California High Speed Rail - A Far Too Reasonable Proposal

The California High Speed Rail Project (official site, wikipedia) proposes to link San Francisco and Sacramento, via the Central Valley, to Los Angeles and San Diego.  But they are getting a lot of grief from cities along the San Francisco Peninsula, who don't want ugly, noisy, perhaps elevated tracks through their downtowns .  Tunnels are not currently on the proposals, due to cost.  You'll find lots of link with a Google search, here's one (see pages 20-29).  The cities dislike the proposal so much that they are suing.  Menlo Park is suing for the second time!

In an ideal, well-planned world, carrying the line the whole way to SF would be good.  But, in the real, poorly-planned world, does it really makes sense to waste years on lawsuits, impact statements and permits, then spend billions of dollars on construction through some of the priciest land in the country?  No.  Terminate the high-speed line in San Jose, not San Francisco.  That will easily save several billion, probably tens of billions.

Use some of that saved money to "spruce up" and electrify Caltrain, which is desperately needed for its survival, and estimated at less than a billion.  Use some of the saved money to accelerate the BART extension from Fremont to San Jose.

How much will this impact San Franciscans who want to take the train to L.A?  They will need an extra transfer, which is annoying and wastes some time - say 10 or 15 minutes with good scheduling.  The train ride will be slower.  Caltrain "baby bullet" trains take an hour to run from SF to SJ.  But electrification is thought to save 10 minutes or so from that.  BART takes 50 minute to run from downtown SF to Fremont. So getting to San Jose is probably a bit over an hour.  However, there are many BART stations in San Francisco, so for most people, they are much more convenient than getting to the train station which is at 4th and King on the far east side of town.  Bottom Line: Caltrain, with a transfer, is slightly over an hour, BART is more convenient for most but would take more like an hour and a half.

How long would a "High Speed" rail trip take?  Though the trains may be capable of a couple of hundred miles and hour, the actual speed along the Peninsula would be limited to around 90 MPH.  The distance as the crow flies is 42 miles,  Let's say half an hour.  But there are possible stops planned for SFO, Redwood City and/or Palo Alto.  With those, we're talking more like 40 minutes.

The net benefit of high speed rail along the Peninsula is small.  For San Franciscans using the downtown train station, they'd save about 20 minutes.  San Franciscans who live near BART and far from 4th and King could well save time by taking BART.

My proposal saves California taxpayers billions of dollars in money, and years in costly construction delays.  Plus, we get BART to San Jose, truly circling the Bay, and save and enhance Caltrain.

To the politicians and special interests in California - can you put reason and logic first?

Paul Krugman Deliberately Misleads, Again

In today's editorial, Paul Krugman lashes out at NJ Governor Chris Christie for cancelling a 8.7 billion dollar tunnel project.  The project sounds like a good idea, and much of the money is coming from the Feds, (only three billion from NJ) so, if you just read his editorial, the project does sound completely rational.  What is this irrational, "destructive", and "incredibly foolish" Christie up to anyway?


A trivial Google search (I typed in "christie tunnel hudson river") reveals something that Krugman somehow fails to mention: The project is facing potential cost overruns of up to 5 Billion Dollars, all of which would be paid by the State of NJ.  The very first hit is entitled "NJ governor kills Hudson River tunnel due to costs".  Am I to believe that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman didn't know that?  Or is it more likely that he deliberately intended to mislead his readers?


Another article states that the project may still move forward.

Christie and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will meet today “to discuss a path forward on the ARC tunnel project"

Presumably, Christie will seek a deal where the Feds will help pay for some of the overruns.  Suddenly, Christie is the one who seems eminently rational, not the misleading Krugman.

I'm not getting excited about the Giants this year

Even though they are a good team making a great playoff run, I'm finding it difficult to get too enthused.  Why?  Most of their hitters aren't "real" Giants, who have come up from the minors and you've been able to follow as they develop.  Few of them have played even a year for the team.  I'm not feeling a "connection".

