Saving California from Itself

In 2012 I expressed skepticism about the just-approved high-speed rail (HSR) project:

But they're going to start in the middle, i.e., the Central Valley, where the labor and land are cheaper and environmental obstacles less restrictive. After the expenditure of an estimated $6 billion, HSR will be operational between Fresno (pop. 350,000) and Bakersfield (pop. 500,000) in 2017...

Just to make clear, your humble observer is not in favor of the HSR project. It's expense ($65 billion in today's dollars and $90+ billion, including inflation ) is only defensible under the wildest pie-in-the-sky scenarios. When one looks at the sad history of California construction overruns in projects like the Bay Bridge extension, San Francisco airport, and BART, it is even more improbable that the final cost will be justified, and it won't matter much whether it was built top-down, bottom-up, or middle-out.

Support pillars in Hanford (Merc photo)

13 years later HSR has played out as foreseen: $billions over budget, decade-long delays, and no guaranteed funding to finish it. Even many of its former supporters agree that HSR is a white elephant, but very few have publicly advocated abandoning it.

This time around (he failed to do so in his first term) President Trump will likely be able to kill the project given the weakened state of his opposition:

“The train that’s being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst-managed project I think I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some of the worst,” Trump told reporters, asserting that the project is “billions and billions” of dollars over budget.

“We’re going to start a big investigation of that, because I’ve never seen anything like it,” he added. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. The worst overruns that there have ever been in the history of our country.”

...The current estimate for linking San Francisco with Southern California is $107 billion. Officials don’t even know how to fully finance Merced-Bakersfield, much less raise the other $72.4 billion they would need.

By pulling the plug President Trump will be saving California from itself, but I doubt anyone in Sacramento will thank him.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

The future Fresno station: too bad we'll never see it. (Chron)

We were skeptical of the high-speed rail project when it was announced in 2012. As cost estimates tripled, milestones got pushed out, and expectations were massaged down, we became convinced it would never be completed. From 2018:

I'd bet money on this: we will put a human being on Mars before anyone travels from LA to SF on high-speed rail.

In 2024 harsh realities are at last sinking in.

the project remains about $7 billion short of the cost to complete the initial segment from Merced to Bakersfield.

The rail project also needs about $100 billion to make the original vision of linking San Francisco and Los Angeles via bullet trains a reality. And some of the project’s watchdogs say state leaders need to decide soon whether to commit to the entire project — or abandon it.

In an election year no one in power will admit to this multi-billion-dollar disaster, much less allow the project to be cancelled. Nevertheless, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel---and it's not an oncoming train.

They Didn't Measure Twice

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is above the fold in most newspapers, but in the Honolulu Star Advertiser the lead was yet another in a long line of stories about the troubled rail project. [bold added]

O‘ahu’s rail was supposed to carry commuters from West O‘ahu’s suburbs to urban Honolulu by now. Instead, the 20-mile, 21-station project is only about 63% complete.

Its costs have more than doubled since the City and County of Honolulu signed an agreement in 2012 with the Federal Transit Administration to build the project for $5.122 billion, and it’s now estimated the full system won’t be operational until March 2031 – 11 years later than promised in that agreement.

The latest snafu concerns a "mismatch" between the width of the train wheels and the tracks:

The gap between rail tracks is too narrow by less than one-eighth of an inch leading into at least five spots where the trains cross onto different tracks...

There are two main ideas to fix the mismatch, including unbolting the track that leads into the frogs and then “(sliding) them over slightly,” then re-bolting the track — a process that could take weeks, [CEO and executive director, Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation Lori] Kahikina said.

Another idea would be to cut the problematic track, reweld and retest in a process that could take months and potentially cost “a couple thousand per cut,” she said...

But, Kahikina said, “Worstcase scenario, there could be a derailment,” but “there hasn’t been an issue.”

Board member Jade Butay, director of the state Department of Transportation, asked Kahikina how the problem was just discovered when the track was installed years ago.

