Five Bay Area train operators say they are entitled to as much as $400 million of projects to accommodate the $42.6 billion bullet train that would run along the Caltrain tracks from San Francisco to San Jose on its way to Los Angeles. They include the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, San Francisco Muni and the Altamont Commuter Express….

The California Transportation Commission reserved $745 million for 10 transit agencies in December, leaving each train operator this week to apply for its share of the money and prove its projects qualify. The commission calculated each agency’s share based on track length, service levels and ridership.

Three other intercity rail corridors will get $142.5 million ($47.5 million each). The $745 million then goes to those agencies that apply. Mike Rosenberg’s article lays out who is asking for what (final applications are due on March 15):

BART appears on track for more than twice as much money as any agency in the state, and on Thursday its board of directors is expected to approve an application for $257 million.

BART would put $150 million of the 1A money toward its $1 billion project to replace its rail cars. It says it has federal money for the rest of the project. The rest of BART’s high-speed-rail money would go toward increasing seat capacity in cars, the Hayward yard maintenance complex, Embarcadero and Montgomery station upgrades, train control reliability and an operations control center.

Caltrain, meanwhile, will apply for $40 million as part of its project to electrify its diesel railroad, which will be necessary to accommodate bullet trains. VTA is eligible to apply for up to $26 million. It said it may use part of its share for Caltrain electrification, while Muni said it will seek $61 million to improve rail connections. ACE train operators said they will apply for $15 million for upgrades to service, Altamont corridor environmental studies, track enhancements and connectivity improvements.

The amounts requested are not arbitrary, but conform to CTC guidelines published last month, which is why BART is asking for $250 million and ACE only $15 million. In each case the funds appear set to go to help pay for planned upgrades, although not for new routes or service.

One such example can be found in Buena Park, which finally got a Metrolink station in 2007. Transit-oriented development is still being built at the station – it wasn’t completed at the time of the Google Maps satellite shot of the station below.

View Larger Map

In recent weeks, Buena Park officials have learned that the CHSRA’s plans for building high speed rail along that corridor might require either the station or the transit-oriented development to be moved:

Mayor Art Brown spent years pushing for a commuter train station combined with nearby housing in his community. But as townhouses are being finished around the $14 million Metrolink station, he’s facing the prospect that California’s high-speed rail line may plow right through his beloved project.

“The only option they presented to us was either losing the condo units or losing our train station,” Brown said of an engineering presentation to city leaders last year….

“The idea that they would spend millions for a new station and remove it is a colossal waste of time and money,” said Mark Goldsmith, a resident of the “transit village” next to the Buena Park station.

Why yes, yes it is. It’s an unfortunate example of the lack of coherent, integrated transportation planning that happens in this state, where numerous local governments and agencies are conducting plans that don’t always match up. The CHSRA claims they had been in touch with city planning departments since 2005, so perhaps there was a point at which Buena Park learned of the HSR plans and said “screw it, let’s go ahead with these Metrolink Station/TOD plans anyway.” Or perhaps the CHSRA’s outreach was insufficient and Buena Park didn’t know the full details of what was being planned. In any case, it’s a rightly frustrating situation.

The LA-Anaheim Alternatives Analysis from June 2009 shows the issue (look on pages 60-61). The plan is to add HSR tracks just to the south of the current alignment, requiring 45 feet of ROW acquisition. That’s where the TOD in question is located.

The Buena Park Metrolink station can accommodate four tracks (there are currently two). But the Dedicated HST Alternative identified in the Alternatives Analysis involves six mainline tracks, two HSR-dedicated tracks and four for freight/Amtrak/Metrolink, between Redondo Junction and Fullerton Junction. Because of BNSF’s heavy usage of this corridor, the CHSRA and their consultants determined this was the necessary solution for HSR implementation. Hence the need for more tracks, and the conflict at Buena Park.

As the AP article makes clear, it’s not just Buena Park that is concerned:

Buena Park joined a coalition of gateway cities demanding a chance to evaluate all options and their potential impacts before moving into the environmental review process. The demand for better coordination was recently agreed upon in a memorandum of understanding with the authority.

“We’re not trying to be obstructionist NIMBY types, but it has to make sense to us,” said Ernie Garcia, city manager of Norwalk.

Which is sensible enough. Because of an apparent lack of coordinated planning for this portion of the LOSSAN corridor, these conflicts are there, and will have to be dealt with. It’s a good sign that these cities are avoiding the approach taken by their counterparts in the Bay Area – suing the Authority and giving fuel to anti-HSR, NIMBY sentiments. And if push came to shove, Buena Park’s mayor made clear he’d make way for HSR:

In Buena Park, Mayor Brown still could face his dilemma. But he said that if forced to choose, he would sacrifice the train station where his name is prominent on a plaque marking its opening.

“I would not take the homes away from those people,” he said. “They saved all their lives in some cases to buy a home with good transportation nearby.”

