An article in June 27th Fresno Bee says California's legislation has a Plan B for the proposed HSR.  In having followed the HRS project, it is clear that the legislators know nothing about the project.  There is no realistic Plan B.  At best this is a motion to tell the other legislators that the current Plan A is completely dysfunctional.  San Francisco was anticipating completion of the HSR and have already begun building their multibillion dollar transit station; they need a long distance passenger link for their station.  LA is a traffic nightmare and always will be; diverting up to 10,000 people a day (in the HRS dream figures) to ride on the proposed HSR won't put a dent into LA's traffic problems.  To put an extra $1.5 billion into redesigning LA's Union Station for hundreds of Metrolink passengers is quite a stack of bandaids but, lacks the point of addressing a cure to traffic.

The technology chosen by CA's HSRA (High Speed Rail Authority) is the problem instead of a legitimate transportation solution.  To choose an updated version of a 150 year old technology is ludicrous.  The massive weight of heavy rail is unnecessarily expensive, inefficient and intrusive.  Overall the antique causes more troubles than solutions, the train was built for society in the early 1900s; this is 2012.

The proposed Plan B only serves to identify two problems: LA and San Francisco need a modern day transportation solution.  The antiquated technology is comparable to pedaling a bicycle instead of a rocket to get to the moon.  The point being; the 18,000 mph speed needed to break Earth's gravitational pull can not be attained by pedaling a bicycle.  The concern of political process is to maintain the status quo.

The article quotes Dan Richard, chairman of the HSRA, to say the Plan B can't be done. 

"There are no legal, practical or contractual ways to move the money out of the Central Valley," he wrote. "The Authority's revised plan already makes major investments to rail across the state."

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/06/26/2888935/high-speed-rail-plan-b-would-limit.html#storylink=cpy

It's the political process in action.  The players are already in place and collecting profits.

The only question is: will the legislation vote to go ahead and fraudulently (an editorialized choice of wording) spend the 1A tax bond money within the next two weeks.  Or, will the legislators use this Plan B as rational to justify that the proposed Plan A is inadequate.  

The solution is building a modern transportation system using new transit technology instead of the political version of a train technology that became obsolete in the 1930s.

A Bold Newspaper Headline

A bold headline from the Washington Examiner June 22, 2012.  The close of the article says: "Either way, there is simply no way California will be able to break ground on the project before the federal deadline." 

The question becomes very curious as to whether California's proposed HSR can go forward.

The HSR and Blum

In a newspaper article, June 13, 2012, The Fresno Bee reports that Tutor Perini/Zachry/Parsons is the prime contractor selected for the proposed HSR project.

An unrelated article at The AVA.com from 2010 shows a bit of history from one of the strongest participants behind the scenes of California's proposed HSR.

In Conflict

In highlighting events that took place at the rail meeting in the Bay Area last week, the Examiner featured an article in its May 27, 2012 edition.  It states: "There are no agreements with Union Pacific (UP) or Burlington Northern, Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) to operate in close proximity. These agreements have to be in place before any construction can begin. This is a federal statutory requirement. Senator DeSaulnier said he wanted to know if the Authority would have these agreements finalized before the legislature had to vote on the funding. Authority Chairman Richard said it was a goal but he couldn’t be sure."

The vote by the legislature is due July 1 regarding its allocation of the $3billion start-up money.

The railroad operators are exempt from being mandated allocating their property eminent domain rights-of-ways access to any government entity. 

Active again

And yet another new plan for the proposed CA HSR is announced in Sunday's Fresno Bee (April Fool's Day). The new plan calls for the funding to come from a new business penalty fund. This leads to questions about the proposed 'cap-and-trade' taxation program; is this new penalty for doing business in California part of a marketing strategy to attract new businesses that are needed for increasing revenue to its sagging economy?

The newly revealed HSR plan does claim high ridership numbers to pay for it's operation and maintenance. BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) in the San Francisco bay area operates at a 61% subsidy (Wikipedia). For a government agency in California to propose a plan that claims profitability, reflects a politically motivated number.

One aspect of the newest HSR proposal is that it does provide a useable Amtrak connection from Bakersfield to Burbank. That cost of $31billion is a reasonable figure to build a new Amtrak line but, is a far cry from what the voters agreed on for HSR.

The HSR illusion

The Fresno County Supervisors held a vote to continue support of the HSR. The March 27, 2012 Fresno Bee article explains.

The articles the Bee run are relatively honest and impartial but, the comments are filled with non-cognitive emotion which produce irrational stupidity. Posted in a blog by Todd Litman, a leading land-use expert, at www.planetizen.com, is one of the best comments of this phenomenon: "A related issue is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which refers to the tendency of people who are unaware of how little they know about a subject to be overly confident of their abilities and judgment. Research indicates that ignorant people often rate their knowledge and ability higher than it actually is, suffering from illusory superiority, while more knowledgeable people underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."

like a circus tight-rope act

An article in the LA Times dated March 26, 2012 claims the proponent's hyperbole may be in jeopardy. The proponents claim that the project can side-step the legislative requirements. It appears that the fate of CA's HSR is going to lay in the hands of the judicial authorities who will hear the cases.