High Speed Rail: Part Two of Three

This is part two of a three part series on the subject of High Speed Rail (HSR).  There are three questions this series seeks to address:

1.  Separation - How acceptably does HSR alleviate concerns of safety - trains vs. pedestrians, and trains vs. traffic?  was posted November 14, 2011 in Lakewood Patch.

2.  Motivation - How accurately does HSR present its information?  In other words, is there information that HSR makes available for public consumption, while pursuing an under-the-radar purpose revealing an ulterior motivation?

3.  Transportation - How affectively does HSR address the needs of transportation?

As you read this there remains but a few weeks left (December 11, 2011 deadline) in the effort to gather 5,500 signatures of Lakewood registered voters to put before the people the opportunity to vote on the most significant transportation issue our city will likely ever face.  "Remember," stated the 2011 Informed Voter Guide issued by the Freedom Foundation, "it's your government, it's your money, it's your future."

To help with the effort you can download the petition here.

Part II

"We shirk our moral responsibility when we accept uncritically as received truth the beliefs of others - whether parents, teachers, or so-called experts."  - Timothy W. Crusius with Carolyn E. Channell in "The Aims of Argument"

If safety is the far more obvious elephant in the room, then what follows - to continue the analogy - is not unlike a jungle where we cannot see the forest for the trees - that is unless we look closely to discover what lies behind.

In other words there is that which the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) makes available for public consumption, and then there is what amounts to deep-in-the-forest information that reveals a more true-to-historical-record track that this train has long been running on.

There's what's said, and there's what isn't said

For example what's in it for Lakewood?  Andrew Wood, WSDOT representative, in a presentation to the Lakewood City Council on January 19, 2010, said Lakewood stands to gain "$2.1 million in sales tax revenue; 992 jobs, 635 direct, 357 indirect over two years."

What WSDOT didn't say is that $2 million in revenue is offset by HSR's insistence that the Lakewood Water District upgrade their water pipes beneath every area where the track will cross a road, and that cost - upwards of one million dollars according to Senator Mike Carrell - is being passed on to the taxpayer.  Carrell wrote in his Kitchen Cabinet update, "Essentially, you are being forced to pay an average 12% more for water so the feds can run their train through Lakewood," leading Carrell to the conclusion, "this is an unfunded mandate of the worst kind."

Adding insult to injury, after the stimulus money is gone, what then?  Who maintains the tracks?  The state.  How much?  $50-$80 million over 20 years according to Scott Witt, WSDOT's rail and marine director in a May 17, 2011 statement.

Rightly is the pittance of stimulus money referred to as "a drop in an ever expanding bucket."

What do they know that we don't?

It is a point of logic in argument in presenting evidence that what is true in one instance should be true in another.  Presuming that's the case, why did Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida reject stimulus funds for HSR?  What do they know that we don't?  Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, happy to take the money they gave up, also wondered.  "Why they've turned it away I have no idea," she said as reported in the Tacoma News Tribune, May 17, 2011.

Lloyd Flem, executive director of All Aboard Washington, a consumer advocacy organization for improved and expanded rail passenger service, and Ralph Munro, Washington's secretary of state from 1980 to 2011, say the reason our state received an additional $160 million from these states' 'rejected' grants, was "based significantly on the success of our Amtrak Cascades trains."

But here's what the train advocates fail to mention and the answer to Gov. Gregoire's mystification.

The Tri-City Herald in November of 2010 quoted then Wisconsin Governor-elect Scott Walker, and his Republican counterpart in Ohio, as "criticizing the high-speed rail program as unaffordable in tough economic times.  Walker said their states would have to invest considerable dollars in the projects in addition to federal aid.  Walker urged the federal government to give up on high-speed rail and instead use the money to repair roads and bridges he said were 'literally crumbling'."  Walker further reasoned that the "long-term jobs we need are sustainable private sector jobs outside of government."  In objecting to the estimated $7.5 million it would cost his state to operate the rail line, Walker said, "This is a short-term fix that will cost the taxpayers of our state millions into the future."

