Crossposted from the California High Speed Rail Blog

California newspapers, the LA Times excepted, have been using their editorial pages to try to convince Californians that somehow, an economic downturn caused by overdependence on oil should not be addressed by job-creating projects that would provide renewably powered transportation and enable economic growth over the long term. Most recently it’s the Redding Record-Searchlight making the argument that somehow Prop 1A would hurt California’s budget and economy, when in fact it is a necessary part of the solution.

This is Shasta Dam under construction in 1942:

It remains a key part not just of the state of California’s overall water storage and provision system, but was crucial to the Redding economy during the 1930s and in the years since.

It was also a Depression-era project. Built at a time when California barely had enough money to balance its own budget. In 1933 California passed a bond measure allowing money to be spent on the dam – $170 million, a significant sum in those days. By 1935 California had secured federal funds to help begin construction on the dam. The jobs created by the dam project and the long-term value of the Central Valley Project were considerable. Redding got badly needed jobs as well as flood control. California got jobs and a base for long-term agriculture, an industry that remains significant to this day in Redding.

Had California rejected the 1933 Shasta Dam bond, chances are the dam would not have been built for a decade or two. Redding would have lost out on those crucial jobs in the depths of the Depression and California agriculture might not have had the stable water source it needed to be productive for these last 70 years.

We can go on. The Golden Gate Bridge funding fell through after the 1929 stock market crash – so voters in the North Coast counties that comprise the Golden Gate Bridge District had to approve bonds, which they did in November 1930. Similar bonds had to be sold for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, also in the depths of the Depression. The two bridge projects not only provided jobs when they were desperately needed but enabled massive economic growth in the Bay Area after World War II.

The argument that we cannot build high speed rail because of the economic crisis or credit crunch simply doesn’t hold water. The economic downturn is an argument FOR high speed rail. Worse, the Redding Record-Searchlight’s reasons for not supporting Prop 1A make little sense:

An alluring investment in 21st-century transportation for a growing state? Yes. It’s also $10 billion that California doesn’t have.

Of course California doesn’t have $10 billion – which is why we’re going to borrow it. The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst has determined we actually can afford Prop 1A. Repayment lasts over a 40-year term. The jobs, tax revenue and economic activity created by high speed rail combined with the savings on oil consumption and carbon emissions are likely to outweigh the annual debt service cost.

If it were up to HSR deniers like the Redding Record-Searchlight we’d still be in the Depression. We wouldn’t have the dams and bridges that made our late 20th century prosperity possible. And if we follow their advice we will have a hard time getting out of whatever we’re going to call this economic crisis.

Welcome to a probably not-so-regular feature, offering the latest news on the ballot propositions.  The Calitics Editorial Board will be out with their endorsements on these initiatives sometime next week.

• Prop. 1A: A lot of good stuff on this race at Robert Cruickshank’s California High Speed Rail blog.  For instance, Arnold has come forward with his support:

There is far more economic opportunity in fighting global warming than economic risk….We shouldn’t let the budget crisis hold back good things for the future. 20 years from now you can’t look back and say “well they had a budget crisis so we didn’t do it.” Just because we had a problem with the budget does not mean that people should vote “no” on high speed rail. Our rail system in America is so old, we’re driving the same speed as 100 years ago, the same system as 100 years ago. We should modernize, we should do what other countries do…We should start in this state, we should show leadership.

Absolutely, especially when you consider that initiatives which reduce emissions routinely save money and improve quality of life.  A recent study showed that HSR would be a tremendous economic benefit to the Central Valley, with $3 billion in direct benefits and the creation of over 40,000 new construction jobs.  You can add that to the reduction of billions of pounds of CO2 annually, which would be significant in that region at a time where interest groups are successfully suing the city of Fresno for its failure to curb pollution and protect the environment.

In other news, The LA Times has come out in favor, and check out this neat little graphic anticipating the train route.

• Prop. 2: You can see it by clicking on the ad on the side, but, you know, Piggy Wonder deserves some main-page love.  Joe Trippi is apparently involved in the Prop. 2 campaign, which would help stop animal cruelty; I got an email from him promoting this video.

• Prop. 5: The LA Times has a series of profiles on all the propositions, and here’s their edition on Prop. 5, which would finally increase treatment for nonviolent offenders like drug users instead of warehousing them at our overstuffed prisons.  Opponents are smearing this by saying its true intent is to legalize drugs, but the failed Drug War is the great unmentionable sinkhole in state and national budgets, and a smart policy emphasizing rehabilitation is desperately needed, especially in California.  The No on 5 people must have better spinmeisters, however, as most of the newspapers in the state have come out against the measure.  Right, because the policymakers have done such a stellar job in sentencing law, we should just leave it to them.