CHSRA deputy director Jeff Barker was quoted in the article pledging to work with Buena Park and the other “gateway cities” such as Norwalk and La Mirada (where my wife is from), and that pledge was reinforced in the memorandum of understanding recently signed between the cities and the CHSRA.

There’s every reason to believe that these conflicts, frustrating as they are, will be effectively resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. I’m not going to propose a solution myself, but it is good to see that the cities are adopting a constructive approach to these matters. Let’s hope that attitude is shared across the state so that high speed rail can get built on-time, on-budget, and in a way that meets the needs of Californians for generations to come.

Yet the $8 billion set aside for high-speed rail in his 2009 stimulus package, split among 31 states, includes only two genuine high-speed rail projects — in Florida and California. And even that money will do little more than kick-start the schemes. The rest of the package will go to upgrading various sections of the Amtrak network….

And that’s what makes the Acela lines from Washington to Boston the best opportunity to create a real high-speed, high-frequency service to compete with air travel along the Northeastern Seaboard.

Of course, the Acela is already a successful example of sort-of-high speed rail in California America, with 60% of the market share on the Northeast Corridor according to recent stats. While the Acela needs to be upgraded to even faster speeds, HSR will get more lasting support in Congress if HSR in new states is supported. The Clinton Administration would up focusing its HSR efforts on the NEC and as a result, no lasting HSR funding project was achieved until Barack Obama became president in 2009.

So it would not be sensible from the perspective of generating national support for HSR to just focus on improving the Acela. The most valuable thing to do to get a national HSR system up and running would be for Congress to create a significant, stable, long-term funding source for HSR, and Wolmar doesn’t propose that here.

But Wolmar offers some other good places to look at in order to speed up HSR in the US:

It’s not just a matter of money, though. The government must do away with a host of state and federal regulations that reduce train speed and are far too restrictive.

Wolmar didn’t go into details here, but we can. One of the most important reforms involves Federal Railroad Administration rules that make it difficult to bring off-the-shelf European and Japanese style high speed trains to existing railroads. Instead trains must be made heavier, slowing speeds and travel times.

Another issue is environmental regulation. As I’ve discussed here before, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) needs to be reformed in order for sustainable infrastructure projects like HSR to be built, with a more holistic statewide process created that can supplant the existing, flawed CEQA model that doesn’t effectively engage public input and gives too much power to NIMBYs. All sides should support sensible reform, because in its absence, the legislature is moving instead to exempt more projects from CEQA entirely, which isn’t an ideal solution.

The federal government can also help by reforming the way railroads are regulated. Currently the state of California has very little leverage over Union Pacific, which enjoys immunity from state regulation and eminent domain dating back to the Gilded Age and is no longer necessary here in the 21st century.

These are just some of the state and federal regulations that could be reformed to help accelerate HSR planning and construction. I’m sure you all can offer more in the comments, and I invite you to do so.

The state has tens of billions of dollars in unsold bonds, and Treasurer Bill Lockyer has warned that with the state’s lowest-in-the-nation credit rating he may market new debt only sporadically….

The High-Speed Rail Authority is paying a public relations firm $8 million to peddle the deeply flawed project with “a coordinated statewide communications program” because advocates are eager to break ground and commit the state to the project before its deficiencies become toxic.

Walters’ column also includes assumptions that global warming deniers are right (despite the controversy over leaked emails from a British climate research institute, the overall scientific consensus that global warming IS happening has not been dented), suggesting his ideas are really a grab bag of conservative criticisms of efforts to change a failed status quo. His column boils down to “government spending is bad.”

This is despite the fact the only reason there are any signs of economic recovery is because of massive federal deficit spending. When the recession was under way and the scale of the state budget crisis was known in 2008, California voters rejected the arguments of the new Hoovers and agreed that spending $10 billion in bond debt to create jobs via sustainable transportation that wasn’t dependent on ever-rising oil prices was a good thing.

It’s clear that California’s budget mess is ongoing. Without considering the sale of the Prop 1A bond, or the $11 billion water bond on the November ballot, the state still faces an annual $20 billion deficit for at least the next 3 years. Even if we didn’t sell another dime of the Prop 1A bond (and forfeited at least $2.25 billion in federal funds) the state would still be in a deep fiscal hole and would be giving up as much as 160,000 jobs that could help fill the state’s coffers.

Ultimately, California is going to have to raise taxes, mostly on the wealthy and on large corporations, to deal with the budget gap. The alternative is to shut down health care programs, whole education programs ($20 billion is half of the total cost of K-12 education in the state), or other important services that are necessary for a prosperous modern society.

