Govt steps up Japan-brand sales efforts (Source: The Daily Yomiuri)

Link: Govt steps up Japan-brand sales efforts : Business : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri)

Govt steps up Japan-brand sales efforts

Akihiro Okada, Izuru Jitsumori and Koichi Uetake / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

Cabinet ministers are globe-hopping to help Japanese companies sell their specialized products and technology, such as Shinkansen bullet trains and nuclear power plants.

Company officials accompanied the ministers, in an attempt to revive competition against rival countries like France and South Korea.

The sales efforts involved members of both the public and private sectors, such as executives from Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai).

According to the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, global investment in railways and other essential infrastructure is expected to reach 41 trillion dollars (about 3.85 yen quadrillion) by 2030.

This growth is due to an increased desire for nuclear power plants that do not emit greenhouse gases and for efficient high-speed train lines for economic stimulus.

Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister Seiji Maehara visited the United States hoping to export Japan's maglev and Shinkansen technology.

At a press conference on April 30, Maehara emphasized, "Unless the government and business unite to tackle the issue, even excellent technology won't be adopted."

The U.S. government plans to build 11 bullet train lines with a total distance of 13,700 kilometers at an expense of 13 billion dollars (about 1.22 trillion yen).

With the U.S. plan in mind, the government in April revised regulations allowing the Japan Bank for International Cooperation to make loans to industrialized countries for high-speed train projects.

The government will also host U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood from Sunday to Wednesday to have him ride the Shinkansen and maglev trains.

However, JR Tokai Chairman Yoshi-yuki Kasai, who accompanied Maehara to the United States, told reporters, "Japan's efforts lag behind other countries."

Another JR official also expressed concern, saying, "Japanese companies might not win any U.S. train contracts."

As an example of the stiff competition, a Florida high-speed train line has 22 companies bidding for the contract.

Maehara said, "I thought the number would be five or six at most. On the trip I got a glimpse of how fierce the competition in the high-speed train business is."

France and Germany are at an advantage with their public and private sectors working together. China is also looking to export its high-speed train technology, charging lower prices than its rivals.

Yoshito Sengoku, state minister for national policy, attended the opening ceremony of the Shanghai World Expo and then traveled to Vietnam on Sunday, where he promoted Japanese nuclear power and bullet train technology.

Vietnam plans to build four nuclear power reactors.

Two contracts will probably be won by Russia, which sells the reactors together with submarines as a set. Japan, France and South Korea will likely compete for the two remaining reactors.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama sent a personal letter to Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, but it remains uncertain if Japan's bid will be successful.

Japan did win an Indian urban development contract utilizing Smart Grid, a next-generation electric power supply network, costing about 120 billion yen.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Masayuki Naoshima attended an April 30 signing ceremony between the Japanese business consortium and an Indian state government. "We hope to popularize this successful model throughout Asia," he said.

To increase contracts won by Japanese companies, the central government's aid is important, but a system to handle projects in an integrated manner is also needed.

For example, France provides services for everything involved in a nuclear power plant, from construction to operations, fuel supply and the processing of used fuel.

Japanese infrastructure firms, railway companies, power companies and those involved in the operation and management of finished facilities must increase their collaboration.
(May. 7, 2010)

A Roundup of recent articles by Joel Epstein on mass transit. Part 3

Joel Epstein: Preaching to the Choir: Metro and 30/10 Revisited

Article 7

Preaching to the Choir: Metro and 30/10 Revisited

With a tip of my Metro cap to Bob Dylan for his special telling of the sacrifice of Isaac, over the weekend I took a virtual drive out on Highway 61. If you know the song or at least the story behind it, the tune begins like this:

Oh God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son'


Abe says, 'Man, you must be puttin' me on'
God say, 'No.' Abe say, 'What?'
God say, 'You can do what you want Abe, but
the next time you see me comin' you better run'
Well Abe says, 'Where do you want this killin' done?'
God says, 'Out on Highway 61.'

Thanks Bob. As you know fair use says I can use just about that much of your intellectual property before I need to pay for it. Like Abe, it's time we all made a small sacrifice and wrote Congress and the President, and spoke with our friends, co-workers and neighbors in support of 30/10, an inspired mass transit plan for Los Angeles that stands a good chance of happening. A good chance, but realistically, the plan needs all the help it can get, which is where you and some important community leaders come in.

30/10, for those who don't know, is LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's important push to get built in a decade 30 years' worth of painfully overdue mass transit projects. 30/10 is inspired, but it needs Congressional leaders and the US Department of Transportation to back the massive public works project by offering Los Angeles County a bridge loan.

Bridge loans aren't rocket science. These generally short-terms loans, used everyday in construction to get developers from wherever they are in a project to completion, would let Los Angeles start today what no one can afford waiting three decades for.

The loan, which would be guaranteed by the tax revenues voters approved when they voted by a 68 percent majority for Measure R, would permit Los Angeles County to accelerate work on a dozen mass transit projects including the Purple Line Wilshire Blvd subway to the sea, a subway (preferred) or bus rapid transit (BRT) line connecting the traffic-clogged San Fernando Valley with the traffic-clogged West Side, an extension of the Gold Line in the San Gabriel Valley, and new stops on the Green Line at LAX and in Torrance.

Am I preaching to the choir in asking everyone to write Congress and advocate for this plan? Unfortunately, I don't think I am. I'd like to be, but since they're not likely to let me get too close to the pulpit I'm calling on the clergy -- LA's priests, imams, ministers, rabbis and shamans -- to lead their flock into the promised land of subways, light rail, and rapid buses for all. Next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday how about preaching a fiery sermon about 30/10 and the urgent need for all of us, regardless of religion, creed or politics, to back LA's aggressive mass transit building campaign? Hell, I mean "Heck," for starters, the massive Los Angeles Archdiocese with 288 parishes in the region might seize this opportunity to put the mass [transit] back in the Mass.

And for those of you concerned that "advocacy" of this sort doesn't belong in church, not to worry. Trust me, it's kosher and goes with the gospel like preaching about earthquake relief in Haiti and Chile and imploring congregants to volunteer at the Los Angeles Mission, or Sova, plant trees with Treepeople, or clean up Compton Creek and the beach with Heal the Bay.

Without clergy on board this plan isn't likely to overwhelm mass transit-related Causes on Facebook as users log on to donate and volunteer. I wish it did, but don't pretend it has that sort of clout. Alas, I checked and Move LA, the smart coalition of civic, business, environmental and labor groups behind Measure R and still working tirelessly to advance public transit in Los Angeles, doesn't even have a Facebook page, let alone a Causes page, yet.

While not even my children listen to me, Angelenos listen to their clergy. And together, LA's clergy have just the clout 30/10 needs to give Washington a piece of our mind. As such I call on the City's religious leaders to get on the train and lead their congregations and city forward in the direction it needs to go.

Though prayer alone won't bring the light rail to Compton or the subway to Santa Monica, I dream of the city's chapels, mosques, Buddhist temples, ashrams and synagogues filled with the sweet sound of train bells peeling as the clergy calls the congregation to action for mass transit in Los Angeles.

And it's not just the clergy in the pulpit that needs to be talking about and working for this. 30/10 and mass transit should be an activity for every youth group, religious and otherwise, in this town. What a teachable moment, and what do the New and Old Testaments, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita and other religious texts teach us about traveling together on common forms of conveyance. What would Jesus, Muhammad, Dr. King and Abraham Joshua Heschel have to say about the lack of fast, efficient mass transit options in too many of our communities? The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts should offer badges for best mass transit designs and LAUSD after-school clubs should organize bake sales to raise bus fare to Metro Board meetings and to support Move LA.

For some, Dylan may be a prophet, but he never could sing like Gladys Knight & The Pips.

So that LA doesn't prove too much for this man and all of us who know that we deserve better than bumper-to-bumper on the freeway, let's sing as one in harmony to Congress, the President and the Transportation Secretary about how much 30/10 means to us as both a transit fix and the public works employment project the region needs.

Like Rosa Parks, all Angelenos deserve to sit at the front of fast and efficient buses, subways, and light rail trains as they ride home from work. Sí se puede, President Obama, Congress and Transportation Secretary LaHood, but we also need that bridge loan as soon as possible.

Today, if you walk to the west end of the Metro Purple Line station platform at Wilshire and Western and look west into the tunnel, all you can see is darkness. On the train itself the Red Line/Purple Line map looks sort of like a wishbone, with Purple and the residents of the West Side drawing the short side of the bone. It's time we all got our wish. A bridge loan will bring mass transit to the masses and that's just what Angelenos deserve. The campaign to make 30/10 happen has made a believer out of me.

Amen for that.

Article 8

Joel Epstein: Public Space = Public Health

Public Space = Public Health

All this rain and time spent indoors is giving me cabin fever. Which is why I'm dreaming of traveling to Colombia. So if you work in the PR department at American Airlines or Avianca and have some free tickets to spare, don't be a stranger. Ever since I read Wade Davis' eye-popping book, One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest, I've been fascinated with the country, its messy colonial history and its importance to ethnobotany both for its ties to the rubber trade and to medicinal plants. So perhaps there's some method to my recent blog mention of Bogotá's TransMilenio bus rapid transit system and these kind words in support of CicLAvia.

CicLAvia is a Los Angeles-based effort that's bringing an inspired urban public space concept that originated in Bogotá to LA. In a, for now, modest way CicLAvia is replicating in LA Ciclovía, a Bogotá event that happens every Sunday from 7:30 am to 2:30 pm with the conversion of many city streets to pedestrian-only and bicycle-accessible thoroughfares. No, I didn't spell that incorrectly. The LA organization's name is a play on the Bogotána name of the program.

Planned as an interconnected network of fixed routes throughout Bogotá, Ciclovía is designed to connect walkers and bikers to many parts of the city. In Bogotá, up to 1.5 million or 30 percent of the population routinely participates in Ciclovía.