• Prop. 8: An update on those million yard signs that were “in route” from China to the Yes on 8 campaign: they’re still not here.

It seems that the signs, some of them outsourced overseas, didn’t all arrive in time for the September event. And many still haven’t reached supporters of the measure that would amend the state Constitution to ban gay marriage.

“It takes longer to get a million than we thought,” said Sonja Eddings Brown, deputy communications director for the Protect Marriage coalition […]

Brown tried to spin the production glitch as a positive thing for the campaign — a sign, so to speak, of the overwhelming demand for lawn signs by voters who wanted to participate in “the most unprecedented and largest grass-roots effort ever attempted in California.”

Oh that’s just a FAIL.

Meanwhile, when the most reactionary editorial board in the state, the Orange County Register, comes out against your proposition, you know you’re having a tough time selling it.  As for the right-wing boycott of Google for opposing Prop. 8, the website orchestrating it advises its supporters to follow the fate of the proposition – on Google News.

I think I’m going to miss this initiative, it’s been hilarious so far.

Crossposted at the California High Speed Rail Blog

In a move they’ve been telegraphing for weeks, a group of wealthy NIMBYs have convinced the cities of Menlo Park and Atherton to join forces with the Planning and Conservation League, the California Rail Foundation (which has all of 3 members) and “lawsuit-happy activist” David Schonbrunn of TRANSDEF and sue to block high speed rail. Their claim is that the EIR/EIS that was adopted last month by the California High Speed Rail Authority violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) – but what is really going on is that a small coterie of long-time HSR deniers are greenwashing themselves and using the courts to stop one of the most important projects in state history.

Menlo Park and Atherton’s objections are perhaps the most absurd. Driven by a handful of wealthy landowners, including Morris Brown and Martin Engel, their argument is that HSR would harm the aesthetics of their wealthy enclave:

The proposed route of the project runs down the heart of Menlo Park and Atherton on a narrow corridor occupied by CalTrain. The necessity of 4 tracks, where there are currently only 2 as well as needing the high 15 foot berm for the rail bed to accommodate grade crossings is of concern to both communities. With a minimum of 100 feet of width needed , as well as overhead catenaries for the electrical power to power the train, the impact in both communities is severe.

This is a comical, classic NIMBY objection. They’re arguing that clean, sustainable mass transit, which California so desperately needs, should be stopped because it might not look pretty in two of the state’s wealthiest communities?! That they’re making an environmental argument is even more ridiculous. Currently Caltrain is powered by diesel trains and has a high rate of accidents caused by cars and people wandering onto the tracks. HSR would solve both problems by electrifying the tracks and physically separating them from the surrounding landscape, eliminating air pollution and making the entire corridor much safer.

Morris and Engel are inherently opposed to this project, and have spent months trying to dredge up any thin reed they can find to kill HSR. They never have proposed alternatives to how California can deal with the energy and climate crisis, and seem to prefer the failed status quo. And why not? They’ve got their land already, who cares about the masses?!

NIMBYism is one thing. The involvement of the PCL and TRANSDEF, two groups that have done good work in the past on containing sprawl, in this lawsuit is another. It’s a profound disappointment to see them engaged in an effort to kill the HSR project. Surely they realize that a lawsuit filed three months out from the election jeopardizes the passage of Proposition 1. They don’t have an alternative political strategy either on this, either for passing the HSR bonds or for dealing with our state’s transportation issues.

Their reason for suing involves the choice of Pacheco Pass to connect the Bay Area to the Central Valley instead of the Altamont Pass. As this blog has repeatedly argued, both alignments had their good points and their bad points – but neither was clearly superior to the other. The most important thing for those who truly want to see HSR built in California is that we make a choice and stick with it. The California High Speed Rail Authority chose Pacheco, and so these Altamont supporters are choosing to sue.

The arguments against Pacheco are weak and by no means enough to suggest HSR should not be built. We dealt with the sprawl issue on Sunday but more detail is warranted. Much of the Pacheco Pass region cannot be built upon for topographical or legal reasons. A station at Los Banos has been permanently canceled. Gilroy has an urban growth boundary that could be stronger, but it exists. Moreover, HSR as a station-oriented system would primarily encourage growth near the station itself, not in far-flung exurban areas. Finally, these critics have consistently ignored or dismissed the reasons why sprawl is in mortal danger – without cheap oil and cheap credit, sprawl is simply not possible.

