The California High Speed Rail Authority is in damage-control mode in Southern California.
Planning is underway for the
Palmdale-to-Burbank section of the $68-billion bullet train, and the rail authority is required to
solicit community input on proposed routes. On Monday, Team Bullet Train was at the Santa Clarita Activities Center to comply with that legal mandate.
The strain was evident. “Santa Clarita has been very effective at vocalizing its concerns to the High Speed Rail Authority,” a rail official stated with cool irritation.
“I will lead the City Council to file a lawsuit if it goes through Santa Clarita,” Councilmember TimBen Boydston said later.
Public meetings usually feature members of the audience asking questions of a panel of officials and experts. Everyone can hear the answers.
Not this time. The rail authority’s meeting took place in two large rooms, with chairs set up in one room and computer displays in the other. Two officials gave a presentation in the room with the chairs but would not take questions from the people sitting in them.
“We prefer that people ask their questions individually of the experts at the open house,” an information officer said, referring to the room where engineering and environmental consultants stood near their displays like bored vendors at a trade show.
So none of the other people attending the presentation heard the experts tell me that the automobile was “a 50-year experiment that did not work out well,” or that “Ansel Adams opposed the Golden Gate Bridge, and one day opposition to high-speed rail will seem just as ridiculous,” or that “we will learn from the Europeans” how to safely evacuate train passengers from a tunnel 60 feet underground in the event of a fire or explosion.
In another questionable assertion, the team insisted that the bullet train is financially viable and won’t need taxpayer subsidies to operate. They offered up
a stack of year-old letters from private sector companies as evidence.
But the letters are about construction loans, not financial self-sufficiency. In the very first letter a CEO writes, “we believe that long-term funding by the State is needed.”
The second letter says the project could be completed “with funds from the state” in combination with private financing, if the state provides “a multi-year source of repayment.”
The would-be private sector partners were offering to help us borrow money, which we would then give to them to build the bullet train. They were pleased that the state would be able to make loan payments using money collected from cap-and-trade fees assessed on gasoline, diesel fuel and industry.
At a news conference in May, Gov. Jerry Brown was asked about the cap-and-trade spending. A reporter wondered if he had a long-term plan, “because as pollution goes down, the revenues will go down.”
“No, not quite,” Brown answered. “Pollution — we’re not as successful with reducing carbon pollution as we are with what they call ‘criteria’ pollutants, like sulfur, carbon monoxide, NOx, things like that. Carbon pollution is still rising. Worldwide. And so one of the principal strategies is to put a price on carbon. And a price that will rise. To increase the burden of using carbon.”
The reporter asked again, “But these revenues will taper off at some point and begin to go down, yes?”
“I don’t think so,” Brown answered.
“Spending will continue,” the reporter said.
“Spending will continue,” Brown confirmed. “There will be a gradual rise. And I would imagine as, assuming climate change becomes more evident, there will be efforts to ramp up even further the price of carbon.”
The governor is widening the definition of pollution so the penalty fees can go up. The only way to maintain public support for this scheme is to incite guilt and panic with endless warnings that climate change is about to become “more evident.”
Meanwhile, production and transportation will grow more expensive, and California will lose businesses, jobs and revenue. But limits on greenhouse gas emissions can always be tightened further to generate higher penalty fees. Spending will continue.
The bullet train is worse than an unnecessary expense. Funded by debt and fines, it will be a permanent leech on California’s economic lifeblood.
Save the future. Take Southwest.
Susan Shelley is a San Fernando Valley author, a former television associate producer and twice a Republican candidate for the California Assembly.