Some parallels between the Colombian capital and LA are disturbing. Two smoggy, traffic-clogged cities plagued by a growing problem of childhood obesity and diabetes. When I asked CicLAvia for details on the LA approach they explained that the program is designed to "give people a break from the stress of car traffic. The health benefits are immense, bringing families out to enjoy their streets in a new way and giving them the chance to walk and bike together."

As someone who grew up riding his Schwinn in warm weather along the closed Bronx River Parkway on Sunday mornings, CicLAvia is an idea close to my heart. While the urban policy junkie I've always been thinks, "Damn I wish I'd thought of that," the Angeleno in me is just happy to know that it has come to Los Angeles and a number of other US cities, temporarily turning long swaths of the streets into People's Park.

With a pitch as informed as a doctor of public health's, CicLAvia's Stephen Villavaso explains that, "In Los Angeles we need events like this more than ever, as anyone who tries to move through this city knows. Not only is it difficult to walk, bike, and drive here, but more and more children suffer from obesity and other health effects caused by growing up in a park poor city. CicLAvia creates a park by removing motorized traffic from city streets, and encourages people to come out and carve a new landscape for themselves."

Given the success of the program in Bogotá the concept has spread to Mexico City and Guadalajara, Mexico; Santiago, Chile; Quito, Ecuador and in the US to El Paso, Portland, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Miami.

In a city with many neighborhoods starved for public space and parks, CicLAvia promotes a creative way to make over LA, at least for a few hours a week.

CicLAvia has already been recognized by GOOD Magazine which in partnership with Pepsi on its Pepsi Refresh Project is offering a $50,000 award for, just that, good civic ideas.

As a new board member of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy which is pushing for a soda tax in Sacramento, I just love these opportunities to mix my metaphors... The Center's annual awards luncheon honoring Michael Pollan, David Kessler and Congresswoman Doris Matsui is next week in San Francisco...

The GOOD/Pepsi Refresh Project, a voter-based, month-long competition on Facebook gives users 10 votes a day for the entire month. So remember the advice of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and vote early and often for CicLAvia.

With its Mediterranean climate and large transit-dependent population, Los Angeles is ideal for CicLAvia's adaptation of the successful Bogotá model. Sure CicLAvia lacks the union iron worker job-creating girth of the Tom Bradley Terminal reconstruction project at LAX but it deserves our love just as much if not more.

To its credit, the mammoth $1.55 billion infrastructure project (the most-expensive in Los Angeles municipal history) is not just a boon to the workers and contractors hired to do the construction. As anyone who has flown in or out of the Bradley at LAX knows, it has to qualify as one of the worst airport experiences not just in the so-called first world, but in the developing world as well. As the globe's sixth-largest airport, the only thing missing from LAX's renovation is, you guessed it, a light rail link to the city the airport's named after. But don't get me started, as I'm trying to give the mass transit theme a rest for a week at least.

Roughly 8.6 million passengers, an awful lot of Angelenos, tourists and immigrants, pass through Bradley at LAX in a typical year. The new terminal will be an important gateway to America's most diverse city. Still, while we're salivating over the new building's glass and steel soaring over the waiting room at passport control, let's not forget programs like CicLAvia and the benefits of turning local streets into parks and bikeways, at least from time to time.

Instead let's look ahead to the arrivals' first weekend in, or back in, LA and imagine the smiles on their faces as they stroll and bike along LA's own Ciclovía. It's sure healthier than Animal Style Double Doubles from the drive thru at In-N-Out Burger en route on the freeway to the Nokia Theatre at LA Live.

There are so many good civic ideas in this town and some of them even make it past the cutting room floor. CicLAvia is one that deserves to see itself projected onto even more of LA's endless pavement. Now if Metro would only finish building the train lines to get us there.

Article 9

Joel Epstein: Moving LA: There's a Train a Comin'

Moving LA: There's a Train a Comin'

Nothing good, or bad, lasts forever. Which is why we're seeing Toyota, whose reputation had long been for quality, torn down by a widespread recall. Over 4 million cars and trucks at last count. If this keeps up we'll soon be confusing Toyota with GM and Detroit with Tokyo.

It's times like this that as a fan of John Updike and his brilliant American family saga about Harry Angstrom I feel adrift. Without the great writer around I don't know whether Toyota the company will weather the storm or like Toyota the dealership that made Rabbit rich go down in flames under the tutelage of the new generation. I'm like a tourist in LA without a Metro bus map.

Will the Harvard Business School case study-worthy company bring back its customer base with fire sale prices on the superior, fuel efficient cars Toyota became known for, or is the company's condition fatal? As someone who will need to buy another car in ten or fifteen years I'm saddened by the prospect that Toyota's demise would leave the consumer that much poorer. With fewer reliable models to choose from and the greatest thorn in the side of a still poorly performing Motown gone from the scene, we'd all be goners.

Of course, like the fortunes of Toyota's leaders guilty of hubris, ideas change too and that can be a good thing. Take for example Los Angeles and its attitude toward mass transit. In November 2008 the City and County, known for decades as a great big freeway in an unassailable romance with the car, approved a half cent sales tax to pay for long overdue mass transit improvements. Move LA, a smart coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups, actually came together and worked to convince 68 percent of the electorate to open up the spigot on $40 billion in transit funding. Measure R, which will provide the transit funds over a thirty year period, shows that even Angelenos have come to realize that the always packed freeways have become a powerful octopus slowly tightening its unforgiving grip around the heart of this city.

Mass transit, as the voters proclaimed in passing Measure R, has to be expanded if we ever want to leave the house after breakfast and get home from work before the kids have logged off Facebook and put themselves to bed.

And it's not just a new tax for mass transit that says Angelenos have had it with the traffic. Just look at the explosion in the number of locals riding bikes, motorcycles and scooters that can weave between the stagnant flow, the growth in telecommuting at least part time and the number of people moving closer to work or, if they own the store, moving work closer to home.

As anyone who leaves his or her crib before sunrise to commute to work can tell you, LA's traffic hurts more than just the commuter. In a big city like this economic prosperity, never easy to achieve but especially hard to find in recessionary times like now, goes hand in hand with mass transit. Trains and rapid buses help get workers to their jobs as quickly and efficiently as possible or at least on time.

Just talk to the thousands of business owners, large and small, who know they are losing their competitive edge, as their hard working employees look for work closer to home or in less traffic clogged cities, and clients opt for less logistically challenged suppliers.

With Measure R passed, as tempting as it is to kick back and wait for the train to come, the hard work has only just begun. Now we actually have to build the dozen train lines and other transit improvements that Measure R funds are earmarked for. And perhaps most importantly, we have to accelerate the process - 30/10 as the Mayor's dubbed it - to complete within 10 years the transit system LA needs today not three decades from now.

The campaign for 30/10 will need volunteers and dedicated activists, concerned citizens who get involved; motivated by their exasperating experience commuting in this endless suburb of a city.

It will take people like C, a Masters graduate student in City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley concentrating in transportation who wrote me following my last blog about how he wants to do something about mass transit in his hometown; or M, who describes himself as one of those who for now waits patiently on the Metro 761 bus but is up for the fight to get a train or rapid busway built through the Sepulveda Pass; or K, who works in reality TV and has to drive the dreaded 101 through the San Fernando Valley instead of riding a comfortable train back and forth to work.

Move LA has a laundry list of important encore projects it will need to achieve if it wants to see the benefits of the Mayor's 30/10 initiative realized. These include a national infrastructure bank committed to supporting mass transit projects like the Subway to the Sea, enhanced Federal funding for regional mass transit projects through the Federal transportation re-authorization bill, a set of guidelines for public private partnerships for mass transit development; and a State constitutional amendment that enables agencies like Metro to seek voter approval of new taxes for mass transit by a 55 percent vote rather than a two thirds majority of the electorate.

A comprehensive mass transit system for Los Angeles constructed within a decade will help the region address its crushing traffic problems and will be an economic lifeline to the poor, middle class, and rich alike who try to live and work here.

If you like living here, it's time to join with the chorus in working for the train a comin'. Together we can move LA.

A Roundup of recent articles by Joel Epstein on mass transit. Part 2

Link: Joel Epstein: Educating Congress About Mass Transit

Article 4

Educating Congress About Mass Transit


There's nothing better than when a good idea catches on. Especially when the idea concerns Los Angeles and mass transit. Over the past week the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have written articles praising Mayor Villaraigosa's 30/10 plan to build thirty years of overdue mass transit projects within a decade. The Los Angeles Times is also on board thanks to two forceful pieces by Tim Rutten. In the latest, the columnist notes that "Essentially, the mayor is proposing what federal officials are calling a 'big bang' transit construction program that would simultaneously address both Los Angeles County's grinding congestion problems and its desperate unemployment crisis."

The Mayor's recent back-to-back visits to Washington DC, and a meeting at Metro with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Senator Barbara Boxer have also played an important role in moving forward the inspired plan.

30/10, a job-creating machine which would bring 165,000 construction and 2,500 permanent transportation-related positions to the City, has found powerful allies in Senator Boxer, Secretary LaHood, House Highways and Transit Subcommittee Chairman Peter DeFazio and House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar. The Brooklyn-born Boxer, who grew up riding the sort of mass transit Angelenos are aching for, recognizes that 30/10 is self-help at a time when too many are out of work and construction costs are down 20 percent from where they were before real estate went bust. Boxer and company recognize a win-win for the City and State when they see one.

The smart thinking contained in the mass transit package championed by Move LA has captured the imagination of Congressional leaders from both the Tea Party and the Democratic Party because 30/10 is a nonpartisan opportunity to move beyond the uncivil discourse that has come to characterize Capitol Hill. But 30/10 is also catching on because it's a good governance idea that will work as well for tens of other infrastructure-starved cities. With health care lobbyists descending on Washington like locusts, 30/10 is just what the doctor ordered for a sick and dysfunctional Washington. The transit/jobs plan lets the federal government shine as the facilitator of loans to the City rather than as a lightening rod for the anger of partisans frothing at the mouth about everything from health care to the Second Amendment.

