Morgan Hill Takes a Closer Look at HSR Route
Last week, the CHSRA held a meeting in Morgan Hill on the proposed HSR route. As we’re seeing in other agricultural parts of the state, Morgan Hill is witnessing a debate between those who want to put the tracks on the edge of town, and those farmers who prefer it not be in their fields. Here’s how the Morgan Hill Times described the route options:
An alignment alternative along the east side of U.S. 101 would enter South County on an aerial track to make room for wildlife crossings, returning to ground level just north of the city. Then the tracks would ascend to an aerial structure to cross over Cochrane Road, East Main Avenue and East Dunne Avenue.
South of Dunne Avenue, the route would diverge easterly from the freeway as it crosses over the city’s Outdoor Sports Center on Condit Road. After crossing Tennant Avenue, the train would return to ground level and realign with U.S. 101 near East Middle Avenue, eventually reaching an HSR station east of Gilroy, on Leavesley Road.
Another alternative would carry the high-speed train along the east side of U.S. 101 until it reached Maple Avenue south of Morgan Hill. At that point, the train would pass underground through a trench to the west side of the freeway, en route to the state’s preferred station site in downtown Gilroy.
Both alternatives that travel along U.S. 101 would require the train to be trenched underground through the CHP truck scales on the freeway, and adjacent to the South County Airport. The tracks have to be underground near the airport, as a 30-foot-tall aerial structure would carry trains through restricted airspace, according to Parsons Senior Project Manager David Wemmer.
But the HSRA’s preferred alignment is still along the east side of the existing Union-Pacific and Caltrain tracks – a route the railroad company steadfastly objects to. Through Morgan Hill, this alignment would require new grade separations to bring major streets over the UP and HST tracks, as well as Monterey Highway, north of town.
At Cochrane Road, the train would continue along the UP tracks along an aerial structure through downtown, until it returned to ground level at Maple Avenue. The route would then swerve to the east or west in Gilroy, depending on where the South County station ends up.
This option would also require relocating Monterey Highway to the east on the north side of Morgan Hill, in order to create room for a bullet train right-of-way up to 60 feet between the UP right-of-way and the road.
Morgan Hill officials have noted that they prefer a track alignment along U.S. 101, as it would not create a new dividing line through the community as a downtown track would.
So to sum up: Morgan Hill city officials support the 101 alignment. The CHSRA prefers the Monterey Highway alignment but Union Pacific is obstructing this, leaving a 101 alignment a near-certainty to be chosen.
But that doesn’t sit well with folks who live in that area, who voiced their concerns at the meeting:
The most common complaint aired at Thursday’s meeting were from rural property owners who live in close proximity to the different alignments and are worried about property values and other impacts – including the possibility that the state will take their properties.
“One of the reasons I moved here was because it was quiet, and now that’s going away,” said north Gilroy resident Ginna Raahauge.
If the 101 alignment is chosen, it will still be about as quiet as it is now in north Gilroy. The HSR trains will not add a meaningful amount of noise, unless you’re standing very close to the tracks. In such a case, you’d also be very close to Highway 101 right now, which certainly isn’t a quiet transportation facility.
The HSR tracks have to go somewhere. And that means someone is going to be impacted, inconvenienced, and perhaps even see their home or property taken to eminent domain. There’s no way around it. The same would be required if Highway 101 were ever widened, and a Gilroy station would be a major boost to South County residents who would want to travel to other parts of the state – or to bringing people to their region. I can imagined packed HSR trains on the weekend of the Gilroy Garlic Festival (seriously – if you’ve never been, you should definitely go, and make sure you have some of the garlic ice cream – it is amazing).
If the HSR station were built in downtown Gilroy, it would also help preserve the rural character of the land east of Gilroy. That’s where a series of battles have been fought against sprawl, many of which have been won, in order to protect the farmland and stop it from being paved over with subdivisions.
If the people living east of Morgan Hill don’t want the HSR tracks to parallel Highway 101, they need to take it up not with the CHSRA or their local officials, but with the Union Pacific Railroad. And they should contact their members of Congress, particularly their two U.S. Senators, in order to get Congress to finally apply pressure to UP to stop its costly, wasteful, damaging obstruction to HSR.
