High Speed Rail Supporters Organize in Hanford
Have you “liked” Citizens Who Support High Speed Rail in the Central Valley on Facebook yet?
You should. While a few shrill voices are predicting doom and gloom for Kings County should the project go through ($100 million would be lost if dairies are affected? Really? Are the tracks somehow going to destroy all dairies in the region? And why aren’t they counting the huge economic benefits of new jobs and new residents that the Hanford HSR station will bring? Ridiculous. More on that later.), there are a growing number of people there who understand the benefits the project will bring, and are organizing to ensure it happens.
Andrew Picard, creator of the Facebook page, was profiled in the Hanford Sentinel this week:
Picard, raised in Hanford, said he was shocked by all the vocal opposition to high-speed rail expressed at recent meetings, particularly the meeting Felts attended.
“So many leaders in the community support high-speed rail,” Picard said. “And their voice isn’t heard.”
Those leaders include Erin Holloway, Hanford recreation supervisor.
“There are so many kids in this town that have never been to San Francisco or Los Angeles,” Holloway said. “If something like [high-speed rail] were to come in, there would be many more opportunities. There’s just so much more out there than there is here, and a lot of people in this area don’t get to experience that.”Holloway said she believes that it will spur economic development locally by giving Hanford residents the chance to live here, but commute to faraway jobs on the train.
“There’s going to be a huge amount of jobs that would open up here,” she said.
They get it. And when you read Picard and Holloway’s comments on the impact of the tracks on farmers – that they understand the anger, but that the tracks do have to go somewhere and after all, a narrow corridor of rails won’t damage the regional agriculture economy – you see that they’re reasonable and decent people.
Unfortunately, as tends to be the case these days, their opposition isn’t. We live in an era where political “debate” tends to be defined by crazy, indefensible, extremism on the part of those who oppose progressive and popular policies. After all, the anti-HSR crowd booed a local student, Veronica Felts, when she dared stand up and speak of her support for the project.
Keep in mind there was a reason Hanford and Visalia fought hard to get a station. Their elected leaders know that HSR will be a huge economic boon to the region – and that like freeways and rails across the world, it will coexist with farming just fine. Let’s hope these reasonable folks get the support they need to ensure their voice is heard.
San Joaquin Valley cities are growing. As these cities grow, many of the new residents have little or no connection to the agriculture which initially built the valley. Local farmers are not blameless as many have sold land to developers, adding to the size of the cities.
The cities will benefit greatly from high speed rail, so city officials support high speed rail, as they should. But at the county level, city dwellers are often outnumbered by farmers.
There will be some interesting battle lines drawn as this moves forward, and as a pro-HSR organization, we should be aware of the differences…
joe Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
I wouldn’t couch this as Ag vs urban.
It’s Talk-radio-tea-bagger vs public infrastructure.
HSR offers benefits to farmers: HSR contains growth, limits sprawl and reduces air pollution. Tracks are weaker hydrological barriers than roads.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
HSR does not contain sprawl, local mass transit does. HSR simply doesn’t target the sort of trips that lead to sprawl. If anything, it may actually increase sprawl by making the CV a potential area to commute from (depending on price) and to locate businesses in.
Miles Bader Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 9:43 pm
HSR very much contributes to an environment that reduces sprawl though: It encourages dense urban areas, pedestrian access, and reduced emphasis on the automobile. It’s part of a network of rail and mass-transit.
[and the idiot teabagger claims that HSR is going to "create sprawl" are pure crap. Contributing to the growth of minor cities isn't "sprawl."]
joe Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 9:48 pm
I disagree.
HSR contains sprawl by creating a center in Kings County, the station.
The HSR station also provides “network effect” or something a kin to “demand-side economies of scale” for public transit. It increases the value of property closer to the station and access to it more valuable – that discourages car based sprawl.
My little town, Gilroy, uses the old train station as its bus hub. The City has invested to build up and protect farmland and control sprawl. The HSR station ideally, options are TBD when the study is finished, will be located there.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
“create sprawl” implies that the relatively small number of higher income people who will rely on HSR for some form of commuting will be located in a lower density area than if they were not relying on the HSR.
But those people would likely be living in outer suburbia otherwise. The people who are going to be electing to live in King County and commute from there (quite possibly partial-week commuting combined with work at home) are not going to be otherwise living in some condominium apartment in central SF.
