UPDATE: In a move that should surprise none of you, the CHSRA board voted to certify the revised Program EIR connecting the Bay Area to the Central Valley via the Pacheco Pass. The Authority also approved a Supplemental Alternatives Analysis for bypassing Hanford to the east instead of sending tracks through town, and made some adjustments to alternatives through the Tehachapi Pass area.

On one side, city officials and most residents appear to be coming, albeit slowly, to the realization that high-speed rail is happening, and that when it does, California won’t be paying for it to be in a deep tunnel or covered trench. On the other side, a small number of residents, fearing any change to their community, continue to aggressively fight the project.

[There’s a middle group — the majority of residents who support the project, including many who live near the tracks. I’ll save that group for a later post.]

This played out on Tuesday, as the Palo Alto City Council’s High Speed Rail Subcommittee met to discuss the latest developments in the high-speed rail project in front of a packed audience.

Unhappy Either Way
Members of the Palo Alto City Council and a small number of residents have called for the high-speed rail project to be stopped, slowed down or drastically modified so as to have no impact on Palo Alto. Recently, California High Speed Rail Authority officials announced plans that, in effect, may delay all construction most HSR infrastructure.

In an updated grant application, the CAHSRA announced that it will prioritize building two new HSR-only tracks from San Francisco to Redwood City, and then from Mountain View to San Jose. In this scenario, Palo Alto and neighboring cities would remain largely untouched at first, with the only major improvement being electrification of the entire corridor.

This may satisfy the desire of project critics and opponents to avoid major construction impacts and minimize the need for additional land. Yet, it does not resolve the fact that once HSR service commences, there will still be traffic and safety impacts due to the additional rail traffic HSR will bring on tracks that are not grade separated. These same impacts will occur with the inevitable increase in Caltrain service in the future, notwithstanding the temporary funding crisis.

Palo Alto officials expressed concern at the idea of this new approach. As an Aug. 26 Palo Alto Online News article reported,

[Palo Alto Mayor Pat] Burt mentioned this scenario at Tuesday’s meeting of the City Council High-Speed Rail Committee when he referred to the possibility of the rail authority taking the ‘phasing’ approach for the Midpeninsula — an approach he said would leave the city with the existing two tracks. He said this could impact the city’s traffic, safety and emergency response and called it one of the most critical questions facing the Midpeninsula cities.

Continued opposition to the project from Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Atherton has, it seems, led to the Authority building other phases first.

Palo Alto and other cities need to confront reality and understand that more train service will be coming to the Peninsula, whether its from HSR or increased Caltrain service. They ultimately will have to find a way that allows for the grade separation of the corridor.

It is fantasy for Peninsula residents and leaders to believe they can just hope rail service will stay the same and they will never have to invest in grade separation. What better time to solve their problems then now, with HSR bringing billions of dollars of state and federal money to finally get this essential work done. For Palo Alto to now worry that it will be left with more trains, while not pursuing grade separations, is a head-in-the-sand approach.

Despite the latest complaints, officials and residents do seem to be coming to accept that the project is going to happen, and they’re not going to have total control over the project without putting up funds. Burt told the meeting,

I think the chance of the rail authority funding either cut-and-cover or deep tunnel are highly unlikely. We should focus our discussion around that.

It’s easy to predict how this dichotomy will play out when it comes time for the Midpeninsula station location to be chosen. If history is any indication, Palo Alto will fret over the downsides to a Palo Alto high-speed rail station and then express dismay and betrayal if Redwood City or Mountain View is chosen as the Midpeninsula stop.

Upset Over Parking
City officials and residents also spent much of the meeting dwelling on the 3,000 parking spaces that HNTB rep John Litzinger previously told the city they might be asked to build.

Larry Klein, responded to the issue with more mixed messages.

Parking spaces are far from the best use for any community. Taking up valuable space to create 5 or 6 parking buildings, at 50 feet high, I really don’t think that’s what our community would want to develop. This isn’t my vision of Palo Alto. This isn’t what the plan should be for any particular city, unless they have no economy at all. We should be very clear that we don’t’ want to participate in a process that has no benefit to our community.

Klein makes it clear that he understands the value of urban spaces, and why you prioritize development of other uses, like residences or shops, around a transit station, before you build parking. Yet, he’s also a member of the PCC, and it’s rare that you hear him talking of the value that vibrant transit corridors and transit-oriented development can bring — aside from when it comes in handy to fight construction of parking garages.

