Palo Alto and four other cities have called on the California High-Speed Rail Authority to review allegedly unreasonable ridership projections for the proposed line.

The cities of Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame and Belmont, which comprise the Peninsula Cities Consortium, claim that the estimates were made hurriedly in an attempt to begin construction on the San Francisco-to-San Jose line by September 2012. Meeting this deadline could qualify the high-speed rail project for up to $17 billion in federal stimulus grants, though only $2.25 billion has been committed.

If the current ridership model is used for decision-making, the consortium argues, the system put in place will be a broken one. Though federal funding, if granted, will help complete the $43 billion project, the cities are calling for better planning to ensure the system’s viability.

“The project is suffering from an enormous credibility problem, due to its widely criticized business plan, faulty ridership numbers and the absence of funding to carry out the project statewide,” said Rich Cline, chair of the consortium and mayor of Menlo Park, to Palo Alto Online.

The consortium’s outcry was prompted by a report produced by the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC-Berkeley. It claimed that the projections, which asserted that the project would be financially self-sustaining, were flawed.

Earlier this year, similar claims were made by watchdog group Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design, based in Palo Alto.

The line in question will run from San Francisco to San Jose, with a Redwood City/Palo Alto station a few miles from Stanford. With Proposition 1A in 2008, California approved $9.95 billion for the line and similar projects, but much of the funding has yet to be received.

—  Joseph Beyda