Burbank Proposes Putting Their HSR Stop at Burbank Airport
Earlier this month we reported on the debate in Burbank over where to locate an HSR station. At the time it looked like a station in or very near downtown would be chosen.
But this week we learned that Burbank is now proposing putting the station at Burbank Airport:
Officials in Burbank are pushing the developers of a high-speed rail line to add a stop at Bob Hope Airport.
City officials have proposed the stop be located near the intersection of Hollywood Way and San Fernando Road.
Representatives of the California High-Speed Rail Authority had planned to present two station alternatives to their board of directors as soon as May 6 in San Jose. But the Burbank City Council last week called on the representatives to consider as part of their environmental study a stop near Bob Hope Airport, arguing that a proposed $120-million regional transportation center there should not be isolated from high-speed trains.
As you can see on the map below, this would not be a downtown station (the airport station is in green, the other two proposed stations are in yellow):
View Burbank HSR in a larger map
It’s an interesting idea. But some questions come to mind:
1. Is it better to have a station near downtown Burbank or near Burbank Airport? Downtown Burbank has some density, and could have more in the future, but is it a more compelling source of riders than the nearby airport? Is it worth moving the station nearer the airport at the expense of downtown?
2. Is Burbank Airport equipped to handle the ridership that HSR might bring? Burbank is already a popular option for people flying to points in downtown LA and nearby areas, as it’s easier to get there from Burbank than LAX. HSR service would be a huge advantage for Burbank, as LAX can never hope to have service to downtown LA as fast as an HSR link from Burbank. But Burbank isn’t a large airport and may not be able to handle a big increase in passengers. Then again, if HSR succeeds in grabbing most of the market share of the LA-SF corridor, then that would free some space at Burbank.
3. What happens to connections to Metrolink and Amtrak? Since the Burbank station is so close to Union Station, this might not be as big an issue. It would mean that people wanting to get to HSR from points westward on Metrolink (currently as far as Moorpark) and Amtrak (as far as Santa Barbara, maybe even San Luis Obispo) would have to go all the way to Union Station to transfer to a northbound HSR train.
Burbank’s airport HSR station proposal is new, and so they may not be in a position to answer these questions. But those are the first ones that come to my mind about this.
It looks like it could make sense.
I wonder if it would work to run the line along the yellow metrolink line to Burbank airport, and then north along the east edge of the airport back to the original alignment. That way you’d get a station right next to the terminal, and close to the metrolink/amtrak station. Better yet, run the HSR parallel to runway 33. That would reduce the corner quite a bit and reduce the length penalty.
Another issue for Burbank is that HSR will compete with at least the Northern California traffic to the airport. An HSR station in an airport makes the most sense at an international or regional hub airport like LAX.
BruceMcF Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 9:39 am
HSR competes with that traffic wherever it is located in Burbank. From the perspective of the airport, locating it at the airport would generate substitute business to compensate.
From the perspective of TOD, it would only seem to works if this is a cross platform transfer to a train running through multiple downtown Burbank stops … that is, trading off weaker TOD impact per station for a greater total area at a given effective pedestrian distance from the HSR station.
If its a terminal station which brings Bob Hope Amtrak and Bob Hope Metrolink both into the terminal as well, that would be very interesting, indeed.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 10:29 am
It’s not a terminal station. The terminal station is on the other side of the airport, about 3 km west of the Ventura County/Antelope Valley split.
BruceMcF Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
How could an airport terminal station be that far from the airport terminal?
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
The proposed HSR station isn’t an airport terminal station.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
… you do intend “the railroad station that serves the airline terminals”….
The current railroad station is relatively close to the airline terminals. All of them are on the south side of the airport. That railroad heads west from Burbank. HSR will be using another line, one that heads north. That line is on the northeast side of the airport, across the runway from the airline terminals, where no station currently exists.
BruceMcF Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 8:47 am
No, I intend “a station that is connected directly to a terminal”, like MARTA in Atlanta, or the subway Cityrail stations underneath the international and domestic terminals in Sydney. IOW, the specific type of airport station that acts like its inside the terminal.
If they move the terminal to that empty lot facing N Hollywood between Tulare Ave and Winona Ave, then the transport challenge becomes how to locate the Metrolink airport station at the same site.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 2:39 pm
It’s okay to have two airport stations, as long as they’re connected by people mover. Of course, the problem is then that people movers are expensive, and for the same cost they could do something useful for Downtown Burbank like extend the Orange Line…
You mean there is actually a \downtown Burbank\?! I thought it was only a Johnny Carson joke.