“It could be all the way back from the design to the manufacture to the installation … and our own inspection,” Kahikina said. “Right now the main focus is, What is the extent of the issue, and how can we fix it? … Why wasn’t this found sooner? Very good question, and we’re asking the same thing.”

Matching the width of the tracks to the car wheels, and having the width be consistent over the entire system has been a basic principle of rail transportation for almost 200 years. The "gauge" is not a trivial issue, because the engineering needs to be precise and the gauge was not originally standardized. With thousands of miles of incompatible track, it took half a century for the American gauge to be fixed around the Stephenson standard of four feet, eight-and-a-half inches wide, which some claim dates back to ancient Rome(!).

And why does it cost "thousands of dollars" per cut to fix? Below is a video of welding tracks in Sweden.

Remember, dear reader, to measure twice, and cut once.

No Savings for a Sunny Day

"Lake" Oroville on July 22, 2021 (Chronicle photo)

The Lake Oroville hydroelectric plant has been shut down due to the drought:

It was the first time the Hyatt Powerplant at Lake Oroville has been shut down because of low lake levels since it was constructed....Hyatt is the fourth-largest hydroelectric energy producer in California, authorities said.

It was only four years ago that there was so much rain and snow during the winter that the water pouring over the Oroville Dam threatened the collapse of the spillway.

Oroville in 2017

The failure to add water storage capacity to save for a sunny day--and to upgrade existing dams and reservoirs--is another consequence of a Progressive governance that wasted multi-$billions on a high-speed rail system and decommissioned reliable, carbon-free nuclear power plants.

The inability to provide adequate water, not to mention electrical power, is a feature of a developed society, and it's a reasonable question whether California fulfills even that basic definition.

High-Speed Rail: Staying Alive

2021: HSR construction in Fresno

We thought the multi-billion dollar High-Speed Rail (HSR) project was a bad idea in 2012 (wouldn't work, lousy project design, $billions of easily foreseeable cost overruns, less efficient than already cheap SF-LA flights).

We thought it was effectively killed when Governor Newsom drastically scaled back the project in 2019. However, a state agency kept HSR alive in 2020 despite bipartisan efforts to kill it.

The change in Administrations in Washington rewarded the bureaucrats' stalling:

California will receive $929 million in grant funding toward its high-speed rail project — funding that former President Donald Trump had previously canceled in 2019 — under a deal announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office late Thursday night.

Americans are divided over policy matters, such as where to spend government funds. But they're close to unanimous against spending money on things that will never work.

The Las Vegas Review Journal: [bold added]

In the early aughts, the state’s political class bamboozled voters into approving a high-speed rail project intended to ultimately connect Los Angeles with San Francisco. Construction was supposed to be completed early this decade, and residents were assured that the shiny new “clean energy” train could be theirs for the low, low price of $30 billion. Instead, the project is more than a decade behind schedule and is now projected to cost $100 billion … and counting. Officials now hope they can complete a 171-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Merced by the end of the decade...

The Golden State bullet train is already an environmental nightmare, and there’s absolutely no evidence it can — if it’s ever actually in operation — compete with air travel in terms of time or price. President Joe Biden might as well have held a Rose Garden photo-op while chin-flicking taxpayers and taking a blowtorch to a $1 billion pile of cash. That would have been more honest than propagating the fiction that the California high-speed rail debacle is vital to saving the planet.

Like a monster in a lucrative horror movie franchise, HSR keeps coming back after you thought it was dead.

Appreciate It For Its Own Sake

A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie’ (1866), by Albert Bierstadt (WSJ/Brooklyn Museum of Art)

A work of art that was famous, then forgotten, then rediscovered, Storm in the Rocky Mountains (1866) helped to rekindle the American spirit after the carnage of the Civil War:

Created in the gloomy Civil War era, the painting conveys the grandeur of the American West at a time when the nation’s belief in Manifest Destiny roused hopes and dreams even for citizens who were not headed west. Studded with emblems of the frontier—a soaring eagle, a black bear, pristine lakes, big skies, steep cliffs and a Native American camp—“A Storm” is, in the words of art historian Linda Ferber, writing in the museum’s 2006 “American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum: Artists Born by 1876,” “a pivotal work in American cultural history.”