But mass transit and jobs aren't the only challenges this city faces. Public education has long been the elephant in the room and it still doesn't work for too many students. With Metro seemingly moving full steam ahead, it's time to focus as well on the schools.

To get a taste of how LAUSD operates, contrast the possibility inherent in 30/10 with the situation for 1,180 high school students from across the city who attend Palisades Charter High School, a California Distinguished School.

Imagine you are one of those students from South LA and you wake up Monday morning and have no way to get to class. The LAUSD bus that used to pick you up at 6:00 am to get you to Pali by 7:50 am never shows and you don't have bus fare for the 3 different Metro buses you would have to ride to get to school on time.

It's true that LAUSD faces a $640-million budget deficit. But rather than renegotiating what looks like an exorbitant (sole source?) bus contract and letting go of the still-ample fat that doesn't make sense even in the best of financial times, LAUSD has proposed eliminating busing for the committed students from over 100 poor performing school zip codes who head to Pali each weekday morning.

To read this you'd think I hate public education, but nothing could be further from the truth. In several prior blogs I've praised public schools and chastised LA parents with a good public school option for leaving the system. As the parent of three public school kids (albeit not Crenshaw or Dorsey High), silence is simply not an option.

When I learned about the district's plans, I googled "LAUSD," where right at the top of the homepage I read the laughable tagline, "Today's Learners, Tomorrow's Leaders." But no one is laughing about a plan that makes 1,180 of today's learners tomorrow's losers.

During his first term Mayor Villaraigosa made important strides toward transforming LAUSD by backing school board candidates favorable to education and to changing business-as-usual at the district. Unfortunately, a great deal of work remains to be done to change a school district culture that kills well-oiled programs like the LAUSD/Pali partnership. The fact that LAUSD formerly ran Pali and may be seeking to exact revenge on the highly-rated charter and the bused students for making the district look like a poorly-educated dropout is not lost on this blogger.

If I were a flaming radical I'd say that the school board's move against the Pali students is equivalent to educational apartheid. After all, under the 1963 ruling, affirmed in 1982, in Crawford v. Board of Education of Los Angeles, LAUSD has to find ways to integrate its student body. Whether the district likes Pali or not, since the desegregation program's creation Pali has educated 10,000 district students from outside of its West Side catchment area. In a district where 91 percent of the students are of color, one might say that depriving the bused students of the chance to attend largely white and academically rigorous Palisades Charter is unacceptable resegregation.

African American and Latino students at Pali perform significantly better as a group than students of color at Crenshaw, Dorsey, Manual Arts, Los Angeles High and Jefferson High Schools, the schools that many of the Pali students would otherwise attend. These schools are household names, thanks to their reputation as among the worst performing schools in Los Angeles. The Pali difference is measureable. Bused students there are achieving Academic Performance Index (API) scores that are routinely 200-300 points higher than the API scores earned by students at the neighborhood schools. Under the circumstances LAUSD should be encouraged, assisted or forced to sharpen its pencil and take another look at its budget before cutting the buses for students from across the City going the extra miles to attend a school that delivers.

As civic endeavors, 30/10 and schools that educate today's learners to be tomorrow's leaders go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, for too long both transit and education have been held hostage by a governing structure that leaves the mayor at the mercy of a divided and bloated city council and an unhinged school board. The LAUSD Pali spat is just the latest example of a school board that lacks the sense to educate the district's students.

When 30/10 moves forward, the new trains and light rail will help ease LA's crippling traffic as well as help sew together the City's diverse neighborhoods. Maybe someday it won't take students and others an hour and a half to travel by mass transit from south LA to the Palisades. More importantly, maybe soon South LA's schools will be good enough that local students won't need to leave home before sunrise to head to class on the West Side. Until this happens however, LAUSD should honor its mandate by continuing to offer bus service to students going west for the quality education all students deserve.

Congress should give LA the loan it needs to be a light unto the nation on mass transit. LAUSD needs to become a bus ticket, rather than an obstacle, to the future for LA's students. Today's learners will only become tomorrow's leaders if they can get to class.

Article 5

Link: Joel Epstein: Money for Mass Transit Is Precious

Money for Mass Transit Is Precious

Every time I see a picture of President Obama at a health care meeting earnestly imploring the public and Congress to give him the win we all need, I can't help feeling nostalgic. As I jones for that more innocent time of possibility when Hope had just taken office and before he'd hitched our wagon to health care, it pains me to think of the lost honeymoon period when anything seemed within reach. Everyone's got their fantasy plan for rebuilding America after eight years of W and if you haven't guessed by now, mine's got to do with mass transit. If I were running for office, my slogan would be "A Train or Bus For Everyone."

What if, instead of shelling out $182 billion for AIG, $45 billion for Citigroup and countless billions more for those other Wall Street saviors of Greece, Iceland, and the US of A, America had invested in itself? What if even a healthy fraction of the US taxpayers' cash went instead into building subways and light rail that move people fast, efficiently, and with far fewer emissions?

A little after 8 this morning I found myself at La Cienega and Jefferson staring up at the new El going up over the intersection. At this stretch of track, LA Metro's new Expo Line will be elevated just like the, um, Loop in Chicago and the 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 trains rumbling overhead in the Bronx. Well actually "just like" is quite a stretch -- and El is still a funny word in Los Angeles, which doesn't really have much other elevated track if you overlook the Gold Line as it skirts Chinatown and crosses over N. Spring Street in front of Homeboy Industries and the Green Line to nowhere.

But on a clear day looking south on La Cienega past the El my mind is racing imagining the possibilities. With the hills of the Hahn State Recreation Area dead ahead pleasantly serene, and looking beautifully lush and green after all the winter rain, I envision Expo destined for greatness like other celebrated urban train lines. Think of Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle huffing and puffing up the stairs to the Expo El platform as he pursues a drug dealer in French Connection III. I have a call in to Billy Friedkin about directing, but he's not getting back to me.

While Expo's coming along and the hills sure look pretty, the current streetscape on La Cienega and Jefferson, not so much. For now it's a ragtag jumble of unattractive storefronts and mini malls like too many other parts of LA. To some extent this will change when Expo opens and the businesses and developers realize the transit-oriented development possibilities. What do they say? "Gentrification Happens." So let's just make sure some building codes are in place and the routes lining the light rail don't become one long billboard worthy of the miscreants who would wallpaper over the whole city with supergraphic ads if they could.

For now, a late-model Starbucks at the corner is pretty much the only sign, apart from the El construction itself, of things to come. But who knows? Will See's Candies, with its headquarters just south of the Expo station-to-be on La Cienega, soon be joined on the block by Old Navy, Pottery Barn and the Apple Store?

In all likelihood, not so fast. But Starbucks isn't stupid. They see the writing on the subway wall and know that their corner location across from the station will be where every third Expo-bound rider stops before boarding the train to downtown LA, Culver City and (ultimately) Santa Monica.

With our sight lines out the train windows preserved by LA's aggressive City Attorney, I hope Metro is planning to tout the views from the elevated stretch of Expo in its promotional campaign. Once it opens with its bird's eye views of the LA basin framed by the rugged mountains, Expo should offer stiff competition to New York's Number 7 train's close up of midtown Manhattan as the El crawls noisily north through Queens.

If the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau can sell us all on an old billboard for Hollywoodland, the least they can do for Metro and the City is get a good percentage of the millions of tourist who come to our fair city to shell out $5 apiece for a Metro day pass that leaves the driving to someone who isn't texting or talking on their cell.

It's my guess though that many tourists are already better educated about LA's good/excellent public transit options from the Bureau's well-done Los Angeles Public Transit page than the hundreds of thousands or millions of Angelenos who have never ridden Metro and can't even tell you the fare.

Still, I can't help but be sad about what might have been. What if, a year ago instead of pushing health care, President Hope had focused on restoring the country's confidence in America by rebuilding the economy through an unprecedented investment in mass transit and other long-neglected infrastructure projects?

Let it go, you say. Just accept that Hope didn't take that track and that the infrastructure train has left the station. The beauty though of support for urban mass transit is that it's never too late to get on board. With cities as diverse as Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Charlotte and Phoenix building or expanding their mass transit systems, large and small city residents and civic leaders alike from across the country have come to recognize they need these projects to move beyond the traffic gridlock and to jump start or keep moving the local economy.

O, are you listening? There's the independent base if there ever was one.

The Expo Line and the new Gold Line to East LA are great backdrops against which to hold the next Presidential press conference. So I'm shouting out to President Obama, imploring him to accept this invitation to come to LA and grab a latte or café con leche and churros before climbing a train platform that may even remind him of the El at Wrigley Field if he uses his powerful imagination. Just don't eat or drink on our trains.

With Mayor Villaraigosa back this week at the circus known as Washington, let's hope he's walking the walk by riding the DC Metro from Reagan National Airport to his appointments on the Hill. What I would give to read about that in tomorrow's paper rather than another story about the sexual proclivities of retired New York Congressman Eric Massa and California State Senator Roy Ashburn, the flying Toyota Prius or what Howard Stern thinks about Gabourey Sidibe's future acting career.

Even if Villaraigosa's not taking the train, may the gods be with him, and may he come home with the support Los Angeles needs to keep on building our way to a better transit and economic future. Now that would be Precious.

Article 6

Link: Joel Epstein: Rebuilding America From Ore to Assembly

Rebuilding America From Ore to Assembly

On Thursday, within earshot of a big noisy rally against education cuts at California's public universities getting underway outside, I found myself inside the UCLA School of Public Affairs. What brought me to the leafy Westwood campus was a talk by Metro Manager of Community Relations Jody Litvak and Metro Executive Officer/LA City Planning Commissioner Diego Cardoso. Litvak and Cardoso's presentation to a group of urban and environmental planning graduate students and the lively conversation that followed focused on Measure R (the recently approved 1/2 cent transit tax) and the future of mass transit in Los Angeles.

