Mook and Dragoman are the two who pass the Transportation 1 Planning Class. The system must be able to walk "and" chew gum at the same time.

HSR that isn't part of a comprehensive passenger rail system, and that doesn't serve those local markets is useless in California, and will fail both economically, and in serving the taxpayers paying for it, with a good transportation alternative. The stand alone market between SFO and LA is insufficient, has the most significant alternative aviation competition. The mismanaged CHSRA have failed to do competent planning and are again wasting your taxpayer monies on a third "business plan" since the previous ones have been found to be so incompetent.

The systems in Europe offer fully integrate local, express, and non-stop service like we once did in America, often using shared segments, as well as exclusive high speed segments. Yes, Virginia, with a properly planned and designed rail system you can operate local, express, and non stop service on the same system. We just don't appear to have anyone that competent in charge of CHSRA or the Caltrans Rail Programs, and thus no proper coordination or planning.

In Europe all of these high speed and very high speed lines operate as part of a totally integrated rail passenger system, not a seperate unique stand alone component. Most leave the urban areas at "lower" speeds on existing shared right of way, since such construction of new route in urban centers would have bankrupted these projects before they even started. Integration in Spain is so complete that they have dual guage high speed trains to allow branching onto the wide guage network.

These systems typically have "tres gran vitesse"="very high speed" segments built out through rural areas, where costs are much lower to construct. All of the European systems provide for the ability to branch off of the high speed segments to serve cities on the the "legacy" system links. Paris to Brittany is a great example of that type of multiple service multipe branch integrated system approach.

Only in America-or maybe just dysfunctional Kallyfornia can a group of incompetent political hacks like Morshed, Kopp, and Pringle come up with such a half assed process as we have had here with the CHSRA. It is a project apparently only primarily concerned with political gold plating and contract steering on a truly massive scale.

There is a move afoot to remove some of these incompetents, without a major scandal or too much publicity, which might jeopardize our chances for Federal funds. I spoke with at one CEO at a local agency at the Assembly hearings on transit funding this week, and they are now committing more local resources to getting adult supervision over this project.

The article this week by Senator Lowenthal on the incompetence shown by the Governor's office on the priorities for the ARRA FRA applications is an example of the lack oversight of the runaway money train, and a lack of coherent planning by either Caltrans or the CHSRA.

This system could be very successful, but the CHSRA needs significant reform and housecleaning before they really start wasting taxpayer money. The incompetence you've seen in public on this is only the tip of the iceberg.