And it remains the case that they will tend to cluster near the HSR station, whereas in a car-commute reliant outer suburb, they will not cluster. Clustering is the opposite of sprawl, even if it is town style clustering rather than inner urban clustering.
Likely more important would be back office or manufacturing locations for activities with their IP development centers somewhere higher rent like the Peninsula, where the importance of the HSR access is the ease of getting from the development center to the back office and from the back office to the development center.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 7:01 pm
So they trade a San Francisco condo for a Fresno (or Hanford) condo?
Or a Bay Area suburban tract house for a Fresno (or Handford) condo?
I don’t think so.
Your hypothetical long-distance commuter from the CV is still going to buy the tract house with giant backyard. Otherwise, what’s the point of commuting from way, way out in the CV in the first place?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
They trade an outrageously expensive studio in a rough neighborhood for an expansive 2000 sq foot loft in walkable downtown Fresno.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 7:59 pm
Fresno has a higher crime rate than San Francisco.
Of course, I wouldn’t expect someone out in the Adirondacks to know that.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
and the people moving to Frenso from the rough neighborhood don’t live in San Francisco.
datacruncher Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 9:34 pm
Fresno’s per capita crime has been lower than SF for some time now.
Using CQPress’ national rankings which uses data reported to the FBI, the two cities have been ranked (higher means higher crime):
2010 ranking (2009′s crime data) (out of 400 cities ranked) – #130 San Francisco; #133 Fresno
2009 ranking (2008 data) (out of 393 cities ranked) – #93 San Francisco; #161 Fresno
2008 ranking (2007 data) (out of 385 cities) – #102 San Francisco; #144 Fresno
http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City_crime_rate_2010-2011_hightolow.pdf
http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2009/CityCrime2009_Rank_Rev.pdf
http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/CityCrime2008_Rank_Rev.pdf
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 9:46 pm
How is it that with SF having lower crime rates on that ranking until the last year, you claim that Fresno’s per capita crime has been lower for some time?
datacruncher Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 10:03 pm
The rankings are highest crime to lowest crime, #1 is highest crime city. If you open the ranking links the top cities are usually places like Detroit, Camden or Oakland. So Fresno’s ranking numbers place it as having lower crime than SF.
Spokker Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
SF is made out to be this liberal utopia where everything is sunshine and farts that smell like Branston pickle. Yet even the sanctuary city that is Santa Ana is safer than San Francisco and Fresno. Yet to stand anywhere in Santa Ana is perceived to be far more stabby than either by those who have either never been there or only passed through.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 9:02 pm
I’m sorry, but who in the world is going to be commuting from Fresno and yet living in a condo or something? I doubt HSR is going to greatly reduce the current $64 round trip fare which, even just one day a week, puts HSR commuting above the normal person’s transportation costs (and I rather doubt Fresno will be able to let them go carless for the remaining 6 days of the week).
HSR is intercity rail. Like Amtrak and airlines, it targets an infrequent travel sector by all but businessmen, who do not use it for commuting. The LA-SD line might be useful for commuters, but that’s because it is, in part, a rail upgrade for a line already used for commuter service.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 11:53 pm
If you and your spouse work at home you only need one car instead of two cars. Even if your spouse works outside of the home, if you are working all day at home you don’t need a second car. Taxis or Zipcar can take care of the occasional need for a second car.
…. all those people who have Amtrak monthlies between NY and Philadelphia must be doing something wrong….
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 12:41 am
If they’re paying for it on their own dime rather than a business account, yes. A monthly ticket between those two cities on Amtrak costs $1,260 per month. Anyone with that kind of cash to spare is a high level professional; not a super plentiful type of person nor the kind to be attracted to a condo in Fresno. Sprawl is more of a middle class phenomenon, if for no reason other than numbers, and they will not be affording such a monthly ticket nor are they likely to have work at home jobs.
francis Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 11:11 am
Typically a commuter town only needs to send out a small percentage of its workers to the city. Those long-distance commuters bring back lots of $$$ that they spend in the town and create jobs at stores, schools, etc.