For the moment, Palo Alto seems to be stuck going in two directions. Fighting high speed rail, yet bemoaning the outcome of doing so.

Let’s hope they choose the right path – utilizing the HSR project to solve the existing and future problems along the Peninsula associated with rail service..

Talk amongst yourselves!

Guest Post by Justin Nelson:

As followers of this blog are well aware, the California High Speed Rail project offers us the best chance to change Californians’ transportation habits in probably all of our lifetimes. When I say this, keep in mind that I’m 23. However, out in the Inland Empire, already one of the worst offenders in the area of suburban sprawl, planning efforts are underway to ensure that – instead of transformative change – we get more of the same.

This article in Riverside’s local paper, the Press-Enterprise, shows that City officials are making an “aggressive push” to put an HSR station near March Air Reserve Base (what I’ll call “March Field”). The site would be at the intersection of Alessandro Ave. and Sycamore Canyon Blvd. on the fringes of the city and nearly 8 miles from its rapidly re-developing downtown.

I’ll launch into why this is a terrible idea in a second, but first, a little background. When CHSRA first proposed their project-level alignment for the LA-SD segment, they planned on placing a station next to UC Riverside, alongside the then-planned Metrolink Perris Valley Line station that was to be located there. While UCR is still around 4 miles from downtown, the area around the University is the second-densest in the city, housing thousands of students, faculty and staff within walking distance of both the campus and nearby amenities, so it was a fair compromise. However, the residents of the neighbourhood complained bitterly about the siting of a Metrolink station there. First, they expressed concern about parking and traffic impacts, and when the local transportation commission agreed to remove all on-site parking, they complained about noise until the station was removed from the project altogether.

In what must be an attempt to placate these residents, local officials have simply moved the HSR station to the next station down the proposed Metrolink Perris Valley Line, the station at Alessandro. Unlike the station at UCR, the Alessandro site is on greenfield land, with nearly nothing within walking distance, and nothing but suburban sprawl surrounding it on all sides.

The proper and obvious location for a station here in Riverside should be downtown, at the existing Riverside-Downtown Metrolink. Like both UCR and Alessandro, downtown will be a station on the Perris Valley Line (an extension of Metrolink’s 91 Line), but it is also a station on the IE-OC Line, the Riverside Line, and the San Bernardino Line on weekends. With 4 Metrolink lines, Riverside-Downtown is the most connected station in the Metrolink system after Los Angeles Union Station. It’s also a stop on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief to Chicago and for Amtrak California buses that connect to the San Joaquins trains in Bakersfield.

City officials are also currently working on the design of a brand new multi-modal transit centre that will be located adjacent to the downtown station. This centre will be the primary hub for local and express buses serving the region, of which the Riverside Transit Agency has several. (There’s even an attractive “system map” of express buses throughout western Riverside County here, although that map misses the Omnitrans 215 express which links downtown Riverside and downtown San Bernardino.) Greyhound and other intercity buses will also serve the station, which will allow direct connections to places like the Coachella Valley, the Victor Valley, Barstow and Las Vegas.

Downtown Riverside is undergoing a rapid re-development process at the moment, and the City is a major investor in that process. We just spent a considerable amount of money renovating the Fox Theatre, an early 20th century movie theatre that is now a state-of-the-art performing arts centre hosting everything from films to professional theatre to major performing artists. A new hotel and condo-centred mixed-use development, with restaurants and shopping at ground level, is going to be built soon, and construction has already begun on a new office tower.  And despite the use of the word “re-development”, downtown is already a pleasant place to be right now, with a hearty helping of restaurants, bars, clubs, the requisite cozy coffee shop and speciality retailers. Of course, all of this development is walkable and transit-adjacent (if not transit-oriented), unlike anything being built nearly anywhere else in the city. It seems like a natural fit for high-speed rail.