Modern historians who view history through a normative lens describe the period following the Civil War as an era to be deplored by late 20th century standards, when the United States adopted the imperialist philosophies of the European nations and rode roughshod over indigenous peoples.

If we dispense with moralizing but focus on the descriptive, the "winning of the West" was inevitable, given the developments of the Industrial Revolution, the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad (1869), and the incentives of the Homestead Act (1862).

The creation of the sea-to-shining-sea America in the 19th century produced an America that won two World Wars and one Cold War, the latter without significant casualties. Must we take the evil with the good? That's way above this humble blogger's pay grade.

Setting aside our--and I include myself in this tendency--to look at everything through an ideological or political lens, I can appreciate Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie as a work of art by itself. May I do more of that in the New Year.

HSR: Still Lingering

We were highly skeptical when we first looked at the high-speed rail (HSR) project, which has grown more problematic with each passing year:

Merced-Bakersfield route (Chron graphic)

Since 2012 we've been commenting on the complicated design, pie-in-the-sky ridership assumptions, and cost overruns of the California high-speed rail project.

On February 12, 2019 Governor Newsom effectively killed the project by announcing that he would only commit to completing the Central Valley line between Merced (pop. 83,000) and Bakersfield (pop. 376,000).

One could have reasonably expected the coronavirus to put HSR out if its misery (since many riders have soured on germ-ridden mass transit), but one would be wrong. It's being kept alive as a jobs program for powerful unions and the hope that a President Biden ("a train guy") would reverse the Trump Administration position and support Federal funding.

If the Republican Party were just slightly competitive in California, Democrats would fear wasting $billions on HSR when the State is facing a $54-billion-dollar deficit. Democrats guess that they won't pay a price in November, and they're probably right.

Burying the Bullet Train

The coronavirus has forced everyone to make hard financial choices, both in their business and personal lives. Thr State of California, facing a $54-billion budget deficit, has even put Jerry Brown's bullet train under the microscope.

The state High-Speed Rail Authority now projects the 171-mile stretch [from Merced to Bakersfield] would cost $20 billion to build and lose between $40 million and $90 million a year. Even that assumes millions of people living in the Central Valley each year will ride the train to Merced and then use commuter rail to connect to San Jose.

As economic consultants William Grindley and Bill Warren have pointed out, a round-trip between Bakersfield and San Jose would take 12 hours and 10 minutes and cost $189 without a subsidy and $104 with a subsidy.

Long gone are the dreams of connecting the major population centers of San Francisco and Los Angeles. As we noted last year:

Merced-Bakersfield route (Chron graphic)

Since 2012 we've been commenting on the complicated design, pie-in-the-sky ridership assumptions, and cost overruns of the California high-speed rail project.

On Tuesday Governor Newsom effectively killed the project by announcing that he would only commit to completing the Central Valley line between Merced (pop. 83,000) and Bakersfield (pop. 376,000).

The deadly pandemic that has caused record unemployment and business closures has prevented officials from getting raises ("The four members of the California Citizens Compensation Commission voted unanimously Thursday to leave the salaries as they are"), so you know things are really serious.

Proceed with Caution

One of the reasons that a picture is worth a thousand words is because a verbal description often is confusing. Here are the words--with a picture--describing a new traffic design. (Try to read it first, and then look at the picture to see if you got close).

It’s called a diverging diamond. To enter the freeway, the cutting-edge interchange requires drivers to veer at a 45-degree angle across the center divide, switching sides with opposing traffic and briefly motoring across as if they are in England.

By being on the left side, they can then glide left onto the highway without a dangerous 90-degree turn across oncoming cars.

Some traffic planners are smitten with the concept and how, in the name of efficiency and safety, it forces opposing traffic to negotiate an X-shaped, signalized crossover before a bridge or underpass. As freeway-bound drivers drift to the left to an on-ramp, those heading through the interchange to the other side of the freeway follow the road back to the right at another crossover.