“Tracks are weaker hydrological barriers than roads.”–Joe
So true! Ask the civil engineers about this. They will tell you that you need larger drainage ditches with a road, and their maintenance is considerably more important, than what you need for a railroad. The reason is that the road has that large, flat, impervious surface, while a railroad is skinnier and actually quite porous through that stone ballast. This means a highway sheds a lot more water in a storm, with some pretty heavy runoff in spots (think of a city street in a downpour, and watch those rivers run into the drains). You rarely if ever see water laying or puddling on a railroad, and if you do, you can bet there’s something seriously wrong, like a major flood in progress, or a genuine washout.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
HSR will be using concrete slab track however rather than stone ballast. Porosity may be the same or marginal compared to road.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 8:20 pm
Might be using slab track.
AndyDuncan Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 7:27 pm
Probably will be using slab track. The last technical drafts I saw specced slab track for “high speed” sections.
AndyDuncan Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 7:34 pm
From Technical Memo 2.1.2 (Via Clem, Via CARRD)
Elizabeth Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 9:51 pm
FWIW the December costing estimates seem to specify ballasted track for at grade sections and “direct fixation” track for the aerials
AndyDuncan Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Interesting. Perhaps the slab track got value engineered?
swing hanger Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 9:14 pm
Also, ballast has natural sound deadening characteristics. Slab track is noisier, though it can be mitigated by sound deadening construction in the aerials.
joe Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
The EIR for HSR makes this claim, the track is a weaker hydrologic barrier than a road. This is important characteristic for preserving hydrologic connectivity of the undeveloped lands it cuts across.
Yes, I did read the EIR for the Northern Segment.
Miles Bader Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
The smaller area of a rail line compared a highway is significant though. Slab track may be (basically) “flat,” and “impervious” (compared to ballasted track) but it’s not really all that “large.” Moreover, even on a slab track, it’s much simpler to put in good drainage than it is on a road, because the road must be a single uninterrupted surface, whereas the concrete in a slab track is merely structural.
Also, of course, HSR doesn’t necessarily use slab track; the tokaido shinkansen, for instance, generally seems to use ballasted track except near stations (etc).
joe Reply:
June 11th, 2011 at 11:00 pm
Lateral flow is the important attribute.
The road and rail bed have different permeability. Rail allows greater lateral flow. It is less disruptive.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
And for the scenario of “having to drill new wells”, a private water line to connect a well on one side of the rail corridor to land it presently irrigates on the other side is not only a quite reasonable thing to ask for, but also something that would be straightforward to provide.
joe Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Roads can alter surface and sub-surface flow at conditions at a or near saturation. So this difference matters to the vernal pools, wetlands and farmers.
Farm wells are deep. In the CV they are very deep and the land surface has sunk over 100 feet in sub places due to pumping and compaction of the drained aquifer. It’s obviously non-sustainable and their well water is often too salty – it can kill almond trees if used in place of surface water.
wu ming Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
alkaline salts are more of a problem for those of us on the west side of the central valley, because of the alkaline nature of the clay rock formations in the coastal range that our soil’s eroded from, IIRC. the east side, that 99 goes along, is eroded from the granite formations of the sierras, and tends to be relatively acidic (relative to westside soils). my dad used to bring bottles of water from the tap at work in sac to water my mom’s plants in davis.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Wu, and Joe, what are your backgrounds? You sound more knowledgeable than most on agriculture, including me.
wu ming Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
nothing professional, but i garden a lot (acid-loving plants die here not long after you water them, because of the salts in the well water), and have lived in the valley most of my life. there are more than a few people in davis who know a thing or two about soil and water in the area, because of the ag science program university here at uc davis. there was also a really great blog a few years back run by a woman in the dept. of water resources who wrote about water/soil/ag issues in an engaging way (no, really!), and the local garden store guy has a good column in the local paper that talks regularly about the eccentricities of the local soil/climate.
so yeah, i’m not an expert, but water and soil’s a big deal in this corner of CA, so you pick it up after a while. all this HSR fighting has nothing on the ragnarok that will erupt if they start to move on the peripheral canal project.
joe Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
I earned an advance degree in ecology with an emphasis in hydrology.
wu ming Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
joe FTW!
BruceMcF Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Yes, elevations will be slab track, but the French tend rely on ballast track for regular corridor at grade. I believe the Japanese and the Germans tend to rely on slab track.
This Report from 2002 suggests slab can indeed be effective at maintaining tolerances required for HSR when subjected to heavy freight axle loads, which might be a consideration for the first construction segment, given the need to support heavy Amtrak loco’s in its fallback use, in the event that Morris and Co. are successful in keeping California’s intercity transport mired in the past.
Peter Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
I remember reading about sections of slab track in Germany that were laid in the 70′s, and haven’t needed to be serviced (except for some grinding) since.
