The students from yesterday's CALPIRG event also love a fast train. Photo: Anne Ohliger/CALPIRG

Back then, most people thought of California High Speed Rail as the future of transportation for the state.  High Speed rail was imagined as fast quiet trains zooming through the country-side connecting the major cities and other attractions.  Over the last three years, High Speed Rail has taken a beating in the public, with accusations of incompetence and corruption hurled at the project’s Board of Directors.  Nationally, the idea of fast moving trains has become a political hot potatoe because President Obama likes the idea which means that Republicans have to hate it.

For example, these are two headlines that didn’t make the morning headlines roundup: With Little Hope for Near-Term Federal Support, California High Speed Rail Struggles, and Congress Is Broken and CHSR Pays the Price.

But yesterday at Union Station, on the same day that U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer announced a “mark-up” of legislation to renew the federal transportation funding package, a group of CALPIRG’s students rallied to remind voters, and the Senator, that High Speed Rail is a winning proposition for California regardless of what’s going on with the politicians and appointed members of the state CAHSR Board.

“As students, we know that our broken, outdated, and oil dependent transportation system needs to change,” said Josh Joiner, CALPIRG Students Campaign Leader.  ”With California’s population expected to hit 50 million by 2035, we can’t afford to just keep building more congested highways and airport runways that will cost us more money and keep us stuck in traffic, stuck on security lines at the airport, and ever more dependent on oil. Our transportation system alone consumes more oil than any country in the world besides China.”

Last week, the Senate voted against President Obama’s Jobs Bill, which contained $4 billion in funding for increased U.S. high speed rail capacity.  Part of today’s rally was to push for his provision’s inclusion  in follow up legislation to be considered by Congress in the coming weeks.

Students members of CALPIRG also asked passerbyers to snap a picture of themself holding an “I love trains” sign to Senators Boxer and Feinstein to show their support for High Speed Rail.  The good news is that both Senators have expressed support for High Speed Rail, and other forms of rail travel, in the past with Boxer releasing a press release every time USDOT gives more funds to the California project.

Flanked by City Council Members from Santa Monica and Los Angeles, as well as dozens of people waving signs proclaiming "fast trains are cool," CalPirg Transportation Advocate Erin Steva rallied supporters in front of Union Station for increased funding of the state's planned High Speed Rail Network.  While some "fast train" advocates were questioning the federal commitment to investing in this infrastructure, the federal government is only spending $2.3 billion on High Speed Rail in the next year instead of $4 billion that it promised, yesterday's rally was upbeat. 

After all, when you combine that $2.3 billion with $8 billion in Stimulus funds already allocated, those numbers start to add up.

However, federal funding pales in comparison to how far behind America is to the rest of the modern world when it comes to spending money on High Speed Rail.  China is expected to spend over $100 billion in the next year and Europe already has a rail network which is more efficient and popular than the airplane system in parts of the continent.  While it's never good to be behind when it comes to building infrastructure, it does create one advantage.  America is positioned to learn from the successes and failures of High Speed Rail in other countries so that it can avoid the mistakes of the past.  In their report Next Stop: California, CalPirg outlines what some of these lessons are, including:

1. Build it:

2. Focus development in city centers:

3. Make stations accessible:

4. Integrate high-speed rail with improvements to commuter and freight rail:

5. Keep clear lines of accountability:

6. Use private participation responsibly:

7. Improve lines of communication:

8. Maintain budget discipline and spending transparency.

9. Make it green:

For more on Next Stop: California, visit CalPirg's website.

Meanwhile, an unlikely argument from an unlikely source was made in favor of High Speed Rail in Washington, D.C.  Representative Don Young (R-AK), former Chair of the House's Infrastructure and Transportation Committee and the Congressman who named our national transportation funding legislation after his wife, penned an op-ed for Politico that basically called out the Obama administration for wasting money on "big government spending." Instead wasting money on something silly such as running Amtrak, Congress and the President should invest in something useful, such as High Speed Rail.  Young writes:

As a country that is currently beholden to foreign countries for its oil supply, this should serve as an incentive. Additionally, though some may worry about the high costs of implementing such a system, high-speed rail represents the kind of long-term infrastructure investment that pays dividends for decades.

Our current infrastructure system has paid for itself many times over, and a high-speed-rail system would do the same.