There’ll be another HSR meeting in South County soon, on Monday June 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn on the south side of Gilroy (where Highway 101 and Monterey Highway intersect) from 6 to 8pm. I’m going to do my best to attend that meeting.
The East of 101 alignment in Gilroy is in the unincorporated part of town. That adds political complexity. It also means implications for coverage for Emergency services like Fire and Police -especially if the station is out there.
Tony D. Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
“It also means implications for coverage for Emergency services like Fire and Police – especially if the station is out there.” What the heck are you talking about Nadia?!
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
She’s dredging up FUD.
Peter Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
I’ll agree that there’s some degree of FUD. She’s right that there would be some implications. The police that would theoretically respond would be the Sheriff’s Dept, not Gilroy PD, and the county Fire Dept would respond, not Gilroy FD. It just means that there would simply have to be an agreement that the local departments would respond to that location. It’s not an issue that can’t be dealt with relatively easily. So yes, it’s FUD overall.
thatbruce Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Wherever a station is, the nearest city will seek to have the land it sits on incorporated into itself, if only to be able to levy any extra taxes on travellers using the station (eg, city sales tax for any station shops, other TOD nearby etc).
Nadia Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
The City of Gilroy has had severe budget cuts and officials are concerned about meeting the needs for basic services like Police and Fire already. Annexations to the city would have implications on their costs. I’m not saying this isn’t something that can’t be dealt with – I was just raising the issue since Robert’s post doesn’t mention anywhere that the East of 101 alignment is in the unincorporated area.
I was at the South County meeting and there were several people questioning whether they were being represented by the County appropriately – hence my comment about political complexity. Don Gage made some statements about his personal thoughts on the proper alignment through that area at the May Caltrain Board meeting.
His quote: “I have my own ideas where it (the alignment) should be, but, and I think the City of gilroy if they think it’s going to come downtown under the ground is nuts. But you know, they’re going to have to go out to the east side up there, but that takes an amount of property.”
Peter Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Well, let’s not forget that we’re looking at a timeline where operation to Gilroy likely wouldn’t start until 2018 or 2019. Prior to that I don’t see why we’re worrying about fire and police service…
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
Building an HSR station and the economic benefits that come with it would likely pay for these costs themselves in the form of new revenue for the city.
It is simply incorrect to assume HSR is merely a cost, instead of a revenue generator.
“One of the reasons I moved here was because it was quiet, and now that’s going away,” said north Gilroy resident Ginna Raahauge.
Ginna Raahauge is a VP at Cisco systems.
Is there anyone in the bay area that is NOT pissed off by this train?
nobody important Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Why does it matter who she is and who she works for?
Jathnael Taylor Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Me…I want it built and I want it yesterday.
Tony D. Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Exactly NI,
How could one person be above the voters and citizens of this state? Nice try BAR! By the way, if she wanted “quiet,” she shouldn’t have moved next to 101. Oh well.
YesonHSR Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Really moved next to a freeway and now is whinning
political_incorrectness Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
One problem with Americans, they expect traffic to go away if they move next to a busy road. Always expect growth around major corridors!
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
She does not have a right to experience quiet where she lives. Nobody does. There are noise ordinances, sure, but those don’t stem from any kind of inherent right to silence. If it did, I’d move the flight path to the Monterey Peninsula Airport to not be directly over my apartment.
However, she should also get educated about HSR – whether it uses the UP or 101 alignment, it is not likely to meaningfully impact the amount of noise she hears.
wu ming Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
just the little people unworthy of a newspaper quote, who voted to build the HSR. but who cares what they think?
Peter Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Right, because the only people who matter are the ones who have a lot of money.
YesonHSR Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:36 am
about 62 percent are not that voted YES on the bond!
The fastest alignment into Pacheco is east of 101 in Gilroy. If past decisions are any indication, the CHSRA is nearly certain to discard it in favor of a massive project through downtown, causing another bothersome speed restriction and wasting valuable time for the majority of travelers. Nobody in charge appears to be minding the ‘H’ in HSR.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Except that those pesky passengers are close to downtown and the pesky passengers from out of town will find it easy to get to downtown. . . on the other hand it’s easy to build humongous parking garages out in the middle of nowhere…
Winston Reply:
June 16th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Downtown Gilroy is an older commercial strip about 3 1/2 blocks long and 1 block wide surrounded by single family homes on moderately sized lots. It has neither a lot of redevelopment potential nor greater than typical suburban density. It isn’t even near the center of the mass of sprawl that is Gilroy. It is probably better to accept that Gilroy will never really be a transit friendly place and build a 1/4 mile circle of asphalt around the station for parking. You could park around 13,000 cars which is more than enough for the station. The other alternative would be to only build 6000 or so surface spaces and develop a reasonably dense downtown around the transit station.