Check out their roster.  Or, even better, the box score from tonight's game.

Cody Ross joined the Giants August 22nd.  One month ago.
Freddy Sanchez joined them late 2009.  So he's been here roughly a year.
Aubrey Huff joined the beginning of 2010
Buster Posey is a real Giant.  Hooray!
Pat Burrell joined the middle of 2010
Jose Guillen joined the Giants the middle of August of this year.
Pablo Sandoval is a real Giant.  (Except he's awful right now)
Juan Uribe is an "old-timer", he's been with the Giants now for two years, even if he didn't come up through their minor-league system.

So, of their eight starting fielders, only two came up through the Giant's minor-league.  Of the others, only one has been for the team much longer than a year.


Now, I enjoy following the Giant's pitchers, cause, for the most part, I've been able to follow their development, their struggles and their successes.  For example, I feel some pride and joy seeing Jonathan Sanchez harness his talent to achieve well-deserved success, since I've also seen him struggle.  There's a connection there.  But I could care less how Jose Guillen or Mike Fontenot does.

I'd like to see them make the playoffs, but I won't be rooting as hard as usual.

The Strange World of Chess Politics steps into the Ground-Zero Mosque Quagmire

The World Chess Federation (FIDE) has offered to buy the site.

It's almost certainly a publicity stunt for the incumbent president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who was once abducted by aliens and is currently in a tight election contest with former world champion Anatoly Karpov.

Organized chess is really strange.

Is Jerry Brown a Tea Partier?

California Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown (democrat)  has his first radio ad.




At the end, he says

"We have to start living within our means,
We need to return power and decision making to the local level, closer to the people,
and no new taxes without voter approval."

Hmm, Sarah Palin and Brown in 2012?

Phil Cuzzi is an awful umpire

At least today.  I'm a SF Giants fan watching the Giants/Padres game today, and Cuzzi, the home plate umpire has made repeated bad ball and strike calls, all favoring the Giants.  A clear strike on Huff was called a ball (the catcher did catch it funny), Huff ended up on base instead of the 3rd out, and Posey hit a dinger.  Two runs for SF.   The same pitch, or worse, was repeatedly called a strike when a Padre was batting.

When Chase Headley was batting, he raised his arms as if to call time-out, then let the pitch happen and called Headly out on strikes.

Here's predicting some Padres get ejected by the end of the game.

Just think, if I were a Padres fan, I'd notice even more.

Two recent NY Times Editorials of interest

David Brooks writes about one possible cause of the American decline. 

"the U.S. has drifted away from the hardheaded practical mentality that built the nation’s wealth in the first place.

The shift is evident at all levels of society. First, the elites. America’s brightest minds have been abandoning industry and technical enterprise in favor of more prestigious but less productive fields like law, finance, consulting and nonprofit activism."

He's at least partially correct.  Since we are unlikely to stop buying foreign oil and cheap Chinese manufactures, we need to export something back.  If it's natural resources, we act like a colony, and our current strategy of producing and exporting treasury bonds is unsustainable.  We must continue to have sharp minds producing valuable technical manufactures for export to remain a strong and prosperous society.

Thomas Friedman writes a column with similar thoughts.  He largely cites a column by Robert Samuelson, which bemoans that students aren't motivated to do the hard work.

"Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a "good" college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure."

to which Friedman adds

"We had a values breakdown — a national epidemic of get-rich-quickism and something-for-nothingism."

A good friend who teaches high-school says the same thing - the bailouts have been bad for student motivation.


I remember a recent TV ad for an on-line high school.  Some of the supposed benefits were that you got to take courses at your own pace and take tests at your own time.  For some students, this is a benefit.  But, the real lessons of high school are not that the square of the hypotenuse is the sum of the squares of the other two sides, nor that Jane Austen wrote a bunch of good books.  The real lessons are the world does not exist for the benefit of the students, and sometimes you have to take tests on somebody else's schedule.