‘How Could They Be So Far Off?’: Doug LaMalfa Grills Witness On High-Speed Rail In California

3 months ago

During a House Transportation Committee hearing earlier this month, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) questioned witnesses about the California High-Speed Rail Project.

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Transcript

00:00The gentleman yields and I'll recognize Mr. LaMalfa for five minutes.

00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In my home state of California, I'll direct this to Mr. Gardner,

00:13our high-speed rail project went from a projected ballot item that told the taxpayers it would be

00:19a $33 billion project to go from SF to LA and be completed by the year 2020.

00:26And a good portion of that, above the $9 billion bond portion that the voters voted on,

00:34the rest would be from private investments, you know, attracting private investments.

00:39So, so far the private investors have stayed away in droves. The $9 billion has been burned up

00:48and the projected cost is instead of $33 billion is at least $128 billion.

00:54And there hasn't been a mile of actual track laid yet, other than some of the roadbed that

01:01has been put down and some of the bridges. They also at the time claimed that there'd be a million

01:05jobs up until, you know, a couple of years after the ballot measure. Then they finally had to admit

01:11a million job years, which at the present number they tout of 13,000 workers. The math I did would

01:20say if you have a million job years divided by 13,000 workers, that'll take 76 years to build

01:26the project, which they're right on track for that at this point here. So this would be at least 2030

01:32something before they get one of these segments done. So, Mr. Gardner, how could they be so far

01:41off on an initial business plan that they told the voters, the taxpayers, in 2008,

01:49to what we have now, where there's nowhere near $128 billion. They might be able to put their

01:55hands on $20 billion when they do carbon taxing and they just filched another $3 billion out of

02:02the federal government here recently. So, you know, when they're $100 billion short, where are

02:07they going to get that? And how could they be so far off on a plan? They didn't even have the route

02:11figured out before they put this in front of the voters.

02:17Well, Congressman, certainly Amtrak, as you know, has not been involved in the high-speed

02:23project directly or its original development. We are supportive of advancing high-speed,

02:30and similar to Congressman Walton's point, we think there is a real role for high-speed

02:36in various markets in the United States, and California certainly has incredible markets

02:40and huge demand and real challenges in terms of mobility. But I think the main issue,

02:45and something we've learned, and an issue that's also faced Amtrak, is that quite often,

02:50because there hasn't been the apparatus to fund or develop early planning phases for good ideas,

02:56when folks are trying to sort of develop concepts for these systems, which I think could create a

03:03lot of value, they're doing so before we've gone through the standard preliminary engineering

03:09design, NEPA processes, that really do set the envelope of cost and schedule.

03:14What did you just say for the last 40 seconds there? What did you just actually say right then?

03:19So that one of the challenges when doing big projects is the amount of planning and the

03:26time for planning to get the project developed. And so what happened in California is really,

03:33I think the California high-speed team could explain the process, but I would say that

03:38for any project to really, a big project, to be something that folks can understand in terms of

03:42estimating cost and time, you've got to go through this environmental process, and the environmental

03:47process and the planning process are really what set out the possible envelope. So you ask me what

03:53happened from their initial estimates to now, it's that process. If you have an idea how a plan could

03:57be that far off, and we have bigger plans going forward. Let me talk about a more local one.

04:03Dunsmuir, California, up in my district, used to have a twice a day connection there.

04:10During the pandemic, as they call it, it was all halted. So now there's only one a day.

04:15You have to catch it around somewhere between 1 a.m. or 4 a.m. depending. So the local economy,

04:20and this is just one typical rural town, that rural areas are some of the least utilized service

04:26routes, and they have much more interruptions. So with Amtrak setting forward to do very optimistic

04:35work, how are we going to see that the rural areas are going to have any share of this that's

04:41going to be significant instead of being the tail end of the whole system? Well, Congressman,

04:49we've got our Coast Starlight service serving Dunsmuir and the other several stops in your

04:57district, and there is also supplemental bus service that serves some of the stations, Chico

05:06and I think up to Redding as well. That's funded by the state of California in partnership with

05:15Amtrak, the connecting bus service. So I think maybe the change in service is the bus service

05:20levels, but we believe, as you heard from our chairman, in investing in this national network.

05:26Right now, the big changes that are happening are new fleet coming to better serve communities like

05:31Dunsmuir and investments across all the stations so that we have accessible stations and also

05:37stations that are ready. Thank you. I have to cut you off there due to time, but new fleet isn't

05:42going to change the fact that there's no trains running through there and that we don't have the

05:51model be successful out there with passenger rail. It seems the freight has to somehow keep

05:57railroads in business. So with that, I'm way through time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll yield back.

‘How Could They Be So Far Off?’: Doug LaMalfa Grills Witness On High-Speed Rail In California

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