I guess Burbank knows more about their needs than I do, but what happens when they put the station in the vicinity of the airport and no one shows up? They’ll be sorry they didn’t put the station in “downtown.”
I say expand the FlyAway program rather than bending over backwards to serve airports with HSR. HSR needs to connect with local transit first and foremost.
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 4:59 pm
The station belongs in downtown Burbank. If there is to be a station *at all*. The Burbank airport is well served by Metrolink, and expansion of that service makes much more sense than moving the HSR station to the airport. (Unless Burbank really thinks a lot of people are going to fly into Burbank airport and then catch a train going NORTH. I suppose it is a remote possibility but I’d like to see the studies to prove it, if that’s really what they’re going on.)
This is really off topic but Randall O’Toole of the Cato Institute has written an article in the Wall Street Journal in which he blasts high speed rail. The article is in the leisure section and is under the heading of driverless cars. You need to read through most of the article to get to the section on public transit. The article came out about 4 hours ago.
Spokker Reply:
March 19th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
A Randall O’Toole article was posted four hours ago?! I’m dropping everything to go read it! Thank you! I don’t want to miss this!
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Ah, more proof that the Wall Street Journal is not a legitimate newspaper. We already knew that Cato was not a legitimate libertarian organization, and that O’Toole was just an anti-rail fanatic.
As for driverless cars, they’ve been “a few years in the future” for about 100 years, and will be forever. Computer pattern-matching for collision avoidance at grade is an unsolvable problem.
The proposed station is on the opposite side of the airport from the terminals. They talk about turning it into a transit hub, but there’s something that doesn’t add up about this configuration.
BruceMcF Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Ideally its in the airport terminal and brings a cross platform connection to Amtrak and Metrolink. Second best, it has a cross platform connection to Amtrak and Metrolink and brings a people mover to the terminal. Third best … I don’t think there is a third best, just plan A and plan B, and they could well be starting with plan C.
BruceMcF Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
That is, the Metrolink and Amtrak are presently much closer to the terminals than San Fernando Blvd, so unless the idea is to make it a major bus hub and have a 1.25mile people move down N. Hollywood Way, then to Terminal A, Terminal B, Bob Hope Amtrak, and ending at Bob Hope Metrolink … I don’t see what they are thinking.
Who owns that block facing N. Hollywood between Tulare Ave. and Winona Ave? They’d be big beneficiaries of any people mover between San Fernando / N. Hollywood and the airport terminals, if a stop was added halfway between the supposed transit hub and Terminal A.
Well, if they extend mta metro from north hollywood to bob hope, then that would make it a lot easier for me to get off hsr at BUR and take the subway to h’wood proper without having to ride all the into dowtown LA, then all the way back north on the red line to highland.
Joey Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 1:01 am
Unless the subway stop is on the opposite side of the airport…
Roger Christensen Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 1:12 am
Actually there have been proposals for Metro to expand the Red Line north to the Burbank Airport Metrolink station from NoHo – a great link into Hollywood area. It appears on an unfunded list in the Long Range Plan and didn’t make it unto Measure R.
Don’t know what my own preference here. Perhaps the Red Line should continue east to a downtown Burbank adjacent HSR station. Metro and the CHSR planners should confer on this.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 1:20 am
For a start, the Orange Line has a natural corridor east to Burbank Station. But that extension didn’t make the 10/30 plan; only extensions further out did. In fact, 30/10 includes zero projects adding access to the HSR stations. The Green Line to Norwalk Station didn’t make it, the Regional Connector purposely misses an extra connection that would allow nicer transfers to LAUS, and Burbank Station doesn’t get anything.
Roger Christensen Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 7:53 am
Palo Alto syndrome here.
East of NoHo Red Line the Orange/exSP ROW narrows to 50ft and Metro shares ownership with nimbyesque City of Burbank.
The City of Norwalk has long vowed “no extension to Norwalk rail hub unless it’s in a tunnel” thus keeping Green Line extension planning on the West end.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Palo Alto is vowing the same “no HSR unless it’s in a tunnel” opposition. What you’re telling me is that CHSRA is capable of pushing through an el in Palo Alto but not of building at-grade light rail in Norwalk.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Um HSR is a state wide project. A few NIMBY’s in Palo Alto have much less influence on the state than the same amount of NIMBYs would have on a local transit authority. . . they don’t want light rail, let ‘em sit in traffic while breathing bus exhaust and burning 6 dollar a gallon gas.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Light rail connections to the stations could be sold as part of the $950 million in 1A for connecting local transit.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
$950 million will buy you less than 10 miles of “light” rail, state-wide, at going Californian (“maximize construction price, all else be damned”) prices, even if all the connecting pork hadn’t been divved up and spoken for long ago.
