Merced-Fresno HSR Route Choices Narrowed
Although the San Francisco-San José Alternatives Analysis dominated the news this week, the CHSRA board discussed a draft AA for another segment – Merced to Fresno. Two alignments were eliminated, and two will be carried forward for further study.
The two that were eliminated (follow along on page 4 of this document for a map of what I’m talking about):
• A3: Western Madera (through farmland, paralleling Highway 99 about 10 miles to the west of Chowchilla and Madera)
• A4: UPRR/BNSF hybrid (following the Union Pacific tracks south from Merced, then BNSF to go around Madera on the east, then paralleling UPRR along Highway 99 into Fresno)
The two that are being carried forward:
• A1: BNSF (from Merced along the BNSF route east of Madera, then joining Highway 99 just north of the Madera/Fresno county line)
• A2: UPRR (from Merced along the UPRR/Highway 99 corridor all the way into Fresno, through Chowchilla and Madera)
The draft AA also selected downtown Merced to carry forward, dropping the Castle Airport and Merced Amtrak station proposals (although Castle Airport remains an option for the maintenance hub). The Preliminary AA report shows on page 35 that a comparison of these three options has downtown Merced rated the best, particularly because it fits with TOD goals and local government plans (the city of Merced wants a downtown station).
As to the alignments, Merced and Madera counties are split, as the Fresno Bee reports:
Local governments were split on the two other alternatives. Merced and Merced County backed the UP route, but Chowchilla and Madera voiced a preference for the BNSF.
Since neither Chowchilla or Madera would be getting a station (those proposals were dropped several years ago) one can understand why they’d prefer the trains bypass their communities entirely by using the BNSF corridor.
On the other hand, the UPRR/Highway 99 route would seem to make sense, as it’s an existing transportation corridor, has backing from Merced County and the city of Merced, and since the trains will use UPRR/99 through Fresno. One big caveat, of course, is UPRR’s reluctance to share ROW with the HSR project. The Authority addresses this on page 46:
However, UPRR has expressed reluctance to collaborate with HST alternatives that either infringe on its right-of-way or on its access to current and future freight customers along its right-of- way throughout the Central Valley. Because areas in Merced, Madera, and Fresno are constrained portions in this corridor, UPRR’s resistance may delay property access and hinder timely design solutions that would enable the HST project to meet its design objectives. The Authority Executive staff continues to meet with UPRR on a regular basis in an effort to resolve concerns, and the project team is working to design around this limitation, which will require cooperation from UPRR.
This is where some Congressional pressure and action on getting UPRR to share their ROW would be rather useful. After all, their ROW was given to them by the federal government for the public benefit, so it would make sense for the feds to insist that UPRR not obstruct the HSR project. If that doesn’t happen, however, then it would seem clear that the BNSF option will indeed be selected.
BNSF through the city of Fresno isn’t an option. It’s pure residential through the entire city. UPRR will have to give in on the ROW next to their tracks through the city. It could cost the state alot the longer it takes them to convince UPRR of this.
After being involved in the orginal U.C. Merced committee that help land U.C. Merced our area learned a vauable lesson on the rights of endangered species and wetland issues. The Greater Merced High Speed Rail Committee,the City of Merced, County of Merced and the Madera and Merced County Farm Bureau all came to the same conclusion.
It will be almost impossible to acquire a permit from the Army Corp because of the wetland issues, fairy shrimp, kit fox and permanent row corps which have been planted in this area for over 100 years. All of the above groups have notified the authority of these facts.
