The Big Bang and Incremental Improvement (Source:California High Speed Rail Blog)

California High Speed Rail Blog » The Big Bang and Incremental Improvement

The Big Bang and Incremental Improvement

Apr 20th, 2010 | Posted by Robert Cruickshank

Last Saturday RailPAC held what was a fantastic event at MTA headquarters in Los Angeles, bringing together rail advocates from across the state and even the nation to speak about the future of passenger rail in California, with an emphasis on high speed rail.

I was only able to attend the morning session, but found it to be extremely valuable, both for the presentations as well as the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones. The discussion was wide-ranging and while there may not have been agreement on everything, there was clearly a shared desire to seize the opportunities voters gave us in 2008 to make a dramatic change in passenger rail in California.

I’ll make some brief comments on different items discussed at the meeting, but I wanted to open with a framework offered by Amtrak VP of Policy and Development Stephen Gardner in his presentation – that there are different approaches to HSR in the US, one he termed “the big bang” (European/Asian style 150mph or higher trains) and “incremental improvements” (small scale improvements that can add up over time).

Gardner argues that the US needs both, and I fully agree. However, I also strongly believe California HSR must embrace “the big bang” – and in fact that Californians have already done so by their votes for Prop 1A, Measure R (LA County), Measure B (Santa Clara County) and elsewhere in 2008.

For the last 30 years, passenger rail advocates have become expert at doing a lot with very little. Funding has been hard to come by, and advocates learned that in the absence of massive amounts of money (which instead was going to freeways and airports), passenger rail had to be efficient, smart, but also accept certain limitations in order to survive. This approach has had quite a lot of success, especially on the Capitol Corridor but also on the other two Amtrak California routes, where big ridership gains were wrung out of a relatively small amount of money and an unfavorable trackage situation. I don’t mean to disparage the incrementalist approach, because without it we’d have been screwed in the era of Reagan, Gingrich, and Dubya.

That being said, even California’s incremental success has relied on its own Big Bang, which came in 1990. The passage of Propositions 111 and 116 at the June 1990 election provided the funding for Amtrak California services to buy an entirely new fleet of cars that enabled the incremental improvements. This is obviously not the same kind of “Big Bang” that Gardner was talking about – he was referring specifically to high speed rail – but it does indicate that incrementalism is not possible without strong advocacy for big infusions of cash, and that when such infusions become possible, they must be pursued with full force.

Comparing 1990 to 2008 is like comparing a high tide to a tsunami. By 2008, it had become absolutely clear to two key groups of people – the California electorate and the Barack Obama campaign – that what was needed was something more than the relatively slow and sometimes unreliable service burdened by sharing tracks with freight. Big bangs capture the public’s imagination, show that better passenger rail service is both possible and desirable, and can consolidate public and political support for ongoing investments in passenger rail.

The California public in 2008 did not vote for incremental improvements. They voted to transform intercity rail service. Of course, how we get there is an open question.

As the Tea Party movement has arisen and Democrats have grown a bit more hesitant to spend lots of government money, many rail advocates are witnessing the return of the conditions they knew so well over the last 30 years. Growing doubtful about the prospects for more federal money, some advocates are concluding that we may need to scale back our ambitions and use the existing HSR funds for incremental improvements.

Others, like Darrell Clarke, argue for a “mid-course correction” in the HSR planning process, where the CHSRA seeks more accommodation with the existing ROW and more integration with existing service. This appears to be able to meet both the goals of the Big Bang – true HSR service from SF to Anaheim – while also satisfying the incremental approach that may be necessary in the immediate future.

In the presentation we collaboratively produced, Dan Krause of Californians For High Speed Rail laid out CA4HSR’s vision for the LA-Anaheim corridor. Based in part on prior conversations with LA rail advocates, it indicates ways to implement what Darrell Clarke has been describing. Krause laid out some key design principles that need to be foregrounded when considering the LA-Anaheim corridor:

• Design with the assumption of full HSR build out.

• Design each piece of new infrastructure to be scalable – there must be enough capacity to handle future ridership growth.

• Design LA-Anaheim section to be compatible with entire statewide system (to guarantee reliable through-service).

In other words, incremental improvements and track sharing ought to be explored, as long as they serve the long-term Big Bang goals and definitely as long as whatever we spend our money on does not act as a bottleneck to future service.