While President Barack Obama is pushing billions of dollars in stimulus bills that fund Big Government, he is missing a golden opportunity to stimulate the economy. Investments in infrastructure create jobs, plain and simple.

While some of those arguments are going to rankle rail advocates, if his battle-cry gets picked up on by Republicans who have tarred High Speed Rail spending as wasteful in the past, it could open the coffers to more investment in the near future.

One couldn't ask for better weather for a holiday, so allow me a moment to wish all Angelenos reading this a Happy Transportation Freedom Day. This lovely day marks the point in the year where your average Los Angeles family has earned enough money to cover their transportation costs for the entire year. Remember what you were doing on New Year's Eve? That seems like a long time ago, doesn't it.

Of course, this is for the average L.A. family. Depending on your community, Transportation Freedom Day may have come early. The Koreatown community surrounding the Wilshire/Western transit hub celebrated their holiday on February 22. Santa Monica and Pasadena celebrated their's last week. By contrast, some of the parts of the Southland that are farther flung such as Santa Clarita or Hacienda Heights won't celebrate until sometime in April.

"Transportation Freedom Day is an eye opener," Erin Steva, Transportation Advocate for the California Public Interest Research Group. "It shows the need for greater investments in more efficient ways to get around, such as public transit. When government makes the right kind of transportation investments, citizens save a lot of money."

"People may not recognize how much they pay for transportation. Our research and these numbers show that we need long-term solutions that make it easier for Californians to drive less and to get around more efficiently," said Steva.

Nationwide, the average family spends seventeen percent of their budget on transportation.  For Angelenos that number is a somewhat higher twenty percent.  This suggests that greater investment is needed in "people powered" transportation and transit.  We all know that the Mayor has seized the banner for transit expansion by championing both Measure R and now "30 in 10."  Perhaps it's also time to push the banner for safe walking and biking?

CALPIRG computes when Transportation Freedom Day is for various cities and smaller communities within these cities by taking the average income for the area and average transportation costs based on census data.  CALPIRG's release can be found after the jump.

The news isn't good.  Despite pretty rhetoric about trying to ween the state off its car-dependency, California is actually spending more of its stimulus funds on highway projects, and highway widenings, than the national average.

Chart: California Public Interest Research Group

That California's roads aren't in great shape isn't news to anyone that lives here, yet the Golden State is spending more money on adding more highway capacity than 41 other states. Eleven other states, including the progressive transportation hotbeds of South Dakota and Alaska, didn't spend a dime on highway expansion.  Meanwhile, California is home to the highway widening that is sucking up more stimulus dollars than any other highway project in the country right here in Southern California.

Of course, using stimulus funds to further the destructive cycle of highway widening isn't just bad transportation policy; it's also bad use of stimulus funds.  Highway widenings are one of the least effective transportation projects when it comes to injecting money into local economies.  A greater percentage of the funds will be used for asphalt and equipment than funding local workers than "fix-it" or other projects.

California didn't just fail to lead the way on curtailing highway expansion, it also failed to take the lead on transit growth as well. That a state government led by a Governor who jet-commutes to work while robbing taxes dedicated to transit to balance the state budget shouldn't be a surprise, but in its press release, CALPIRG notes that there is plenty of support from the Californians that don't own private jets.

When asked in a poll by the National Association of Realtors how they would spend the recovery money, a very strong majority of Americans (80%) said they prefer that stimulus transportation funding be used for repairing roadways and bridges and for public transportation. The public wants a balanced transportation system, as evidenced by local ballot measures like Measure R in Los Angeles to build more public transportation, and the statewide high-speed rail ballot measure passed last fall.

The stimulus provided a chance for states and transportation agencies to begin to make the kind of changes that people are crying out for when it comes to transportation planning.  Few states seem to have made that commitment, and sadly California isn't one of them.

Caltrain parked in SF. Photo: smif/flickr

Last month, Streetsblog we saw that thanks to some creative accounting, Governor Schwarzenegger had found a new and creative way to rob transit even after he effectively eliminated the transit subsidy that exists in the state budget.  Because the gas tax is producing more funds than expected, hundreds of millions of dollars in transit funds appeared in state coffers.  However, as quickly as it appeared, the Governor proposed spending it on the giant gaping hole that in the state budget.