More to the point, sprawl is a problem whether we build HSR or not. So why hold HSR hostage to an issue that we have to solve no matter what? This really is a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. HSR would mitigate against sprawl, would reduce carbon emissions, save on oil consumption, and promote mass transit riding habits. Why on earth would two organizations who are usually supportive of mass transit try to kill HSR?

The Altamont option isn’t perfect either. It would require a new rail bridge across the bay, which would bring environmental problems of its own. The cities of Fremont and Pleasanton promised to sue if it were built, while the cities along the Pacheco route are supportive. On the whole there is no clear and compelling case to choose Altamont over Pacheco – and besides, if we really want HSR to be built, we need to rally around the project and ensure it passes, not drag this out forever. It’s like Hillary vs. Obama all over again.

The deeper problem is that these groups have no sense of urgency. Al Gore and Van Jones have both explained the need for environmentalists and conservationists to come up with solutions NOW if we are to blunt the momentum of the “drill now, drill everywhere” crowd. We cannot build the public momentum for mass transit solutions if environmental groups spend their time in opposition, It is time to start showing Californians that high speed rail is a better deal for them than relying on wallet-busting oil prices, a failing airline industry, or carbon-spewing methods of travel.

The last group involved in the suit is the California Rail Foundation, headed by Richard Tolmach. Their opposition sounds dire, but the CRF has all of three members. The much larger – and therefore more representative – California rail organizations have chosen not to join the suit, such as TRAC, or openly support high speed rail and Prop 1, such as RailPAC and the National Association of Railroad Passengers (TRAC’s decision on whether to endorse will be made later this month). Several chapters of the Sierra Club, including many in Southern California, are also supportive of high speed rail, suggesting something of the broad support HSR has around the environmental community.

So it’s deeply unfortunate that a small group of people upset that their favored route wasn’t picked, or upset that their wealthy communities will have safer and cleaner trains, are choosing to sue. They don’t represent the California environmental movement, they don’t represent the California transit movement, and as the election results in November will surely demonstrate, they don’t represent Californians period. Their frivolous lawsuit is a nuisance, but it won’t stop us from making the case to Californians that high speed rail is a good and necessary project.

Crossposted from the California High Speed Rail Blog

It wasn’t the article I was hoping to read upon my return from my honeymoon, but it’s not that surprising to read in the Fresno Bee that the Sierra Club and the Planning and Conservation League are hesitating on backing Prop 1 and even considering a lawsuit – and for the nonsensical reason that the choice of the Pacheco route might “induce sprawl.” That objection is bad enough, for reasons I’ll discuss in a moment.

But what’s really disturbing about this move is that it suggests the Sierra Club and the PCL have lost their focus – instead of looking at the big picture of high speed rail and emphasizing the game-changing environmental benefits it brings, they’re focusing on a small non-issue instead. They’ve lost sight of the forest for the trees and instead of providing leadership on this issue they may instead cast their lot with the far right and leave Californians with no viable alternative to soaring fuel prices and a transportation system that is making our environmental problems far worse.

First, their criticisms as reported by E.J. Schulz:

But the environmentalists are still seething over the selection of relatively undeveloped Pacheco Pass as the route to connect the Central Valley to the Bay Area. They favor the more urban Altamont Pass to the north because they say it would induce less sprawl….

Environmentalists would rather see trains run farther north in the Valley before heading west so that more populated cities are served. They like the Altamont route because it would bring trains closer to Modesto, Dublin, Pleasanton and Livermore in the first phase.

By contrast, the Pacheco route — roughly following Highway 152 — is in a less populated area. Environmentalists worry that a planned station in Gilroy would induce sprawl in surrounding rural areas.

These worries are baseless. Gilroy and much of southern Santa Clara County have strict urban growth boundaries. If those places were going to sprawl they would have already done so given their proximity to the job center and hot housing market of Silicon Valley. HSR doesn’t change that dynamic.

More below…

Nor does it change the fact that sprawl is facing hard times. Sprawl is bad, but it isn’t a force of nature. It is instead a product of three major factors: cheap oil, cheap credit, and favorable land use laws. The first is disappearing for good, thanks to peak oil. The second doesn’t exist now, and may never return. Certainly land use policies need to change to limit sprawl, but those changes have long ago been made in southern Santa Clara County. Why should HSR alone carry that burden? AB 32 carbon reduction goals should be applied to new housing developments, and ultimately, localities will have to change their ways.