Now both because education matters and as a parent who hopes his hard-working LAUSD-educated kids have the chops to get into a University of California school in just a few short years, I guess I should have been out there protesting too, but I wanted to hear the talk I'd come to Westwood for.

Nonetheless, as I listened to the interesting presentations mingled with the sounds of protest coming through the open window, I found my mind drifting back to my days at the University of Michigan, protesting cuts to the University's undergraduate program and smaller departments like Geography. Indeed, as a student I once had my head handed to me while testifying on behalf of the Geography department. You see, though I'm pretty good in the subject I'd never actually taken a college Geography course and a professor representing the University lost no time in discrediting me for as much and for taking too long to find the Cape Breton Islands on a map.

Though I didn't much like being made to look like a fool or reading about it the next day in the Michigan Daily, Ann Arbor was a great place for me to go to college. Not only did I love classes and all of the extra curricular activities, but it was also a chance to learn about Detroit and the rest of the so-called rust belt. My best classes were in urban history and politics. It was there that I came to the correct conclusion, subsequently disavowed for law school, that I should go to graduate school in urban policy or planning.

I'll never forget exploring Motown and southeastern Michigan, which in many ways still hasn't fully recovered from the 1967 riots and the multi-generational contraction in the auto industry. Most striking then (and now) was the perpetually sad state of the economy. For a while I worked as an after-school tutor in Ypsilanti, a nearby depressed and somewhat depressing city then with its own Ford plant. Some of the parents of the kids I tutored were even lucky enough to work off and on at Ypsilanti Ford, which I understand later became a Visteon plant and then an ACH factory before shutting down for good in 2008.

Even today, when people talk about Detroit, it's usually about the riots, its unparalleled musical heritage, the massive Ford plant at River Rouge in its varied incarnations since opening in 1917 as an automotive "ore to assembly" complex; or maybe Eminem and 8 Mile.

But Detroit says a lot more about this country's decline as an industrial powerhouse than just the closed auto plants like Ypsilanti that litter the landscape and the stunted careers that are the result of Motown's main industry's bad business decisions. It must have been the last gubernatorial election cycle when Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm called me in my role as a local political director. As we made polite chit chat about her upcoming race I couldn't help going off script and asking the Governor what she was doing to goose the auto executives into doing more about emissions and building more fuel-efficient vehicles. As Granholm launched into an unconvincing spiel about how she had just returned from an industry conference in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where they had discussed just that, all I could think about was the depressed cities and ruined lives I saw in southeastern Michigan that the misguided industry had left in its wake. Sure, for generations Detroit had offered a high wage long-term career, but for too many today that dream is just a Motown memory.

All those thoughts of Detroit, and the decline in the country's industrial might, have me thinking about Tom Friedman and how he got to be so good at what he does. I guess the answer is sort of like the punch line to the old Borsch Belt joke, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" This week Friedman's captured my imagination with this statement, "We are the United States of Deferred Maintenance," in an opinion piece entitled A Word From the Wise. The op ed, which goes on to talk about America's anemic investment in infrastructure, education and innovation and the consequences for the country's competitiveness, is must-reading for everyone in Los Angeles City Hall and in cities like Detroit. We all need to start thinking and acting differently if we want to extricate ourselves from the economic and educational malaise that ails us.

A public works project here in Los Angeles, as outlined in LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's 30/10 plan to build three decades' worth of mass transit projects in a decade, and smaller projects in the 80 other cities across the country looking to expand their light rail, subway, and bus systems, is an excellent start. And along the way perhaps Los Angeles and the other cities can learn a thing or two from United Streetcar, a subsidiary of Oregon Iron Works in Portland.

With cities across the country poised to construct or add trolleys to their mass transit systems, United Streetcar is building for the domestic market a product that many cities would otherwise have to import from Europe. And these are expensive babies, selling for over $3 million each, and requiring proud, skilled workers. Portland knows a good opportunity when it sees one.

One can only hope that going forward Los Angeles companies will be as successful as United Streetcar in leveraging the resources provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With a new deputy mayor focused on jobs and investment we are at least moving in a good direction.

As anyone who has tried to navigate Congress or City Hall knows, the sausage making of government and applied public policy isn't always a pretty business. But like becoming a great musician (or getting great at anything else) you have to practice to get to Carnegie Hall. This politically and economically divided country is out of practice and the signs of this are everywhere.

Don't think I miss the irony in calling for new investment as the states and cities further slash their budgets and payrolls and thousands protest deep cuts to education in California. So be it. Finding the money to proceed with job-creating infrastructure projects, like Mayor Villaraigosa's 30/10 mass transit building plan, and a renewed investment in public education, can get this city and country back on the right track.

New California high-speed rail chief likely to be named Thursday (Source: Los Angeles Times)

New California high-speed rail chief likely to be named Thursday | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times

New California high-speed rail chief likely to be named Thursday
May 5, 2010 | 9:50 pm

A top executive at a firm that operates the nation’s largest train manufacturing plant and has expressed interest in involvement with the state's proposed $43-billion high-speed rail line is expected to be named to head the agency overseeing the project, The Times has learned.

Roelof van Ark, president of Alstom Transportation Inc., a subsidiary of a French-based conglomerate, is scheduled to be introduced at a California High-Speed Rail Authority meeting Thursday.

An authority source, who spoke on condition that he not be named because the announcement was not yet official, confirmed that Van Ark is the board’s tentative choice. If formally approved by the board as anticipated, Van Ark would succeed Mehdi Morshed, the longtime agency chief executive who recently stepped down.

Van Ark, who has headed major, global divisions of both Alstom and Germany-based Siemens AG, appears to have the project management experience that agency board members want at a crucial time of transition.

After years of quiet planning, the authority is trying to rapidly embark on one of the most ambitious public works projects in state history. But it is also confronting a multitude of challenges and a growing array of skeptics, including influential state lawmakers. The latest blow came in a highly critical audit released last week by state Auditor Elaine Howle.

Even as routing and financing controversies continue to boil, the agency is committed to starting construction on the Bay Area-to-Anaheim line in two years so it can collect $2.25 billion in Obama administration stimulus money.

Van Ark, who currently heads a New York-based branch of Alstom with $1 billion in revenue, is expected to be paid $250,000 to $375,000 annually, based on recent board actions. He could receive an additional hiring incentive and relocation payment of up to $150,000. The salaries of chief executives at Los Angeles and San Francisco regional transportation agencies fall in that range, according to the authority.

Authority board members are likely to highlight Van Ark’s leadership of large, complex transportation projects, including high-speed rail lines in Germany and subways in China.

But that same background could invite questions about possible converging public and private interests. In recent years, Van Ark has signaled that his firm may want to invest in or bid on California’s high-speed rail project. The most recent such indication came just two months ago in an interview reported by business website Bloomberg.com.

-- Rich Connell

A Roundup of recent articles by Joel Epstein on mass transit. Part 1

Most of the articles I post are very specific. It's nice to post articles by a writer who sees the larger issue of buses, train an subways as a system. These are his latest three articles. Tomorrow, I'll post more. Enjoy.

About Joel (from the Huffington Post):

Joel Epstein is a senior-level corporate communications, public affairs
and philanthropic giving professional. A lawyer and public policy
analyst, Joel is also a published author who loves travel and spends his
local free time exploring Los Angeles, where the native New Yorker in
him likes to rely on LA's much maligned but extensive public transit
system. If you want to hire him or just want to learn more about what
else he is capable of, check out his profile at google.com/profiles/joel.epstein,
or contact him directly at joel.epstein@gmail.com.

Article 1

Link: Joel Epstein: A Bronx Tale About Mass Transit: Take Note, Los Angeles

A Bronx Tale About Mass Transit: Take Note, Los Angeles

If you time it just right, New York in the Spring can feel like the greatest place on earth. And that's how it was late last week. Even in the hardscrabble Bronx where I spent much of Friday looking at a bus rapid transit (BRT) project on East Fordham Road and two to-be-rebuilt transit plaza on Fordham Road in the north and 149th Street in the south. On Thursday and Friday I was a contented walker in the city, purposefully studying New York while thinking about mass transit and public space in Los Angeles.

With Los Angeles' 30/10 Initiative to build thirty years of taxpayer-approved mass transit projects within a decade up for review by the Metro board I'd come to New York at the invitation of the Project for Public Spaces. PPS is a three decades' old nonprofit that helps communities rework their streets and public space. They had invited me to attend their Streets as Places training because of the focus of my recent blogging. Given my near obsession with 30/10 it was a hard choice, but I'd committed a month earlier before Metro had set a date to put 30/10 to a vote of its full board. I'm glad I did. If I hadn't I wouldn't have had the chance to meet with Janette Sadik-Khan, the smart, committed and funny Commissioner of the NYC DOT or spend a day walking, talking shop and riding mass transit around the Bronx with Ed Janoff, the DOT's Senior Project Manager for Streetscapes and Public Spaces.

Given the healthy mass transit rivalry between New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Portland, it seemed only fair that I give New York a shot at showing up Los Angeles and the others. Sadik-Khan has a lot to say about the city and the changes she has implemented since being appointed to the DOT Commissioner position by Mayor Bloomberg.

After talking some about the city where we both grew up and about L.A., where I live, and Sadik-Khan attended Occidental College, the Commissioner deftly dismissed criticism I'd heard that the DOT was focusing too much on sexy Manhattan projects like the closure of Broadway in Times Square to motorized traffic and Summer Streets, bike-only Sundays on Park Avenue, at the expense of BRT and repaving projects in the outer boroughs. Paraphrasing Sadik-Khan's response,

It's the press. As Commissioner I'm a woman in a mostly man's world and what can I say, that's what the reporters focus on. They don't want to go out to Queens or Brooklyn to report on a newly repaved street or bus route or the over billion dollars DOT has spent repairing roads and bridges throughout the city. They want to talk about Times Square and Summer Streets and the biking.