High speed rail would help get us out of the mess by building infrastructure the state needs for a 21st century economy and creating jobs that can put the state back to work and put more tax revenue into Sacramento’s pocket. Those jobs will be created, though it’s possible it won’t be as high as 160,000. Even if HSR doesn’t break even or meet its ridership numbers (a remote though possible outcome), those jobs and the tax revenue it spurs would be there, helping power the state’s recovery. And over time, as the state grows and takes in more money, the annual debt service will become an ever-smaller portion of the state budget.

There’s plenty of precedent for this – it’s how the bay bridges were built in the 1930s, during the depth of the Depression – but embracing the idea of deficit spending to create jobs also means rejecting the status quo. It means refusing to accept long-term unemployment, refusing to embrace 21st century forms of transportation, and refusing to invest in our future.

Which is exactly what some wish to do. Usually these are people who have made enough money off the 20th century that they feel they can continue to prosper here in the 21st century while everything that made 20th century prosperity possible is torn to pieces.

It’s true that there is an upper limit on the state’s bond debt. But during a recession like this, that limit isn’t something we’re anywhere close to, especially when the state leaves billions of dollars on the table through its refusal to effectively tax the fortunes of the wealthy and the enormous profits of its largest corporations.

In fact, California’s bond debt of $83.5 billion is just 4.5% of our state’s $1.85 trillion GDP. In contrast, some of the European nations whose debt levels are generating so much attention have far higher ratios – Greece’s government debt-to-GDP ratio is 112%.

In short, HSR bond money isn’t really a major factor in the state’s budget crisis. California deliberately doesn’t take in as much money as we need to in order to operate our public services at desired levels. We either have to generate new revenue, or accept a lesser level of public services. Punishing one of the few government services that will pay for its ongoing operating costs – high speed rail – strikes me as a very foolish thing to do.

A few excerpts from the LAO report makes it clear they’re not opposing the funding request in concept, but instead want more information on why the specific levels were requested:

Analyst’s Recommendation. In regard to the proposals for contract funding, there is no basis for the Legislature to determine the appropriate level of contract funding that should be provided to the authority for 2010–11. Accordingly, we withhold recommendation on the $203 million request pending receipt of supplemental information on the amount of work to be accomplished in the budget year, by contract, and information on how each contract fits into the overall development of the system….

Analyst’s Recommendation. We withhold recommendation on the staffing request until the authority is able to support the request for additional staffing with a strategy that outlines how to meet the short– and long–term staffing needs of the organization. The staffing strategy should include justification for the requested exempt positions. For the reasons discussed above, we further recommend that any exempt positions be defined statutorily.

In other words, the LAO is telling the CHSRA “show your work.” It’s a reasonable enough request, though the LAO needs to keep in mind that the CHSRA has been handicapped by a persistent lack of funding up to this last year. They have a few number of staff being asked to do a lot of work, including responding to the Legislature’s and LAO’s requests for more info. That’s not to say the CHSRA shouldn’t have to provide the info about the funding requests, they should – but the LAO and Legislature need to keep in mind the capacity the CHSRA has to respond.

Mike Rosenberg’s article on the issue noted comparisons being made between the HSR project and the East Span of the Bay Bridge:

Analysts fear the rail line could barrel down the same track as the Bay Bridge replacement project, where lack of oversight led to financial problems.

But there were other factors leading to the East Span’s financial problems. First, the basic design proposed by Governor Pete Wilson’s administration was rejected by Oakland politicians, including Mayor Jerry Brown, as not being aesthetically pleasing enough. A self-anchored suspension span was instead selected as a “signature span,” but this came at a much higher cost. The delays meant that construction materials procurement happened in the middle of the Chinese economic boom, which had driven steel prices through the roof. Had the line been held on design, the overall cost would have been smaller and procurement could have happened sooner, saving the state a huge amount of money.

That’s something to keep in mind as the public project planning process proceeds on the Peninsula and in other parts of the state. The best way to avoid financial problems for the project is to hit the sweet spot of a design that maximizes ridership and operations while also being integrated effectively with its surroundings.

Some of the main topics of discussion at today’s meeting:

• Appointment of interim executive director and update on permanent executive director search

• Proposed MOU for LOSSAN corridor

• Update on Vision California planning project

• New Program EIR for the San José-Merced segment, in order to comply with the judge’s order in the Atherton v. CHSRA case.

And updates from various subcommittees.

Feel free to use this as an open thread for discussing what comes up at the meeting. And I’ll have a post later today on the LAO report on the proposed CHSRA budget.

UPDATE: The CHSRA posted a very informative memo on the questions being raised about the ridership model. It includes a long explanation from Cambridge Systematics about the model and some of the questions raised about that model. It would seem to finally put to bed the controversy that erupted in January. Of course, it’s unlikely to get Alan Lowenthal to stop saying the ridership numbers “don’t pass the smell test,” despite his lack of any explanation or evidence for the claim. I still expect the legislature to order some form of revision or update to the ridership projections.