City officials have said that March Field is an ideal fit for HSR because there is room for “development.” The unstated assumption here is that the sort of development that will surround HSR will look precisely like the sort of development that most of suburbia has seen for most of the last century- auto-dependent, low-density, and poorly served by transit. Proponents of this site seem to think that high-speed rail stations of the future will necessarily look like airports of today: easy freeway access and plenty of long-term parking. Some proponents of the March location say that access to Metrolink will provide convenient car-free connections to downtown, or that RTA will provide ample transit service to the station once it is built. If Metrolink connections are indeed desirable, then the downtown site (with 4 lines) is much better than March (with 1). As far as transit provided to the March site, I have no doubt there will be – right now, RTA runs the #20, an hourly bus route, along Alessandro – but while this may serve to get transit-dependent riders to the train, the surrounding area will never allow for the kind of transit service that would influence development outcomes: frequent, all-day transit.

As of right now, it seems that CHSRA is not pursuing a downtown Riverside station – the current alignments being debated are either via I-15 and Corona, with a stop at the Dos Lagos area (more miserable sprawl) or via I-10 and I-215 and northern Riverside, with a stop at March. There is an alternative – the UP railway alignment travels nearly directly from the Ontario Airport to downtown Riverside, with straight, nearly-flat tracks and ample room along most of the corridor for expansion. (HSR will probably have to move to elevated tracks as it enters Riverside, but that was the Authority’s original plan anyway.) The downtown station could easily be re-developed to include the necessary parking and station facilities for HSR, putting it within walking distance of the most vibrant neighbourhood in the Inland Empire and connecting it to nearly everywhere else in Riverside and the eastern San Bernardino valley via transit. However, this alternative is not being considered, and unless we make an issue out of it now, it won’t be.

If any of you have any opportunities to comment on the LA-SD leg of the HSR project, please tell CHSRA and any applicable politicians that you want a station in a vibrant downtown, not a sprawl-surrounded parking lot.

Meanwhile, you should head over to the European Tribune to read DoDo’s latest post on Taiwan’s HSR system, particularly about its financing. The system was overly reliant on private funding, which made up about 80% of the construction cost, and suffered from some flawed design choices that could have been more easily avoided. Still, the system’s ridership has been steadily growing, and the system is now emerging from the red.

PS: Yes, today is indeed Tuesday. Sorry for the erroneous title on this post. Too much salt water and sun.

Addendum by Rafael:
Orange County Transportation Association, Veolia Transportation, HDR Engineering, NRG Energy West and Brandman University are hosting a conference called ‘The Light at the End of the Tunnel: Planning for High-Speed Rail in Orange County and Southern California‘.

Why: The conference is a discussion and exchange of ideas on real solutions for increasing our mobility, reducing our emissions and planning for high speed rail in southern California.

When: Thursday, AUGUST 26, 2010 at 9:00 A.M.

Where: Brandman University 16355 Laguna Canyon Road, Room 111, Irvine, California 92618

Just a quick post to let you know I’ve added a Glossary page. The link is located just underneath the banner logo, in-between “Comments Policy” and “Log Out”. This will be updated every now and then, but I hope even this initial version will prove useful to any readers unfamiliar with the railroad terminology and acronyms that tend to pop up in our posts and comments from other readers.

Stopping HSR in San Jose is obviously predicated on the assumption of avoiding the impacts of building HSR infrastructure (i.e. new tracks, grade separations, etc.) along the Peninsula.  This assumption, however, is incongruent with moving huge numbers of new San Francisco- and Peninsula-bound HSR passengers and the growing number of daily Caltrain commuters. Without massive upgrades to the rail infrastructure along the Peninsula, the idea of stopping HSR trains in San Jose begins to break down due to a lack of capacity.

For Caltrain to accommodate all the HSR passengers and the projected additional Caltrain passengers, they will have to run significantly more trains, obviously. In fact, they would need to have trains meet each and every HSR train that would terminate in San Jose, as a large portion of riders will be proceeding northward. This is in addition to their existing commute trains. Without adding tracks and grade separations, the current problems of traffic backing up behind rail cross guards and pedestrian safety will be significantly exacerbated.

As for the traffic, the increased number of trains will lead to cross guards being down much more frequently and potentially longer per cycle than they are now. In fact, the problem of cross guards being down a very long time is a common problem along the Peninsula, especially during peak hours. For example, where Palo Alto Ave/Alma Street crosses the tracks, the cross guards come down, not only for one train, but often stay down as another trains is approaching from the other direction, making the wait time for cars exceedingly long. This intersection, like numerous others up and down the Peninsula, will see traffic condition greatly worsen. This situation will happen much more frequently when the number of trains is increased.

