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

[John Rizzo]

The governor just agreed to sign the changes to Prop 1, which is being
referred to as "Prop 1A." (I don't know if that's an official
designation or not.)

The state Sierra Club opposed the Pacheco Route because it was
spawl-inducing. I'm afraid I don't know what the changes are, but Sierra
Club California is supporting the new 1A version.

The analysis below compares this project to the Boston Big Dig. The
major difference is that the Big Dig was a highway and High Speed Rail
is public transit. 

Although this costs billions, taxpayers now pay bailout the airlines.
The airlines bailouts are less than the cost of high speed rail, but are
still billions of $. Airlines also emit high levels of greenhouse gases
per passenger. Every figure I've seen and emmissions per passenger shows
rail being much less than airlines, by a lot, and less than automobiles.

Finally, the statement about additional coal-fired plants is not
accurate. Last year, the state adopted new regulations that ban power
utilities (public and private) from investing in  coal-fired plants or
signing contracts for coal. There will be no increase in using coal.

You'll probably want to look at the new "1A" changes. 

John

>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.
>