Palo Alto: No Confidence in the California High Speed Rail Authority

The Palo Alto City Council High Speed Rail (HSR) Committee passed on a 4-0 vote on Thursday, September 2 and have created a draft resolution, entitled: No Confidence in the California High Speed Rail Authority.

The City Council originally supported the HSR bond measure passed in 2008, but says it has spent too much time and resources since then attempting to work with the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) to produce an HSR project in which it could support.

It claims that since 2008 it has discovered an overwhelming number of facts that lead them believe that the only alternative is to stop the HSR project now:

Claim 1: Ridership Study

“As one member of the CHSRA has himself noted, without a reliable ridership study the project cannot move forward. But that is precisely the situation we have. Responding to various criticisms of the CHSRA ridership study the State Senate asked the prestigious Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies to review that study. Their conclusion released earlier this year: the Authority’s study was deeply flawed and should not be relied on. The new CEO of the CHSRA, in a meeting with Mayor Burt and Council Member Klein earlier this summer, stated that he trusted the Authority’s ridership consultant and saw no need to verify their work. This is unacceptable.”

Claim 2: Cost

“The Authority prior to the 2008 election estimated the cost of the system at $33.6 billion. Shortly after, it increased to $42.6 billion citing inflation as the cause for the increase (but we’ve had little or no inflation in recent years). Many observers believe the Authority is significantly underestimating the cost and point to studies that show the cost of large construction projects almost always exceeds initial estimates. And the Authority’s cost estimates do not include the cost of necessary land acquisitions. We have repeatedly asked the Authority to tell us what properties would have to be taken in Palo Alto and what would be the estimated cost for such properties. The Authority has stated that it’s too early in the process to have such information but we have been advised to the contrary. The Authority’s concern, of course, is that land acquisition will significantly increase the cost of the project and raise the ire of the owners of the properties taken, both problems it would like to delay as long as possible. Low ball cost estimates are unacceptable.”

Claim 3: No Business Plan

“Business Plan. There isn’t one. Not a meaningful one. Various state officials—the Auditor, the Legislative analyst—have pointed this out, quite pointedly. The “plan” calls for $15 billion of private financing which is nowhere in sight. The “plan,” rather amazingly, also calls for $5 billion from local governments. Not acceptable.”

Claim 4: Relationship with the Authority

“The Peninsula communities were frequently promised–even before the election–that our voices would be heard in designing HSR in our area. That has proven not to be the case. The attempt to use Context Sensitive Solutions clearly has failed. Certain Authority members have made it clear that, in effect, the railroad is coming through our community and we need to get out of the way. This is unacceptable.”

Claim 5: Impact on the Community

“The alternatives the Authority clearly favors will have major negative impacts on our community–reduction in residential and commercial real estate values, traffic, noise, vibrations, east/west division–with little or no benefits to us. As one of our neighboring communities put it, “‘Aerial orientation’ and ‘viaduct’ are [the Authority’s] euphemisms for constructing the equivalent of a six-to-eight-lane elevated freeway through the middle of our cities.” This is unacceptable.”

Palo Alto City Council says that it believes Caltrain is the indispensible backbone of the local and regional transit system and that they must have a permanent, dedicated source of funding and that it should be appropriately upgraded and that it is fully committed to collaborating with other Peninsula cities and counties to help create a dedicated funding source for Caltrain and its needed improvements.