In addition to traffic, the issue of pedestrian safety has been a major issue for the last few years. Recent deaths on the tracks (including children) have been a major concern of a large number of people on the Peninsula. By blocking upgrades now, this problem will not be resolved, and in fact, worsened. More trains on today’s infrastructure will likely lead to even a higher rate of deaths in the future.

Unless folks along the Peninsula want to increase their suffering in respect to worsening traffic congestion and dangerous pedestrian conditions, they are going to have to admit at some point that upgrading the Caltrain corridor significantly is an absolute necessity, with or without HSR on the Peninsula. Such an upgrade to Caltrain will entail many of the same impacts that HSR would have. To increase capacity for Caltrain to accommodate both increasing numbers of commuters and HSR riders, it is wishful thinking to assume we can just leave things as is or only do minor upgrades to the Caltrain corridor. Further, the HSR project is the only possible source of money to accomplish these needed upgrades in the foreseeable future.

It should also be noted that Caltrain has already been making plans to increase the capacity of the corridor to four tracks on an incremental basis with the support many of cities along the line. For example, both Menlo Park<http://www.menlopark.org/departments/trn/gradesep_pres.pdf> and Redwood City<http://www.redwoodcity.org/phed/planning/precise/final_plan.html> commissioned have created plans that included proposals for aerial grade separations of Caltrain in 2004 and 2007 respectively. The question needs to be asked, that if these were reasonable solutions then, why are these cities so against similar solutions now?

To conclude, the critics and opponents on the Peninsula of the HSR project seem to be forgetting that the HSR project will improve traffic and pedestrian conditions on the Peninsula immensely. It is seems reasonable to assume that many Peninsula residents will perceive a direct benefit in the daily experience due to the reduction of traffic congestions the upgrades HSR will bring, not to mention the elimination of train horns and diesel pollution. The idea of stopping HSR trains in San Jose is pure folly, is illegal per Proposition 1A, and is not in the best interest of the vast majority of Peninsula residents. If Peninsula critics and opponents are successful in killing HSR on the Peninsula, the fate of the Peninsula will be sealed for the next 20 years – a traffic morass and more pedestrian deaths (including children).

So far, it hasn’t become a major issue. I expect that to change, but it won’t play out the way it has in Wisconsin or Ohio. In those states, right-wing candidates have been portraying HSR as an unnecessary and wasteful project that diverts funds from freeways and other 20th century legacy projects.

Here in California, right-wing Republican candidate for governor Meg Whitman has indicated she thinks HSR funding should be delayed – but so far has not yet come out in opposition to the project itself:

Meg Whitman, the Republican gubernatorial candidate and former eBay CEO, said through a spokeswoman that she “believes the state cannot afford the costs associated with high-speed rail due to our current fiscal crisis.” She lives in the wealthy Peninsula town of Atherton, which is ground zero for the anti-bullet-train movement because of concerns about the tracks that would run through the community.

Whitman’s framing here is significant. She isn’t attacking the concept of high speed rail, isn’t saying it will be a flop or a boondoggle, and isn’t saying California doesn’t need it. Instead she claims that due to the fiscal crisis, we simply can’t afford even the $10 billion that voters already approved (the rest of the construction cost doesn’t come out of state funds).

She’s wrong there too – California not only can afford to pay it’s share of HSR, a view voters shared in November 2008 even after the recession had begun and after two successive years of budget deficit, but we cannot afford to NOT build it, unless we’d rather pay a lot more than $10 billion in higher fuel costs, lost jobs and income due to those costs, and tens of billions in freeway and airport expansion costs.

Whitman’s view is colored by her belief that state government is too large, even though the overall budget is at the lowest point in at least 15 years. She pledges to conduct mass layoffs of state workers and pursue privatization of other state services. Maybe that’s a good move and maybe it’s not, but it indicates Whitman is inherently hostile to public spending, not that she sees any particular problem with HSR.

That’s not to downplay the threat she might pose to the project if elected. Whitman would direct her Department of Finance to obstruct the bond sale, just as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s DOF obstructed the release of Prop 1B funds to buy new trainsets for Amtrak California.

What it does suggest is that Whitman, unlike her counterparts in Wisconsin and Ohio, is hesitant to attack HSR itself. Perhaps in the Midwest, sustainable mass transit technology is more easily demagogued as being unnecessary. Not here in California.