Travis D Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 12:04 am
You’d be surprised how quickly a place can change. I personally hope it is routed downtown but that seems less likely with the obstructions that UPRR is putting up.
Just how will UPRR be dealt with eventually? Can CAHSR work out a deal for some sort of liability waiver/reduction so that they can’t use that as an excuse anymore?
rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 8:29 am
I agree with Clem on this one. CHSRA needs to get the tracks just east of 101 as soon as possible after leaving San Jose and then stay there through Gilroy on the way to Pacheco Pass. Only a subset of trains will be stopping in Gilroy, the rest will thunder through as fast as possible, perhaps at the full 220mph.
Robert claims that HSR trains are quiet, which they are – at 50mph. At 220mph, very different story! The power of aerodynamic drag is proportional to the third power of velocity, so at full speed it’s about 85 times as high! That translates to a powerful bow wave and wake, plus massive turbulence and a short, sudden, harsh noise event. Not like an actual gunshot, of course, but there’s a reason these things are called bullet trains and, it’s not just the shape of the nose. Therefore, whenever possible, HSR should be routed around the downtown areas of rural towns that will get only limited service or none at all. Yes, that will impact farmland. Chronic noise can make people sick and, population health considerations have to trump property rights.
The Gilroy station should be located a little east of the premium outlets mall. A new 5mi standard-gauge spur off the UPRR line should run around the built-up area to the HSR station, such that a new HSR feeder train (funded jointly by Monterey, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties) can run from downtown Salinas via Castroville to Gilroy HSR.
The new spur is the red line on this MAP.
Folks in downtown Gilroy and Hollister would either drive to the HSR station or else, hop on a shuttle bus (funded jointly by Santa Clara and San Benito counties).
A separate HSR feeder service up to Santa Cruz would also be possible, shown on the map for completeness’ sake.
The situation in Gilroy should be compared to that in Hanford, except that aggregate ridership may be higher. Don’t make the mistake of thinking a downtown station is the holy grail in each and every case. Also, do not make the mistake that the existing UPRR track is all any HSR feeder service would ever be able to use. If justified by additional ridership, it’s ok to construct a few short miles of new standard gauge track for new/modified HSR feeder services.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 9:30 am
Robert claims that HSR trains are quiet, which they are – at 50mph. At 220mph, very different story!
they will be louder at 220 than they will be at 50 or 100…. just how loud are they, that they are going to cause the populace to flee in terror?
Rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 10:33 am
The following video is in German and was produced by Transrapid, a maglev vendor. It compares train noise at different speeds to other sources of traffic noise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QegwxBtMCCA
Sound pressure is measured on the logarithmic decibel scale, modulated by the A-curve filter to approximate the sensitivity of the average human ear at different frequencies. Sound pressure attenuates with the square of distance between source and microphone/observer.
single car passing at 100km/h (62mph) at 25m (80ft) distance: 66 dB(A)
maglev passing at 200km/h (125mph) at 25m: 79 dB(A)
heavy duty truck passing at 80km/h (50mph) at 25m: 83 db(A)
steel wheels regional train passing at 120km/h (75mph) at 50m: 83 db(A)
maglev passing at 200km/h at 50m: 76 dB(A)
high speed steel wheels train passing at 300km/h (186mph) at 50m: 92db(A)
maglev passing at 300km/h at 50m: 81 dB(A)
jet aircraft taking off at 200m distance: 85 dB(A)
maglev at 400km/h (250mph) at 200m: 78 db(A)
1) Maglev is a lot quieter than steel wheels trains, but it has a lot of other downsides. CHSRA decided a long time ago that the California system would be based on steel wheels.
That said, engineers are continually improving train designs wrt noise by using acoustic tomography to pinpoint noises sources on a passing train. Extra-long and duckbill nose shapes tend to perform better wrt tunnel boom, other shapes work well for train stability in gusting cross winds or when trains pass each other at high speed on tracks with narrow loading gauges. As usual, there are trade-offs.
