High Speed Rail

As the price tag for California's bullet train has soared to nearly $100 billion, a central argument for forging ahead with the controversial project is an even loftier figure: the $171 billion that promoters recently estimated will be needed for new roads and airports if no high-speed rail is built. Without a fast-rail network, they warn, the state would have to add 2,300 miles of highway and roughly the equivalent of another Los Angeles International Airport to handle a projected surge in future travel.

The Obama administration threatened California on Thursday with rescinding $3.3 billion in federal grants to start construction of a bullet train if the Legislature does not act by June to appropriate the state's share of funding. In a series of meetings with key lawmakers in Sacramento, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that the recent proposal by state Senate leaders to delay a $2.7-billion decision on the high-speed rail project until August is not acceptable. "We need the Legislature to make the strongest commitment possible," LaHood said in an interview.

A potential corridor for passenger trains between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area has become part of a federal initiative to modernize the nation's rail networks and develop high-speed service between cities. Thursday's announcement, however, might doom a 30-year-old proposal to build a high-tech magnetic levitation, or "maglev," train from Anaheim to Las Vegas if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gets his way.

Architects from some of the most prominent firms in the world -- including Renzo Piano and UN Studio's Ben Van Berkel -- joined a long list of well-known local designers Wednesday in presenting hugely ambitious if  largely fanciful plans for expanding Los Angeles' Union Station. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which now owns the station and a 40-acre parcel of land surrounding it, plans to choose a single team of designers as the master planner for the station site by late June.

SOMEWHERE NORTH OF TRENTON, N.J., AS THE TRACT housing, industrial parks and forested hillsides fly by at 125 miles an hour, the sensation begins to crystallize--a passenger railroad car has been transformed into a first-class airliner. This is no clunky diesel with its clickety-clackety roadbed noises, shuddering stops and starts, overbooked with passengers forced to sit in the aisles, heat that doesn't work, and a snack car that is always closed.

Architects from some of the most prominent firms in the world -- including Renzo Piano and UN Studio's Ben Van Berkel -- joined a long list of well-known local designers Wednesday in presenting hugely ambitious if  largely fanciful plans for expanding Los Angeles' Union Station. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which now owns the station and a 40-acre parcel of land surrounding it, plans to choose a single team of designers as the master planner for the station site by late June.

When it comes to California's plans for high-speed rail, scads of people have strong opinions. But that shouldn't be a surprise. As I noted in Wednesday's column, voters in 2008 approved a 520-mile train route that was supposed to cost $33 billion and be completed in 2020. Since then, not 10 feet of track have been laid, the estimated cost has tripled and the completion date is now 2033. And those are just guesstimates. Readers by the hundreds weighed in after that column.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Wednesday defended the Obama administration's plans for major investments in infrastructure before the Senate Budget Committee, saying the spending is justified because "America is one big pothole right now. " The administration's plan, announced in the president's budget Monday, calls for $476 billion in transportation spending over six years, partly paid for with money that was being spent on the war in...

Fresh questions about the ridership and revenue projections that underpin the state's $43-billion bullet train project have been raised in a new internal report by the agency charged with building the system. Among the key conclusions of a California High Speed Rail Authority panel of experts is that forecasts of up to 117 million annual riders by 2030 — which have helped support predictions that the system would generate billions in profits — need to be recalibrated to be more conservative and better reflect important factors that could affect ridership.

Los Angeles Times Community activists from Orange County sent complaints to the state attorney general this week, alleging that two prominent transportation leaders from Los Angeles and Anaheim have conflicts of interest because they sit on the board of the California high speed rail project while holding other public offices. Tony Bushala, a Fullerton businessman, and Denis Fitzgerald, a mayoral candidate in Anaheim, are seeking an investigation of Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle, the chairman of the California High Speed Rail Authority board, and Richard Katz, a Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member.