The example of the modern roundabout is instructive. While the roundabout is easy to picture, its high efficiency in moving more cars along through an intersection is difficult to apprehend unless one has experienced it a few times.

Without the "divergent diamond" schematic, your humble blogger couldn't envision even how it would work, much less whether it would an improvement. Now I'm guardedly optimistic. Traffic engineers have a good, albeit not perfect, record and have earned our trust.

As for those who are "smitten with the concept", let's pump the brakes. Don't go big until we've seen how it works on a small scale. (I'm looking at you, high-speed rail enthusiasts.)

The Train to No---re

HSR scale-back to Merced-Bakersfield (Chron graphic)

Since 2012 we've been commenting on the complicated design, pie-in-the-sky ridership assumptions, and cost overruns of the California high-speed rail project.

On Tuesday Governor Newsom effectively killed the project by announcing that he would only commit to completing the Central Valley line between Merced (pop. 83,000) and Bakersfield (pop. 376,000).

“There simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A.,” Newsom told a joint session of the Legislature. “I wish there were.”

He said the current project would “cost too much and, respectfully, take too long.”

But a link between Merced and Bakersfield, he added, could serve as a revitalizing force for the Central Valley, a region Newsom has promised not to neglect.

Don't call it the Train to Nowhere (WSJ)

Governor Newsom also asked everyone not to use a ready-made name for the project: [bold added]

“I know that some critics are going to say, ‘Well, that’s a train to nowhere.’ But I think that’s wrong and I think that’s offensive,” Newsom said. “It’s about economic transformation. It’s about unlocking the enormous potential of the valley.”

In a bow to ex-Governor Brown, Gavin Newsom didn't stop the entire project. Check back another year and we'll see.

As Easy as Predicting the Sun Will Rise in the East:

If the project doesn't get much further, historians of the future
will wonder why we spent billions connecting Fresno (pop
500,000) with Bakersfield (pop 400,000) (Chronicle photo)

I would say I told you so, but this was as easy as predicting the sun will rise in the East: California high-speed rail project facing more delays, higher costs. [bold added]

The middle-of-the-road estimate is $77 billion, according to the draft report, which will now undergo public comment and legislative scrutiny....

The bullet train’s most recent cost estimate was $64 billion, which was already double the original $32 billion price tag that was pitched to state voters when they authorized bond money for the project nearly a decade ago. The rail authority said it hopes to finish the full line by 2033, a delay from the most recent estimate of 2029.

We derided the project when we first heard about it in 2012. By 2013 and 2015 it had gotten more delayed and more expensive. IMHO, the new estimates are optimistic.

I'd bet money on this: we will put a human being on Mars before anyone travels from LA to SF on high-speed rail.

BTW, here's another great moment in public transportation: At long last, Wi-Fi coming to BART, Caltrain — in 3 to 4 years. By comparison JetBlue began offering WiFi on its flights in 2013.

The leaders of tomorrow, i.e., millennials, prefer socialism to capitalism, so we'd better get used to stories like these.

Disappointing

At least March was better than February (Chronicle image)

The big storm that we anticipated last week didn't exactly fizzle, but it was disappointing.

California’s all-important snowpack measured 39 percent of average for the date at Phillips Station in El Dorado County, the state’s traditional survey spot south of Lake Tahoe, while snowpack statewide measured 37 percent of average.

The good news is that stored water from last year's storms should allow for normal consumption in 2018.

California’s reservoirs remain at average levels for this time of year because of last winter’s bounty, state water officials said. The supply is enough for most communities to weather the year, even if there aren’t any more big storms.

I'd much rather spend the tens of billions about to be wasted on the high-speed rail project (that will be finished in 2030, they say) on water storage. HSR will be used by thousands of travelers while the latter will benefit 40 million Californians.

As the President suggested in his State of the Union speech, I can dream, too.

Long Train

Hoppers, food, coal, and tank cars: a diversified load.

In Central California Union Pacific trains are a regular sight. The wait time at crossings has risen due to the increase in freight traffic. City transplants may be irritated, but the railroads were here first.