2) The above applies to outdoor noise without any mitigation effort. Floating slab track, deflector plates near the rails and sound walls all make a big difference. Indoors, both the sound level and the frequency distribution are attenuated by windows (if closed).
3) Legal limits for environmental noise are based on the so-called equivalent level that averages sound pressure over the interval between noise events. For reference, 10 trains per hour each way would imply a 3 minute interval.
Lawmakers prefer this type of objective measure, though psychoacoustic perception of noise doesn’t correlate perfectly. Basically, there’s quite a bit of variation in noise-related health effects from one person to the next. Many people get habituated to rail of road noise, but some never do. One of the reasons for preferring active rail rights of way for the HSR tracks is the reasonable assumption that nearby residents are already habituated.
Additional filters are sometimes applied to equivalent noise metrics to reflect that noise between 10pm and 6am is considered less acceptable. I suspect the last HSR trains of each day will probably end their runs just after midnight, but CHSRA hasn’t decided that yet.
Different immission limits apply for outdoor noise, various workplaces, residential dwellings and highly sensitive contexts such as hospitals and cemetaries. Note that health impacts are cumulative, so if there are multiple noise sources the equivalent noise level must be computed for the ensemble. However, since dB(A) is a logarithmic scale, as a first approximation only the loudest source actually matters. Noise immission into a location is fundamentally different from noise emissions from a single source.
Mitigation efforts such as deflector plates near the rails and sound walls can reduce airborne outdoor emissions by 5-8dB(A). Structure-borne noise is mitigated by intervening mass, especially if the material is relatively soft. Ballast track is usually more effective than slab track (except floating type). Earthen embankments are usually more effective than concrete aerials.
Triple glazing and similar window treatments can further reduce indoor noise immisions by large amounts, but only if they’re installed correctly. IDK what the laws on this are in the US, in other countries property owners are entitled to such measures at the noise polluter’s expense IFF the equivalent sound level they are exposed to is excessive and a culprit can be clearly identified.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/decibel-dba-levels-d_728.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_health_effects
http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Extra-long and duckbill nose shapes tend to perform better wrt tunnel boom
There won’t be any tunnels in Gilroy so tunnel boom won’t be a problem.
Lawmakers prefer this type of objective measure
Everyone has their own opinion which is why lawmakers, regulators, judged, juries etc like objective measurements.
You are the one maintaining that trains at 225 are going to be too loud for Gilroy. The Chinese are running trains at 225, how loud are they? What are the current regulations for railroad noise? Are 225 MPH trains under or over those thresholds?
Rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:06 am
There won’t be a tunnel directly in Gilroy, the first one will be a little further east on the way toward Pacheco Pass. I just included the information for completeness’s sake, since the post mentions CHSRA is actually considering a route that would route trains around Morgan Hill and then return to the UPRR corridor via a trench under the freeway. Whoever came up with that idea should have their head examined.
Wrt China: it’s a totalitarian country, citizens are exposed to all kinds of environmental hazards that would not be acceptable in the US. Suffice it to say that none of the existing HSR operators run trains at 220mph. Those that already operate at 186-200mph do so only in rural settings or, where special noise mitigation measures have been implemented to protect properties abutting the tracks (e.g. Japan). Noise emissions were one of the reasons JR East’s FasTech 360 development platform led to a production model (the E5) rated at “only” 320km/h.
Running trains at 220mph though a built-up downtown area where the existing rail ROW is barely 60 feet wide and lined with buildings on both sides is, uhm, ambitious. In Gilroy, the objectives should be (a) no speed limits for express trains and, (b) efficient connecting transit into downtown, to Hollister and out to Salinas. There’s no point in building a Gilroy station at all unless the forecast ridership can actually materialize without completely choking the 101 freeway. By itself, the town cannot generate sufficiently high numbers, the population just isn’t there.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Suffice it to say that none of the existing HSR operators run trains at 220mph.
The Chinese do, steel wheel on steel rail and maglev. Somebody somewhere has at least whipped out their Radio Shack dB meter and taken measurements.
rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Last I read the Chinese went back to operating at 300km/h on the Beijing-Tianjn line immediately after the Olympics were over. That route is so short trains can only hit top speed very briefly, so running at 350km/h was more for the prestige than significant line haul time benefits.