Joey Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Slab construction is very low maintenance. It’s also more expensive to build. I have heard concerns about slab track cracking but have never seen a report of that actually happening. I have yet to be convinced that either is superior.
Andre Peretti Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 8:54 am
SNCF’s opting for ballast is due to financial rather than technical reasons. LGVs are generally financed on 10-years bonds with very little state participation. If the state had been more generous slab would have been preferred.
Slab tracks for HSR are very expensive because they have to combine the stability of concrete and the noise and shock absorption of ballast.
Rigid monolithic slabs produce unacceptable noise levels and increase rolling stock wear. They cause rapid “polygonization” of the wheels. In ordinary language: flats. Modern slab tracks associate elastomers and concrete and have none of these defects.
SNCF is now having secondtoughts. It has begun testing a 2km slab track portion of the LGV east. One reason is that as speeds increase, so does ballast maintenance frequency and the cost advantage of ballast might not be as obvious as it used to be. Ballast may even be dangerous for rolling stock not designed for it. An ICE train on a test run to Lyon had its underside damaged by flying ballast.
If CHSR can afford the initial cost, ballastless seems to be the way to go, at least on the 360km/h portion of the line.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 10:44 am
CHSRA would seem to be in a sufficiently similar financial situation as SNCF for a similar decision to be best value.
Eric M Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
San Francisco to San Jose should be ballasted track since slab track for 125 mph and below is a waste. San Jose to Los Angeles should be slab track. (maybe a little ballasted track as you get into the LA basin. Can’t remember the speeds they are proposing to use towards Union Station)
synonymouse Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Ballasted track is insufficiently brutalist, ie., the idea is to pour as much concrete as possible, preferably up in the air.
You know, with a shrinking economy, high budget deficits and a bitter controversy over tax levies, Prop 1A might just end up back on the ballot, as unlikely as that might seem at this moment. If it does goes down like that, it will fail and the blame will fall on the CHSRA for refusing to even consider the Tejon-I-5-Altamont cheaper alternative to Techachapi detour-99 Stilt-A_Rail-Pacheco-iconic Diridon.
The public, in the Golden State and the rest of the country, is just beginning to wake up to the fact there has been a gigantic stealth tax increase occasioned by assessors refusing to lower property valuations altho the latter have been systematically tanking. Property owners have been paying way more tax than they should for going on 5 years.
Eric M Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Wow. You are in left field!
Joey Reply:
June 13th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
Ehh? BART used plenty of ballasted track. Just not in tunnels or on viaducts (which is the usual case).
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Cheap olde tyme or low speed or badly maintained rail, perhaps.
A high-quality or high-speed modern ballasted rail line is basically a highway — completely with subgrade an an impermeable asphalt layer above — with tracks and rocks on top and with poles for catenary support instead of for lighting. (And, for that matter, high speed rail junctions are highway junctions, but much longer (and a little bit skinnier, in some parts only.))
Use teh googles, people!
High hydrological permeability of high speed rail lines: “Clutching at straws” or “pulling facts out of one’s arse”? Evaluate and decide!
There’s a letter to the editor in today’s Bakersfield Californian (http://www.bakersfield.com/opinion/letters/x43955911/Time-for-McCarthy-to-go), “Tim for McCarthy to go,” that specifically cites Rep. McCarthy’s opposition to high speed rail. With the new legislative districts announced Friday and the top-two primary, 2012 presents a great opportunity to elect many new legislators with a commitment to sustainable transportation and investing in America rather than investing in Citibank and endless war in Iraq/Afghanistan.
*”Time for McCarthy to go.”
joe Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 10:50 am
Time for Jim Costa to stay.
He is a Congressional Rep and HSR supporter who may need help in 2012 due to redistricting.
e.g.
“Rep. Jim Costa attacked a critical report on California high-speed rail, saying that it “represents a truly defeatist attitude” in a letter released Friday.”
wu ming Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 11:08 am
um, is this THE jim costa, a costa staffer, or someone else whose name coincidentally happens to be jim costa?
BruceMcF Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Its david jarman talking regarding Jim Costa.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Err, make that it looks like its david jarman, quoting jeffmd, regarding Jim Costa and the CV.
joe Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Jim Costa-farian
http://costa.house.gov/
wu ming Reply:
June 12th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
ah, got it. nevermind. that quote box looked like a new nested comment.