In the San Francisco Bay Area under- and over-crossings cost in the tens of millions of dollars.

Though the population has grown in Sacramento and surrounds, it will be many years before the crowding and wealth have increased enough to justify bypass construction.

Sands of Time

(Google Maps)

Without a second thought, we've headed to Ocean Beach after workdays and on weekends. Driving the eight miles from the Financial District to the Cliff House takes one hour by bus and half an hour by car.

It's hard to comprehend that 134 years ago "thousands" of San Franciscans had never seen the Pacific Ocean : [bold added]

During the city’s first three decades, its western edge was difficult and expensive to get to. An 1863 toll road, Point Lobos Avenue, ran from Bush and Presidio to the Cliff House, but using it required owning or renting a horse and carriage, and its round-trip fare of $1 was beyond the means of most people. A decade later, paved roads to the beach were opened in the new Golden Gate Park, but the Park Commission did not allow commercial lines to use them.

Leland Stanford and fellow "plutocrats" who ran the Southern Pacific built a rail line to the beach in advance of securing approvals, and

On Sunday, Dec. 9, 1883, more San Franciscans were at the beach than ever before in the city’s history. A reported 18,000 people filled the northern end of Ocean Beach, packed the Cliff House and spilled south toward Golden Gate Park.

“Along the Ocean Beach a sight was presented such as has not been seen before by those who for years had made almost daily trips to the beach in hack or buggy,” the Daily Alta California reported. “In spite of the cold wind the Cliff House end of the beach was literally thronged with people. Children, playing in the sand, looked at the ocean for the first time in their lives.”

The round-trip fare was 20 cents, the equivalent of $16 today, and was gladly paid by thousands of San Franciscans.

Please note, language mavens, that even in the 19th century, literally did not necessarily mean "exactly true."

The More We Find the Present Wanting

HSR car: $68 billion doesn't buy what it used to.

The California State Railroad Museum is mainly about the past, but during this week's trip we spent a few minutes on the glorious future, i.e., high-speed rail. Current estimates are that HSR will cost $68 billion when it's completed in 2029. Even that may be a stretch.

The seismic and tunneling issues in mountain ranges were known about when the project was approved, but the assumptions regarding solutions now seem highly optimistic.

Today's problems are trivial, however, compared to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad:

the Chinese workers accomplished amazing and dangerous feats no other workers would or could do. They blasted tunnels through the solid granite -- sometimes progressing only a foot a day. They often lived in the tunnels as they worked their way through the solid granite, saving precious time and energy from entering and exiting the worksite each day. They were routinely lowered down sheer cliff faces in makeshift baskets on ropes where they drilled holes, filled them with explosives, lit the fuse and then were yanked up as fast as possible to avoid the blast.

The Chinese workers, who averaged 4'10" and 120 pounds, helped to complete the 1,907-mile project in six years. California high-speed rail will cover 800+ miles and will take 14 years to complete, if we're lucky.

The more we examine the past the more we find the present wanting.

Groundwork Laid

Surveyor's toolkit: how many of us can identify these
implements, let alone know how to use them?

One's first visit to the California State Railroad Museum is usually spent marveling at the beauty of the restored locomotives. The age of steam seems like the distant past, but it was less than 200 years ago that America was still an agrarian society.

A good part of the Museum is devoted to the history of the First Transcontinental Railroad, which transformed the national economy.

An exact duplicate of 
Stanford Univ's Gold
Spike is in the Museum

Before the final spike was driven in 1869, merchant ships took four to six months to make the trip to California via Cape Horn; a like amount of time was necessary to traverse the overland route by wagon train.

The railroad shortened the journey to five days, unifying the country geographically and sparking an explosion in the movement of people and goods in both directions.

Industry and agriculture were not the only beneficiaries, it was now possible to build fortifications against military threats originating from both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The 20th century became the American century, in large part due to the groundwork that was laid in the 19th.

