☆ Transit expert: CA HSR in too deep to admit project is “stupid,” “impossible”
With over four decades in the transit industry, former SoCal Rapid Transit District CFO Tom Rubin has consulted for and studied a plethora of high-profile projects in and beyond California. In this Opp Now exclusive, Rubin analyzes California High-Speed Rail: why the math just can't justify it, the myth of reduced GHG emissions, and what's keeping CA (despite failure after failure) from surrendering a mea culpa.
California High-Speed Rail was never a good idea and is rapidly becoming far less of one over time. It's funny: I studied the Cascadia Ultra-High-Speed Ground Transportation Project in Washington (for the Washington Policy Center), which proposed to go from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, British Columbia. It was a very obvious twin of California's HSR, but they intentionally tried to distance themselves using that name. Why? They knew it would be compared to California's high-speed idiocy: known for ridership projections that continue decreasing and costs that continue increasing. Not only were original ridership estimates highly overstated—they promised an average capacity higher than any HSR has ever achieved, anywhere in the world!—but many factors that would drive ridership have since fallen off.
But data like this does nothing to dampen California's decision-makers' enthusiasm to build this HSR, as long as it isn't their money. They keep going madly along. They refuse to acknowledge flaws. I have a T-shirt I sometimes wear to public hearings that says, “There's a lot more money to be made by being in favor of cosmically stupid multibillion dollar government projects than there is in being opposed.” That's the reality of it. Otherwise, it wouldn't make any sense for anyone.
A major selling point for Californians is HSR's ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, a quarter of California's cap and trade (a means to finance quick fixes for GHG emissions) goes to the HSR; and given that other sources of funding just aren't showing up, this percentage will likely climb. However, California HSR is a huge net contributor to GHGs due to the emissions put into the air during construction. Concrete, for instance, outputs a lot of carbon emissions. This has been the case around the world with similar HSR projects, and it takes close to a decade after they begin running to overcome those extra emissions. Now, California HSR is experiencing some success in reducing their GHG emissions during construction. But it remains doubtful if the project will ever be completed—and even if it does, and it has decent ridership, I'm not sure it'll overtake its building-era GHG emissions.
Ultimately, California HSR wasn't credible from the start, and they only lose credibility as time passes. Know that it's very difficult for any government unit to admit they've wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. It's hard for them to stop a giant project like this. The last time something similar happened was with the Cincinnati Subway, which broke ground right after World War I. In 1929, the city finally admitted it was a mistake and abandoned construction. Eventually, California's HSR will fall down and go boom. But until their absolute last chance of getting funding disappears, no one in power will say the project is stupid or impossible.
Read more on CA HSR here.
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