The loss of cheap oil and the shortage of cheap credit together will lessen sprawl dramatically in the coming decades. I fully support land use changes to further kill off sprawl, but it’s not worth holding HSR hostage to produce the changes that need to happen anyway at the state and local level.

The death of sprawl has already made itself manifest in Gilroy. The Westfield shopping center developers had a plan to convert a significant amount of farmland acreage east of Gilroy along Highway 152 into a huge mall. The plan aroused the opposition of the community and it was dropped earlier this year. High fuel prices, the credit crunch, and public defense of urban growth boundaries all combined to kill that sprawl project. Those factors will do so again.

A Gilroy HSR station would produce strong incentives for transit-oriented dense development in Gilroy, the kind of development that California cities need to focus on instead of sprawl. Gilroy is already partway there, and an HSR station where the current Caltrain station is located at 8th and Monterey would actually discourage sprawl because there would be viable alternatives to building on new farmland. The combination of infill development and strict urban growth rules are what have made Portland’s anti-sprawl plans a success – you need both for the anti-sprawl measures to work. And high capacity mass transit is a necessary component.

Further, since the Authority has rejected plans for a Los Banos stop, and since as Mehdi Morshed explained in the Fresno Bee article that the communities along the Altamont route were not supportive of HSR, what on earth explains the ongoing refusal of the Sierra Club and the PCL to throw their support to Prop 1?

The only answer is a very depressing one, but an answer that is becoming more widely accepted among many environmental activists, sustainability activists, transportation activists, and folks on the left more broadly: the Sierra Club and the PCL have lost their way, and have lost sight of the big picture. In case folks haven’t been paying attention, this country faces a climate crisis and an energy crisis. It’s not like we have a whole lot of time to be fighting over objections that are not grounded in fact. At Netroots Nation two weekends ago Al Gore explained that we need to stop burning carbon and make a bold move to power our society with renewable energy. An electrically-powered high speed train system won’t achieve that 100% renewables goal itself, but it would provide significant environmental benefits:

-Reduce carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to removing 1.4 million cars from the road, and take the place of nearly 42 million annual city to city car trips

-Reduce CO2 emissions by up to 17.6 billion pounds/year

-Reduce California’s oil consumption by up to 22 million barrels/year (same as above)

According to the Final EIR 63% of intercity trips over 150 miles in California are taken by car (scroll to page 12). HSR would provide a huge dent in that figure.

High speed rail is one of those game changing proposals. How can the Sierra Club and the PCL overlook the cars taken off the road? How can they overlook the CO2 reductions? How can they overlook the reduction in pollution, especially in the Central Valley?

Four years ago Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus criticized the Sierra Club directly in their seminal essay The Death of Environmentalism. In their view the environmental movement, by focusing on small battles, has totally failed to address global warming, and that organizations like the Sierra Club “have little to show” for nearly 30 years of environmental activism after the big victories of the late ’60s and early ’70s. One of their specific criticisms is that the Sierra Club, for example, often eschews big policy changes for a niggling incrementalism that has done nothing to arrest the rate of warming. This has led them to refuse to articulate a bold vision for addressing the global warming crisis that of course hurts the natural environment, and it has led them to ignore the politics of producing change.

The Sierra Club’s failure on high speed rail proves each of Schellenberger and Nordhaus’ controversial charges. Instead of helping change the way Californians get around their state, shifting them away from oil-burning methods of travel to clean methods of travel that limit sprawl and generate urban densities, they are focusing on a small objection that doesn’t even hold up on close examination. They have endorsed the concept of high speed rail in the past but if they don’t endorse Prop 1, what other opportunity will they have to get it passed? If the HSR bonds don’t pass this year, they aren’t coming back anytime soon. It might take 10 years to revive the project – it’s taken 15 in Texas – and that means completion of the line wouldn’t happen until close to 2030.

By then it may be too late. Instead of refusing to support Prop 1 out of pique that they lost the Altamont vs. Pacheco argument, the Sierra Club and the PCL should follow Van Jones’ advice and move from opposition to proposition. We have a proposition – literally – before us. Instead of being on the constant defensive the Sierra Club and the PCL can help California take a bold step in the right direction with Proposition 1. If we pass these bonds in November it will then be a signal to other states and to Congress that HSR is a politically popular project and it will spur similar projects around the country – projects that we desperately need.