UPDATE 2: The Vision California report includes this rather interesting and important item: If smart growth principles are applied, California HSR could result in $24,000 less in housing costs per household, and 11,500 less VMT per household. This reinforces other studies that have shown that proximity to transit and walkable neighborhoods is a major financial boost to families.

Aerial Alignments

The current program alignment is to run an aerial (41 foot max to base of aerial) from Diridon Station literally above the current UP/Caltrain tracks. Once the aerial crosses over 280, the plan is to drop the aerial down until it is at grade with the current UP/Caltrain tracks on a berm with retained fill as it runs through the Gardner neighborhood along Fuller Ave. As the tracks approach 87, the plan is to raise them up on an aerial again, which will pass over 87 and again be routed above the current Caltrain tracks to Tamien and beyond. I spoke with an engineer who stated that the staff is currently leaning toward running the HSR tracks through Gardner south of the current Caltrain tracks (this is all on pages 8 and 9 of the exhibit boards). This same engineer (I believe) stated that there would likely be no entire houses taken, but at least one property would lose a few feet of its backyard. Also, the portion of Fuller Park that encroaches on the current Caltrain ROW would be taken back to make room for the 4-track alignment.

The 280/87 alignment is to fully run on an aerial from Diridon Station in a left-hand curve toward the 280/87 interchange. As the aerial crosses the 280 median it begins to curve to the right. It crosses 87 and the right-hand curve continues to basically follow the Guadalupe River, and then it again curves left to line up with Tamien Station and follows Caltrain above the same as the program alignment does (this is on pages 10 of the exhibit boards). In the presentation, they discussed the issues with building the 280/87 option. The primary issues are column placement and the need to maintain freeway operations during construction. The options discussed were a “simple” aerial with frequent column placement, what looked to me like a reinforced aerial enabling less frequent column placement, and a combination of reinforced aerial and a section of “signature spans” as the alignment crosses the freeways. The City of San Jose, having suggested the 280/87 alignment to begin with, if I recall correctly, is especially interested in the signature span option.

Along both alignments, you will notice that the aerials are quite high throughout. This is based on the request from the community to make the ROW more permeable and appear as less of a barrier.

Speed along both alignments would be severely restricted due to the curve radii. An engineer I spoke with (some one who told me they were leaning toward placing the HSR tracks south of the Caltrain/UP tracks through Gardner) stated that HSR would be going around 45 mph through Gardner. During the presentation one of the panelists said that the maximum speeds would be around 50-60 mph. I am guessing that the discrepancy between the numbers is due to the fact that it is better to promise a less desirable number and deliver something better than vice-versa. The 50-60 mph may also be the maximum speed along the 87/280 alignment.

The station for the aerial alignment is going to have 9 platform tracks (5 Caltrain and 4 HSR), and I assume there will be a separate platform track for Amtrak/UPRR. Add to that the VTA tracks and BART, and you have a 14-track total station.

They discussed two possible architectural designs for Diridon Station (which can be found on pages 8 and 12 of the meeting boards). One appears to have been copied from Oriente Station in Lisbon. This was meant to give the station a more permeable feel. The other design has a very different look to it.

Tunnel Alignments

The tunnel option is what most people were interested in, and about half of the meeting was devoted to discussing the tunnel and the issues regarding constructability and operations.

The tunnel being studied is essentially the Downtown Tunnel proposed by the City of San Jose. There were two other tunnel options put forth by community members, namely “Thread the Needle” and the “5100 Meter Tunnel”. These have been withdrawn, primarily due to constructability issues that would have placed the underground station directly underneath Diridon Station, negatively impacting its operations during construction. The Gardner community agreed with the Authority that the Downtown Tunnel would serve the same purposes as the other two tunnels and had no objections to withdrawing them.

The tunnel would begin right around Tamien and descend into two single-track 32′ diameter bores dug by TBMs. The single-track bores would be split into two tracks each, and the passing tracks would continue past the station on the outside. The station itself would be mined and excavated using Sequential Excavation Method/New Austrian Tunnel Method (SEM/NATM) (this is on page 20 of the presentation). The station would have to be 1380 feet long, 70 feet wide and 40 feet high. The primary issues this would cause are groundwater problems, requiring a very complex soil stabilization process, possibility of cave-ins, and construction time. The tunnel engineer stated that the excavation of the station alone would take over TEN, yes, that is ONE ZERO years (let’s say construction starts in 2013, that would place completion time sometime after 2023?????).

Other issues with the tunnel would be maintaining the stability of the support pilings for 280, poor (unstable) soil for tunneling, groundwater issues, tunneling under both Los Gatos Creek and the Guadalupe River, fire access, evacuation issues (deep station, no elevators or escalators in emergency, etc), extensive surface impacts at entry and exits points of the tunnel, etc.

The cost of the tunnel would be prohibitive, estimated to be $3 billion at this point. This is the same cost that BART is looking at for its tunnel beneath Santa Clara St.