Rail Power

For years we've been pestered by door-to-door salespeople who are trying to push solar panels. Though we've given a couple of them extended hearings (some of the products are financially complex--certainly worthy of a separate post), we have declined for two principal reasons:

1) the technology is improving rapidly, and we would hate to have buyer's remorse in a few years;

2) storage (i.e., battery) solutions haven't gotten to the point where we could be completely off the grid; one of our goals is to be independent of PG&E.

Energy storage is a problem faced by alternative energy systems. The wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine, and both wind and solar

require extra, large-scale infrastructure to store the energy so that it is available on demand and not just when it’s windy or sunny.

Ingenious energy storage solutions often involve gravity: water is pumped uphill using solar energy during the day, for example, then rotates turbines as it runs downhill during the night. But water is not always available or suitable.

ARES: don't call it Sisyphus

Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) has designed an ingenious energy-transfer system involving railcars that are carrying rocks:

The rocks stand in for the water in a pumped-storage system. They are carried up- and downhill by a train that is thus the equivalent of the turbines.....The hill ARES has chosen has a gradient of about 8%. The track itself is just under 9km (about 5½ miles) long. The company estimates that its proposed system will be able to store 12.5 MWh of energy, and deliver it back to the grid at a rate of up to 50MW.

Storage technology will undoubtedly improve, but probably not to the point where weights could be deposited on my roof during the day, then lowered during the evening. Besides, the neighbors will complain.

It's Always the Same Solution

Californians pay the highest gas taxes in the nation. Because these taxes are not enough--they're never enough--to fix our roads and bridges, Governor Brown has proposed new taxes and a new per-car fee [bold added]:

The administration’s plan would create a highway user fee of $65 per vehicle, which would generate $2 billion and could be assessed during vehicle registration. Another $1 billion would be generated by raising the gas tax by 6 cents per gallon and the diesel tax by 11 cents per gallon. Those taxes would continue to rise based on the Consumer Price Index*.

*Because having to go back and ask permission all the time is so tiresome.

Governor Brown will have to twist some arms to get the $3 billion proposal passed.

Meanwhile, the $68 billion high-speed rail project is well on its way to connecting San Francisco and LA by 2029.

$6.5 Billion Doesn't Buy What it Used To

From the initial 1997 $1 billion estimate to its "final" $6.5 billion cost when it opened in 2013, the new Eastern span of the Bay Bridge was a typical government construction project that experienced drastic modifications, multi-year delays, and gigantic cost overruns. But at least it finally got done.....Or did it?

The eastern tower (SFGate photo)

From today's Chronicle:

Caltrans tests indicate that salt water from the bay may be seeping into the foundation of the new Bay Bridge eastern span’s tower, an ominous prospect that raises questions about the long-term viability of hundreds of massive steel rods that anchor the landmark structure.

Where will the State get the billions of dollars to fix a problem that could cost lives? Well, down south there's an expensive transportation project of dubious benefit that has absolutely nothing to do with public safety.....

[Update - 5/7: Bay Bridge news gets worse: "One of the steel rods anchoring the tower of the new Bay Bridge eastern span has failed a key integrity test, suggesting it became corroded and broke during years when it was soaking in water."]

If Ever

(SFGate photo)

Like a runaway freight train there's no stopping the California high-speed rail project, which broke ground today in Fresno. Forget that the initial cost estimates have more than doubled to $68 billion, or that initial operations will serve only about a million people in the Central Valley. (It would be a shock if the Fresno-Bakersfield corridor will produce a regular ridership of at least 1%, i.e., 10,000 people.)

If all goes according to plan, the San Francisco--Los Angeles connection won't be operational until 2029. Governor Jerry Brown "said the state owed it to the future to think big and invest in projects like high-speed rail."

OK, Guv'nor, let's dream about a new, customizable, eco-friendly transportation system for California:

$30 billion for 1,000,000 driver-less all-electric cars @ $30,000--which won't need feeder buses to/from the train stations.

$20 billion for new power plants (nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind)

$20 billion for highway improvements and strengthening the power grid.

This cocktail-napkin transportation project was concocted in two minutes, but there is absolutely no doubt that the CNTP would be operational long before California's High-Speed Rail is completed, if ever.