Bad land deals add to bullet train’s woes

LOS ANGELES — California’s bullet train project confronts an array of political and financial challenges, but its biggest problem involves mismanagement of land acquisitions, which has contributed to construction delays, cost increases, litigation and a federal audit.

Seven years after its land buying program began, the California HighSpeed Rail Authority has yet to acquire hundreds of parcels, even though the state has the power to condemn property in the way of its future tracks.

At the same time, the rail authority has become landlord to surplus acreage that serves no purpose in furthering highspeed rail but still must be managed by the state. It owns toxic waste sites, vacant lots and rental homes.

The California HighSpeed Rail Authority is now a player in the agriculture industry with at least 466 acres of land under cultivation, a side effect of having to purchase entire fields just to acquire a corner for the rail route.

Even while it has fallen behind schedule in buying property for its future tracks, rail authority managers have underestimated the footprint they need to relocate utilities — including gas transmission pipes, communication cables, electrical wires, water mains and sewers — that sit in the route of the bullet train.

The issue again came up at a meeting in Fresno last month when project staff told visiting senior officials the most recent bad news: The agency will have to acquire rights to as many as 468 additional parcels for utility relocations either through outright purchases, easements or encroachments.

Such miscalculations vex many rail authority employees.

“We are encountering gut-wrenching delays,” said one key manager with an extensive background in civil infrastructure projects. “Nowhere have I ever worked where I had to keep going back to the same owners for more land.”

Another middle manager said more delays are inevitable, lamenting, “I am going to ride this train, but I am afraid it is going to be my ashes in an urn. I told my kids to take my ashes on the bullet train.”

The new land requirements complicate efforts by rail authority leaders to turn around years of delays, cost overruns and technical problems that are threatening political support for the project. The need for the additional parcels is coming as legislators, frustrated by a decade of slow progress, are considering shifting some of the bullet train funding from the Central Valley to project segments in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Brian Kelly, rail authority chief executive, who returned from a prolonged illness in June, supports keeping the funding in the Central Valley and is building a new management team that, he says, will turn around the problems.

Recently, the authority removed or fired several key managers, including its property chief Kristina Assouri, an employee of consultant WSP. Roy Hill, head of the WSP operation at the authority, is on suspension pending a state ethics investigation. Contracts manager William Grimsley, who oversaw the WSP contract, was pushed out in recent weeks.

“In all, we are seeing the fruits of a lot of effort and hard work across the board by our team,” the rail authority said in a statement. It added that the authority is now transitioning “into a mature organization with the staff, consultants and policies and procedures in place to get the job done when it comes to right of way acquisition.”

Some in the guts of the organization remain skeptical.

“The authority is as broken as it ever has been,” one manager said. “The top officials just bark orders, but nobody follows orders here. Nothing is working.”

Along with needing more land for utility relocations, the rail authority is also short on property it needs for the train’s right of way. So far, it has yet to secure roughly one-sixth of the 1,859 parcels it needs for the 119 miles between Madera and Wasco.