There’s really no hope as long as dimwits keep forking over whatever is asked for anything that is labelled as “transit” because, like, um, peak oil, and GM killed streetcars, and it’s cheaper than the Iraq War, and stuff. Until projects get canned for busting budgets and for having budgets which are completely out of line with both global peers and with expected benefits, we’re going to keep failing at immense expense over and over and over again.
jimsf Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 11:27 am
I wonder if, when say caltrain buys an emu fleet, if they would sell or lease their existing fleet to another agency such as metro link to save everyone money. And what does bart do with the 800 or so old a,b and c cars when they buy this new fleet? Do they sell em?
Alon Levy Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 2:37 pm
BART can’t sell because of the locally unique track gauge.
But yes, I believe the Caltrain plan is to sell to Metrolink, or another diesel-only agency.
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Well, honestly, if the Iraq war can’t get cancelled for busting budgets, this country’s government really is doomed for the forseeable future — transit is the least of our problems.
Peter Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Metrolink won’t want Caltrain equipment, they’re getting their own new fleet upgrade with Hyundai Rotem CEM vehicles.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Nathanael, could you name a single war in human history that got canceled because it ran over budget?
Domestic projects are different. The people running them don’t start coups d’état when they feel ignored.
Elizabeth Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 7:54 am
The $950 million is more or less already spoken for. It is going by a formula, carefully calculated, to give specific transit agencies a given amount of money based on current ridership and, based on initial applications, will generally go for projects that don’t really do much for connectivity. While connectivity is an allowable use of the money, the legislation explicitly says that you don’t have to use it for connectivity (updating cars is okay, for instance). BART gets the biggest bite.
jimsf Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 9:47 am
Bart is getting a desperately needed new fleet.
Peter Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 10:59 am
Which kind of makes sense, given the size of their fleet and ridership, that they would get the biggest bite.
Btw, where is the money for Metrolink’s fleet upgrade coming from?
AndyDuncan Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
The HSR station might not be at norwalk, so that’s not necessarily as big of a loss for HSR ridership as it might seem, especially given the fact that the green line is such a poorly located line as it is. Without HSR at Norwalk, there’s not much push to extend it to the metrolink station.
The three single biggest projects for increasing HSR ridership are also the three projects on the plan that have the highest ridership potential: The purple line, the expo line and the downtown connector.
The purple line and the expo line are no-brainers and will hugely expand the rail connections to LAUS.
The downtown connector isn’t as screwed up as you might think it is, sure they should have found a way to put the wye at LAUS, but where? They’re still figuring out exactly what the configuration will be, and what service patterns they actually run will determine how the east side is connected, but both the blue line and the expo line will have 1-seat rides to LAUS.
As for the Orange line, I don’t see any reason whatsoever for making that line any longer while keeping it as a bus service. They’re already hitting capacity constraints on their BRT as it is, where do they expect these new riders to sit? That line needs to be converted to LRT or subway. The fact that people are packing the busses should be a good enough indication of potential ridership.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
They’re already making the Orange Line longer – they’re extending it further west.
The downtown connector could have been planned to have a transfer closer to LAUS. Whenever I mention that, the universal reaction among the just-draw-the-lines set is that there’s already a transfer at Metro Center, so it’s okay to run the connector to intersect the Red Line closer to LAUS without a transfer. The one-seat ride is irrelevant, since much of it involves running through Little Tokyo in streetcar mode.
AndyDuncan Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 11:23 am
I know they’re making the orange line longer, I don’t approve of that or the downtown burbank extension, though the burbank extension would probably work better as most people get off at the north hollywood red line stop, freeing up at least some capacity. That whole thing needs to be replaced with higher capacity transit.
The little tokyo alignment is still in flux. AFAIK they’ve eliminated the half-at-grade alignment in favor of an underground alignment that comes up and crosses First and Alameda at-grade. They also are studying a new alignment that would keep the line underground until it surfaces in two portals north and east of first and alameda, respectively.
Depending on how that’s structured, there would be either no at-grade crossings for north-south lines, or one at-grade crossing at temple.
