So far, the authority has spent $600 million without laying any track and has made no final decision on how many stops the train will make between the Bay Area and Southern California.
"The authority is doing this bass-ackwards," attorney Stuart Flashman says. "This is not a board of experts but a political board that makes decisions based on what garners them the most support from other politicians."
ILLUSTRATION BY PETER HOEY
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Flashman represents a host of plaintiffs suing the High-Speed Rail Authority, including the cities of Palo Alto, Atherton and Antelope Park.
California State Auditor Elaine M. Howle released one of the most devastating studies of the authority's behavior and fiscal health in her April 2010 audit, which was initiated at the request of legislators. She titled it "High-Speed Rail Authority: It Risks Delays or an Incomplete System Because of Inadequate Planning, Weak Oversight and Lax Contract Management." A spokeswoman for Howle says an upcoming audit will be just as tough.
The rail authority also doesn't seem to have any particular talent for estimating or identifying incoming revenue.
Board members said they expected a huge contribution from the feds, as much as a $19 billion windfall. And the rail authority board failed to make clear which government entity would be responsible for the future revenue guarantees (to be generated mostly from ticket sales) that are needed to lure private investors, without whom the California bullet train cannot be completed.
Rail authority spokeswoman Rachel Wall says there are good reasons why construction is still down the road. The $600 million spent so far went to "preliminary engineering and environmental clearance and review," she notes, and none of the clearances required under tough California environmental laws have been granted yet. That's a big reason why "nothing's been built."
Wall describes the vast project as more than "800 miles of survey area, from Sacramento to San Diego. Seismic tests along every potential route. We're looking at a huge array of options. In some places we're doing review for two tracks or four tracks, places that might have two stations or four stations. Everything we anticipate is in those engineering reports."
Meanwhile, state Sen. Doug LaMalfa, a Richvale Republican, is pursuing a ballot measure asking voters to kill the train. His measure is highly unlikely to be approved by the Democrat-controlled state Legislature and placed on the ballot. Even so, LaMalfa thinks Californians should be asked a second time if they want to kick in $9 billion, particularly now that it's no longer a $34 billion or $45 billion but a $100 billion train — and one that might not attain speeds much faster than Amtrak's best.
"It seemed like a nice thing," LaMalfa says by phone from his Central Valley farm. But, he asks, "Where are the commuters who are going to ride this thing? I just don't see it. Are people in Merced going to go to San Jose or to the San Fernando Valley and Burbank?"
LaMalfa questions the widely attacked rider predictions from the authority, whose use of very high ticket-sales projections has allowed bullet-train boosters to claim that California residents would not be unduly squeezed in order to subsidize the train's steep and ongoing operating costs.
The authority had projected that 41 million people annually would ride the train between Anaheim and San Francisco, for example. But currently only 12 million customers fly nonstop on the extremely busy air route between Los Angeles and San Francisco each year.
Amtrak's Acela train has attracted 3 million riders a year in the dense corridor of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Boston, but California's rail authority insists 50 million riders would flock to its bullet train in far less dense California. They've since knocked that widely attacked figure down to 16.7 million to 23.7 million riders per year between L.A. and the Bay Area. But some analysts suggest the bullet train will attract ridership similar to Acela's — a few million riders per year.
California bullet-train backers also boasted of much cheaper tickets for those traveling by train, but tickets now are projected to cost $65 to $120 per person, one way. (A Horizon Air ticket from L.A. to San Francisco ranges from $59 to $147 one way.)
LaMalfa says Brown, Speaker Pérez and state Senate leader Steinberg should use their appointment powers to replace California High-Speed Rail Authority board members with experts who aren't "yes-men," asking, "Where are the critics on this board? There aren't any."
But the board's chairman, Umberg, a former California legislator and a drug-policy appointee in the Clinton administration, says, "Saying no to high-speed rail is ridiculous."
If all goes well, the first turn of the shovel is scheduled for September 2012, starting north of Fresno near Merced and ending just north of Bakersfield. That 130-mile stand-alone fragment of track is expected to be finished in 2017, he says, but the leg "will not carry passengers. The first passengers will get aboard in 2021."
He says the authority still has time to find enough financing for the bullet train, because "we don't need money for three years."
Umberg is so convinced of the benefits of the high-speed train that, he warns, "Our standard of living will decrease dramatically if we do nothing" and fail to copy countries with bullet trains.
