authority needed to complete environmental analyses for the segment before construction begins.

As for Richard’s confidence in the bullet train’s lawyers, as the Sentinel notes, the legal team instead looks more like the Keystone Kops:

Kings County opponents celebrated the [August 2013 and November 2013] rulings as at least partial vindication, but Authority officials said the project was proceeding on schedule and implied that the rulings were a minor inconvenience.

In the appeal [filed in January], the Authority argued just the opposite.

“The trial court’s approach to these issues cripples government’s ability to function. … Action by this court is urgently required to avoid compromising the Authority’s ability to build the system quickly and economically, as intended by the Legislature and the voters,” the appeal states.

And keep in mind that in Silicon Valley, rich cities have basically vowed to block related construction forever using NIMBY tactics. These tactics have a long history of winning in California — especially when you have very skilled attorneys with very deep-pocket clients.

Point 3: What the state proposes isn’t even high-speed rail.

Because of fears of just the sort of corner-cutting we’re now seeing, Prop. 1A required that the bullet train get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco in no more than two hours and 40 minutes. But under the governor’s “blended” plan using regular rail from San Francisco to San Jose and from the northern edges of the L.A. exurb to downtown L.A., that means about 100 miles of the trip will be at conventional train speeds and 410 miles at bullet-train speeds.

If you make the generous concession that the conventional trains will go 100 miles at 100 mph, taking 60 minutes, and if you have transfer times of five minutes for each of the train switches, that means the bullet train will have to cover 410 miles in 90 minutes, going 273 mph, to comply with the 160-minute limit in state law.

I repeat, 273 mph. I repeat, 273 mph. I repeat, 273 mph.

That’s average speed, not top speed.

Nevertheless, Richard says that’s not going to be a problem. He says …

“… the independent Legislative Peer Review Group looked at the planning and concluded that at present, our design would allow for that trip to occur in 2 hours and 32 minutes.”

What does the MSM say? Even though I have never seen a piece that breaks down the math of the CHSRA’s claims as I did above, most journos are very skeptical, and so are many experts, as this L.A. Times piece from March 27 notes.

But there’s another wrinkle here. In his response to my original post, Richard seems to take the 160-minute provision of Prop. 1A seriously. But as the L.A. Times reported on June 9 of this year, the rail authority is trying to play semantic games to get out of the obligation — because it’s an obligation it can’t meet:

Dan Richard, chairman of the authority, said the state would deliver a system that meets all legal requirements of the ballot measure.

“We are not trying to parse words and hide behind legal technicalities,” he said.

But critics and opponents, including some key players from the project’s past, say the rail authority is trying to circumvent the basic intent of the protections because the existing plan for the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line can’t meet them.

The unusual specificity of Proposition 1A has been cited by bullet train promoters and critics to bolster their positions. And both sides have put the language and procedures set out in an 8,000-word piece of legislation underlying the ballot measure under an interpretive microscope. One example: Does a requirement to “design” the train so it can travel from L.A. to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes mean the state has to provide such service?

“This bond issue was extraordinary,” said Quentin Kopp, a former state senator, state court judge and former chairman of the rail authority, when the restrictions were written. “I can’t recall any general obligation bond issue that incorporated legal provisions to the extent this one does.”

In Kopp’s view, the state legislation and subsequent ballot measure were a conscious effort by the Legislature to place binding safeguards on the biggest infrastructure project in California history.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), a former state senator who wrote many of the restrictions, said: “We didn’t put them in as guidelines…. It was really clear what we wanted.”

In 2008, 160 minutes meant 160 minutes in California. In 2014? Well, that’s open to debate.

I look forward to Dan Richard’s response to my response to his response to my response to James Fallows. Will he argue again that I’m a “rabid” bullet-train hater? Or will he concede that “rabid” though I may be, I’ve got the MSM generally on my side?

If he says the MSM is with him, Dan should offers specifics, and not just boosterism from the edit page of the Fresno Bee.

We shall see.

In the mean time, I sure hope that Fallows talks to Ralph Vartabedian of the L.A. Times or Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury-News or to former Democratic state Sens. Quentin Kopp, Alan Lowenthal or Joe Simitian. When that happens, he will see that it’s not just blowhard libertarian bloggers who believe the bullet train is a debacle.

It’s lots of people — including many of the project’s original true believers.

In his first installment, his focus is on how much better life is in places with fast, convenient trains and how big infrastructure projects can tranform regions for the better. Then he cites studies which talk about this specific project’s benefits in helping local economies and reducing pollution.

The problem is that Fallows is describing California’s high-speed rail project in a vacuum. When someone just hears the concept, of course they are likely to think it sounds cool.