And one of the top environmental attorneys in the state reviewed all the routes and he found the likelihood of A-1 being approved by the ARMY Corp is 5% if at all and the number of law suits would delay theroute it least 10 years. (U.C. Merced took 9 years for their wetland permit)
Only A-2 meets the LEDPA documenatation as stated by the Army Corp who needs to sign off on this project. Moreover, A-1 is 2 minutes to 30 seconds longer and cost significantly more close to 30 million than A-2. By the way A-1 on the map would be perfect for Castle as the Maintenace Facility since in fact Castle sits right on BNSF. But the permitting process will take so long and does not meet the objectives of the authority, the Bond measure passed by the voters and is the Least Environementally Practicable alternative. Trust me after our lesson on U.C. Merced we know. The A-1 alignement is only a couple miles away from U.C. Merced do you think this land is that much different from the Wetlands that encroached on the orginal U.C. Merced site? IT IS NOT!
Joey Reply:
April 10th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Just so you know all of the alignments currently under consideration use the UPRR/SR-99 corridor through Merced, so access to the Castle Airport area is the same for all of them.
Joseph E Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 5:46 am
Castle Expert,
While the UC Merced project was a large development on near-virgin land, this will be a 50 ft wide railroad right alongside an active freight line. UC Merced is over 3 miles north-east of either rail right-of-way, both of which pass thru partially developed lands in the Merced area. It seems to me that this should make a big difference in the impact on wildlife and wetlands.
Castle Expert Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 8:56 am
Joseph, the study area used for analysis in the program EIR/EIS includes a 50 foot corridor, or 25 feet on each side of the alignement center. The killer of A-1 is it would result in wetland habitat fragmentation which occurs when a large area of intact habitat has been broken down or fragmented. (That is why U.C. Merced had to be moved from its original site)
In a nutshell here is why A-1 cannot work and authority staff has this information. A-1 would impact 5 linear miles of vernal pools grasslands and critical habitat. Moreover, because a High Speed train must be grade seperated this seperation unless it was raised would isolate 30 square miles of kit fox habitat. (In the Central Valley Kit fox are given the same protection as a bald eagle) In light of these impacts it is highly impropable that the Army Corp and EPA would issue a permit when the LEDPA specifically states “Least Envirnomentally Damanaging Practicable Alternative”
Jack Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 8:06 am
U.C. Merced is the reason why the maintenance yard won’t be at Castle. Fresno being led by Swearengin is not going to loose yet another huge job creating project. There going to do everything in there power to make sure it goes to Fresno.
Castle Expert Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 9:02 am
Jack, if I were Fresno what I would focus on instead is the 58 mile Merced to Fresno route submitted by the authority as part of the authority ARRA funding this route has the best chance of going forward of the other 6 applications in the state because it is the shortest and least expensive to build as long as they use the A-2 route. I would put the Maintenace facility idea on hold and focus on getting that stimiulus money first. I think with the unemployment in the valley
2 billion dollars in stimlus funds would put a good dent in our unemployment. Forget the Maintenace facility for now, Merced to Fresno needs to focus on the route and than we can compete on the Maintance facility afterwards, the valley cannot afford the circular firing squad mentality that Swearing wants to promote.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 10:01 am
Trains aren’t Model Ts, you can’t park them under a shade tree and get out a monkey wrench when something needs to be replaced. The maintenance facility has to be up and running when they lay the last tie. Or the ties will lay there unused until they finish the maintenance facility. The cars have to be tested before they are sent out on the tracks for more testing. As they are tested on the tracks they need to go to a maintenance facility and be inspected.
Alon Levy Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Meanwhile, common sense, which would tell you to build the maintenance hubs near the termini, lies bound and gagged in the corner.
If you want jobs, build the CV segments first, and maybe lobby for parking a few trains in Fresno and Merced overnight for the early morning high speed commuter runs. But whatever happens, don’t make trains deadhead hundreds of km from the termini to a maintenance hub. If you really want to spend that extra money, spend it on Phase 2 construction instead. The Upper Central Valley and the Inland Empire need jobs, too.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Meh, 6 of one half a dozen of the other. Put the heavy maintenance facility in San Diego and a train that develops a problem in San Francisco has to be deadheaded to San Diego or vice versa. For monthly inspections etc, as you pointed out they can rotate sets into the stops near a Central Valley station. . . and they can’t start running or even testing trains before there’s a maintenance facility.