In fact, Californians pride themselves on innovation and leading the implementation of new technologies – or in this case, the successful application of existing technology to the California landscape.

Whitman is wary of getting on the wrong side of that belief. That’s why she is hedging on Prop 23, the initiative that would suspend the state’s global warming and carbon reduction law. Whitman supports the principle of suspending the law, but claims she is against Prop 23. That’s a hypocritical position, since her plan would have the same effect as Prop 23 and undermine the growing clean tech industry here in California. But Whitman is hedging precisely because she can read polls, and the polls show Californians like green, sustainable technology.

Jerry Brown can read polls too. And he is coming out strongly in favor of high speed rail, as seen in his jobs plan:

Accelerate planning and construction of high-speed rail in California

Like Whitman, Brown doesn’t go into detail here, but the implications are clear: Brown sees HSR as a key element of California’s economic recovery, and will not only refuse to delay HSR, but intends to accelerate its construction. How he’ll do that isn’t yet clear. But his commitment to HSR goes back 30 years, to his first stint as governor of California, when he created a high speed rail project for the state. The plan wasn’t nearly as advanced as is the current one, and it quickly fell apart after he left office, when a hostile state legislature killed it. But we can expect Brown to continue to fight for HSR, unlike Whitman.

This blog is not going to endorse a candidate for governor, and won’t tell you how to vote. I doubt any of you are single-issue voters anyway. But it is clear that Brown would be much better for HSR than Whitman. More importantly, it’s also clear that Whitman doesn’t want to make a big deal of her opposition to funding the project – after all, 76% of Californians and 77% of those surveyed in her own Assembly district still want HSR to happen.

As I explained it in the Mike Rosenberg article on the candidates and HSR, Brown has more to gain from HSR becoming a campaign issue than Whitman:

Robert Cruickshank, Californians for High-Speed Rail chairman, noted that former Palo Alto Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto, the most vocal bullet-train critic in the southern Peninsula’s 21st Assembly District race, lost to two candidates in the June Democratic primary who were more tempered on high-speed rail.

“If I’m Jerry Brown, I would strongly embrace high-speed rail in the Peninsula and the Bay Area. There’s still reason to believe that most voters there strongly support it,” Cruickshank said. “I would go up to Meg Whitman’s turf in Silicon Valley and say, ‘This is how we’re going to get California back to work.’ “

We’ll see if Brown does that. If he makes green jobs – including HSR – a campaign issue, he would likely benefit from it at Whitman’s expense.

In a tentative ruling issued today, Sacramento Superior Court judge Michael Kenny has indicated his intent to deny an attempt to re-open the Town of Atherton case. The Authority is complying with the November 2009 final judgment in the case. In May, the Town of Atherton and others petitioned the court to reopen the case. The Court’s tentative ruling today denies the petition. The Court will hear oral argument on August 20, 2010.

“We’re happy that the court has tentatively ruled that the petition fails to meet the standard for reopening a final judgment. The Authority has been committed to transparency in carrying out its environmental analysis and we will continue to work with and gather feedback from residents of the Peninsula and other interested groups,” said Authority CEO Roelof van Ark.

As we may recall, about a year ago Judge Kenny ruled against nearly every claim made by Atherton in their anti-HSR lawsuit, and the three points he did use to temporarily invalidate the EIR were addressed by the CHSRA, which is compliance with that ruling. Atherton and Menlo Park had hoped to reopen the suit based on claims that the ridership numbers for the Pacheco Pass alignment were flawed and therefore the EIR that they had filed suit against two years ago was invalid and therefore the case should be reopened. As indicated by the above report, Judge Kenny isn’t buying that argument.

Nor should he. There’s been no evidence whatsoever that the ridership numbers for the Pacheco alignment are flawed – all that have been leveled are accusations by HSR critics. The flawed Berkeley ITS study took issue with some of the methodological choices of the HSR ridership study, but did not prove any specific numbers were incorrect. Further, as we know, ridership was not the only basis for the Pacheco choice (nor should it have been).

As we know, a recent poll found that a clear majority of residents of the 21st Assembly District, including Menlo Park, support HSR. Menlo Park officials have not yet explained why they are spending taxpayer money to sue a project their constituents support.