News comes from CALPIRG, that last week a joint budget committee met to decide what to do with the Governor’s proposal.  Via an email to their members, CALPIRG reports that there was signifigant opposition to the Governor’s proposal from the Democratic Caucus:

On Thursday the Legislature’s Budget Conference
Committee took up the Governor’s
proposal to shift another $336 million in “spillover” funds away
from transit to the General Fund. Senators Ducheny and Leno, and
Assembly Members
Evans (Chair) and Blumenfield all made substantial comments reflecting
their distaste
for the proposal, their acknowledgment that the February budget and
the last
several budgets have decimated transit funding, and their desire to
find a
solution to fund transit operations. 

But the battle is far from over.  After the jump you can find the entire text of CALPIRG’s appeal to members to help fight further rollbacks in the legislature.

As most of you know, the legislature has raided
transit operations funding for other general fund needs. As a result
transit services have been significantly reduced, and fares risen, in
cities throughout the state. As the price of gasoline goes back up, so
has the portion of the sales tax on gasoline legally dedicated to
transit operations, but the legislature could raid 100% of those new
funds unless they hear from supporters.

Please
contact your legislators and urge them to SUPPORT the Conference
Committee’s
direction to find a way to restore SOME 2009-10 transit funding.

Here is a link to detailed information about
transit fare hikes and service cuts throughout the state, job losses,
and transit capital projects that have been delayed: http://www.caltransit.org/files/resources/07%20STA%20member%20survey.doc

Here are more details from last Thursday’s
hearing, from Josh Shaw at the California Transit Association:

On Thursday the Legislature’s Budget Conference
Committee took up the Governor’s
proposal to shift another $336 million in “spillover” funds away
from transit to the General Fund. Senators Ducheny and Leno, and
Assembly Members
Evans (Chair) and Blumenfield all made substantial comments reflecting
their distaste
for the proposal, their acknowledgment that the February budget and
the last
several budgets have decimated transit funding, and their desire to
find a
solution to fund transit operations. (Senator Lowenthal was absent for
the
moment, but Senator Ducheny said that her remarks especially reflected
what she
knew to be his concerns.) No Republican members made comments.

Senator Ducheny
specifically asked for the item to be kept
open, and that the Committee and staff look for a way to save $100
million for
transit, through savings elsewhere or some other development or
breakthrough. Chair
Evans said they all knew they would need to eventually take “most if
not this
entire source,” but she finally agreed to keep it open in deference to
her colleagues’ remarks. Budget staff was asked to consider ways to
provide some amount of funding for transit, and some justification for
the amount
and to possibly include this discussion in the open local government
discussion.

Please specifically ask
your legislators to talk to the
Conference Committee members personally – and to each caucus’
leadership – to carry the message that they, too, support the effort to
find SOME funding for transit. Make that your message and we will work
with legislative
and budget staff to define appropriate amounts and mechanisms to
achieve that restoration.

Yesterday, the California Pubic Interest Research Group, aka CALPIRG, released Spending the Stimulus, How California Can Put Thousands Back to Work & Jumpstart a 21st Century Transportation System, a report urging Caltrans and Governor Schwarzenegger not to waste the $2.5 billion in stimulus funds on projects that would have the least amount of economic benefit to California residents and would expand the state's car dependency. CALPIRG uses economics, transportation planning and public opinion to argue that highway expansion is the wrong way for California to spend it's stimulus funds.

From the economic standpoint, the report urges investment in transit, bicycle, pedestrian, and Fix-It-First projects as the ones that will put the most money into the pockets of California residents.  Because so much money is spent on property acquisition and supplies, highway expansion projects are the one that will stimulate the local economy the least.  It also points out that while many people refer to federal dollars as "highway" dollars there is no limit to the types of transportation projects that can be funded by stimulus dollars.

CALPIRG also points to the savings that transit users and non-motorized commuters see versus those that use transit.  Commuters can save near $10,000 dollars a year by abandoning their cars along with the maintenance, insurance, gasoline and purchase costs of an automobile.

Lastly, Calpirg notes that the public overwhelmingly supports expanding transit.  A poll released in January by the National Association of Realtors, showed that 80 percent of Americans support expanding transit over expanding highways when it comes to spending federal dollars.

If we leave projects such as the 405 HOV Lanes project, there are still plenty of ready-to-go projects that would meet Calpirg's project criteria such as the Wilshire Bus Only Lanes project, adding 3o miles to the Los Angeles River Bicycle Path and backfilling the state's backlog of highway and bridge "Fix-It-First" project.