While we spoke Sadik-Khan looked at her Blackberry and broke out into a big grin after reading an e-mail that a deal for the DOT to purchase an asphalt plant in Queens had gone through. As a dedicated environmentalist who bikes to work near Wall Street from her home in the West Village Sadik-Khan is rightly proud of the fact that the new plant will save the DOT money and let it up the percentage of recycled asphalt (above the 40 percent it currently uses) in road repaving projects. What's more, if you're looking for a pair of concrete shoes you can now turn to Sadik-Khan as well as the traditional vendors. Just don't expect to read about it in the New York Times any time soon as asphalt's just not that sexy.

The other exciting stuff I learned from my meeting with the Commissioner include her plan to launch by October a new BRT line that will run from Houston to 125th Street on First and Second Avenues. With the Second Avenue subway still years away from completion this will be an important transportation achievement for New Yorkers and the Commissioner whose department conducts some 2,000 community meetings a year to explain itself and elicit community input on planned and ongoing projects. Another critical paired street BRT project is planned for busy Bedford and Nostrand Avenues in Brooklyn.

Like a lot of people who meet her I left my meeting with Sadik-Khan impressed by the Commissioner as well as by the BRT news and details of the bold just-announced 34th Street transitway project that will split the congested crosstown Manhattan street in two routing traffic east and west from a pedestrian plaza on the block between 5th and 6th Avenues. As Dan Biederman of the 34th Street Business Improvement District (BID) has said about DOT, "This is not your father's D.O.T. This agency says they do something and they do it."

Nonetheless, given the criticism I'd heard from the bridge and tunnel crowd about the Commissioner's undue focus on Manhattan I needed to get out of the borough to see things for myself.

For this I was hooked up with Ed Janoff a young and intense public space-obsessed DOT employee who knows his stuff. On Friday he greeted me at the transit plaza at East Fordham Road across from Fortress Fordham University in the north Bronx with a ream of print outs about the Bx 12 Bus Rapid Transit line and other surface transit projects that are key to Sadik-Khan and Mayor Bloomberg's plan to permanently remake transportation in New York City. Janoff, who worked for Dan Biederman before coming over to DOT, is a fount of knowledge about surface transit, streetscapes, and DOT's plan to remake the public space it is responsible for in each of the city's community board catchment areas. Between Sadik-Khan, Janoff and the other members of the new generation of DOT staffers I met I felt like I'd walked into a timewarp, perhaps the Kennedy era when the best and the brightest served their country and community through government service. If nothing else this may be Mayor Bloomberg's legacy and it is a proud one.

Of course all is not roses on the streets of the Bronx and throughout the city when it comes to surface transit. Despite the commitment to European- and South American-inspired Bus Rapid Transit and other changes car and truck traffic still reigns in many neighborhoods. If only the reporters who can't seem to leave Manhattan to write about anything other than DOT's signature projects like Times Square, and now the Union Square street closings, the reporters, and the public, would have a better sense of what DOT is up against and the considerable work that still remains to be done.

On Fordham Road, for example, cars and trucks routinely clog the east and west bound bus-only lanes, originally painted red and clearly marked with signage declaring that this is a dedicated bus lane. A plan to put lane enforcement cameras on the front of the buses that would capture and ticket cars and trucks blocking the lane has been twice killed by New York state politics. This, in spite of the fact that the instatickets (or proper traffic enforcement), would have quickly eliminated 90 percent of the grief caused by cars traveling without cause in the bus lane. What's more, in the past merchants and residents were not adequately educated about the planned changes so they tended to resist, fearing they'd lose street parking, rather than benefit from the less congested streets and more rational traffic flow.

But the problem is also one of unrelenting traffic on streets like bustling Fordham Road and, because of opposition to permanent changes to the roadway and politics, tepid design decisions by the DOT. In effect, the Fordham Road bus lane was, and still is, a trial run. On paired DOT planned BRT routes on Nostrand and Bedford Avenues in Brooklyn and on First and Second Avenues, and on 34th Street the changes to the roadway will be made more permanent and aggressive traffic enforcement is planned.

As for the situation at the Bronx transit plazas while Fordham Road's is under par, the 149th Street plaza is downright depressing. Janoff took me to both locales to give me a taste of the before makeover phase. At the Fordham Road plaza an anemic vendor program created to get the illegal tube socks and fake Rolex sellers off of Fordham Road attracts a small fraction of the heavy foot traffic that clogs Fordham Road itself and makes it one of NY's most vibrant shopping areas. The ambitious plan is to remake the plaza with a large Greenmarket like the flagship market at Union Square in Manhattan. A remade plaza would also aim to pull in Fordham University which sits castle-like behind a well guarded fence. To date, it seems as if the university is doing all that it can to insulate its students from the surrounding area rather than integrate them in.

At the 149th Street transit plaza the local partner has entirely dropped the ball in managing the location. Landscaping planted in large planters around the intersection of 149th Street and Third and Willis Avenues has been left for dead and a street closed and another redirected to reduce traffic accidents at the busy intersection look forlorn with no noticeable steps taken to spruce up the locale or undertake community programming. DOT's changes have reduced the incidence of accidents at the intersection and policing in the bustling and still-rough neighborhood is formidable, but if a Manhattan native or visitor to the city landed there they'd quickly realize they're not in Manhattan anymore.

Though I'd come to N.Y. for the Project for Public Spaces training, it was the DOT transit and public space projects and Sadik-Khan's leadership that captured my imagination. Net, PPS is doing important work helping city planners from around the world recharge and rethink their approach to their jobs. Thanks PPS! Shining a light on what communities like the Bronx experience every day is my way of paying it forward.

With so much of New York and L.A. a built environment, rebuilding and remaking the streets and public spaces is a mighty challenge. Thanks to the healthy rivalry between the cities and the high bar Sadik-Khan and the DOT have set I look forward to L.A. giving as good as it gets from its east coast rival. The 30/10 Initiative gives L.A. the chance to bring on line essential and overdue subway, light rail and BRT projects that make the most of the good bones 2010 L.A. inherited from a time years ago when the region was covered with long-limbed trolley lines that stretched from downtown north, south, east and west.

But why not share the expertise? Doesn't it make sense for L.A. to extend an offer to NYC DOT to visit more often? I'm sure they'd say yes as L.A.'s known for the perfect weather that blesses New York just once a year. More information sharing and collaborative thinking about these critical transit and public space challenges behooves us all. But as best I can tell it's not happening much outside of professional conferences and on critical forums like Streetsblog and Streetfilms.

I'd love to see DOT's Sadik-Khan and Janoff sharing their wisdom with L.A. and Move LA's Denny Zane riding the Bx 12 bus on Fordham Road. The lessons offered and learned on both ends would certainly be worth the transit fare.

Article 2

Link: Joel Epstein: A Tea Party for 30/10

A Tea Party for 30/10

With tax day upon us I got to thinking about all of the tea partiers making the pilgrimage to Boston to celebrate their namesakes' stand against a British tax on tea, and the Brits' bailout of a tea importer too big to fail. While tea drinkers seem to think smaller is better and less is more when it comes to government and taxes, they don't seem to get the irony in their taking convenient, publicly-funded mass transit from Logan Airport into downtown Boston. Nor do the party animals driving their GMCs, built by a Detroit company bailed out by the taxpayer, up or down I95, an interstate built by big government for the taxpayer, acknowledge the contradictions inherent in the trip back to their ancestral home.

But enough about that. Onward. And I'm moving beyond the ongoing hostility between the LA Mayor and the City Council over control of the DWP and former Mayor Dick Riordan's recommendation that the city declare bankruptcy sooner rather than later. Instead I'm very upbeat about 30/10's chance to give Angelenos a first class mass transit future. The cause for my enthusiasm is two-fold, really. Part one comes in the form of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce's full-throated endorsement of 30/10.

Bravo to the Chamber for speaking out so clearly in support of the plan and for encouraging its membership to urge the MTA to back 30/10. The second cause for my enthusiasm is Metro's new PowerPoint on the Westside Subway Extension. If you want to make a mass transit nut like me salivate just show him the deck Metro prepared for its Community Update Meetings.

To save paper though, read the forest-buster on line. I nearly lost a good friend tying up the printer as her deadline loomed and the printer spit out all 47 pages so I could savor every word. And what sweet words they are - Wilshire/La Brea Station, Wilshire/Fairfax, Century City (preferably centrally located at Constellation), Westwood/VA Hospital, Wilshire/Bundy, Wilshire/26th Street, Wilshire/16th, and Wilshire/4th Street. Reading these pages I felt like I'd found a previously undiscovered tome by Steinbeck or Fante.

The Metro community meetings, which began April 12th at LACMA West and run through the 21st, promise to be lively affairs that give the community an opportunity to see what is possible within our lifetime if we can make 30/10 a reality.

Which is why it is so important that we not let the car-addicted turn 30/10 into a barrel of pork to be raided for more lanes on the freeways. Voters approved Measure R for mass transit -- which is spelled S-U-B-W-A-Y, L-I-G-H-T R-A-I-L and B-U-S not 405, 10, 710, and 605. Regrettably that's just what two Metro Board members, Lakewood City Councilwoman Diane DuBois and Santa Monica City Councilwoman Pam O'Connor, have proposed. Though I don't know DuBois and O'Connor, I'm sure they're nice people who understand the importance of mass transit. So what gives? Don't they see that Angelenos have been waiting long enough to go into the promised land of mass transit not to have it pulled out from under them? Let's not let it happen. Hands off the public's mass transit dollars!

Sure, the political process is sausage making at its finest, but can't we just once use voter-approved dollars for the purpose they were intended for? A purpose, as has been demonstrated again and again, that is for the greater public good. If I were MOVE LA or METRO I'd go with a campaign like that irritating but unforgettable ad for the antacid, "How do you spell relief?" I spell it M-E-T-R-O, and you should too.

