Progress in Relation to Caltrain

First, it appears that our concerns regarding the compatibility of the Caltrain electrification project with high speed rail, reflected in our recent letter to Caltrain staff, seems to be coming to a positive resolution. Caltrain staff and the California High Speed Rail Authority (Authority) are now working together with a new plan to obtain funds (which total more than $4.7 billion from a combination of Federal stimulus/ARRA funds, Federal 2010 HSR appropriations money, and matching funds from Proposition 1A and other sources) for the San Francisco to San Jose Section of the HSR system. That plan includes the following basic elements:

Phase 1A (which would amount to $3.312 billion – $1.656 billion from ARRA funds and a $1.656 billion Proposition 1A match):

• Modification of 4^th and King Station to accommodate HSR service on two platforms.
• Electrification of existing Caltrain tunnels in San Francisco.
• Extension of the existing four-track section in Brisbane to the existing four-track section that runs through Redwood Junction. 
• Completion of the remaining 39 grade separations projects between 4^th and King and Redwood Junction. The plan assumes elevated track except for a one-track tunnel at Millbrae Station. If a trench is ultimately selected in portions of the corridor, a shorter distance of improvements would likely be pursued unless additional funds can be found.
• Positive Train Control system for the entire corridor (either CBOSS or ERTMS). 

Phase 1B (which would amount to $1.43 billion – approximately $700M to $1.0 billion of this would come from a Federal grant base on the FY 2010 appropriations and the rest would come from Proposition 1A and other sources):

• Completion of the remaining 6 grade separation projects between in Adobe Creek in Mountain View and Fair Oaks Avenue in Sunnyvale.
• Expansion of existing two tracks to four tracks between Adobe Creek and Fair Oaks Avenue. Immediately south of Fair Oaks Avenue, the new four track section would tie in with the existing four track section, which runs to the Sunnyvale/Santa Clara border.
• Reconstruction of San Antonio, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale stations to accommodate four tracks.
• Expansion of the Millbrae Caltrain/BART station to include HSR.
• Partial construction of electrification along the entire San Francisco to San Jose section (i.e. two of the four tracks along the corridor will be electrified in this phase, while the other two would be done at a future time).

 Addition work left for an unfunded Phase 2:

• Extension of track to the Transbay Transit Center.
• Construction of the HSR station at Diridon Station in San Jose.
• Completion of necessary track expansions and grade separations in Atherton, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto.
• Also likely required but not explicitly mentioned would be the completion of electrification of the other two tracks and the elevated viaduct between Santa Clara and Diridon Station.

The significance of this new plan is that electrification is now planned to take place after the expansion of the corridor to four tracks and all grade separations are completed except for one section between Redwood Junction and Mountain View (which would complete grades separations and track work as part of a Phase 2 build out of HSR when funds become available). Previously, Caltrain was attempting to obtain approximately one billion dollars for the CBOSS signaling system and two-track electrification system to be built before grade-separations and track work was completed. Elements of the new plan for electrification would still need to be relocated from Redwood Junction to Mountain View, but this is much better than having to rebuild the electrification system along the entire corridor. A caveat of the new plan is what the Authority means by only electrifying two tracks, rather than all the tracks in the new four-track sections. CA4HSR asks, would the two outside tracks be electrified for Caltrain or would it be for the center tracks for HSR (see below for a discussion of the track configuration)? Also, would the overhead contact system (OCS) just be added to, or would brand new OCS structures replace the two-track structures previously installed? CA4HSR will continue to request clarification on these issues.

CA4HSR is also encouraged by the consideration of implementing either CBOSS or ERTMS. However, more clarification is needed to confirm the intent of Caltrain and the Authority regarding the PTC system. For instance, Caltrain has been claiming that CBOSS is what they need to run their trains during construction. However, CA4HSR wonders the following: if the Authority chooses EMRTS as the ultimate PTC system, could that be employed on Caltrain trains during the construction period? This may require more coordination regarding the issue of freight, something not addressed in the new FRA application or the Supplemental Alternative Analysis Report. This new development could save up to a ¼ of a billion dollars, nothing to sneeze at. We strongly encourage Caltrain and the Authority to continue to increase coordination by resolving the issues related to freight that may create inefficiencies in the PTC signaling system and train operations due to differing platform heights.

