You might be forgiven for thinking that, between the passage of Proposition 1A last November (the good Prop 1A, authorizing $10 billion in bonds to build high speed rail from SF to LA) and President Barack Obama’s strong leadership for HSR, including securing billions to start funding projects, that all is well with California’s high speed rail project.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. A group of well-organized and wealthy people along the Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose have been increasingly successful in throwing up major roadblocks to the system’s planning process. What began as a classic “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) opposition to the high speed trains has now grown with the city of Palo Alto reversing its previous position of support for the project. As we’ve explained at the California High Speed Rail Blog the Palo Alto City Council is making dishonest and inappropriate claims about the HSR project in an effort to undermine and compromise its effectiveness.

The issue involves how the existing Caltrain corridor will be upgraded to handle high speed trains. Currently trains cross streets “at-grade” – a very dangerous situation that leads to frequent and often deadly accidents. High speed trains cannot use at-grade crossings – the trains have to go over or under the cross streets. The California High Speed Rail Authority proposed the most affordable and effective solution – “above-grade”, i.e. an overpass.

This led to breathless and frankly ridiculous whining from some Peninsula residents who lived near the rail corridor. Despite an above-grade solution being safer than the existing rail solution, some claimed that it would make their communities “ugly” – a few even took to labeling it a “Berlin Wall” (which is odd because the CHSRA wasn’t planning to include barbed wire or gun towers). There’s already enough right-of-way along most of the corridor and very few houses would have to be taken to build this.

As yesterday’s SF Chronicle explained, several Peninsula cities are now demanding a tunnel be built instead of an above-grade solution. The problem is that a tunnel could cost around $5 billion, money that the state and federal governments don’t have.

Even though above-grade HSR can be implemented effectively, the absurd demand for a tunnel has merely grown, and many now advocate a “tunnel or nothing” approach.  They convinced the city of Palo Alto to demand that the CHSRA study cutting the HSR trains off at San Jose and forcing passengers to transfer to Caltrain to finish the trip to SF (which is unworkable and will destroy ridership) or move the trains to the median of Highway 101 (which is poor urban planning and would do nothing to help improve Caltrain).

Peninsula NIMBYs realize that few Californians are going to take them seriously. After all, why should we let a key piece of 21st century infrastructure be held hostage to a handful of wealthy homeowners who refuse to admit that the 20th century is over? So instead of attacking the project, they are trying to attack the people who are building it. Their hope is that if people will question the credibility of the CHSRA, then they will either question the credibility of the HSR project itself and/or support state legislative “solutions” that will undermine or destroy the project.

Unfortunately it seems they may have been able to dupe Senator Joe Simitian into helping them accomplish their anti-HSR goals:

Simitian said the community’s message was “loud and clear.” The subcommittee agreed to hold off on authorizing the funds and urged rail-authority officials to expand their outreach efforts.

The senators heard from about 30 concerned Peninsula residents who made a morning trek to Sacramento to lobby for more oversight and transparency.

“What we really asked for is for them to change the structure of who is running this,” Palo Alto Vice Mayor Jack Morton, one of the speakers, said.

“It’s quite clear that the high-speed rail staff is insensitive to the community and has no ability to be responsible for the funds,” he said.

Simitian said the nature of the rail authority has changed over the past few months from a small study group advocating a high-speed rail line to an organization actually building the line. Now is the time to consider changes that would bring more oversight and more community outreach to the process, he said.

As far as I can tell, Palo Alto vice mayor Jack Morton misled, and may have openly lied to, the Senate subcommittee here. There’s more at the HSR blog on this, but the short answer is that the CHSRA has been holding a series of public meetings over the last few years. Palo Alto residents have been claiming that the routing of HSR trains along the Caltrain line was a “surprise” – which is not a credible argument since that routing was in the Prop 1A wording and was prominently reported on by local media. Peninsula NIMBYs are also trying to claim that CHSRA officials have made contradictory statements, but as far as I can tell, they’re just upset that the CHSRA will not guarantee them a tunnel.

Considering that the CHSRA has never had stable funding, and even now cannot access the $10 billion Prop 1A bonds owing to the state’s financial crisis, demanding the agency reform before backing further HSR planning is putting the cart before the horse no matter the context. But it’s even worse that Sen. Simitian is apparently letting a small group of vocal HSR opponents drive the process. He needs to stand up to them, and stand up for high speed rail, and insist that the project be built properly yet affordably – and that Palo Alto along with the rest of the Peninsula understand that the 20th century is over, our dependence on cars is over, and high speed rail WILL be built along the Caltrain corridor.