On the Wuhan-Guangzhou line you may be correct, though I vaguely recall that they decided to run more slowly on that as well after the acceptance testing. It’s not that the trains can’t run that fast or that there’s a technical problem with the infrastructure. I suspect they just want a margin of safety while their operations staff get a firm handle on things. After a while, they can bump up the speed if there is demand for that. Fares are not cheap in the Chinese context.
Clem Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Suffice it to say that none of the existing HSR operators run trains at 220mph
Unless you meant to exclude China from this statement, note that Wuhan-Guangzhou has been operating at 220 mph for six months now.
Most charts that I’ve seen extrapolate to about 100 dB(A) at 50 m for a high-speed train running at 220 mph. That’s not quiet. It’s also important to recognize that most people have never experienced a train running by at very high speed from trackside, except maybe on YouTube. (You can listen to space shuttle launches on YouTube, and the sound fidelity is no better.) It’s very loud and very impressive and bears absolutely no relationship to what you might hear on the Northeast Corridor. It’s got to be heard to be believed.
I can say with certainty that such a noise source does not belong in any downtown.
rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
That sounds about right. The important figure there is 50m distance, about 165 feet. Out in the open countryside, there generally aren’t any buildings that close to the tracks. In a downtown area, there always are.
This is why the Italians build direttissima main lines with long detours into city centers, typically leveraging legacy tracks in the downtown area. Of course, they don’t have to deal with private freight rail owner/operators or FRA rules on mixed traffic. Even so, the Italian approach is nose-bleed expensive, probably prohibitively so in the California context where it’s much harder to take farmland by eminent domain and there’s no a priori commitment to fully fund construction.
I’d really like to see CHSRA forced to articulate how it intends to run express trains through downtown areas at 220mph without provoking a massive backlash. Sound walls will buy you about 8dB(A), but 92dB(A) at 50m is still extremely loud in a built-up area – especially since they’re planning to run 9-10tph by 2030 or so, during a 6 hour peak period every day. That would translate to one noise event every 3 minutes or so.
The low-tech answer is of course a speed limit or even a stop at each station in the CV, but then CHSRA can kiss the 2h40m SF-LA non-stop target goodbye for good.
Peter Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Also, Spain will be running them that fast when ERTMS 2 is certified on their tracks.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Commercial speeds much over 300kmh simply aren’t environmentally and economically sustainable over the medium term. Pushing ground level air out of the way is inherently an expensive, noisy and energy-intensive business, one with very quickly decreasing benefit/cost, one any honest advocate has to acknowledge and account for.
Sure, you can run trains that fast, and doing so gets train fans all hot and excited, but that doesn’t mean you should or can afford to, long-term or even medium-term. Moreover, there are nearly always better and cheaper ways to achieve the nominal goal of faster door to door trip times.
Fun fact to know: the highest average speed line in Germany is the rebuilt (Ausbaustrecke) 18th century alignment Berlin-Hamburg with a maximum speed of “only” 230kmh. It beats all the station to station timings on all of the heroically-engineered, 300+ max speed spanky new high purpose built high speed lines (Neubaustrecken) because speeding up slow sections is always far more important than stunts involving the highest speeds. Get in and out of the stations quickly and get up to and sustain a reasonable top speed quickly and you have a good engineering and economic solution. Another fun fact: Eurostar passengers waste more time in security and checkin lines than the time gains by the billions spent on the heroic engineering of CTRL1 and CTRL2.
Meanwhile, the cretinous CHSRA consultants’ “plan” of dragging down average speeds through dismal route selection and insane local alignments and then “requiring” infeasibly high maximum speeds to undo their self-inflected stupidity and to meet their made-of-thin-air ridership “projections” is an excellent way to maximize construction and operating costs. How … very surprising that things should just happen to work out that way …
Alon Levy Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Both 300 km/h lines in Germany are cutoffs that only bypass portions of the legacy line. So it’s not surprising that they’re slow.
But the 300 km/h lines in France can have average speeds of about 240 km/h.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 1:53 am
Alon, do you somehow think you’ve contradicted my point?
(And I’m not sure how why Frankfurt-Köln is merely a “cutoff” any more than LGV Sud-Est.)