All in all it was not a pretty picture for tunneling. Even the council-member from City of San Jose that I could see was nodding his head sagely when all the problems with tunneling were being listed. The only advantage for the tunnel option would be higher approach speeds and higher speeds for the through tracks.

The tunnel engineer that was present at the meeting was local, having grown up in San Jose. He seemed sufficiently knowledgeable to address this meeting, although he did not discuss any major tunneling projects he had engaged in. I didn’t hear him mentioning any bored tunnels, although he mentioned a local tunnel he had worked on (unsure of the tunnel construction method). Given that they won’t actually be building a tunnel (or so I hope; God help us if they do), I’m not too worried about his experience. They would probably hire some experienced tunnel engineers to actually build the thing.

Panel Discussion

People were wondering how loud the trains would be. The Regional Project Manager stated that they had sent teams to both Spain and Taiwan to get noise values for different types of trains. Spain made sense to me, as you can study the original TGV design, the Velaro, and the Talgo 350. Taiwan made sense as well, as you can study the 700T Shinkansen, while assumably getting the noise values minus the Japanese mitigation measures. My guess is that they wanted to compare one European modern EMU with a modern Japanese EMU. They are working with the FRA to update the FRA’s HSR noise evaluation handbook (if you will recall, the handbook only includes older, earlier generation HSR trains). The results of the noise study should be released in the next couple of months, so we have something else to look forward to. The community member on the panel expressed concern over the peak noise and frequency of trains. Obviously this will not be an issue in Gardner, especially not if the trains are limited to 45 mph.

Someone asked why HSR and BART could not simply swap tunnel depths. Apparently there are four major issues preventing this from happening. First, because BART would then have the same problems regarding access and safety that HSR would have. The bigger issue is that if HSR tunneled shallower than they are looking at, they would not be able to use TBMs and would have to use cut-and-cover, which would obviously be much more disruptive than boring. HSR would also be too shallow to go underneath the 280 freeway pilings, and BART would have difficulty realigning itself with the Caltrain ROW to get to Santa Clara.

The staff is researching other deep tunneled station and have not come up with an example of an HSR station that was dug that deep. They briefly discussed the psychological effects of such deep stations, and stated that no one had done any studies as to how having such a deep tunnel would affect ridership from a purely psychological basis. They also discussed that such a deep station would make transferring to other modes of transportation at Diridon more difficult and less desirable, with negative impact on ridership at the station overall.

There was a discussion of vibration caused by trains, which Bob Doty and some others discussed by explaining how the HSR trains would be lighter and cause less noise and vibration from wheel-track interaction.

The community was concerned with impacts on existing properties in terms of construction noise vibration. The panelists punted that issue down the line, stating that that would be studied in the EIR.

Bob Doty corrected a poorly worded reply by an Authority panelist to a question regarding horn noise. The Authority panelist had stated there would be no horns on HSR, and Bob Doty corrected him by saying that the HSR trains would have horns, but would not sound them at grade crossings, because there would be none.

The Draft Project EIR is due to be released in early 2011, if I understood them correctly. The Draft Program EIR is due to be released at tomorrow’s CHSRA board meeting. The 45 day comment period would begin on March 11.

There is a very odd proposal floated by the community for the so-called San Jose Split alignment. This would split off the station tracks around Tamien and have them follow the general tunnel alignment discussed above. The through tracks would follow 87 on an aerial (I assume, it was never fully explained) and join up with the station tracks further north. To me, this would seem to be a combination of the worst of both worlds. You would still have to tunnel and mine a station just as large as with the regular tunnel alignment. At the same time you would have to somehow construct an aerial following 87 and at some point link them up further north. Bob Doty nearly laughed when he heard this suggestion. His objection was that this would severely constrict the operator’s flexibility and would cause major problems if there was a track blockage. Some more knowledgeable railroad people can explain that to me.

Bob Doty stressed a number of times that the operator will want the most flexibility possible built into the system, hence the separate bores for the through-tracks around the tunneled station.

After the panel discussion, I tried to speak with Bob Doty about some of the issues raised on Clem’s blog regarding FFSS or SFFS and CBOSS/ERTMS and how those choices meshed with maximizing flexibility, but he was inundated by crazy people. I did overhear him stating that Caltrain is looking at equipment to run at up to 110 mph.

by Peter

DOJCHSRA

For NIMBYs who have argued that the CHSRA’s 2009 Business Plan is “illegal” because it floated the possibility of revenue guarantees to turn around and propose ending in San José is the height of hypocrisy. (I’m not a fan of those revenue guarantees, and if Prop 1A indeed banned them, then that would be a solid argument against their inclusion in a financial plan. Just so we’re clear.)