Alon Levy Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Most maintenance moves are not for emergency reasons; they’re at predicable maintenance intervals. For example, following ICE maintenance routines, you’d need to take out the train every 4,000 km for light maintenance. The question then is whether you want to deadhead it 10 km from SF to Brisbane or 300 km to Merced.
Rotating the trains into Merced is possible, but a) once Phase 2 opens Merced’s no longer going to be a terminus, and b) it requires much more scheduling jujitsu than putting maintenance yards near one of the primary termini.
And why do they need to test trains at all? Many of the existing off-the-shelf train designs will have already been tested in real-world conditions, on tracks built to the same specs as CAHSR, or in one case (Tohoku Shinkansen for the Fastech 360) to more exacting specs.
Joey Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Like I said below, there WILL be light maintenance facilities near the termini.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Scheduling trains is what train scheduling software does. Train scheduling software is cheaper than the interest costs of very expensive land in SoCal or NorCal versus the free land being offered in the Central Valley. Deadheading is probably cheaper than the interest costs of coastal California land. Not that they would have to deadhead, they could use their scheduling software to perform the miraculous jujistu that railroads all over the world have been performing since they started doing maintenance on regular schedules.
They are going to be testing trains. No responsible operator opens track to revenue service until it’s been inspected and tested. No responsible operator would take delivery on a train and put int into revenue service without testing. Extensive testing in the case of new models and the trains in California will be new models in a few ways.
Alon Levy Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Railroads all over the world don’t place their maintenance yards in the middle of their lines. They place them at the ends, even where land costs are high.
Not needing this jujitsu is part of operational flexibility: you want as few constraints on scheduling as possible, and “each train has to terminate in Merced once every 4,000 km” is a major constraint. Deadheading to Merced every time means the train spends nearly 10% of its travel distance, not earning revenue. Effectively, it would cut operating revenue by 10% per unit of operating cost, just in order to avoid building on empty land in Brisbane.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Sunnyside was cheap land back in 1905. Ivy City was cheap land back whenever they opened IVy City. Croton was the end of the line for locals for a long time. It’s still where heavy maintainence is done. Kinda hard to get to from White Plains. Or Stamford. Means Amtrak has to go through all sorts of things to make sure the train ends it’s service interval in DC and not New York or Boston.
Alon Levy Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Okay, so the steam-era railroads had railyards 5-10 km from the terminals, plus at the points where the electrification ended. That would explain Croton, which sat at the end of a busy long-distance line; White Plains at the time was just a commuter line, and Stamford was on another railroad, which did its maintenance business in New Haven. Now why is that an argument for placing a modern railroad’s maintenance hub in the middle of nowhere?
The fact that the Shinkansen does maintenance only in Tokyo, or the Acela only in DC, isn’t that big of a constraint. Ensuring a train’s trip ends at one of the primary terminals is a lot easier than ensuring it ends at a secondary terminal.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Ya fell for it. The heavy maintenance facilities. Not the place where they empty the toilet tanks and vacuum the rugs. Or the place where they take the train our of service for a day to inspect it’s brakes and dump the diagnostics from the on board computer network.
The PRR’s heavy maintenance facility was in Altoona. NS still uses it. The Erie’s heavy maintenance facility was in Susquehanna and then Hornell. Union Pacific’s were in Omaha and are now in Arkansas. Amtrak does it heavy maintenance in Delaware, middle of the line. . .
Alon Levy Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
The obvious question is, how often do you plan on trains needing all this heavy maintenance that you want such a big, expensive hub in Merced for it? I’m not being sarcastic here. Taking the train out for a day to inspect the brakes happens a lot, but the multi-day inspection modules happen at intervals deep into the six figures. A heavy maintenance hub for multi-day inspections only would be a lonely place. The only reason to reserve large amounts of land in Merced for stabling and maintenance is if the intention is to do this at short intervals, in which case the 10% deadheading issue is brutal.