Other positive news in relation to Caltrain is that, according to Caltrain, the San Bruno grade separation project, which is currently moving forward, will not require any Federal ARRA or Proposition 1A funds as was previously applied for by the Authority. All funds will come from non-high-speed rail funding sources. Further, the design will still accommodate two more tracks for HSR. CA4HSR understands that the design is not ideal due to the curve radius. However, given the project is moving forward, we are taking the position to identify other segments of the HSR system that will help make up for the lost speed in this section.   

Overall, CA4HSR commends all parties in planning the corridor more holistically.

Progress in Relation to Interoperability and Grade Requirements

The Supplemental Alternatives Analysis (AA) Report, released on August 5, contains some significant changes in approach that address key concerns expressed by CA4HSR in our comment letter for the Preliminary AA Report regarding interoperability and grade requirements.

The Supplement AA Report now recommends focusing on a track configuration that is oriented to allow access to both local and express tracks more easily. The Preliminary AA Report contains alternative track arrangements that placed the two Caltrain tracks to east or west side of the two HSR tracks, making overtakes very difficult if not possible. It appears the Supplemental AA Report has eliminated these alternatives, thought it is not absolutely clear. The report also revises text that allows for both HSR and Caltrain trains to perform overtakes, something not planned for in the Preliminary AA Report. This is a significant development that CA4HSR strongly endorses. All in all, it appears that interoperability has been greatly improved.

The Supplemental AA Report indicates that the 1% maximum grade design criteria for HSR tracks has as been relaxed so as to allow for 2% grades in some sections. This should allow for shorter elevated and trench sections. CA4HSR sees this is an improvement. We encourage the Authority to consider expanding application of 2% grades or more where costs and impacts can be reduced.

Discussion of Track Configuration Changes in the Supplemental AA Report

In addition to the new focus on interoperability, the Supplemental AA Report does recommend a specific track configuration for the four-track corridor, with Caltrain utilizing the outside tracks and HSR trains utilizing the inside tracks (Caltrain—HSR—HSR—Caltrain  or  Slow—Fast—Fast—Slow as commonly referred to in the blogosphere). The rationale for this, according to the report, is to significantly reduce ROW requirements. By keeping Caltrain on the outside, the platforms at the Caltrain-only stations can be placed on the outside, allowing for a much narrower ROW between stations. Some rail advocates prefer having HSR tracks on the outside and Caltrain tracks in middle with center platforms at Caltrain stations, which provides some operational advantages, such as allowing Caltrain to cross over to use the opposite platform at their numerous stations. However, this configuration necessitates a wider ROW, which is very challenging when considering impacts on the Peninsula. CA4HSR currently does not have an official position on the configuration regarding the whether HSR tracks should be on the inside or outside. We will continue to study this issue for the time being. For more information on these track configuration issues and the surrounding debate, please refer to the Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog post titled “Peninsula (Northeast) Corridor.”

Changes Still Needed in the Supplemental AA Document

CA4HSR still wants to see a commitment to the following items in the Draft EIR/EIS:

• A strategy to resolve freight issues so consistent platform heights are achieved between Caltrain and HSR.
• Designing HSR/Caltrain stations on the Peninsula to allow for cross-platform transfers (like is done at MacArthur BART station).
• Consideration of an adaptive re-use/redesign of the Millbrae Station to save money over the proposed tunneled station.

Discussion of Vertical Alignment

Currently, CA4HSR has not taken a position on the vertical alignment profiles along the Peninsula. To date, we have been allowing the design process to unfold before jumping into the fray over what makes sense along the Peninsula. Building an improved and effective Peninsula Rail Corridor is an extremely complex undertaking, and we feel it needs a lot of study before a final determination should be made.

