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.

“The Chinese company hired to build key parts of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge had never built a bridge.

“Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co. Ltd., after all, was a manufacturer of giant cranes for container ports.

“The California Department of Transportation agreed to contract the company known as ZPMC in 2006 because it had established a reputation as fast and cost-effective, offering savings of about $250 million compared to the competing bidder.

“Bridge officials were racing to finish the span, pushed years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget by political squabbles and construction delays. Fearful that the old bridge might not survive a major quake, they wanted speed and savings.”

State wanted ‘speed and savings’ — sound familiar?

Speed and savings — that’s been the watchword at the California High-Speed Rail Authority ever since three years ago, when Gov. Jerry Brown deemed $98 billion too high a pricetag for the project and pushed as hard as possible for groundbreaking, in ways that Judge Michael Kenny found against state law. The cost shrank to $68 billion because the gov gave up on true high-speed rail for a “blended” plan linking the southern edge of the San Francisco-San Jose metro area with the northern tip of the L.A. metro area. But there was also attempts to hide nearly $1 billion in costs — revealed a month ago — and a still-stunning analysis by Ralph Vartabedian in the Nov. 13, 2012, L.A. Times outlining the amazing complexity of what the state wanted to do:

“The sheer scale and scope of the bullet train’s push into Southern California, including traversing complex seismic hazards, would rival construction of the state’s massive freeway system, water transport networks and its port complexes. It is likely to be viewed in future decades as an engineering marvel — or a costly folly. …

“The plan calls for bullet trains to shoot east from Bakersfield at 220 mph, climbing one of the steepest sustained high-speed rail inclines in the world. It would soar over canyons on viaducts as high as a 33-story skyscraper. The line would duck in and out of tunnels up to 500 feet below the rugged surface. It would cross more than half a dozen earthquake faults heading toward L.A.

“Tunneling machines as long as a football field will have to be jockeyed into mountain canyons to do the heavy, back-breaking work once left to Chinese laborers. New access roads and a corridor for high-voltage power lines will have to be carved through the Tehachapis to feed power-hungry trains. When completed and fully operational, the bullet train will need an estimated 2.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity each day — about a quarter of Hoover Dam’s average daily output. …

“One measure of the topographic challenge: Over that 141 miles from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, up to 59% of the track would run in tunnels or on viaducts, according to preliminary planning documents. …”

$7.7 billion is the price tag? That’s all? Really?

More from Vartabedian:

“At this point, the rail authority estimates it will cost about $7.7 billion to build the 83 miles of rail from Bakersfield to Palmdale and about $12.5 billion to build the 58 miles of rail from Palmdale to Union Station. …

“Depending on the slope of the track, the tallest viaduct could be 200 to 330 feet off the ground.

“The same holds true for the segment through the San Gabriel Mountains, roughly following California 14.  …

“California’s bullet train will have to operate over some of the nation’s most seismically active terrain … . There are half a dozen faults between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, including the White Wolf and San Andreas, both capable of producing a 7.5 magnitude quake. Where high viaducts are near faults, engineers are considering reinforced concrete structures that would resist ground motion and have containment features to prevent a derailed bullet train from plunging to the ground … . At full speed, however, a bullet train would need four to five miles to make an emergency stop on level ground, and longer going downhill.”

To repeat what I wrote last time, I don’t know how anyone could read this without thinking about every other sentence, “The state of California is competent to pull this off?” The preposterousness of the idea that the state government can build this while meeting the budget was apparent in 2012. The pattern of problems with far more minor challenges posed by the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project makes the bullet train building plan for the Tehachapis look not just preposterous but, well, insane.

Nexis shows no L.A. Times’ editorials on the topic for more than two years. The last one was the instantly infamous editorial from November 2011 — infamous for its juvenile take on a big issue:

But he didn’t ask the question that blows a gaping hole in the side of the Good Ship Baloney that blustery Dan is piloting to depict a project still on track and facing minor challenges.

So here goes: This is the email I have sent to him.

Dec. 14, 2013

Dear Dan:

In Saturday’s Los Angeles Times, reporter Ralph Vartabedian wrote about Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny’s recent finding that the California High-Speed Rail Authority could not legally spend its state bond funds on construction of the bullet-train’s initial link because it didn’t have a legal business plan or sufficient environmental reviews. Vartabedian also wrote about a federal agency’s refusal to expedite a permit sought by the rail authority. I would like to ask you about this part of the story:

“Dan Richard, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, countered that the recent setbacks to the bullet train — connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco with 220 mph trains — represent normal challenges encountered by giant, visionary public works projects.

“In a recent debate on public radio, he characterized the legal problems as largely procedural and suggested that ‘crossing the Ts and dotting the I’s’ would resolve the issues.

“Claims of a ‘major setback are wildly overstated,’ he said.”

My question is this: If the obstacles presented by Kenny’s ruling are “largely procedural,” then why was the rail authority unable to address and resolve them after Kenny’s initial Aug. 16 ruling that the project didn’t have adequate financing or complete environmental reviews for the $31 billion, 300-mile initial operating segment? From Aug. 16 to Kenny’s release of his final ruling on Nov. 25, the rail authority had 101 days to take care of the judge’s objections. It never did.

Now you describe these objections as “largely procedural.”