One last observation before signing off. Kudos to the smart City of Pasadena for its decision to exercise its right of eminent domain to save a derelict Julia Morgan-designed YWCA in downtown Pasadena. It seems the building's owner was seeking to sell the property for twice its market value before the city stepped in and said no. Which begs the question, why the Trust for Public Land felt the need to suck so much money out of donors to unduly enrich the Chicago-based real estate firm threatening to sell new home lots next to the Hollywood sign. It seems that a cash-strapped Los Angeles would be similarly justified in using the eminent domain card to secure at market value a far better-known landmark than the old Pasadena Y. After buying the Hollywood land for its rightful price LA could turn around and resell it at cost to the Trust for Public Land or the non-profit charged with preserving the internationally recognized landmark that defines our city. Maybe it isn't too late!

30/10 is worthy of the widespread support it is receiving and Angelenos deserve the relief the dozen new transit lines it will build will bring. So it's time the City Council, the Mayor, the DWP and car lovers all sat down together to tea. Maybe then they would all agree to get along and focus on the prize. Uniting behind 30/10 will bring much-needed peace to City Hall. Next stop, Metro.

Article 3

Joel Epstein: A New Route to a Better LA

A New Route to a Better LA


It took 100 years and a determined President to get a health care bill through Congress. In this young City of Angels and others it may take a bit longer to find the right mix of ingredients needed to create a transit-friendly environment and a feeling of community.

But lately it does seem as though LA has turned a corner in its quest to leave behind its car-obsessed past and become a city where community matters, residents ride mass transit and more of our neighborhoods develop their own distinctive vibe. Sunday's LA Marathon, in which 25,000 people ran the new route from Dodger Stadium to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, gave the effort a good push along. Though I didn't (and probably couldn't) have run the 26 miles, biking with my son from our house to watch the runners was nearly as exciting. Seeing all those blocks of normally traffic-choked city shut down was a beautiful thing. The most distinctive sounds from our vantage point along the route were the rhythm of feet hitting the pavement and enthusiastic Angelenos cheering them on. These are the sorts of sounds we should all here more often throughout LA.

The marathoners were a colorful bunch, duded out in all sorts of running outfits. Just about the only t-shirt I didn't see was the one that the insurance industry folks are wearing on the day after, which reads, "I voted for Obama and all I got was this historic victory on health care."

The Marathon in LA was a chance for many of us to rethink the Sunday routine of a drive to Target, Costco, the Santa Monicas or the Farmer's Market at Third and Fairfax. With too many streets closed off, it wasn't worth it.

It was liberating really, or rather, really liberating. Since many of us couldn't get anywhere anyway we stayed close to home or ventured out on foot or bike.

But even before the marathon LA had achieved some important home-grown pro-community success. If you don't live near it or take it regularly for example you may not be aware of just how good Metro's Orange Line Busway has been for both commuters and bikers and how it has become a bus rapid transit (BRT) model of sorts for the country. If not for the NIMBYs and yesterday's thinking about ridership the Orange Line would have been (and hopefully will still someday be) a seamlessly linked rail line to the Red Line subway at North Hollywood. Nonetheless, the BRT is a win nicely profiled in the year-old but still fresh film from Street Films.

Now, if reason can only triumph, the Orange Line's accompanying bike path will be replicated on the Westside in Expo phase two.

Ah the NIMBYs. With Orange, Blue, Gold and now Expo they just love to bring up safety, that evergreen boogeyman. They ignore the facts and say light rail just isn't safe. And they point repeatedly to the Blue Line, where, over the last 20 years, 51 people have been killed, hit by a train on the tracks. Well, as my high school English teacher would have said, "It is sad, it is too bad, but it is not (in the Greek or Shakespearean sense) a tragedy." Just read Fred Camino's excellent piece, A Pedestrian's View of the Blue Line complete with photos and clips of all the safety barriers and signage Metro has installed to protect the public, and you may agree that there's a less flattering word for anyone killed by a Blue Line train.

That Camino's piece should appear on the same day as David Lazarus' snarky article in the LA Times entitled, L.A. Mass Transit Agencies Make Only a Token Effort to Get People Onboard, underscores the divide in this town between believers and cynics who don't get the challenges Metro, Move LA, and groups like Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic (FAST) still face in trying to change attitudes about mass transit. Granted, Lazarus makes some good points about the need for better integration between Metro and the other neighboring transportation systems. And, it is absurd that riders can't get a transfer to switch from one Metro route to another, or from a bus to a subway. But if he's so right, how come Lazarus' piece grates on me like another Times reporter's recent piece on the snob on the bus?

It's all about the starting line and context -- and let's not forget that this is LA. It wasn't very long ago that many otherwise reasonable Angelenos said, in all seriousness, things like, "We don't want mass transit here. This isn't New York."

Paired with the 30/10 transit/jobs plan, the marathon and programs like CicLAvia, which would periodically convert some of LA's streets to parks, are modifying our ideas about public space and life in the city. All of these changes make Los Angeles a more vibrant and community-oriented place to live.

Mindful of the impact on businesses along the routes and on commuters, the city will need to carefully plan and coordinate CicLAvia events and future marathons. But these are the sorts of things smart planners in coordination with police, fire, risk management and neighborhood associations do every day.

For those who say we can't, I say we can. And for cred my reference is a lecture last week at Occidental College by New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. In her talk to several hundred public space enthusiasts, the LA-raised commish wowed the audience with a description of efforts by New York to re-purpose its streets. These asphalt/concrete illustrations of what LA might do include the pedestrianization of Times Square and New York's construction of 200 miles of new bike facilities.

Sadik-Khan's at-once bold and commonsense vision has helped New York reimagine its public space, including formerly traffic-clogged Broadway in Times Square decked out with lawn chairs, and bike- and pedestrian-only Summer Streets on Park Avenue on a quiet weekend morning.

The Commissioner also made follow-up LA appearances on KPCC's Airtalk with Larry Mantle and at the 2010 StreetSummit. She used all three occasions to talk about NYC projects big and small, but also to inspire Angelenos to keep working to achieve the same.

Without question, changing LA is a give-and-take with city agencies like LADOT challenged by all sides to make the streets into what each competing constituency wants them to be. These visions are as contradictory as another freeway to downtown (one way on Pico and Olympic Blvds) and a temporary park and bikeway where motorized traffic normally idles (CicLAvia).

Not coincidentally, with the needle moving on mass transit and new ideas about public space in LA gaining ground, the City Planning Commission will vote this Thursday (March 25th) on the Food and Flowers Freedom Act. The straightforward Act would allow "the cultivation of flowers, fruits, nuts or vegetables defined as the product of any tree, vine or plant, and that these products be allowed for use on-site or sale off-site." It would overturn LA's antiquated ban on selling flowers and produce grown in the city. Championed by Urban Farming Advocates and City Council President Eric Garcetti, the Food and Flowers Act will be a test of new thinking about how more and more Angelenos want to live and how some in the city will make a living.

Unless you're a shut-in, 30/10, the new marathon route, the blossoming of LA's bike culture and the explosion in the number of neighborhood farmers markets, gardens, and even urban chickens are changes to LA that reveal how Angelenos are revamping the way they think about their neighborhoods and city at large.

If New York, America's most quarrelsome town, can change, then we too can transform how we get around and use our city's open and public space. In fact we can do it better, given our collegiality, climate, landscape and talent.

With the LA Marathon, CicLAvia and other changes afoot, I hope City departments weakened by the layoffs have the vision, flexibility and commitment to respond. If not then maybe it's time to bring leaders like Sadik-Khan home to LA to help us get it done. That is so long as she'll be riding Metro or biking to work.

Expo Line: LA Planning Yet to Get on Board (Source: CityWatch)

Link: CityWatch - An insider look at City Hall

Expo Line: LA Planning Yet to Get on Board
MOVING LA
By Ken Alpern

Rightfully so, critics of mass transit repeatedly excoriate the lack of passenger destinations to encourage ridership in rail lines both in and out of LA County. After all, who would ever use a passenger rail line that fails to access key stops where commuters want to go? But there is such a number of potential destinations that it’s not just a matter of bringing a given rail line to these destinations…it’s a matter of encouraging these destinations to come to the rail line.

Fortunately, the first (Mid-City) phase of the Exposition Light Rail Line appears to be on its way to drawing local and regional Active Imagecommuters; whether or not the second (Westside) phase will follow suit is anyone’s guess. There’s no doubt that Staples Center, USC and the museums near Exposition Park will automatically provide key destinations for travelers to access. The Natural History Museum is creating a 3½ acre outdoor wilderness exhibit adjacent to the line that will provide a potential student field trip staple:[LINK]

Culver City is in the process of creating and re-creating the neighborhoods near the Expo Line to prepare for both the traffic and the economic potential that the Expo Line will offer when service opens either in late 2011 or in 2012. Santa Monica is pursuing the arduous path of doing the same for the Expo Line when it opens for service in that city in 2015-16.

As for Los Angeles, it’s no shock (although it’s a bit sad) to learn that it’s nowhere near to accommodating and preparing for the Expo Line as we see in Culver City and Santa Monica. The budgetary debacle has devastated the Planning Department’s ability to hammer down the West LA Community Plan with respect to zoning and transportation, but more importantly the routing issue that dogged the Expo Line for over 20 years prevented any significant focus on Planning as well.

We now know that the Expo Line has been approved for routing along the historic Right of Way from Palms to Rancho Park to Exposition/Sepulveda (crossing by Cheviot Hills). Although the line has been approved by the Expo Authority Board for at-grade (ground level) crossings at Overland Ave. and Westwood Blvd., it remains yet to be determined whether it will be elevated or at-grade at Sepulveda Blvd.

If the legal history of the Expo Line’s configuration near Dorsey High School is any indication of the future, then Westside legal challenges will keep all potential grade crossing alternatives possible regardless of any expert’s claim that he/she knows what will happen. Political compromises are made, learning curves go up, and court dramas go in places that no one can predict…but it does appear that the question of what path the Expo Line will take has been resolved.

Although there are those who believe that planning for all possibilities is akin to “giving in” to the opposition, the alternative paradigm of preparing for all contingencies now while we have some time to do so is another belief that is arguably more thoughtful and helpful for all parties interested in creating an Expo Line that fits into the communities it traverses…as well as creating a series of communities that fit the potential of the Expo Line.

