Hushing up concerns of bullet-train workers? Not a great look for state rail authority

Serious allegations raised this week by former workers on California’s high-speed-rail project would, if true, support charges by conservative critics that the effort is deeply flawed.

According to a Los Angeles Times story, several former employees in the lead contractor’s engineering and planning ranks in the Fresno office said they were discouraged by their bosses from raising critical questions or “bad news.”

One former employee went so far as to say that his firm, WSP, altered staff reports to make construction progress on the mammoth project look better than it really was, the Times reports.

WSP is the bullet train’s lead consultant. A spokeswoman for the company told the Times that the claims were baseless, and that the company works closely with the California High-Speed Rail Authority and gives the agency “realistic and transparent” information.

Behind the scenes, however, was an office climate in which employees were expected to toe the line and “shut up” if problems were about to be raised, a career construction manager told the Times.

The newspaper said that employee’s story was backed up by a half dozen current or former senior-level officials familiar with the project’s office in Fresno.

First segment

The charges come at a time when the authority is building out the first operational part of the project, which would go from Merced to Bakersfield.

Under the revised business plan issued last month, that segment would become operational in 2028-29 at a cost of $17.2 billion.

Having the initial trains run from Merced to Bakersfield was not in the original concept; high-speed rail is supposed to link Southern California to the Bay Area by way of the San Joaquin Valley. But Gov. Newsom in his 2019 State of the State speech said the most realistic first segment for trains would be from Merced to Bakersfield. Passengers could connect at either city to other services to get to the metropolitan centers. Building out the rail network would come once the authority shows it can operate the initial line.

Conservative shots

When the updated business plan came out, familiar criticism was leveled by Fresno Assemblyman Jim Patterson, a Republican who has long seen high-speed rail as a boondoggle.

“The 2020 business plan is yet another make-believe document, like all the others before it,” he told Bee staff writer Tim Sheehan. ““It’s become a pathetic fight for the scraps of a failing project.”

Authority leaders remain committed to delivering an all-electric train that will zoom passengers to their destinations and be a first for California. All of their plans and decision making has been either reported to the Legislature or put into public view in reports on the authority website, they say.

And authority CEO Brian Kelly, who took over two years ago, has remade middle management and vowed to improve transparency.

This latest revelation does not doom the project. But it speaks to dysfunction that, if left unchecked, will remain a severe drag on the construction process.

The authority must assure Californians that it is indeed keeping the contractors honest. Those builders, in turn, must have senior managers willing to hear challenges to their assumptions from lower-ranking staff.

Any major public works project is going to have difficulties. Covering them up and silencing any whose intentions are honest only harms the project. The taxpayers deserve better.