By taking the stimulus money, "You are theoretically opening yourselves up to some pretty big obligations," said Wendell Cox, a researcher in St. Louis who authored critical studies of some projects elsewhere.  "You are now on the hook for running those trains regardless of ridership," Cox stated in a Tacoma News Tribune article, May 17, 2011.

Take California for example, as reflected in a New York Times op-ed this past April entitled, "Fast Train to Nowhere".  Author Richard White wrote, "The most astonishing thing is that even as financial problems force California to dismantle its social safety net, eviscerate its educational system, and watch its roads crumble, it has agreed on a plan for high-speed rail that demands substantial local subsidies."

True to his name, White sees the dichotomy in black-and-white, a shake-of-the-head amazement at how money can be so misspent in such unaffordable times.  But it's not like this is news.  White is professor of history at Standford and is author of the just released "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America," in which White reveals that what is happening now is simply history repeated - inviting a sequel perhaps entitled, "Gullible's Travels" given - once again - the American people are 'being taken for a ride.'

Despite the fact that "Amtrak is on track to report its highest ridership in history," in a September 2010 article entitled "What's wrong with high-speed rail," Larry Kaufmann, economic consultant based in Madison, Wisconsin, reveals that "revenues collected from ticket sales will not cover operating expenses even under optimistic ridership forecasts.  Operating the line will add to the state's existing budget deficit, already at record levels.  This will crowd out spending on other public services and spur state tax increases."

If, or rather since, essential services can be kicked to the curb in other states - services threatened specifically from costs associated with high speed rail - are we somehow immune here in Washington?

No.

The headlines have been replete with just-in-time-for-Halloween horror stores of the affects of yet another $1.5 billion in state cuts due to a worsening economy - hundreds of prisoners let loose on the public; teachers climbing the walls of over-crowded classrooms; the working poor removed from financial life-support, their babies' subsidized health care umbilical cord cut, and other night-of-the-living-dead scenarios played out on the chopping block floor of the state capital.

"There are no choices left," said Ed Murray, D-Seattle, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

None?

You mean we can threaten basic human services - "the elimination of the Basic Health Plan and raiding federal education dollars" and, at the same time as basic needs are threatened, a train is promoted for a need not demonstrated?

For whom are we making this ultimate of sacrifices?  We are cutting essential services for tykes to provide more reliable service for trains, to accommodate whom exactly?

Train tourists wave while working poor wait

WSDOT admits that "over 80% of Cascades trips are leisure-based," according to page two of a November 14, 2008 letter by Lakewood's Assistant City Manager Dave Bugher addressed to George Xu, Planning and Strategic Assessment Manager for WSDOT State Rail and Marine Office in Olympia.  Bugher, in quoting from WSDOT's own "Washington State Amtrak Cascades Mid-Range Plan," concludes that "the plan" is not in fact founded upon the "demand for Amtrak Cascades service" but rather "appears strongly tied to marketing."

In its promotional material WSDOT says the plan is to improve service reliability.  But on page 153 of Camp Murray's 2011 Environmental Assessment in which the Washington National Guard is addressing its own transportation issues, Amtrak officials admitted that "the project (Bypass) will reroute passenger rail traffic service, which will result in some improvement in service but is primarily intended to allow an increase in the number of trains per day."

This then begs the question.  If Amtrak is not about service improvement primarily, but rather more about more trains, why?

The answer should become obvious from the following.

"In participating in WSDOT meetings," Bugher wrote - pages 20 and 21 of a document entitled Written Direct Testimony of David Bugher in a report before the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, Exhibit No. Docket No. TR-100127, dated May 5, 2010 - "city staff observed that organic demand for the Amtrak Cascades route does not exist so much as that generated by heavy WSDOT investment in promotion, which has included a clear intent to siphon travelers specifically from Horizon Air.  To the best of our knowledge," Bugher testified, "WSDOT has never engaged in any outreach about this particular aspect to the City of SeaTac, Port of Seattle, or Alaska/Horizon itself."  Bugher further observed, on pages 10 and 20 after reviewing Horizon's 2009 annual report, "Horizon could be harmed by reduced demand and/or increased competition in its key markets, which include Seattle and Portland.  Portland-to-Seattle is one of its leading nonstop routes."