Really the gold line east should have been built as an extension of the red line, as was originally planned. The red line maintenance center already has a portal south of the 101, a bridge could have been constructed across the river divining down to a subway where the gold line goes underground. They wouldn’t have been able to drag it as far east for the same amount of money, but they could have gotten it as far as the subway portions of the gold line run, which would have been good enough.
Manu Reply:
March 22nd, 2010 at 2:22 pm
The Orange line is suppose to be light rail by 2015, if it is not, metro would have to pay back the funds it received from the feds and state to build it. Which it looks like it isn’t goint to happen.
of course Ill be 90 by the time this is open so I may not be trotting off to hollywood to party on the spur of the moment. meh, tell em to put it wherever they want. doesn’t really matter.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 1:23 am
90? I thought you were, like, 37.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 8:58 am
He’s read about the Second Ave. Subway. He’s an optimist.
now this place needs a stop and some economic incentive for TOD…
This sounds like a great plan to promote the airport and kill the downtown economy.
Please stop writing about SoCal. It makes me go into Richard Mlynarik-style rage at planner incompetence. Bay Area issues are much more pleasant to think about.
For a start: how are they planning to get people to Burbank Airport? A station on the wrong sides of the terminal would need a new people mover elevated over quite a long distance.
And that’s without mentioning such facts as the much, much easier TOD in Downtown Burbank and Sylmar…
But what the hell. LA already thinks that coordinating transit planning and HSR is for sissies. Real men just plop lines and dots on a map and participate in ribbon cutting ceremonies.
jimsf Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 11:33 am
oh just cam acorss this :
Amtrak San Joaquin service set a new four-month ridership record for the period from Nov. 1, ’09 to Feb. 28, ’10, besting the total by 19,273 for the same four-month period of the year prior. San Joaquin ridership for Nov. 1, ’09 to Feb. 28, ’10 was 310,252 while for the Nov. 1, ’08 to Feb. 28, ’09 period ridership was 290,979, according to an article in yesterday’s online Fresno Bee.
With respect to Amtrak’s entire national network, the ***San Joaquins continue to rank number five in terms of passenger volumes***. This is behind the Pacific Surfliner and Capitol Corridor services, ranked two and three, respectively, California’s other Amtrak “California” trains. Ranked number one in the nation in Amtrak’s national service network is Northeast Corridor (NEC) service between Boston and Washington, D.C.
“but californians don’t ride trains…….
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:16 pm
OK, I’ll bite: which service is ranked #4 in passenger volumes?
1. NEC
2. Pacific Surfliner
3. Capitol Corridor
4. ???
5. San Joaquin
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:19 pm
OK, found the numbers from January’s performance report
1. NEC
2. Pacific Surfliner (8 per day)
3. Capitol Corridor (8 per day)
4. Keystone (7 per day)
5. San Joaquin (6 per day)
6. Empire Corridor NY-Albany (really close to San Joaquin numbers, 6 per day)
7. Cascades (4 per day)
8. Hiawatha (really close to Cascades numbers, used to be bigger than them, 7 per day)
The combined Michigan services would be in next place (but look worse individually).
9. Chicago-St. Louis (4 per day)
10. Empire Builder (used to have more passengers than Chicago-St. Louis).
And I’ll leave off there because a whole lot of trains start to have similar numbers after that point.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Keystone/Pennsylvanian (link). And #5 is Empire. However, when Empire is broken into separate New York-Albany and Albany-Toronto segments, #5 is a near-tie between Empire and San Joaquin; they change positions every few months.
Joey Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
When you live in the Bay Area things don’t seem so pleasant…
jimsf Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
joey the bay area is fantastic but you have to get out of the city. yesterday we drove up to clear lake via napa valley. Right now it looks like tuscany or le midi in spring. have you gone hiking in the regional parks? They are real gems. Tilden, Wildcat, Chabot? Been to the top of mt tam yet? Hiked the lands end trail? Headed out through woodide to san gregorio? If you haven’t done thiese things, with summer coming if I were you id make a list and get to it. Start with angel island ferry. and don’t miss tilden and grizzley peak.
tam
headlands
muir
Joey Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
I’m talking about the state of transit planning here. From my perspective, it’s as least as bad as SoCal…
jimsf Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
oh. well, take my travel advice anyway ;-)
Michael Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
LA’s transit planning is much better than the Bay Area’s. And I’m a fourth generation San Franciscan.
Joey Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
That’s kinda the point, actually. Wherever you live seems to be the place with the worst transit planning.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
I live in New York. I don’t have a dog in this fight. It’s just, BART to SJ may have very little transportation value, but the Foothills Extension has absolutely none.