There is more to the presentation that you should read, but Krause moved to list three priorities for the LA-Anaheim corridor, based on the above principles:

Priority 1: Complete Los Angeles Union Station Approach & Station Modifications – i.e. run-through tracks. Jarard Wright of Transit Coalition also called for this, indicating possible consensus on the value of moving to build this project, which can provide immediate benefits as well as serve the long-term needs of the HSR system.

Priority 2: Complete Key Grade Separations Projects. Importantly, this needs to be done so as to not throttle future levels of HSR service – we do not want to come back in 10 or 20 years and have to tear this out again. Let’s get it right the first time.

Priority 3: Complete HSR Portion of ARTIC Station. The design can be cost-effective – HSR might not need to go in a subway, and parking structures might be able to wait for the time being.

CA4HSR feels these are some starting points – though by no means the only ones – for moving forward on the LA-Anaheim segment.

Still, there were some conceptual differences on display at the meeting. At the end of the “How to Spend the First Billion Dollars” panel (where Dan Krause gave the above presentation), RailPAC president Paul Dyson argued that it did not make sense to build a high speed train that just links LA to Anaheim as a demonstration segment, a first segment, or a proof of concept segment, because that would fail to generate public support.

Ryan Stern, however, gave a very eloquent response to that argument, pointing out that was pretty much what happened with the Metro Red Line – it opened just from Union Station to MacArthur Park in 1993. And what happened? The public clamored for more, and has been clamoring for more ever since.

While there is surely room for sensible short-term investment in the corridor as Dan Krause laid out, he was absolutely right to point out that Californians expect bullet trains, and we need to find ways to deliver. The Big Bang is here. We already are going to have to implement it in stages, but as long as that big picture vision is kept in mind, there is every reason to believe sensible choices can be made about what to do in the near term, and ensure it provides for major increases in passenger rail service in the long term.

What that to me means is it needs to be all hands on deck to secure more and permanent federal funding. We’ll have more on that in the coming days and weeks.

Some other items that were discussed that was noteworthy:

• Tom Stone of DesertXpress gave a very thorough presentation that went into great detail on the plans to link Victorville to Las Vegas. As Brandon pointed out in the Saturday Open Thread, that presentation did not include details on the funding, only that they are in “active discussions” with a range of funders. We will see what happens, but I am excited for this project and think it could give quite a boost to our own HSR project between SF and Anaheim.

• Armin Kick of Siemens emphasized the company’s Sacramento factory, which has been making light rail vehicles since 1984. The factory covers all of North America and even does some exports to South America. Siemens has no plans to build a second factory elsewhere in the country, and is quite happy in Sacramento, defying the claims that California is overregulated and cannot sustain major industry. Siemens has already identified and purchased adjacent land to the existing factory for high speed rail production. There’s been a lot of discussion about China’s proposal to use the former NUMMI plant in Fremont to build trainsets, but Siemens showed that they already meet and exceed Buy America rules, do most of the production in-house, and meet or exceed green building standards. Siemens will be able to make a very compelling case for why it should be the supplier of trainsets for our system.

• Joshua Coran of Talgo came down from Seattle to deliver his presentation on Talgo’s success with the Amtrak Cascades, where they’ve been able to deliver an exceptional on-time performance because they insisted on doing the maintenance on the trains, not just selling them to the State of Washington. Talgo is primarily focused on the emerging HSR corridors elsewhere in the country, but clearly has its eye on California as well.

In the afternoon session, which I had to miss:

• Amtrak’s Stephen Gardner spoke about Amtrak’s HSR success and the need for ongoing investment in existing Amtrak services, particularly replacement of aging rolling stock.

• A panel spoke about the LOSSAN corridor, including Buena Park mayor Art Brown. I’d be especially interested to hear about this panel.

• And finally the Coast Starlight Communities Network presented a list of proposed upgrades to improve service quality and ultimately provide additional runs beyond the daily train serving the line in California.

Again, this was an excellent day of discussion about high speed rail and passenger rail. We are moving into a new era in this country, and while many challenges remain, it does seem that most everyone shares the desire to work together to bring about the vision that Californians endorsed back in November 2008. The Big Bang is here – it’s time to get it built.