The state rail authority has grossly underestimated future operating costs of California's proposed bullet train, meaning taxpayers potentially will have to provide billions of dollars annually once the system is running, according to an analysis released Monday by a group of outside financial experts. The California High Speed Rail Authority's claim that its future system would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in surpluses is based on unrealistic assumptions about what it will cost to operate the network, according to the study group, which included former World Bank official William Grindley and Stanford University management professor Alain C. Enthoven.

SACRAMENTO - The car salesman offers you a sleek new luxury model for $33,000. Go for it, you think. Time for an upgrade. Sold. Oops, the sales guy says later. Those numbers won't pencil. We'll need $98,000. You're stunned and outraged. Tell you what, the dealer counters. We'll let ya have it for $68,000 and take off some options. Take the car and shove it, you tell him. Can't afford it. Don't need it. You're entitled to do that - back out of a car deal before taking delivery.

The plan to build a bullet train has so many funding uncertainties and so many other details that remain unclear that the state should delay any decision this year to commit billions of dollars to the project, the nonpartisan research branch of the Legislature recommended Tuesday. The tough advice came on the day before two key legislative committees are to examine the plan and an accompanying request by Gov. Jerry Brown for funding to start a $6-billion construction segment in the Central Valley.

The plan to build the California bullet train is almost certain to be approved Thursday by the state's high-speed rail authority at a board meeting in San Francisco, but the project is facing a less certain future in Sacramento. The rail authority has long insisted that it needs to move as quickly as possible, starting construction on an initial $6-billion segment of track through the Central Valley this year to meet the terms of a federal grant that covers more than half of the initial project.

A congressional committee has launched a wide-ranging examination of the California high-speed rail project, including possible conflicts of interest and how the agency overseeing it plans to spend billions of dollars in federal assistance. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), notified the California High-Speed Authority about the review Monday and ordered the agency to preserve its documents and records of past communications.

A transportation expert hired by California bullet train officials to ensure the accuracy of critical ridership forecasts worked for the company that prepared the estimates and maintains a close relationship with one of the firm's top executives. The consultant, Frank S. Koppelman, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at Northwestern University, has chaired the California High-Speed Rail Authority's ridership review panel since December 2010, assessing the projections of Cambridge Systematics Inc., a Massachusetts-based research company.

Who's in charge? Re "Obama enlists help in tax-cut battle," Dec. 11 Not too long ago, he was touted as an intellectual eminence, the measured, cosmopolitan orator, the man of audacity who would change the way business was done in Washington. Barack Obama was the messianic vanquisher of the Clinton machine. Now, President Obama has had to enlist Bill Clinton to stave off a massive revolt from the "backbenchers" in Congress. And Clinton obliged. He moved to the White House podium and held court there with the natural and commanding ease of a prince returning to his palace.

A congressional committee has launched a wide-ranging examination of the California high-speed rail project, including possible conflicts of interest and how the agency overseeing it plans to spend billions of dollars in federal assistance. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), notified the California High-Speed Authority about the review Monday and ordered the agency to preserve its documents and records of past communications.

SACRAMENTO - The bullet train boondoggle is looking more like a bullet bull's-eye. But one big question lingers: Where are the bucks? And even if the state can find the bucks, should it spend them on building a high-speed rail line, a cool choo-choo? Especially when higher education in California is such a train wreck? Education - kindergarten through college - should be our No. 1 priority, for both moral and economic reasons. Producing an educated, skilled workforce for the increasingly competitive global economy is even more important than creating temporary track-laying jobs.

Several Los Angeles leaders backed a revised business plan released Monday by the agency overseeing California's ambitious high-speed rail effort, saying it lowers costs and speeds construction while bringing jobs and world-class transit to the region. By embracing a "blended" approach, the plan shaves $30 billion off the cost by using some tracks that now carry regional passenger lines rather than building new ones exclusively for the bullet train. "High-speed rail is the natural extension of the transportation network we are building in Southern California," said L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.