But the California project is not proceeding in a vacuum. It is unfolding under specific parameters governed by state law and under the specific circumstances we’ve seen in California since 2008, when state voters approved Proposition 1A and $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the train. When you look at the pet project of the California High-Speed Rail Authority with these factors in mind, it’s obvious that Fallows, as smart as he may be, is clueless on the bullet train.

Beyond the happy talk: What reality looks like

Here are seven ways that is the case.

1. All the wonderful things the train allegedly does don’t matter if it can’t be paid for. There is at most $13 billion in state and federal funding for a project that has a price tag of $68 billion (a price tag that no one really believes is accurate). There is no prospect for further federal funding in an era in which discretionary domestic spending is being squeezed as never before. State funding of $250 million a year from fees from California’s nascent cap-and-trade pollution-rights market begins this budget cycle. But that is a pittance, and if they’re off the record, no state lawmaker will admit to wanting taxpayers to foot the entire bill. So why can’t the private sector come to the rescue? Because …

2. All the wonderful things the train allegedly does don’t matter if it can’t be built legally. No private sector investors have emerged despite years of promises from the administrations of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown because Prop 1A included a provision that there could be no operating subsidies, whether the rail system was run by the state government or a private operator. No investor wants to partner with a suspect entity like the state of California without revenue or ridership guarantees that are tantamount to promises of subsidies if the project doesn’t meet expectations.

The bullet train isn’t just susceptible to the NIMBYism that routinely hobbles big projects. The only lawyers who believe the state’s proposal is legal under the terms of Prop 1A work for the rail authority or for political entities that support the project. It’s already been blocked by a Sacramento Superior Court judge on the grounds that it has inadequate financing and insufficient environmental reviews to begin construction of its initial $31 billion, 300-mile link. That’s because of yet another Prop 1A safeguard: the requirement that construction couldn’t begin unless there is all necessary money in hand and completed environmental reviews for an entire rail segment that could be economically viable even if the statewide system were never completed.

3. What the state of California wants to do isn’t even a high-speed rail project under the definition established in state law. Fallows somehow has missed the harsh critique of former state Sen. Quentin Kopp, the father of the bullet train idea in California, who opposes Brown’s plan to build a really fast train from San Jose to the northern edges of the Los Angeles exurbs. Kopp says — correctly — that Prop 1A promised a two-hour, 40-minute trip from downtown San Francisco to downtown L.A. That’s not in the realm of even theoretical possibility if riders have to spend an hour getting from San Francisco to San Jose and then an hour getting from northern L.A. County to downtown L.A. on regular trains.

Public, lawmakers have cooled to project

Now it’s time for four more reasons that are a little more subjective but that Fallows still has no effective way to counter:

4. The Fallows case for the bullet train builds on information he was provided by the state and its paid consultants. Unless he is the most naive man in the world, he should be hugely suspicious of information provided by those pushing the project. Why? Because here is the short list of some of the many important things they have deceived the public and the media about since 2008:

The project’s cost (used to be $33 billion, then $98 billion, now allegedly $68 billion); annual ridership forecasts (initially an insane 117 million people, or three times as many riders as Amtrak, which operates in 46 states); jobs created; pollution reduction; and cost of fares.

5. The public no longer backs the project. It won narrowly in 2008. Now polls show nearly two-thirds of voters are opposed. Costly projects surrounded by controversy and scandal — and lacking funding — need public support if they are to be completed.

6. Many Democrats in the state Legislature have lost faith. The incoming Senate president, Kevin De Leon of Los Angeles, even said it was stupid to begin the project in the Central Valley instead of the state’s most populated regions. And the most dominant special interests in Sacramento are public employee unions, not the building-trades unions which love the bullet train. These unions are extremely wary of another big mouth at the state trough. An enormously expensive bailout of the state teachers pension system has just gotten under way; a similar bailout of a program for retiree health care for state employees is still badly needed; and temporary income-tax and sales-tax hikes are expiring in coming years. These factors add up to a grim coming era in which there will be a perpetual dog-eat-dog fight for every dollar in the Legislature. These are the fights that the teacher unions in particular win year after year. There is no reason to think teacher unions will use their clout to help the bullet-train project as opposed to trying to enervate it.

7. The idea that trains dependent on conventional 20th-century engineering are the key to getting people around in 21st-century California is farcical to anyone who pays attention to the enormous building wave of transformative transportation technology. Driverless cars are only one example.

Fallows’ goal seems to be shoring up a project he perceives in trouble. But unless he moves out of his vacuum-based view of high-speed rail’s glories and addresses its California realities, he’s not even going to be a factor in debates over the bullet train — at least in the Golden State.

That’s because here, we’ve already heard all the happy talk. And we’ve noticed how little it meshes with reality.