Of course, there are other reasons to oppose ending the HSR route in San José aside from the inconvenient truth that Prop 1A forbids it. Ridership would plummet since many riders won’t want to transfer to a commuter train that lacks the on-board amenities of HSR, and would traverse the SJ-SF route at a slower speed, increasing the travel time. And with less ridership comes less revenue, making it much more difficult for the trains to cover their operating costs and repay private investors.

Let’s hope this puts an end to what was always an unproductive discussion. HSR will traverse the Peninsula to serve San Francisco. What remains to be determined is exactly how that will happen – above-grade? In a trench? In a tunnel? Some mixture of those? That discussion is going to intensify considerably once there are actual alternatives put on the table, hopefully at the end of this month. And that is the discussion that matters most.

Burbank is slated to get an HSR station and it will be built near downtown Burbank, which is located immediately to the east of Interstate 5. A good overview can be found in this blog post on the Examiner.com website, which is useful even though it has some obvious anti-HSR biases. The most important part is about the station location, which will include a relocated Burbank Metrolink station:

The Burbank Metrolink station is one of the busiest in the county, making the city a logical choice for Rail Authority planners. Other stops in the region would include Union Station downtown, and yet-to-be-constructed stations in Sylmar and Palmdale.

High-speed rail stations require 1400-foot platforms with straight tracks. This eliminates the site of the current Burbank Metrolink station as a possibility, due to a curve in the tracks there. The area must also be wide enough to accommodate six parallel tracks: two for Metrolink and other carriers, two for high-speed rail travel, and two for high-speed rail passenger platforms. CHSRA has identified two possible locations for such a station in Burbank:

1. Near Alameda Avenue, west of San Fernando Boulevard. This would be an elevated-track platform that would run above Alameda. The area surrounding the tracks is occupied by warehouses and small production companies, which would all be displaced if the state chooses this location.

2. A vacant lot just west of the 5 Freeway, between Magnolia Boulevard and Burbank Boulevard. A station here would sit below street level, but impacts plans to widen the freeway with carpool lanes through the area.

Regardless of which option is chosen, the Burbank Metrolink station will likely be relocated to the site of the high-speed rail station. Planners must also squeeze 2,000 parking spaces onto the site to accommodate the projected 5,000 riders per day that the Burbank station will service.

The city of Burbank staff report is neutral so far on the two options, though it seems they would prefer for the former location instead of the latter if pushed to decide right now. They also report that the CHSRA might be investigating a station further south than Alameda, further away from the downtown core. Here’s what staff had to say about that:

However, in discussions with the Authority’s consultant staff, City staff have learned that the Authority is pursuing an Alameda station location that is slightly different from the alternative discussed above. The Authority’s Alameda station would not be located near the Menasco property (north of Alameda) but would instead be located south of Alameda near the Glendale border near the existing Carmax and Home Depot developments. Staff believes that this southern location to the Alameda station would be a poor choice as it would exhibit all of the negative benefits of the southern station (traffic congestion, low-adjoining densities, distance from Downtown Burbank) with none of the positive benefits (catalyst for redevelopment of South San Fernando, potential surface connectivity to Downtown). Staff recommends that the City provide comments to the Authority that a southern station located south of Alameda Avenue would be unacceptable to the City.

I would agree with this assessment.

Some of the concerns raised by residents in Burbank are similar to those raised on the Peninsula, suggesting that the phenomenon of NIMBYism can be found across the state:

Some officials and community stakeholders took issue with the $3.2-billion price tag for the local section of the corridor, asking why the authority wouldn’t slow trains down to share tracks with Metrolink and freight operators, instead of building dedicated high-speed tracks.

“I still don’t quite understand why they are doing this in this area,” said Glendale City Councilwoman Laura Friedman, who suggested cutting off high-speed operations while trains move through urban centers. “Why don’t they start it in Palmdale?”

Of course, HSR can be built very effectively through Burbank and Glendale, following an existing rail corridor, and reaching speeds necessary to help make the trains successful and wean our state off of costly dependence on oil. Just as some Palo Alto NIMBYs want to end the trains in San Jose, apparently Laura Friedman wants to end the trains in Palmdale, which is actually more absurd (and just as illegal) than ending in San Jose.

The excellent article from the Burbank Leader explains there are some possible land use conflicts – the HSR corridor might encroach on a planned TOD project in Glendale, and other officials are worried about closing off streets, or the visual impact of aerial structures. Glendale is also worried about what will happen to its Metrolink station, built in 1923:

When Glendale City Council members raised concerns about the potential demolition of the commuter station, built in a Spanish colonial revival style in 1923, authority representatives responded with a possible compromise.

“You won’t lose that,” said Steven Ortmann, station planning manager for the authority. “Just move it.”

Coming up with a plan to adjust or relocate a historic station to accommodate the tracks will be a challenge, said Jano Baghdanian, Glendale’s traffic and transportation administrator.

“It’s not as simple as moving a street 10 or 15 feet,” he said.

