Palo Alto Again Calls For HSR Planning Delay
Palo Alto mayor Pat Burt is calling for a delay in the HSR planning process, in this case asking for double the amount of time currently planned to review the upcoming Alternatives Analysis for the Peninsula segment:
Mayor Pat Burt said the city council’s high-speed rail subcommittee this week decided to send a letter asking the authority to give the public 90 days to comment on an upcoming “alternatives analysis” document instead of 45. The document will form the basis for a required study of the rail line’s environmental impacts, showing where the trains might run above-ground and where tunnels could be used….
“We think we’re going to be having a need to have public outreach meetings, stakeholder meetings, technical analysis,” Burt said. “We’re engaging with a prominent firm to help us analyze (the plans) from an engineering standpoint. To do all those things, come back to the city council and get feedback and a formal endorsement, it takes a lot of time even when we’re moving quickly. Forty-five days just seems too little.”
Of course, Palo Alto has already been having these kind of public meetings, and the Alternatives Analysis reflects that public input. There have been preliminary meetings on the Alternatives Analysis draft already this month, so it’s not like anything’s going to be dropped onto these cities without warning or some advance discussion. 45 days is plenty of time to complete this process, especially if you schedule it properly – hold your public and stakeholder meetings the first week after the Analysis is released; have the city council meet to provide its initial assessment soon thereafter; get your spiffy engineering consultants cracking on this as soon as possible; collect all that into some proposed responses by day 30, have another public meeting, and have the council offer its proposals by day 45. It’s entirely doable, and there’s no need to take three months to go over the Alternatives Analysis.
I might be open to a 60 day period – another 15 days probably wouldn’t kill the Authority – but Palo Alto has to keep in mind that there are federal stimulus deadlines driving this, and that if HSR is to be able to make use of the $2.25 billion received from the feds on the condition that it be spent no later than September 2012, then everyone will have to work extra hard to ensure those deadlines are met. Surely Palo Alto is capable of that.
Of course, that assumes Palo Alto’s political leadership is interested in economic stimulus. Unfortunately it seems that Pat Burt feels quite satisfied with the state of the local economy, as he has called for missing the stimulus deadline on past occasions. It must be nice to not have to worry about job creation or long-term unemployment.
There is every reason to keep to the stimulus deadlines, and that means the public review process will have to be both thorough and efficient. A 45 day timeline should force Palo Alto to focus on the alternatives at hand, instead of wasting time with proposals that are simply not going to happen (such as moving the HSR trains to Highway 101, or the illegal proposal of ending the HSR system at San José). It will also finally force Palo Alto to have the discussion about how their desired tunnel would be funded, a discussion that so far they’ve not fully engaged.
Let’s be clear – Palo Alto and other cities along the route are going to have to make some important decisions in the coming weeks about how HSR should be implemented. They deserve to be allowed time to get that decision right – and they will be. But the rest of California also deserves to see this project built in a cost-effective and timely manner, and cannot wait while Palo Alto holds the process up, especially when the city government has in recent months been openly hostile to the HSR project. 45 days is a reasonable solution, as would 60 days. Palo Alto ought to make full use of it, instead of continuing to attack the CHSRA.
Poor planning by Palo Alto does not constitute an emergency for the CHSRA. They need to get their butts in gear and realize any expensive plans or modifications to the plan is going to cost dearly. That is the reason the Authority wants the planning all solidifed down now to reduce the chance of cost overruns. They have not come up with a fully studied proposal of their own and think the CHSRA should go along with them. If they paid their own dollars to study another alternative and brought it up, it would have been more than fine with me. However, they want the Authority to continue delaying in order to make the project look worse by the day. I say enough, they continue to bring obstacle upon obstacle against the project. Although the compromise Robert is proposing might give the authority an argument against Palo Alto and show the willingness to compromise.
Either way, can we get this railway built for pete sakes!
Does it really matter if this section misses the stimulus? There are plenty of projects that can be done before that deadline.
I’m just saying with this just being a “down payment”, SJ-SF doesn’t necessarily need to be done with stimulus money.
In any event, he is probally just stalling.
Peter Reply:
February 21st, 2010 at 2:01 pm
It would be nice to get some of the grade separation projects underway on Caltrain, or the electrification. But I agree, it’s not immediately necessary for this segment.
roxanne rorapaugh Reply:
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:09 am
Hi,
I don’t quit understand your question about whether it matters if we miss the stimulus money for this section.
Seems to me need to use stimulus money, for any necessary projects that qualify, as soon as we we can or it might not be available down the road. California is broke right now, but our population is still growing and we need to continue building our infrastructure. The stimulus money will provide jobs to state and help fund the project now, and people need these jobs and we need this built.