For sections of the corridor where at-grade is not feasible, we are open to both remaining options – elevated and uncovered trench – and believe both bring benefits to the communities while also enabling effective HSR service along a shared corridor with Caltrain that enables improvements to that service as well. Obviously, the details matter, and we will continue monitoring this issue and work to participate in facilitating a healthy and constructive dialogue between all stakeholders, as this process will remain contentious. However, with the significant narrowing of the ROW requirements for four tracks, we are encouraged that the impacts of either one of these alternatives will be significantly reduced.

It is too bad the Palo Alto Daily Post has come out strongly against both options, including a trench, which is something many people along the Peninsula have been willing to pursue. We continue to believe that the voice of high speed rail supporters in these communities has not been given full and equal weight by cities along the southern Peninsula, and strongly encourage elected officials to work to include views that represent the full range of opinions in their communities. We urge all stakeholders to view the new designs has progress towards coming to a common solution for all involved.

Update: The Authority Staff memo regarding the FRA application for the SF – SJ Section mentioned the following (page 12):

“Electrification of the alignment, dimensioned for Caltrain and HST whereby 2 tracks only will be electrified in this phase.”

This point has now been clarified by the Authority’s Dominic Spaethling in an e-mail to Elizabeth Alexis of CARRD. Apparently, electrification will cover all tracks between San Francisco to San Jose, including the four-track sections.

This is additional good news. It essentially means  electrification will be totally completed except for the two-track segment that will remain in Atherton, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto.

Metro/OCTA letter to CHSRA

As you can see, the letter argues that shared use of the corridor would provide “coordinated and integrated” passenger rail service. But another key motivation is the language on the top of the second page regarding “reduced impacts upon the LOSSAN corridor communities” from LA to Anaheim by “not requiring viaducts, aerial structures and trenches” and creating “the opportunity to limit the number of required grade separations, resulting in reduced right-of-way impacts.”

The fact that the letter comes from both Metro and OCTA is significant, as both agencies carry a lot of weight both locally and with state government. This comes on the heels of criticism of the LA-Anaheim HSR segment plans by some local rail advocates, including RailPAC, who have argued that the proposed dedicated HSR tracks aren’t necessary and that the number of grade separations should be limited.

The Metro/OCTA request is not a time-waster like the “end it in San José” concept. Still, the CHSRA has studied this in previous EIRs, as the letter acknowledges, and concluded that the combined passenger and freight traffic on this segment necessitated the construction of HSR-specific tracks. It’s not quite clear what Metro/OCTA believe was missed or was in error with those previous studies, but they are asking that the Alternatives Analysis for the corridor, to be released on April 24, to be delayed in order to include a new look at a shared use of the corridor.

Metro/OCTA are also mindful of stimulus deadlines, so this does not appear to be a delaying tactic along the lines of what some Peninsula NIMBYs have proposed. No word yet on the CHSRA’s response. From my perspective, I would be interested to know more about Metro/OCTA’s perspective on the corridor and why they believe shared use should be revisited – and why they disagree with CHSRA’s earlier rejection of the concept.

UPDATE: Curt Pringle has responded to the Metro/OCTA letter, on behalf of the CHSRA. He thanked CEOs Leahy and Kempton for the letter and promised to put the issue on the April 8 CHSRA board meeting agenda.

View Larger Map

The viaduct above the roadway (viewed from the transition road from I-580 west to the Bay Bridge) is the transition road from I-880 north to I-80. Opened in 1998, it’s sometimes known in Caltrans publications as the “East Bay Viaduct.” At its highest point it soars at least 80 feet above the ground. The viaduct can be easily seen from many vantage points in the East Bay, especially the Berkeley/Oakland Hills. After 12 years, it has faded into the landscape, less noticeable by most travelers than the Golden Gate, Mt. Tam, or Yerba Buena Island.