Those are all legitimate issues to work out. The problem is that too often there is a “why does this have to happen?” mentality on the part of locals and city officials, who seem to think that the jobs aren’t needed, that we have no real need to think about a post-oil method of intercity travel that is sustainable and safe. Instead of treating this as an opportunity to improve their cities and plan around a 21st century form of travel, way too many people seem to think the solution is to paint the proposed solution as an enemy, a villain, something victimizing locals unfairly even though it was approved by a majority of state voters and is widely seen as a necessary part of our state’s future.

Some of the concerns from local residents are flatly absurd:

A below-grade corridor in Burbank would take the form of trenches. This design has residents worried about safety — preventing children, animals and others from falling in, accidentally or otherwise — and unsightly walls that may become targets of vandalism and graffiti.

The graffiti issue is legitimate, but the notion that people will just be able to walk up to a trench and fall in is ridiculous – there will be fencing and other safety measures taken to prevent that.

Ultimately one shouldn’t make too much of these issues in Burbank and Glendale – it’s a delicate, complex, sometimes difficult element of the very necessary work being done to get HSR planned and built. It would certainly help if there was more of a constructive attitude from everyone on the Burbank and Glendale councils, but that seems to be part of the problem with the CHSRA being an independent agency. If it were SCAG, for example, then members of the councils would have been part of the decision-making and planning all along, and would have had greater buy-in. CHSRA’s funding problems, no fault of their own, and their organizational structure meant it was more difficult to create that sort of ongoing buy-in over time. But it is starting to happen now, and I hope Burbank and Glendale, as with other cities like Palo Alto, will earnestly work to make HSR a success, instead of trying to stall and undermine the project.

More info can be found at the CARRD website.

Rich Connell and Dan Weikel’s article is essentially a repeat of the common HSR critics’ talking points, without any independent assessment of the facts. It is a misleading disservice to the Times’s readers and to the people of California.

They begin:

Despite a new $2.25-billion infusion of federal economic stimulus funding, there are intensifying concerns — even among some high-speed rail supporters — that California’s proposed bullet train may not deliver on the financial and ridership promises made to win voter backing in 2008.

While there is always the chance it may not deliver, that “chance” must be assessed with respect to facts, and in comparison to other HSR systems. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that every HSR system around the world generates an operating surplus, covering its costs. Nowhere is it mentioned that HSR systems successfully entice passengers to switch from flying and from driving. The often baseless criticisms quoted in the article aren’t assessed against those realities. The result is an article full of speculation and assumptions taken out of context.

Estimates of ticket prices between Los Angeles and San Francisco have nearly doubled in the project’s latest business plan, pushing ridership projections down sharply and prompting new skepticism about data underpinning the entire project.

Nowhere is it explained that one, the higher ticket prices are a scenario; two, that it would remain cheaper than a flight; or three, that the rise was fueled by the inflation-adjusted costs. That shift in accounting is mentioned but not directly linked to the higher estimate, nor is it clearly stated that even under the higher ticket price, the system is projected to cover its costs. Instead it is left ambiguous and even implied that the higher fares might make it difficult for HSR to cover its operating costs and repay investors.

Unfortunately, Senator Alan Lowenthal is also given space to make his totally indefensible and evidence-free claims about the ridership numbers:

“This just smells funny,” said state Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), a supporter of high-speed rail and chairman of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee.

As you can tell, this statement that Lowenthal repeatedly makes gets me extremely angry. It is a dishonest thing for a member of the California State Legislature to keep claiming. If he has evidence that the ridership numbers are flawed, he owes it to the people of California to produce it. If he has no such evidence, he owes it to the people of California to not make such wild speculation. State legislators should be expected to be straight and honest with the people of California. Lowenthal, by his repeated insinuations that something is wrong with the ridership, is not delivering on that expectation.

Much of the article deals with the issue of whether there should be a government revenue guarantee to private investors:

And some government watchdogs are concerned that a linchpin commitment to taxpayers in the bullet train’s financing measure — that no local, state or federal subsidies would be required to keep the trains operating — may be giving way.

High-speed rail planners recently advised state lawmakers that attracting billions in crucial private financing will probably require government backing of future cash flow. “Without some form of revenue guarantee from the public sector, it is unlikely that private investment will occur at [the planned] level until demand for California high-speed rail is proven,” project planners wrote in December.

That is feeding fears that a larger state commitment, beyond the $9 billion in construction bonds approved by voters, could be sought to complete the 800-mile project. “To now put in that we have to [give] some kind of revenue guarantee . . . is totally unacceptable,” Lowenthal said. “That’s not what we agreed to.”

This is a legitimate issue. And I share many of the concerns being raised about such a revenue guarantee. I don’t believe it is at all necessary, and it is something worth discussing even if the final outcome is to reject the concept.