In particular, what remains of Planning and the CD5 office/team of Paul Koretz must work together to have some sort of “game plan” for whether the Expo Line is elevated, ground level, or in a trench between Palms and West LA. What will we want with respect to zoning, green space, open space, tree planting/preservation and traffic/parking conditions on intersecting streets? Can there not be a master plan created for all three possibilities, once the legal and engineering challenges are concluded?

While there are those who hope to tie up the line in legal obstacles, it doesn’t appear likely that either the state or federal or county governments are much interested in stopping this line in some for—even if it means throwing some more money for betterments to this line—so that a three-alternative game plan can and should occur while the legal challenges and community input proceed. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Furthermore, the question of what will exist by the Exposition/Sepulveda and Olympic/Bundy stations is almost a blank slate at this point—Los Angeles is virtually a decade behind Culver City, who has been confronting this line for about that long, if one can actually comprehend that different approach. It must be reminded that it is NOT the responsibility of the Expo Line Authority to do the Planning for the cities and communities through which the rail line is to traverse…but the Authority is still forced to do SOMETHING.

Perhaps, then, it is understandable that (even if one wholly disagrees with) the decision made by the Expo Authority to go with a minimalist approach through West L.A. while it receives virtually no guidance or consensus from the City of Los Angeles on how the Expo Line should be configured along the Right of Way routing through West Los Angeles. The differing agendas of the various councilmembers on the Expo Authority Board have sent impossibly mixed messages to the Authority.

No one really has a clue of what can, will or should exist at Olympic/Bundy and Exposition/Sepulveda stations, but one can be certain that both the Bundy Village and Casden developers for those two station sites have a long way to go before a development plan can be created to satisfy the local residents, the political leadership and Los Angeles City Planning. At this immediate time, it must be concluded that the Bundy Village developers are more at loggerheads with the grassroots and political leadership that opposes them than the Casden developers, who have raised a few hackles among the neighbors but who are trying to compromise and mitigate with them as well.

As Angelenos, particularly those of us in the Westside, we can always just shrug our shoulders and say, “How could we plan for something that wasn’t yet determined?” Perhaps that was true in the past, but that excuse to bury our collective head in the sand can no longer pass muster.

The time MUST come, and probably starting this year as Preliminary Engineering efforts commence before the Design/Build phase of the Expo Line project, where the neighbors and the region focuses on:

1) Neighborhood preservation with respect to zoning and density

2) True transit-oriented development, not overdevelopment that will make car traffic worse

3) Affordable housing where appropriate, but not providing and excuse to build and develop out of control

4) Bicycle, bus, pedestrian and train commuter amenities that don’t overly hurt the quality of life of the car commuters who now and will still be the majority of those commuting through the region

5) Tree planting and greening the wide Right of Way between Sepulveda and Overland, as well as repairing and even improving the trees and sidewalks on Sepulveda, Westwood, Overland and other major streets to be intersected and impacted by the rail line

6) An Expo Bikeway that fits into major bicycle projects planned for Sepulveda and other major thoroughfares

7) Safety and security measures that make all Expo Line train stations into pleasant and safe places to go, and which become and remain good neighbors to the adjacent communities

The City of Los Angeles has the opportunity (if not responsibility) to create a pedestrian-friendly, bicycle-friendly, kid-friendly and business-friendly neighborhood from the freeway to Palms Park, from the Westside Pavilion Mall to National Blvd., and from Pico Blvd. to Palms. The ongoing legal battles need not prevent the community and L.A. City Planners from planning an improvement to the region and providing guidance to the Expo Line Authority.

… and it should be remembered that despite the passions of those who are concerned about the Expo Line (or any other rail line) reaching a sufficient number of quality destinations, we do have the opportunity to get those destinations to the Expo Line as well.

(Ken Alpern is a Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) and is both co-chair of the MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee and past co-chair of the MVCC Planning Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and also chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at Alpern@MarVista.org.This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/05/03/japan-the-model-of-a-train-riding-experience/ (Source: INFRASTRUCTURIST)

Link: Japan: The Model of a Train-Riding Experience » INFRASTRUCTURIST

Japan: The Model of a Train-Riding Experience
Posted on Monday May 3rd by Melissa Lafsky | 906

Nothing drives home the state of your home nation’s infrastructure quite like examining another country’s. A few weeks ago, we spent a week riding the Shinkansen around Japan to get a sense of exactly how high speed rail works in one of the most modern, comprehensive, and highly-trafficked systems in the world. With over 40 years in operation, and over 7 billion-passengers served, how is the Shinkansen experience, from the moment you step on the platform to the time you reach your destination? Here is an overview of what we discovered.

State bullet train might take a detour under Dodger Stadium (Source: The Eastsider LA)

The Eastsider LA: State bullet train might take a detour under Dodger Stadium

State bullet train might take a detour under Dodger Stadium

Thursday, April 29, 2010
State bullet train might take a detour under Dodger Stadium
The plans to build a high speed rail line near the Los Angeles River and through Cypress and Glassell Park has drawn opposition from river advocates, including Councilman Ed Reyes. So, after several years of lobbying federal officials and state railway builders, engineers involved in with the California High-Speed Rail Authority Line are looking at possibly shifting the rail line away from the river. Instead, after leaving Union Station, the train, under one scenario, would travel through a tunnel underneath the state parking now taking shape near Chinatown, Dodger Stadium and Elysian Park before emerging on the other side of the river, Reyes said today. "They are going to very careful how they come up the river way," Reyes said at a luncheon hosted by the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum. "At Union Station, they are going look at going underground ... under the Cornfield, under Dodger Stadium, under Elysian Park and pop up on the other side of the 2 Freeway or at Taylor Yard" near Cypress Park.



The tunnel proposal remains just that, and no decision has been made on what the final route will be. The council office itself has not decided whether it would support the new route under Elysian Park, said Jill Sourial, the council office's point person on Los Angeles River issues. Reyes just wanted other alternatives than the 100-foot-wide trenches and massive bridges the rail authority had been proposing, Sourial said. "Give us some reasonable alternative to just the straightest line between points A and B," she said.

Tunneling would be an expensive proposition, Sourial concedes. But the underground option might reduce the money the agency would have to spend on building at-grade crossings and neighborhood projects required to reduce the impact of an above surface line in the area. Sourial said she believes the agency is serious about studying a tunnel but a final set of alternatives won't be presented until a draft environmental report is presented.

Image from California High-Speed Rail Authority

Expo Line: LA Planning Yet to Get on Board (Source: CityWatch)

CityWatch - An insider look at City Hall

Expo Line: LA Planning Yet to Get on Board

MOVING LA
By Ken Alpern

Rightfully so, critics of mass transit repeatedly excoriate the lack of passenger destinations to encourage ridership in rail lines both in and out of LA County. After all, who would ever use a passenger rail line that fails to access key stops where commuters want to go? But there is such a number of potential destinations that it’s not just a matter of bringing a given rail line to these destinations…it’s a matter of encouraging these destinations to come to the rail line.

Fortunately, the first (Mid-City) phase of the Exposition Light Rail Line appears to be on its way to drawing local and regional Active Imagecommuters; whether or not the second (Westside) phase will follow suit is anyone’s guess. There’s no doubt that Staples Center, USC and the museums near Exposition Park will automatically provide key destinations for travelers to access. The Natural History Museum is creating a 3½ acre outdoor wilderness exhibit adjacent to the line that will provide a potential student field trip staple:[LINK]

Culver City is in the process of creating and re-creating the neighborhoods near the Expo Line to prepare for both the traffic and the economic potential that the Expo Line will offer when service opens either in late 2011 or in 2012. Santa Monica is pursuing the arduous path of doing the same for the Expo Line when it opens for service in that city in 2015-16.

As for Los Angeles, it’s no shock (although it’s a bit sad) to learn that it’s nowhere near to accommodating and preparing for the Expo Line as we see in Culver City and Santa Monica. The budgetary debacle has devastated the Planning Department’s ability to hammer down the West LA Community Plan with respect to zoning and transportation, but more importantly the routing issue that dogged the Expo Line for over 20 years prevented any significant focus on Planning as well.

We now know that the Expo Line has been approved for routing along the historic Right of Way from Palms to Rancho Park to Exposition/Sepulveda (crossing by Cheviot Hills). Although the line has been approved by the Expo Authority Board for at-grade (ground level) crossings at Overland Ave. and Westwood Blvd., it remains yet to be determined whether it will be elevated or at-grade at Sepulveda Blvd.

If the legal history of the Expo Line’s configuration near Dorsey High School is any indication of the future, then Westside legal challenges will keep all potential grade crossing alternatives possible regardless of any expert’s claim that he/she knows what will happen. Political compromises are made, learning curves go up, and court dramas go in places that no one can predict…but it does appear that the question of what path the Expo Line will take has been resolved.

Although there are those who believe that planning for all possibilities is akin to “giving in” to the opposition, the alternative paradigm of preparing for all contingencies now while we have some time to do so is another belief that is arguably more thoughtful and helpful for all parties interested in creating an Expo Line that fits into the communities it traverses…as well as creating a series of communities that fit the potential of the Expo Line.

In particular, what remains of Planning and the CD5 office/team of Paul Koretz must work together to have some sort of “game plan” for whether the Expo Line is elevated, ground level, or in a trench between Palms and West LA. What will we want with respect to zoning, green space, open space, tree planting/preservation and traffic/parking conditions on intersecting streets? Can there not be a master plan created for all three possibilities, once the legal and engineering challenges are concluded?

While there are those who hope to tie up the line in legal obstacles, it doesn’t appear likely that either the state or federal or county governments are much interested in stopping this line in some for—even if it means throwing some more money for betterments to this line—so that a three-alternative game plan can and should occur while the legal challenges and community input proceed. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Furthermore, the question of what will exist by the Exposition/Sepulveda and Olympic/Bundy stations is almost a blank slate at this point—Los Angeles is virtually a decade behind Culver City, who has been confronting this line for about that long, if one can actually comprehend that different approach. It must be reminded that it is NOT the responsibility of the Expo Line Authority to do the Planning for the cities and communities through which the rail line is to traverse…but the Authority is still forced to do SOMETHING.