I mention this as precedent for the discussion of Russell Clemings’ Fresno Bee article on the proposed 60-foot viaduct through downtown Fresno carrying high speed rail over streets and Union Pacific tracks, roughly adjacent to Highway 99:

A decade from now, one of Fresno’s loftier views might be from the platform of its high-speed train station….

Like the rest of the high-speed line downtown, it would be elevated 60 feet from ground level to the tracks….

It wouldn’t be limited to downtown. Plans call for it to begin rising from ground level at Malaga Avenue, where the high-speed line would lie just west of the existing Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks.

By the time it reached Central Avenue, the trackbed would be perched atop a row of pillars spaced about 120 feet apart.

Following the Union Pacific tracks north from Calwa, it would remain at 60 feet at least until Ashlan Avenue and possibly beyond, depending on which of two alternatives is chosen for the route in northwest Fresno.

An elevated structure has advantages. It costs about twice as much as a ground-level route but allows local streets to remain open. And it’s about half the cost of putting the line in a below-ground trench. But it is certainly big.

This is roughly the area we’re talking about here:

View Fresno HSR viaduct in a larger map

According to the article, the whole blue section would be a viaduct, at least 12 miles, though not all of it would be 60 feet. It would be quite a sight. Here’s what the CHSRA mockups look like (boards 21 and 22):

Here the viaduct is located next to the UPRR corridor, but encroaches on Roeding Park. CHSRA proposes another option, of essentially going directly over the UPRR tracks, in order to avoid the park:

However, this would place some houses in the path of the viaduct. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Clemings reports that this structure, although obviously not cheap, would be only about half the cost of trenching the line.

His article also explained that most Fresno residents were only now becoming aware of the proposal – partly because CHSRA and its consultants have only recently come up with it.

There are certainly operational questions, including how this would interact with Amtrak service (which presumably would remain on the other side of downtown on the BNSF tracks). But it’s an interesting design that would become a major Fresno landmark. It’s obviously much longer than the East Bay Viaduct I showed at the outset of this post. That one has faded into the landscape, whereas it might take just a wee bit longer for the Fresno HSR viaduct to do so. But if it is the design that’s chosen and built, eventually, it too would become part of the landscape.

And it should be noted that, love it or hate it, as far as I’m aware nothing like this is being proposed for the Peninsula.

Interstate 5 was the target of the widening, and Tustin High School was in the way. Most of the front lawn was taken so that El Camino Real could be moved to accommodate the six new lanes on the freeway. The town’s batting cages were taken as well, and though I still remember the “Save the Cages” petitions at the site when my little league team went there, they obviously didn’t succeed.

20 years later, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone living in Tustin or attending THS who wishes the freeway hadn’t been widened, or who thinks it turned out for the worse. Overall it hasn’t led to any unsafe situations (a good friend of mine died on the freeway right across from the school in the late 1990s, but it was an accident that could have happened anywhere, and had nothing to do with the widening project). I used to walk with friends under the overpass at Red Hill Avenue or Newport Boulevard to the local pizza place, or to one of their houses to plug a phone line between computers and have long afternoons of multiplayer Doom. I never felt unsafe, and to my knowledge the thousands of students who have followed after me haven’t either.

While it’s not ideal to locate a high school next to a major freeway (and the school district has often talked about moving the school somewhere else), it has worked out pretty well over the years.

One can’t say the same about high schools located near the active railroad corridor on the Peninsula. As many are aware, Palo Alto has seen a spate of suicides near Gunn High School. An at-grade heavy railroad in the middle of a densely populated urban area such as Palo Alto or San Mateo is just not a safe situation.

An elevated, above-grade solution for the corridor, to carry both bullet trains and Caltrains, would make a lot of sense for the schools adjacent to or near the tracks. It’s definitely worth sacrificing a front lawn. So it is a bit bizarre to read these concerns about Burlingame High School and HSR:

The proposed high-speed rail project through the Peninsula could pose serious vibration, noise, safety and other concerns for Burlingame High School, local education leaders said.