I look forward to your explanation as to why these obstacles are all but trivial, yet the rail authority was unable to take care of them over the 14 weeks and three days from Kenny’s initial ruling to his final ruling.

Sincerely,

Chris Reed

cc: Ralph Vartabedian; Mike Rosenberg

By Chris Reed

There’s been quite a bit of good reporting done on the bullet-train fiasco. Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury-News and Lance Williams of California Watch jump to mind. But Ralph Vartabedian of the Los Angeles Times probably deserves top honors.

Vartabedian’s smart, nuanced beat reporting points discerning readers toward the truth — namely, that California’s project makes Boston’s Big Dig look like a work of efficient genius. The latest example was his piece this week on why and how some of the bullet train’s most ardent and longtime defenders have turned on the project. It’s full of interesting specifics that set up his future reporting on court fights over the project’s legality.

But it’s more than just this sort of sharp professionalism. Bullet train followers know all about Quentin Kopp’s misgivings and the lies and deceptions that have marked the project since well before it won $9.95 billion in bond seed money from state voters in 2008. Here’s what Vartabedian has done that is exceptional: His reporting has shown the bullet train fiasco is even worse than we imagined!

This is from his Jan. 27, 2013, piece, headlined “State has yet to buy any land for train”:

“Construction of California’s high-speed rail network is supposed to start in just six months, but the state hasn’t acquired a single acre along the route and faces what officials are calling a challenging schedule to assemble hundreds of parcels needed in the Central Valley.

“The complexity of getting federal, state and local regulatory approvals for the massive $68-billion project has already pushed back the start of construction to July from late last year. Even with that additional time, however, the state is facing a risk of not having the property to start major construction work near Fresno as now planned. …

“It hopes to begin making purchase offers for land in the next several weeks. But that’s only the first step in a convoluted legal process that will give farmers, businesses and homeowners leverage to delay the project by weeks, if not months, and drive up sales prices, legal experts say.

“One major stumbling block could be valuing agricultural land in a region where prices have been soaring, raising property owners’ expectations far above what the state expects to pay. …

“Delays in starting construction could set in motion a chain reaction of problems that would jeopardize the politically and financially sensitive timetable for building the $6-billion first leg of the system. …

“If the construction schedule slips, costs could grow and leave the state without enough money to complete the entire first segment. ..

“In addition to property, the rail authority still needs permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and approval by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, two more potential choke points that Morales says can be navigated.

Here’s an excerpt from “Rail line’s big dig,” the Nov. 13, 2012, piece by Vartabedian that outlines the project’s insane complexity:

“The sheer scale and scope of the bullet train’s push into Southern California, including traversing complex seismic hazards, would rival construction of the state’s massive freeway system, water transport networks and its port complexes. It is likely to be viewed in future decades as an engineering marvel — or a costly folly. ..

“The plan calls for bullet trains to shoot east from Bakersfield at 220 mph, climbing one of the steepest sustained high-speed rail inclines in the world. It would soar over canyons on viaducts as high as a 33-story skyscraper. The line would duck in and out of tunnels up to 500 feet below the rugged surface. It would cross more than half a dozen earthquake faults heading toward L.A.

“Tunneling machines as long as a football field will have to be jockeyed into mountain canyons to do the heavy, back-breaking work once left to Chinese laborers. New access roads and a corridor for high-voltage power lines will have to be carved through the Tehachapis to feed power-hungry trains. When completed and fully operational, the bullet train will need an estimated 2.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity each day — about a quarter of Hoover Dam’s average daily output. …

“One measure of the topographic challenge: Over that 141 miles from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, up to 59% of the track would run in tunnels or on viaducts, according to preliminary planning documents. …

“At this point, the rail authority estimates it will cost about $7.7 billion to build the 83 miles of rail from Bakersfield to Palmdale and about $12.5 billion to build the 58 miles of rail from Palmdale to Union Station. …

“Depending on the slope of the track, the tallest viaduct could be 200 to 330 feet off the ground.

“The same holds true for the segment through the San Gabriel Mountains, roughly following California 14.  …

“California’s bullet train will have to operate over some of the nation’s most seismically active terrain … . There are half a dozen faults between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, including the White Wolf and San Andreas, both capable of producing a 7.5 magnitude quake. Where high viaducts are near faults, engineers are considering reinforced concrete structures that would resist ground motion and have containment features to prevent a derailed bullet train from plunging to the ground … . At full speed, however, a bullet train would need four to five miles to make an emergency stop on level ground, and longer going downhill.”

I don’t know how anyone could read this without thinking about every other sentence, “The state of California is competent to pull this off?” Nor do I think anyone could read this and think the bullet train will only cost $68 billion. Triple that — at least.

Which brings us to the Los Angeles Times editorial page. According to Nexis, the last time it weighed in on the bullet train, in November 2011, here was the literally juvenile result:

 “It’s a gamble, and not one to be taken lightly. But gasoline isn’t going to get any cheaper in the future and the freeways aren’t going to get less clogged. We think California can find a way to get the train built. We think it can. We think it can….”

Yes, the L.A. Times editorial page editor actually invoked “The Little Engine That Could” in sickeningly cutesy fashion to stick up for this folly.

I bet, to invoke a Trent Dilferism, Ralph Vartabedian threw up in his mouth a little when he read that painfully childish and uninformed editorial.