Perhaps, then, it is understandable that (even if one wholly disagrees with) the decision made by the Expo Authority to go with a minimalist approach through West L.A. while it receives virtually no guidance or consensus from the City of Los Angeles on how the Expo Line should be configured along the Right of Way routing through West Los Angeles. The differing agendas of the various councilmembers on the Expo Authority Board have sent impossibly mixed messages to the Authority.

No one really has a clue of what can, will or should exist at Olympic/Bundy and Exposition/Sepulveda stations, but one can be certain that both the Bundy Village and Casden developers for those two station sites have a long way to go before a development plan can be created to satisfy the local residents, the political leadership and Los Angeles City Planning. At this immediate time, it must be concluded that the Bundy Village developers are more at loggerheads with the grassroots and political leadership that opposes them than the Casden developers, who have raised a few hackles among the neighbors but who are trying to compromise and mitigate with them as well.

As Angelenos, particularly those of us in the Westside, we can always just shrug our shoulders and say, “How could we plan for something that wasn’t yet determined?” Perhaps that was true in the past, but that excuse to bury our collective head in the sand can no longer pass muster.

The time MUST come, and probably starting this year as Preliminary Engineering efforts commence before the Design/Build phase of the Expo Line project, where the neighbors and the region focuses on:

1) Neighborhood preservation with respect to zoning and density

2) True transit-oriented development, not overdevelopment that will make car traffic worse

3) Affordable housing where appropriate, but not providing and excuse to build and develop out of control

4) Bicycle, bus, pedestrian and train commuter amenities that don’t overly hurt the quality of life of the car commuters who now and will still be the majority of those commuting through the region

5) Tree planting and greening the wide Right of Way between Sepulveda and Overland, as well as repairing and even improving the trees and sidewalks on Sepulveda, Westwood, Overland and other major streets to be intersected and impacted by the rail line

6) An Expo Bikeway that fits into major bicycle projects planned for Sepulveda and other major thoroughfares

7) Safety and security measures that make all Expo Line train stations into pleasant and safe places to go, and which become and remain good neighbors to the adjacent communities

The City of Los Angeles has the opportunity (if not responsibility) to create a pedestrian-friendly, bicycle-friendly, kid-friendly and business-friendly neighborhood from the freeway to Palms Park, from the Westside Pavilion Mall to National Blvd., and from Pico Blvd. to Palms. The ongoing legal battles need not prevent the community and L.A. City Planners from planning an improvement to the region and providing guidance to the Expo Line Authority.

… and it should be remembered that despite the passions of those who are concerned about the Expo Line (or any other rail line) reaching a sufficient number of quality destinations, we do have the opportunity to get those destinations to the Expo Line as well.

(Ken Alpern is a Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) and is both co-chair of the MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee and past co-chair of the MVCC Planning Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and also chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at Alpern@MarVista.org.This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.) -cw

An example of a high-speed rail system

Japan: The Model of a Train-Riding Experience

Posted on Monday May 3rd by Melissa Lafsky | 695

Nothing drives home the state of your home nation’s
infrastructure quite like examining another country’s. A few weeks ago,
we spent a week riding the Shinkansen around Japan to get a sense of
exactly how high speed rail works in one of the most modern,
comprehensive, and highly-trafficked systems in the world. With over 40
years in operation, and over 7 billion-passengers served, how is the
Shinkansen experience, from the moment you step on the platform to the
time you reach your destination? Here is an overview of what we
discovered.

Please click on link below for article

http://www.infrastructurist.com/galleries/album/72157623832868881/photo/4573007664/start.html

High-speed Rail Roundup

Link: Bullet train hits a new barrier » Ventura County Star

Bullet train hits a new barrier

* Posted May 2, 2010 at 3:17 p.m.

Leaders of California’s high-speed rail project tell us it’s on track and that the state’s residents can confidently look forward to a future of super fast bullet trains whisking them from one end of the state to the other at airline-like speeds.

However, the state auditor’s office is saying officially what outside analysts already had concluded — the bullet train isn’t ready to roll, lacking the tens of billions of dollars in federal and private financing the project will require.

California voters have approved a $9.95 billion bond issue, but it’s supposed to pay for no more than 50 percent of construction costs. With total estimates running beyond $40 billion, the bond would be good only for a quarter at most.

The High-Speed Rail Authority is hoping for a big wad of federal funds — about half the total — but so far has received just a fraction, with no commitments for any more.

However, the biggest unknown, as state Auditor Elaine Howe points out in a report issued Thursday, is whether private investors would be willing to commit at least $10 billion.

The enabling legislation says the bullet train will not have any state operating subsidies, but the authority’s own documents say that private investors need “revenue guarantees” to protect their investments. That raises the specter of operating subsidies, as another recent report by the Legislature’s budget analyst also points out.

“To plan adequately for private investment, the authority should further specify the potential cost of revenue guarantees and who would pay for them,” the auditor’s report recommends.

An indication that something’s amiss is found in the defensive reaction of Curt Pringle, the Rail Authority’s chairman, to the auditor’s report, calling its title “inflammatory” and “overly aggressive” and promising that the questions will be answered as the business plan is finally revised.

There is a fundamental conflict between voters being told that if they approved the bonds the bullet train would be self-supporting, without operating subsidies, and the apparent requirement for “revenue guarantees,” which probably could come only from tapping a state budget that’s already awash in red ink and/or imposing some new special tax.

The auditor’s report, coming just weeks after the legislative analyst’s report and a critique by the Senate Transportation Committee staff, indicates that specific route planning, now under way throughout the state, should be placed on hold until the financial kinks are worked out — if, indeed, they can be.

The danger — and perhaps the hope of the state’s bullet- train advocates — is that the rail authority will make so many commitments that the state will be politically compelled to pony up more money for construction and operation, regardless of financial viability.

Big public projects often become financial sinkholes via that process.

— Dan Walters writes for the Sacramento Bee. E-mail him at dwalters@sacbee.com.

Link: http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201005020176.html

High-level delegation pushes
Shinkansen in U.S.

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

2010/05/03

The government and a coalition of large companies have embarked on a
major lobbying effort to try to secure a large slice of U.S. high-speed
rail projects, totaling 14,000 kilometers, for Japanese industry.

With fierce competition expected from across the world, Seiji
Maehara, minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, led a
high-powered delegation to Washington last week.

He said the struggle for the multi-billion dollar contracts would be a
political as well as a business dogfight. "Unless the government and
industry work together in unity, even excellent technology will not be
adopted. It's a power game," Maehara told journalists in Washington on
Friday.

The delegation included three heavyweights from Japan's railway
industry: Yoshiyuki Kasai, chairman of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR
Tokai), Satoshi Seino, president of East Japan Railway Co. (JR East),
and Tadaharu Ohashi, chairman of Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd.

U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to provide $8 billion (750
billion yen) in subsidies to finance new high-speed railway track across
the country. Bidding for some of the lines is expected to start later
this year, and operations are expected to begin from the mid-2010s.

But decisions being reached now about the framework for the projects
could decide whether Japan plays a leading role in America's new railway
era, or is a bit part player.

Among the key issues being decided are the safety standards for the
new lines.

Among the biggest rivals of Japan's Shinkansen are France's TGV-POS
and Germany's ICE 3, which run at maximum operating speeds of 320
kilometers per hour, faster than the Shinkansen's 300 kph.

A major plus for the Shinkansen is its environmental friendliness.
The Shinkansen is half as heavy as the French and German trains and
therefore emits significantly less carbon dioxide.

But the reason for the Shinkansen's light weight is that it has been
designed with no consideration for accidents at crossings, because it
operates on its own dedicated lines. The French and German trains are
heavier because they are made to withstand such crashes. If the United
States adopts similar safety standards to those in Europe, the
Shinkansen bids may never get out of the sidings.

Meanwhile, a key strength of the Chinese and South Korean consortia,
backed by government affiliated financial institutions, is their solid
funding.

According to Sumitomo Corp., companies from France, Germany, Canada,
Spain, Italy, China and South Korea will bid for the U.S. orders. On the
Florida high-speed line alone, 22 companies are vying for the business.

Japan's sales pitch seems likely to stress a coordinated approach by
operators and manufacturers. Maehara repeatedly used the word "unity" at
Friday's news conference.

The delegation to Washington brought together the transport ministry,
JR firms, train manufacturers and trading companies. It represented the
culmination of two years of growing interest in the U.S. high-speed
rail project from Japanese companies.

Kawasaki Heavy Industries, which has provided trains to the United
States since the 1980s and operates two factories in the country, and
Mitsubishi Electric Corp., which makes train motors and has a plant in
central Mexico, are the leading lights among manufacturers.

Sumitomo Corp. and other trading firms have been bringing these
manufacturers and operators into bid teams and lobbying the U.S.
government and other organizations.

Among the train operators, JR Tokai has been particularly
enthusiastic. In January, Kasai announced that his firm would market its
conventional and maglev Shinkansen technologies to the United States.
Though JR Tokai projects steady profits from its Tokaido Shinkansen in
the future, the number of passengers is unlikely to grow.

The company intends to seek orders in the Florida railway line and
the Washington-Baltimore line.

JR East, meanwhile, is expected to focus on a California project and
the Chicago Hub Network project. It has stable operations in Japan and
had previously been cautious about expanding overseas, but Seino's
presence in the latest mission to the U.S. is a sign that the firm aims
at entering the U.S. market. The leading role now being played by the
government is a significant departure.

In March, Yoshito Sengoku, minister for national policy, announced
that the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, a public financial
institution, would extend loans for railway projects in developed
countries. The move will significantly strengthen Japanese firms' hand
in bid negotiations.