Why would the Sierra Club and the PCL oppose these things? They have let their opposition to the Pacheco alignment blind them to the bigger picture. That decision has been made and even though the Sierra Club and the PCL lost, they can still be big winners. Let’s hope they recognize the pressing environmental need for high speed rail before it’s too late.

Field Poll today on 5 of our hottest propositions for November (pdf). Results below, h/t to Cap Alert which also has the crosstabs.

Proposition 1 (High speed rail)

Yes: 56 percent

No: 30

Undecided: 14

Proposition 2 (Treatment of farm animals)

Yes: 63 percent

No: 24

Undecided: 13

Proposition 4 (Abortion notification for minors)

Yes: 48 percent

No: 39

Undecided: 13

Proposition 7 (Renewable energy)

Yes: 63 percent

No: 24

Undecided: 13

Proposition 11 (Redistricting)

Yes: 42 percent

No: 30

Undecided: 28

A few of these are looking very good, parental notification is looking a bit iffy, and redistricting is…well…have fun with that one.

Our governor was on This Week this morning and as Arnold has a largely undeserved reputation for being an environmentalist George Stephanopoulos decided to ask him some questions on that topic. The answers were quite revealing, and should give Obama a major opening to attack McCain should he be interested in doing so.

ABC doesn’t yet have a transcript up, so I’m borrowing from John Campanelli’s transcription. First up, he destroys McCain on oil drilling:

Arnold: I have no interest in off-shore drilling off California. People can do it wherever they want…[McCain] can give us the rights to drill offshore but we will say “No thanks, we will not drill because we want to protect our coasts.

Stephanopoulos: That’s more important than bringing down the price of gas, bringing down the price of oil?

Arnold: First of all, let me tell you, anyone who tells you drilling, nuclear power, alternative fuel, fuel cells will bring down the price right now is pulling wool over your eyes because we know that will all take at least 10 years.

Which is of course the point I made when this drilling nonsense first emerged. Offshore drilling will line oil company pockets and contribute absolutely nothing to the easing of gas prices. The “wool over your eyes” comment is priceless – let’s hope the Obama campaign replays that quote often in the days and weeks to come.

Arnold took the opportunity to go further in explaining the need for a sustainable energy policy, praising Jimmy Carter’s approach:

Arnold: But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do those things. The problem in America is not that we don’t have ideas. It’s that we aren’t consistent. Jimmy Carter in the late ’70s came in with a great energy policy. He talked about (couldn’t make this out), tax credits for people investing in windmills, and all those things. And then President Reagan came in and scrapped the whole thing because oil prices came down and said it didn’t make sense financially. Well, many countries all over the world  stayed with the program even though oil prices came down. In Germany, with solar, they’ve been working on it for 30 years and they are number one in solar. I think that is what we need to do. We need to stay the course. We got to go and stay, “Here’s the plan: here’s how we get energy independent. We need renewables, we need nuclear power, we need alternative fuels. All of those kind of things. Let’s do research. Let’s never go off course, no matter who the administration is or no matter what the oil prices. Let’s stay on course. That’s the big problem in America.

It’s a great set of points he makes – Carter’s energy policy was smart, but Reagan came to power and promised America a painless return to the cheap oil days of the 1950s and led a conservative attack on sustainable energy and transportation alternatives. America certainly would have been better off had we continued with the late 1970s energy policy instead of abandoning it for cheap political gain.

Stephanopoulos went on to ask Arnold if he’d serve in an Obama cabinet, Arnold said he won’t rule it out. That may be the main media takeaway from the interview, but the more important statements were those quoted above. Arnold does recognize the need for a more sensible energy policy and also admits that McCain isn’t on board with it – instead McCain prefers to continue the failed policies of Reagan and Bush, policies that have caused gas prices to soar and thrown our economy into recession.

Of course we need to not go too far here. Arnold’s own record on energy and the environment is not good. His water bond proposal would ruin the Delta and spend $9 billion on wasteful and damaging dams. He greenwashed himself with AB 32, but continues to target public transportation for crippling cuts. He has endorsed Proposition 1 on high speed rail but hasn’t taken a leading role in campaigning for it. He could help implement a wind and solar strategy in California, along the lines of what Proposition 7 proposes, but prefers to remain silent on the matter.

So ultimately his appearance on This Week is more of the usual environmental grandstanding we’ve come to know and love from our governor. But this time it has political value for Democrats and Obama in particular, who would be smart to exploit these comments for all they’re worth. It would be a good way for Obama in particular to start flipping the script and generating his own news for a change.