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Ah, but what about the Central Corridor in SF? Tonnes of money to interconnect places nobody is travelling between and generate unbalanced loads….
And the Foothills Extension can take reverse commuters from downtown Pasadena to the Metrolink station to connect to a train to San Bernadino. ;-)
I was going to say that NYC did better, but then I remembered the inability to get reasonable prices for construction and the insane 34th Street station planned by NJT (which I guess is really New Jersey’s fault, but still).
But from what I’ve read everyone’s transit planning beats Puerto Rico’s, who designed a good subway line and then built only the part of it which didn’t go downtown. Oops.
On the subject, how about Rochester, NY, with its abortive fast ferry plans, proposals to move the bus station away from the train station, and distinction as one of the only cities to ever shut down its subway?….
adirondacker12800 Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:33 pm
At least Rochester used their subway, there’s a city that I won’t name that built one and then never used it. . .
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Oh yeah, I know which one you’re thinking of. They’re proposing using it, you know.
jimsf Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
hey me too.^^
Donk Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Do you seriously think things are that much better in NorCal? You have the SFO debacle, they want to build a freeway station in Livermore, they want to waste money on an Oakland Airport connector, there is no planned interface between BART and ACE in Fremont, VTA is a complete embarrassment…
Or are you just one of those people that just likes to bash LA?
Alon Levy Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
No, it’s not LA bashing. I just genuinely think that the Bay Area transit planners are somewhat less stupid than the ones in LA, especially when it comes to HSR. They try to build modern commuter rail, and their completely useless boondocks extensions sometimes go to HSR stations. If you want to be snarky, you can say that in the Bay Area Kopp and Diridon coordinate the planning incompetence, whereas in SoCal each agency comes up with separate incompetent ideas.
jimsf Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
To be fair, our old school transit agencies such as bart, caltrain, muni, and ac transit, have been at it for years and bay areans have generally been more quick to embrace even less than perfect transit for the sake of embracing transit. I mean caltrain, previously SP, has been running for eons and bay areans use bart faithfully in spite of its warts. No one really cares about the poltiics of how it was built. That’s history. We just want clean carpet. As for muni my great grandmother used to ride the very same streetcar lines back in1918 or so when half the city was nothing but dunes. So there has been a generational passing down of transit ridership among the working class here, from the early days, through the war and post war industrial period, and into the present. Bart came along fairly quickly after the key line went away, compared to in other cities anyway. I think maybe LA lost what little strap hanging culture it ever had as soon as they opened that first stretch of freeway.
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:26 pm
That’s a nice snarky description, except that the coordination problems seem to have been worse in NorCal (“We just built Muni out to the Caltrain station.” “Well, we just moved the Caltrain station.”) than in LA.
Alon Levy Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Don’t worry, they’re not moving the Caltrain station. 4th and Townsend will still be there as a commuter rail station. Depending on how well they coordinate service patterns, it may be a good thing; to avoid passenger crunches at terminals, transit agencies sometimes connect different lines to different inner-urban stations.
Besides which, the station throat at TBT is so capacity-constrained Caltrain will have to terminate some trains at 4th and King anyway.
This idea sucks for two reasons: it’s on the wrong side of the airport, and there is no connecting transit.
I like the idea I mentioned last time better: extend the Red Line to Downtown Burbank via Bob Hope Airport. Now the airport has much better connections, and you’ve got HSR, Metro, Metrolink, Amtrak, and a plethora of buses all together in Downtown Burbank.
Probably only local trains will stop at Burbank, so we Santa Barbara people will likely be going all the way to Union Station anyway.
I’d say keep it in the “downtown”. First of all the terminal is on the other side of the airport so I don’t think it would be very useful to have a station on the other side. Second I think the connectivity with buses, Metrolink, and Amtrak is important. More people that can get to the station without needing a car, the better. Also appears there is more homes and business near the downtown area.
Are they going to move the airport terminal to co-locate with the HSR station? There is lots of open land on the north end of the airport property. If not they will need a people mover to take connecting passengers from the HSR station to the existing terminal which could also connect with the Amtrak/Metrolink station south of the airport. If they DO build a new airport terminal, they would still need some sort of shuttle/people mover to bring pax from the new parking lots that replace the old terminals up to the new station complex.
Im partial to downtown too. I think all the stations should be in the downtowns downtowns.
New BUR terminal on north side.
