45 years ago, there was a major controversy over planning a passenger rail line in a Bay Area college town. The prospect of an aerial structure freaked out many residents, who insisted the tracks be buried. Ultimately, they took it on themselves to pay for the extra cost of a tunnel, floating a bond and approving a tax increase to repay the bond.

That city was Berkeley, and you can see the results for yourself just by buying a ticket for a BART trip between Ashby and El Cerrito Plaza. It was a fair solution – Berkeley residents felt strongly about burying the tracks, and put up the money to make it happen.

The late 1960s were a rather different economic environment than the early 2010s, of course, as the nation was still experiencing the postwar economic boom as opposed to prolonged recession. On the other hand, the Vietnam War fueled significant levels of inflation that drove up BART costs and necessitated a state-brokered “bailout” that involved BART getting increased tax revenue from the three-county region it then served. Today there’s little sign of commodity inflation, and borrowing costs are as low as they’ve ever been.

That background is worth keeping in mind as we look at the Alternatives Analysis for the San Francisco to San Jose segment. As Mike Rosenberg reports, one of the outcomes is that tunnelling may be too expensive:

But officials cautioned that, in most locations, it would cost four to five times as much to run the train belowground in a trench or tunnel as it would to run it aboveground, far exceeding the rail authority’s projected budget. The agency expects to have $5.1 billion for the section along the Caltrain tracks and doubts it will be able to get any more funding for the $43 billion project, which is slated to extend from San Francisco to Los Angeles by the end of the decade….

Take, for instance, a 1.8-mile stretch of Caltrain track that runs from Burlingame to San Mateo, where engineers will study three alignment options.

An aerial viaduct, a roughly 20-foot structure, would cost $265 million there. By comparison, an underground open trench would cost $425 million and a tunnel would require $894 million, according to the authority.

In other words, a tunnel in Burlingame-San Mateo would cost 237% more than an aerial viaduct. The $629 million difference could be paid for through local taxes, sale of development and/or “air rights”, or potentially some other source. That was floated as a possibility at the San José board meeting:

Rail officials suggested Thursday at a meeting in San Jose that cities wanting a tunnel — which include Burlingame, San Mateo, Menlo Park, Atherton and Palo Alto — could try to pay for it themselves, presumably through a ballot measure.

“If they pull it off, it’ll be phenomenal,” said Bob Doty, head of the joint Caltrain and high-speed rail program and the report’s author. “But I got to be real. It’s a lot of money.”

Some Peninsula NIMBYs argue that because this is a statewide project, localities shouldn’t be forced to pay the extra costs of a tunnel. I’ve always said that approach would not fly with the rest of the state, and that Californians would balk at paying for a tunnel if there were a cheaper option available.

A recent Pasadena Star-News editorial proves that would indeed be a widely shared view:

Up in the Bay Area, the tony cities of Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame and Belmont have created the Peninsula Cities Consortium to lobby for tunnels or trenches for the fast trains.

That expense would take the price over the moon.

Californians may want a bullet train such as they’ve heard of in Europe and Japan. But the chances they’ll ever ride one if they give in to cost inefficiencies and NIMBYism are similar to hoping you’ll find fine dining and a Pullman sleeper on the Metrolink from Fontana to El Monte.

That’s just a taste of what the Peninsula can expect from the rest of the state if folks continue to press for having the state fund a tunnel. Political realities are going to force localities to come up with the extra funds, just as Berkeley did in the 1960s.

It won’t be easy. The absurd, undemocratic rule requiring a 2/3rds majority to approve any tax increase sets the bar absurdly high. And at a time when schools are laying off teachers and local governments are having to cut services to close budget deficits created by the recession, voters might not be in a mood to approve such funds.

This is where the attitudes of many Peninsula NIMBYs could come back to haunt them. Instead of focusing on the case for a tunnel, many of the hardcore have instead attacked the high speed rail project itself, called it unnecessary, flawed, or some sort of alien invader bent on destroying their community. If indeed those same folks want to go back and ask voters for tunnel funds, they may find they’ve poisoned the well.

That’s not to say they shouldn’t try. There are many reasons why a tunnel would make sense, and if there were indeed a ballot initiative proposed to fund a tunnel, I’d wish it well. But this would seem to reconfirm the basic point we’ve been making all along – that those Peninsula residents who are genuinely interested in the best HSR solution aren’t doing themselves any favors by fueling HSR criticism.