Good engineering — and a rudimentary grasp of primary school arithmetic — says to make slow stuff less slow, not waste effort trying to make the fastest stuff more so. The same +-/* calculus works in Japan, Germany, and even France .. but not in God’s Own United States of Murka.
rafael Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 4:45 am
… which is why you want to avoid building tracks in the downtown areas of rural towns where trains will only stop occasionally, if at all. A noise-related artificial speed limit is just as bad as one or moresevere curves or, insufficient acceleration/deceleration sections to either side of stations.
Alon Levy Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Trains run on legacy track less on Paris-Lyon than on Frankfurt-Cologne.
On the other hand, I just booked TGV tickets from Nice to Paris. The train leaves Nice at 10:35. The connecting TER from Monaco, where I currently am, arrives in Nice at :36 after the hour every 1-2 hours. Somehow, I can’t imagine DB being this annoying to its passengers.
dejv Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:28 am
… which is especially important in Japan, where they built lots of tunnels without widened portals before they found out it made tunnel boom worse, so they’re bound to mitigate tunnel boom with train nose design. In Europe, tunnel boom is mitigated by tunnel design (tunnel cross section, portal shape and lining coarseness), so train design doesn’t have to take it into account – compare nose of 700T series to their Japanese relatives.
Windows of cars with top speed above 200 km/h can’t be open because such cars must be pressure-proof.
Jon Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
I think he means the windows of residential properties, not the train itself.
rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Correct, that’s what I was referring to. Opening the window of a train traveling at very high speed would really give passengers a bad hair day.
dejv Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 7:43 am
At 100 mph, it’s not bad – as long as you keep your head inside. :)
The need to keep the windows of closed isn’t that bad if the house is equipped with forced ventilation – do you have any figures how many homes feature it?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 10:01 am
You want to keep your head inside at ten miles an hour.
YesonHSR Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Notice farther down the list is a TGV..its passing thru a small town at 200KPH..I dought the locals are living in FUD everytime a train goes by…I live in SF and noise is a part of life..people and their car boom sound music is by far the most irritating thing
Tony D. Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Totally agree 100% Rafael and Clem,
Living in Gilroy, I say build the station just east of the Outlets near Leavesley. The area is ripe for development, especially with the closure of the old WalMart (which is now located further south near Costco/152). You could also institute a Mello-Roos district around the station to help fund things like fire and police (Nadia!). As for downtown Gilroy proper, it will survive on its own merit. I’m sure VTA Community Bus Service could be easily implemented between the downtown and Outlets HSR station.
Elizabeth Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:30 am
I think what complicates this is that Gilroy has fought long and hard to keep the area now proposed for a station off-limits to development. The whole region just west of the Diablo mountains and east of 101 is environmentally sensitive.
Committee for Green Foothills is actually hosting a tour/lunch this weekend to visit that area:http://www.greenfoothills.org/index.shtml
On the other hand, 220 through developed areas seems more than **ambitious**. The rail authority’s numbers show 220 at 97 decibels when it is at ground level (http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20090810133659_BoardPrezAug09vprint.pdf) . For the reasons that Rafael mentioned, the typical things that you would do to mitigate noise like sounds walls do not work very well at speeds above 180 mph. The FRA study has some work on this (link on our site), this TGV report http://www.schienenfahrzeugtagung.at/download/PDF2008/Lacote.pdf page 15 shows the limits of noise barriers at very high speeds.
According to the May Chron article on the Shinkensen, “Japan has a national noise standard for the Shinkansen, limiting the noise it generates to 70 decibels in residential areas and 75 decibels in commercial districts.”
One of the things this is missing is a national noise standard in this country. If we had such a thing, plans could be made accordingly.
Anyway, it is a really tough situation down there.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:49 am
The rail authority’s numbers show 220 at 97 decibels when it is at ground level
Compare and contrast that with the 105dB train horns that are sounded along with the clanging bells in the crossing gates.
rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
97dB? At what distance? Is that an A-weighted number?
Idem for the 105dB hell’s bells and horns. Only the vuvuzelas at the World Cup are even worse than those.
Peter Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Those numbers are based on first-generation trains. They should be bringing out new numbers based on current-generation trains soon.
rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Don’t expect miracles. If they’ve managed to bring it down by 3dB at the same speed, they’ve done well.