As a matter of fact, in the aforementioned letter to George Xu, Bugher references WSDOT's "Washington State Amtrak Cascades Mid-Range Plan" , Chapter 9, p.9-1, charging WSDOT as "intentionally positioning Amtrak Cascades as the preferred method of (both intercity and business) travel."

To WSDOT's contention that "of every $1 billion invested in rail, an estimated 20,000 new jobs would be created curbing global warming and supporting cleaner energy," Bugher responds to this and several other claims, calling them "superficial (and) outrageous" since "no supporting data or evidence (is) included to offer a logical foundation for the argument."

And finally, pages 2-3, Bugher notes regarding Amtrak's Oregon destination that the "outbound routes, particularly to Oregon where there is notably no sales tax, represent retail and tax leakage for Washington businesses.  In this sense service is not a boon but provides competition with economic development in Washington State."

With regards WSDOT's plan to thrust high speed rail through existing neighborhoods, there's what's said and there's what isn't said.

What's said is that there'll be $2 million in revenue for Lakewood.  What isn't said is that $1 million will literally be poured into the ground in the replacement of water pipes.

What's said is that the feds have made a lot of money available for this program.  The fine print however concerns the $50-$80 million of state-borne maintenance costs over 20 years - money not available for other needed projects and services requiring additional taxes.

What's said is that 80% of Amtrak riders are tourists.  What isn't explained then is how need is substantiated.

What's promoted is service reliability.  What Amtrak really wants is more trains.  And the reason for more trains?  Market domination.

What you don't know, you ought to know, because the unknown can hurt

"The more voters know about high-speed rail, the more they are likely to vote to stop the project," concluded Probolsky Research of Newport Beach, California, upon the revelation to sticker-shocked voters that "the state's massive high-speed rail project had zoomed - faster than a speeding bullet train - to nearly $100 billion - triple the estimate given to voters and more than enough to run the entire state government for a year."  And that's before a single section of track has been laid.

"I don't think you could dream up a bigger boondoggle than this, even if you tried," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. of his state's so-called "high-speed train wreck."  Nunes even goes so far as to suggest corruption is afoot.

Lest we think 'corruption' too strong a word, trains - and their promoters - have had an attitude from Day 1 since leaving the station.  "Railroads were as mismanaged and corrupt as they were long," train historian Richard White proclaims in his newly released "Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America."  From the industry's formation, "in order to finance their risky endeavors, railroad owners routinely bribed politicians and borrowed money they could not pay back."

To read White's review of current goings-on in his home state of California, little has changed since "The Robber Barons Railroaded America" except maybe the speed at which trains travel and their even faster ability to drain money from local, state and national economies.  "God forbid we should learn from experience," White exclaims.

Ed Morrissey, from the show bearing his name, likewise is incredulous as to what possibly the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) could be thinking in submitting their most recent funding request to the state legislature: "What exactly did the CHSRA submit on Thursday . . . a letter to Santa Claus?  What are these variables that will add more than half as much cost as the project's original price tag?  Shag carpeting, spoilers on the caboose, quadraphonic stereo . . . what?"

If an attempt to grab the transportation market from other providers while tanking the economy in a need-not-substantiated gambit describes HSR's behind-the-trees-of-the-jungle motivation; and safety is the easily identified elephant in this game of "I Spy"; then what shall we call forging blindly ahead anyway into the forest while leaving our life-line behind?  That will be the subject of the third installment in this series.

Again, the days are numbered (December 11, 2011) to do that which only lies in our hands to accomplish  - gather 5,500 signatures of Lakewood voters to put this issue before the people.  Petitions, and instructions, are available here.