But it is misleading to frame that discussion around an assumption that the ridership numbers are flawed, that the costs are soaring out of control, that in short there is something wrong with the HSR project that makes this revenue guarantee likely to be triggered. If there is evidence of that, by all means let’s discuss it. So far, no such evidence has yet been presented. All Alan Lowenthal has is gut feelings and assumptions, which are significant given his political position but are also not a stand-in for evidence.

The article does break some important news about what the CHSRA board might do about the ridership numbers, and what the state legislature might do about the Authority:

“I think the [ridership] numbers should be scrubbed,” said authority board member Richard Katz, adding that doing so could help the project.

Katz is echoing points I have made before, that a new ridership study would likely benefit HSR since the earlier studies rely on numbers from 2000 to 2005, before the sustained statewide increase in passenger rail travel experienced since 2007. I would not be surprised if the Authority did order some form of updated ridership numbers, in part to appease the legislature – and if the Authority doesn’t, I fully expect the legislature to order such studies itself.

Lowenthal hinted that, as I’ve predicted, the legislature might reduce the Authority’s independence by moving it under an existing Executive Branch department:

But lawmakers are likely to overhaul the high-speed rail agency and move it more directly into state government, Lowenthal said. “It’s not going to be out there on its own,” he said.

This is probably a good move – with the Authority “out there on its own” it has fewer institutional and legislative defenders than it deserves.

Other elements of the article indicate the authors did not do their fact-checking when it comes to reporting on critics’ claims:

But some analysts point out that almost all U.S. rail systems — and a number of foreign operations — have required large government loans or cash infusions to keep running.

This line should not have been included in the article. The whole thing requires a citation needed tag. First, “some analysts” is a vague claim. Who exactly are we talking about here? Second, this does not distinguish between HSR and other forms of passenger rail – and as the evidence shows, that is a key distinction. SNCF, the French national rail operator, makes “fat profits” on the TGV and uses that to subsidize its other rail services. Fares cover the operating cost of every single other HSR system in the world, from Europe to Asia to the Acela here in the United States.

Even Taiwan, which needed a government bailout for its HSR system, generated operating surplus. The bailout was due to the over-reliance on private financing, an issue that would have been worth exploring in the context of the discussion of the revenue guarantee. The LA Times article needed to include those rather important facts here.

The article further insinuated few people will ride the line:

Some smaller cities, like Gilroy, Merced and Bakersfield, show numbers of nonlocal trips equal to or greater than Los Angeles. “We’ve never understood their models,” said Lowenthal, whose panel is delving deeper into the projections.

I’ve not seen those particular numbers. If true, there may well be reasons for it – Gilroy would be a gateway to the Monterey Bay region, Merced would be the transfer point to Sacramento, and Bakersfield has lots of people who want to go to LA. This notion of “nonlocal” is unclear, and as we know, Alan Lowenthal simply doesn’t think people will ride the trains for intercity trips despite a mountain of evidence that they will.

Still, I suspect this claim is another misreading of the stats. Overall LA Union Station will likely have far higher ridership than Gilroy or Merced. And the attempt to point to a specific ridership stat to try and paint it as so incredible that the whole thing is flawed strikes me as a classic case of the Chewbacca Defense.

The article continues:

Some transit advocates say predictions of private participation aren’t realistic. “A lot of it’s still magical thinking,” said Bart Reed, executive director of the Transit Coalition.

As much as I like Bart Reed, he is wrong here, and the LA Times again failed its readers by not fact-checking this claim. Over 30 companies responded to a March 2008 Request for Expressions of Interest the CHSRA put out to the private sector, ranging from operators like SNCF and Veolia to train builders like Alstom and Siemens. Private financial participation is and has always been very realistic, but the details matter.

The article also threw in a separate discussion of a dispute in Buena Park between city officials and the CHSRA over the corridor:

Conflicts are brewing in Southern California as planners step up efforts to squeeze trenches, viaducts and extra tracks into a crowded rail corridor cutting across the region. Problems remain over how the bullet train will pass through Los Angeles’ Union Station transportation complex. Existing buildings, freeways, rail lines and overpasses around the station make it an extremely tight fit.

In Buena Park, city officials recently learned that part of a new award-winning transit-oriented residential project tied into the city’s 3-year-old Metrolink station may have to be ripped out.

A high-speed rail representative told local officials, “We either take the condominiums or we take your station,” recalled Councilman Art Brown, who has generally supported the bullet train. Planners are reexamining the issue, but it remains unresolved.

Not knowing much more about the details than this, it strikes me as an issue that does need to be examined more closely and resolved. I know Clem has discussed a San Carlos TOD project that is apparently being planned without any real coordination with the HSR project. The CHSRA and local officials need to work together more effectively on situations such as this.

Still, while an examination of the Buena Park issue would have been worth an entire article, what the LA Times offered instead was a badly flawed rehash of HSR criticism that is often lacking in evidence or running directly counter to the evidence. Times readers and Californians deserved better.