You can’t compare freight railroads here, because freight railroads don’t lose as much by deadheading. Their operating costs are dominated by diesel fuel, not labor, so moves in which locos don’t have to haul freight around are essentially free. The correct comparison is to modern passenger railroads, which do maintenance in the main terminals. The ICE maintenance shops are in the major German cities and in Basel, the Shinkansen maintenance shop is in Tokyo, the TGV maintenance is done in the Paris suburbs.
BruceMcF Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Its a double-Y system … moving further up toward the terminus of one branch means moving further away from the terminus of the other branch.
dejv Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Every piece of rolling stock needs at least tests of compliance with approved design, while initial trainsets must be approved by authorities in charge. If you look up AGV in Railway Gazette archives, you’ll learn it had reached 360 km/h in dec 2008, but they had to re-test the dynamics again at italian tracks recently. And this is the very same trainsets, no stuff like cross section changes that would modify train aerodynamics and so on.
Alon Levy Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
They wouldn’t have to modify train aerodynamics, as some of the designs, such as the Velaro, are available in the standard US loading gauge.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
How many Velaros run on 60Hz current? At the very least they are going to have to have testing of the the new electronics in the power train. Can’t test the signals until you put some trains out hter and run them at speed either.
Alon Levy Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
Did Japan ever have significant problems running the Nagano Shinkansen at 60 Hz on part of the line and 50 Hz on another part?
swing hanger Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
The trainsets running on the Nagano Shinkansen Line are capable of running under both 50 Hz and 60 Hz, the switchover occurs near Karuizawa on a special section of catenary that automatically switches the frequency as a train passes through.
dejv Reply:
April 12th, 2010 at 12:42 am
Alon, off-the-shelf Sapsan and Velaro CN/CRH3 are 3260 mm wide, they would strike ada-compatible platforms at NEC and they are the only trains currently in production that are so close. Other trainsets width is more different, Regina is 3450 mm, Shinkansens 3400 mm, AGV and mini-Shinkansens around 2900 mm.
EMC is one of the biggest obstacle of interoperability of european network so there must be taken care to make system working. There’s a reason why JR Central tried to avoid another Taiwan with their bid.
Alon Levy Reply:
April 12th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Fair enough…
Joey Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
There will in fact be light maintenance facilities at the stabling yards near the termini.
Castle Expert, the UPRR alignment is through farmland. UC Merced was undeveloped land that was the home of vernal pools, wasn’t it? I have driven along UPRR and — other than the SJ River — I didn’t see any water courses at all.
I agree, the 99 route makes more sense than a loop around Madera, if only because it is a shorter route.
Castle Expert Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
John, no question that A-2 does go through some Ag land but there is no comparsion between the number of acres of prime Ag being harmed when comparing both routes. Ask the Ag community their preference, both the Merced County Farm Bureau and Madera have come out against A-1.
Remember those who do not learn from history have a tendency of making the same mistakes. Currently A-1 impact 5 linear miles of vernal pools and grasslands. A-2 does not.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
It’s refreshing to read contributions somebody who knows what the hell s/he is talking about. Thanks!
YesonHSR Reply:
April 11th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
How many acres of prime farm land have been built/paved over for large housing tracts in the valley??
I thinka huge amount as I can see them from goolge Earth 3x out of zoom…somewhere I read that the land needed for HSR ROW for the entire state is about 2 of these housing tracts..which there are hunderds in the Valley
“[UPRR]‘s RoW was given to them by the federal government for the public benefit, so it would make sense for the feds to insist that UPRR not obstruct the HSR project.”
That was other a century ago – how long should UPRR’s debt to the public last? Surely they’ve more than repaid the cost of the land through all the taxes they’ve paid on their profits.