Phillips on CA high speed rail

[psa188]

Don Phillips' October 2012 column is titled “Messy politics of California’s high speed rail.” It is a refreshing improvement over most of the rail press’ sycophantic articles that simply parrot the CHSRA party line. To his credit, after some happy talk about the “blended” aspects of the latest revised HSR plan, Phillips tears into CHSRA board chairman Dan Richard’s objections to an LA Times report on CHSRA’s rejection of SNCF’s offer to manage California’s high speed rail project. 

Of course, towards the end of the article, Phillips tries to equivocate by condemning “misrepresentations and outright lies on both sides.” Actually, it would be nice if he could do a proper analysis of the California project t and explain why, as David Rowell reports, “A recent CA Senate vote had the Senate’s entire high speed rail oversight group, Democrats and Republicans, voting against commencing the project” even though, as Phillips mentioned, it passed because of political arm-twisting on the part of Governor Moonbeam.

David Rowell’s excellent article is posted here:

http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2012/08/californias-high-speed-trains-go-off-the-rails.html

[Phoebe Vet]

By referring to Gov. Brown as Gov. Moonbeam you turn what you probably intended to be a discussion of the pros and cons of the HSR project into a childish political rant.

[CMStPnP]

psa188

Don Phillips' October 2012 column is titled “Messy politics of California’s high speed rail.” It is a refreshing improvement over most of the rail press’ sycophantic articles that simply parrot the CHSRA party line. To his credit, after some happy talk about the “blended” aspects of the latest revised HSR plan, Phillips tears into CHSRA board chairman Dan Richard’s objections to an LA Times report on CHSRA’s rejection of SNCF’s offer to manage California’s high speed rail project. 

Of course, towards the end of the article, Phillips tries to equivocate by condemning “misrepresentations and outright lies on both sides.” Actually, it would be nice if he could do a proper analysis of the California project t and explain why, as David Rowell reports, “A recent CA Senate vote had the Senate’s entire high speed rail oversight group, Democrats and Republicans, voting against commencing the project” even though, as Phillips mentioned, it passed because of political arm-twisting on the part of Governor Moonbeam.

David Rowell’s excellent article is posted here:

http://blog.thetravelinsider.info/2012/08/californias-high-speed-trains-go-off-the-rails.html

Yeah I'll tell you if I had to guess randomly just based on what I am reading the whole WWII issue against SNCF is a campaign by the Chinese via under the table payments to land the contract.     I would not at all be surprised if California politicians were in bed with the Chinese at this point with that amount of taxpayer money on the table.     Watch them carefully California.

[steve14]

Sigh...

I read Don Phillips' article with great interest as I live and work on the peninsula and have watched and listened to all of the posturing going on. I didn't think he was far off when he took both sides to task for "bloviating". I took him to mean CAHSR and the Nimby's. The one who got lost in all of that was Caltrain. They are now trying to dig out of the hole CAHSR dug for them on the peninsula. They are delivering what is being referred to as the "Balanced Approach" initiated by 3 local elected officials and are getting a pretty good reception.  

Part of the deal the governor made was to get funding committed to the Bay Area and LA for improving the existing services in expectation of the eventual arrival of CAHSR. That will improve things even if CAHSR never arrives.

Time will tell how well things go towards actually accomplishing something towards a high speed train SF to LA, but in the mean time this has been some of the best political theater since the days of the first Mayor Daley in Chicago.

[erikem]

My original concern about the Cal HSR project was getting the money to build it - this wouldn't be a concern had the state budget been where it was in 1998. The Don Philips piece and the LA Times piece leaves me wondering about the ability of the project management pulling this off even if there was enough money to build it. SNCF has shown that they know how to build and safely operate HSR - though I would disagree with the recommendation of building along I-5 through the San Joaquin Valley versus Highway 99.