[Sustain] (fwd) GP Alameda County endorses NO on Prop.1

[John-Marc Chandonia]

Here's Alameda's analysis of Prop 1 - any thoughts?

> We all believe in attractive alternatives to driving, especially sleek
> electric trains designed in Europe, but the promises in Proposition 1
> are too good to be true.
>
>
> The cogent reason for Greens to oppose the high-speed rail project is
> that it is a public works fraud scheme specifically designed to appeal
> to gullible environmentalists. If we vote for Proposition 1, as it is
> currently on the ballot, the only guarantee is that billions of
> dollars will be spent on engineering, land acquisition, demolition,
> and construction of part of a guideway.
>
>
> Out front, the promoters say this is a $45 billion system. The $9
> billion provided by the ballot measure for high-speed rail is only 1/5
> the project cost, and project proponents are likely to come back
> asking taxpayers for additional tens of billions from taxpayers. There
> is no guarantee that there ever will be a workable rail system, and
> under current law, no consequences for project managers if they waste
> every dime. The idea is apparently to start a very big hole in the
> ground, then come back and ask for more bucks. Federal funding is as
> imaginary as private investment, as Amtrak high speed rail funding
> belongs to the 20 senators in Northeastern states.
>
>
> The firm which has been prime contractor for all work authorized to
> date by the High Speed Rail Authority is Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB),
> notorious for unsigned engineering drawings on sections of the
> Wilshire Subway that caved in, and for choosing the wrong concrete
> epoxy for the tunnel in Boston?s out-of-control Big Dig. The cost of
> the Big Dig ballooned from $2 billion to $22 billion over the course
> of the project, and the tunnel still leaks seawater. PB and other
> firms were fined $450 million under their settlement with the
> Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but the rest of the money is gone, with
> not very many feet of highway to show for it.
>
>
> PB also was responsible for the multi-billions of cost overruns on the
> San Jose light rail line, the Wilshire Subway, and the BART-SFO line,
> and their overall business model doesn?t seem to have changed much
> since. For example, one of the most recent PB productions was a plan
> for a $1 billion Sacramento airport line.
>
>
> On the high-speed rail project, not only the cost figures are
> ballooned beyond belief. The Rail Authority predicts an annual
> ridership of 117 million passengers on the 24-station line. As a
> reality check, France?s most popular high-speed train, the TGV-
> Southeast carried 18 million passengers during its 10th year of
> operation. Eurostar, the London-Paris high-speed train you may have
> heard about, finally managed to carry more than 10 million passengers
> for the first time last year, a decade and a half after it started
> running. It is hard to believe that California trains will outperform
> European routes with more population.
>
>
> The Authority claims that the project will have no operating deficit,
> but the Legislative Analyst has produced an opinion in the ballot that
> the operating cost would be about $1 billion annually, and suggests
> that some proportion of this would have to be covered by state
> subsidies (likely in the hundreds of millions annually). This would
> directly harm all transit service statewide.
>
>
> The Rail Authority has been actively goosing the Merced County real
> estate market with statements about the "new California gold rush" and
> its selection of the Pacheco Route, a repeat of the UC Merced land
> scam with the same participants. Stations in Gilroy and Palmdale will
> be minutes from the Peninsula and Los Angeles, respectively, causing
> huge incentives for new exurban sprawl. The staff says they won't
> build a Los Banos station but Angelo Tsakopoulos and his investor
> corporations have purchased 3500 acres of land there within three
> miles of the proposed stop, so the station and sprawl are likely to
> happen if the route is built.
>
>
> Severe negative environmental impacts on the Pacific Flyway
> (disruption of nesting and avian mortality from striking 220 mph
> trains), and noise impacts on communities on the Peninsula, and in
> Santa Clara County, Los Angeles County, and Orange County are also a
> major concern.
>
>
> Promised environmental benefits are questionable. According to British
> studies, 220 mph trains do not produce greenhouse gas reductions or
> energy savings, because of the exponential increase in energy
> requirement of trains above about 120 mph. France has GHG reductions
> from HSR only because the trains are 100% nuclear powered. The
> proposal here will depend on additional coal-fired plants in the
> Southwest.

-- 
John-Marc Chandonia (jmc at sfgreens.org)
http://sfgreens.org/
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