Peter Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Oh, totally. 3 dB are in fact a major decrease.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
and 3dB here and 2 dB there and it’s much quieter….
Tony D. Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Elizabeth,
The city of Gilroy actually proposed (or were willing to approve) a Westfield Shopping complex (complete with cineplex, retail and residential condos) just southeast of the Premium Outlets near Leavesley Road, where we are now talking about a hypothetical HSR station. The Great Recession killed that idea. Perhaps such a development could be resurrected to be incorporated into a HSR station. Again, we’re talking about potential development just southeast of the Outlets and west towards 101, most likely including the old Wal Mart site. Area’s to the east towards the Diable Range probably won’t see much development (if any), as they are unincorpated lands of Santa Clara County (don’t belong to Gilroy).
Tony D. Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
I was somewhat right:
http://www.gilroydispatch.com/business/205958-shop-talk-begins-for-mainstreet-mall
Anyhow, this proposal could probably be resurrected along with a HSR station.
rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
In this case, choosing a station site east of 101 would be a due to lack of co-operation from UPRR + noise from express trains. TOD is really neither here nor there in that context. Indeed, at 220mph, HSR operations might well curb any enthusiasm for developing greenfield sites near the station.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Six lane Interstate quality highway crossing a six lane boulevard wouldn’t have anything to do with people not wanting to develop things close to the ROW would it?
YesonHSR Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:50 am
I agree with Tony..not ever single foot of HSR needs TOD around it if its a faster more cost effective way to get the line open..
YesonHSR Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:47 am
lets hope the new CEO will start applying some of the ideas he spoke of in his first speech!
Reminder: RailLA workshop on HSR in Los Angeles on Tue 22 June @ 7pm:
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articles/2010/06/16/news/doc4c191da036021284185232.txt
Elizabeth Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Not to be a wet rag, but it should be pointed out that this event is sponsered by Parson Brinkerhoff.
Such workshops seem like a great idea – it is just too bad that everything we do now has this corporatist flavor. At this point in time, the public sector is essentially working for the private. How do we turn this back around?
rafael Reply:
June 17th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Political leadership + willingness to spend a modest amount of money to regain control and oversight. CHSRA is operating on the assumption that putting staff on the payroll is a major no-no because the state’s public sector employees enjoy lifetime employment guarantees – something even the most socialist of European states have already got rid of.
I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect that the state could set up a not-for-profit state-owned company dedicated to effectively manage/oversee private contractors during the planning and construction phase on behalf of state voters, plus take charge of public outreach efforts. It’s executives would report solely to CHSRA’s board. Their job security would be the same as for private sector employees, but they would also not be subject to a public sector pay scale. This way, CHSRA could actually compete with the PBs, Alstom’s etc. of the world for top talent in the planning and railway engineering sectors. Outsourcing basically everything is a recipe for high cost.
There is some rant letter to the editor about HSR in the online gilroydispatch about HSR causing trash and junk to fly around..what hogwash
If the French were to build the Gilroy station, where would they put it? They wouldn’t, even though they love garlic. They would find it ridiculous to build a station only 30 miles from a major city and its station. Its only value is for commuting, and the French do not use HSR for commuting. Most of the comments on this site focus on the commuting opportunities; the words “Los Angeles” never appear.
If, however, the French did build the station, they would likely put it out near the outlets. They have put a few TGV stations out in the countryside, such as TGV Macon and TGV Avignon, which is about 10 km from Avignon proper. Although it has express tracks for through trains, they do not bang through the station at line speed; based on my brief look at the station and environs, I would say they probably come through at about 120 kph, max.
In Japan there are apparently some stations where the HS trains come through at line speed, and one station where they come through [begin ital] on the track next to the platform. [end ital] However, there the arrival of the train is heralded by a warning bell, and a barrier rises automatically between the tracks and the platform. Innovations that work well in Japan, with its social traditions of obedience and stoicism, don’t always translate to the Occident.
Alon Levy Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Translation: who needs to learn from those slant-eyes? We whiteys know better!
(In reality, if you care to learn, the Western notion that Asians are all obedient and stoic is full of crap. China and Taiwan can be chaotic, Singapore is culturally chaotic but has a strict government, and a quick visit to Tokyo’s underground bars will disabuse you of the notion that the Japanese are essentially different from Westerners.)