Regarding “wrong side” there were (are?) plans to relocate the Bob Hope Burbank airport on the north side in that big empty lot. The existing airport used to be crammed in a corner next to a Lockheed factory. Relocating on the north side would be the chance to build a new, modern terminal on a clear lot without having to build around existing operations. The possible new terminal would be much closer to a proposed HSR station. Likely why the station location is being proposed. Now if both metro lines could also relocate to the new station and maybe also the light rail it would all come together. I looked for a link to old plans but could not fine one. At one time there was an architectural plan of the new terminal in the lobby. Back before 911 when the dot-com boom was giving us a taste of the future. Back when SFO was considering upgrading the runways. We may still need to upgrade our airports even with HSR.
Some Burbank locals do not want the airport to expand due to more noise. Planes are getting quieter so noise may be less in 10 to 20 years.
BruceMcF Reply:
March 20th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
A lot easier to build an airport terminal rail line when a trench can be put in and then the terminal built over the top. Still want Metrolink cross platform and Amtrak as close as possible … with diesel equipment, maybe island platforms accessed from underneath from a mezzanine that connects the HSR with the rest of the air terminal.
Nathanael Reply:
March 23rd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
*If* they are moving the terminal to the north side, it makes sense to build the rail station there (build both Metrolink and HSR platforms) and construct the airport terminal on top of it.
Otherwise not.
Wait a minute…nothing says that Burbank is abandoning its other station. The article only said they wanted HSR to put a stop near the airport. And that’s a clever idea because if it gets shot down they will put the heat on LAWA for putting all this effort into making sure Ontario had a stop….
BruceMcF Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 8:41 am
No, there’s the one Burbank station penciled in, and its the location of that station that’s what Burbank is providing local feedback on.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
March 22nd, 2010 at 7:30 am
The existing Amtrak/Metrolink station is on a railroad line that will not have HSR. ( In phase one anyway.) If they aren’t planning any changes for the existing station, there’s nothing to provide feedback about. People to/from the west and coast would use the railroad station on the south side. People to/from the north would use the railroad station on the north side.
rafael Reply:
March 21st, 2010 at 9:51 am
Fair point, Burbank airport isn’t managed by LAWA and therefore represents competition for LAX and Ontario. However, given its size and location, there’s only so much air traffic growth that Burbank could possibly accommodate. Due to the high cost of effective noise damping (triple glazing), any TOD near the airport would more likely be office towers rather than residential buildings.
I guess it all depends on what Burbank wants HSR to accomplish in the area and on whether those expectations are realistic. I hope the city takes a very long-term view since the station location will create a development and road traffic planning focus for decades to come.
My first concern about locating HSR at the airport would be that the airport area is already sized about as it should be for the traffic it handles – that is, it’s reasonably easy to get in and out, there’s about enough parking, etc.
What there is not is capacity for the airport volume again worth of parking and traffic, and that is what I expect a station like this to bring, in an area where you pretty much have to drive to it to use it, and in an area where this would be the only HSR stop for the people who live in the San Fernando Valley. There are no walkable destinations in that part of Burbank aside from Fry’s Electronics. ;) It’s very low density light industrial and low density residential. Literally no one would be able to walk to or from it.
If Burbank were an international airport, you would expect synergy from the airport passengers linking with HSR, but Burbank is a regional airport serving local destinations in the west. The only destinations that I can see that people might do from an HSR to Burbank Airport link would be Phoenix or Salt Lake City. Other Burbank destinations will be better served by HSR.
(I love Burbank Airport BTW – one of my favorites. But it may help those of you who have not used it to get a sense of its size and scale by knowing that the only stairs in the place are the portable air stairs. It’s a single story terminal with a handful of gates, and people walk outside, rain or shine, onto the tarmac, and climb the portable Air Stairs to get on or off planes. Old school. )
On the other hand, the Burbank downtown has high rise office space, many walkable destinations as is, restaurants and shopping, and even high density residential. People could live there and walk to the HSR station. People could walk to work from the HSR station.
I think there could be value in doing both stations (yes, I know the concern about too many stops, but you can see these serving different constituencies, and the surrounding population is enormous), but if I had to pick one, I’d pick the downtown station. It better suits the long term planning and use of the line.
Plus I know that somewhere in metro’s plans there is a proposed light rail line that would run from Downtown Burbank to Union Station. They can jus have the HSR stop at DB and extend this proposed LR line to the burbank airport. This would benifit all,amtrak, metrolink and Downtown riders.