Number one NIMBY rule is to delay is to kill.
As last month in LA when Phase 2 Exposition LTR EIR to Santa Monica was approved: after 3 years of studies, refinements, meetings, and 15,000 pages of documents the opposition still cried that it was a shocking, incomplete, and flawed document that was being foisted on the community by surprise.
I would be loathe to give them 90 minutes.
Matthew F. Reply:
February 21st, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Exactly: Every year you can delay the start of a project is 4% by which they have to increase the cost. And then they can start shouting “Boondoggle”, when cost increases are the result of their own actions.
YesonHSR Reply:
February 21st, 2010 at 3:03 pm
NO more time than what is normal standards..there trying the “palo alto process here” NO not with HSR.
The Palo Alto City Council, and the neighborhood groups opposed to HSR, are making a big mistake. Although total funding for HSR is still an uncertainty, if the funding does come through, then it is inevitable that HSR will come through Palo Alto on the CalTrain route. So rather than trying to alter that fact, which is futile, Palo Alto ought to be working on the best way to accommodate HSR. This involves coming up with the best ideas for underpasses to allow cross streets to go under the tracks, or overpasses to allow cross streets to go over, or raised tracks in those locations, or some combination of these. Forget about tunnels or stacked tracks — too expensive. Rather, figure out how to minimize the “ugly” factor that at-grade or above-grade solutions would otherwise present. There are plenty of innovative ways to do this. Fortunately, the right of way is wide enough for most of Palo Alto that an ordinary at-grade solution, with under- or over-passes for cross streets, is perfectly feasible. That seems not to be the case for the areas around Churchill Ave. In that area, maybe as many as 25 properties will be impacted by eminent domain — perhaps just part of their back yards, perhaps more. They will be reasonably compensated and neither the city nor the neighborhood groups should act as their advocates. They will have their own lawyers and they will be unhappy but they will get their reasonable compensation. Above all else, the city should vigorously push to have Palo Alto be a regular stop for HSR. That way, the speed through Palo Alto will be less for the trains that stop here. And the benefit by way of realizing the long-sought vision of reconfiguring the downtown transportation center will be of tremendous value. It would be crazy to allow Redwood City or Mountain View to steal the stop away from Palo Alto. If the City Council allows that to happen, history will judge them harshly.
Time after time, additional allotment of time does not result in any more insightful comments. Additional time only makes folks feel better.
If more time is allotted, it should be decided in the 11th hour…, not up front.
delays
hey PA
In related news, a dog bit a man yesterday.
Did that just …
wtf
I found this YouTube channel yesterday about PA and Caltrain/HSR. The videos are well produced, but they are good about adding the subtle hint that only a tunnel will do. Needless to say, it does its job in promoting one dominant view held by the city and using the words of others to back it up (which I believe they call propaganda). http://www.youtube.com/user/HSRworkshop
Peter Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:22 am
Carrasco is creepy-looking.
And yes, they are subtly propagandizing the “tunnel is best” idea.
Missiondweller Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:32 am
They obviously want a tunnel or trench. I certainly understand that. But let them pay whatever the difference is as Berkeley did with BART. I think they probably have some sense this is true. Let’s hope so.
Excellent post Robert. If PA wants to stay in denial that HSR is coming they are only hurting themselves, but no single city should be able to slow down the overall project.
Does 90 days actually cause the project to miss stimulus deadlines?
I don’t like listening to the PA city council bloviate any more than anyone else, but 45 days seems awfully tight. You’re proposing a backasswards process where they get the bulk of their public comments together before their engineers have delivered their report. Why even hire the engineers under that scenario?
If their engineers do a thorough job, it will take several weeks at least before their report is complete. Unless the Authority can demonstrate that 90 days causes the project to miss the September 2012 deadline, I say give ‘em the 90 days.
Peter Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:43 am
I’m not sure if it alone would cause the project to miss any deadlines. But the cumulative effect of delays may cause the project to miss them. SF-SJ has already been put on notice that they’ve fallen well behind sections further south, like LAUS-ANA.
I can see giving them 90 days if this was the Final Draft EIR, but not for the ongoing alternatives analysis.
Peter Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:48 am
I think you mean for the Draft EIR. I don’t think there is a “Final Draft EIR”
EJ Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 11:55 am
The alternatives analysis is more complex from their point of view, as it’s driving the actual design choices. The final EIR is just a matter of ratifying that the environmental effects of whatever the final design decision is have been correctly quantified.