“The way I see it is the rail corridor essentially goes through the front yard of Burlingame High School,” Dave Pine, board president for the San Mateo Union High School District, said earlier this week. “If the (high-speed rail project is) above ground, it’ll have a significant impact.”

Really? More significant than an at-grade railroad?

With the front of Burlingame High about 400 feet away from the tracks, Pine said that “any kind of above-ground approach would have a substantial impact on the campus” without adequate mitigation measures.

Noise from the high-speed trains, for example, could require “extra insulation” for the school, he said. Campus buildings may also need additional reinforcement for the trains’ vibration.

San Mateo Union leaders also want to know how the project and its construction could displace the way students go to and from school, “especially those who walk and bike,” district Superintendent Scott Laurence said.

“We’ll have to do a quick polling on how students get to school, identify who walks and bikes “… and figure out what would be the impacts to school routes,” Laurence said.

The trains will likely be much quieter than the existing Caltrain locomotives, and at a distance of 400 feet from the tracks it doesn’t seem too likely that vibration will be a major issue, especially if the tracks are elevated. Student transportation to and from campus can easily be accommodated, and school officials and parents would likely welcome a rail corridor that is much more difficult for teenagers to access.

District officials did identify one legitimate issue:

The possibility that the project could dig up arsenic along the tracks is another major concern for the district, Pine said.

Burlingame High has already gone through an expensive effort to remove arsenic and other contaminants found on the property.

District leaders believe the arsenic could have come from weed killer sprayed along the tracks years ago, Pine said. They are wary that the construction of the high-speed rail could stir up that contaminant.

“Substantial precautions have to be taken so there’s no hazard to our students,” he said.

That is a reasonable concern, one that can and should be addressed. But it’s no reason to be worried about or opposed to HSR along the corridor.

The article mentioned that the 35 other schools near the rail corridor will have to determine what impacts HSR will have on their operations. But these shouldn’t be seen as “problems” but instead are very real benefits. As San Carlos councilmember Omar Ahmad explained at the Palo Alto state Senate hearing in January, San Carlos has seen its rail corridor become extremely safe since the grade separation was constructed.

You’d think that parents and neighbors up and down the Peninsula rail corridor would leap at the chance to separate the tracks from their children. And in fact, many of them are doing just that, even though their voices have so far been drowned out by their NIMBY neighbors.

Every school district along the route will have to make accommodations for HSR. That’s a necessary and valuable process. It’s also one that should be embraced as an opportunity to create a safer environment for children, instead of something to be feared out of concern for one’s own property values.

This isn’t an entirely unreasonable assumption. Many cities, in the Prop 13 era, have had to cut back on spending for keeping the streets clean. The areas underneath overpasses tend to collect trash and dirt, and cities are generally not consistent about sanitation there.

Further, the evisceration of the safety net over the last 30 years has created the problem of homelessness, and overpasses tend to be a favored spot to sleep – a crude roof over one’s head, and in a place that’s generally out of the way, so one isn’t rousted by the cops as often as if they slept somewhere else.

By the late 20th century, then, overpasses became symbols of blight. This scene from San José is a good example – it’s an image of a railroad overpass near Diridon Station and San Carlos Street. The photographer’s caption reads “Elevated so the trains can pass freely underneath it, also doubles as a dumping ground and homeless encampment.”

Of course, there are other examples of railroad overpasses along the Caltrain route, including the prominent one at San Carlos (photo by Clem):

Although I’m not a regular user of this station, I have used it on a few occasions, and it did not seem at all “blighted” to me. Sure, there are some issues with the design and implementation, as Clem’s post explained, but overall it struck me as a successful implementation of building an above-grade rail structure in a way that looks good and doesn’t encourage “blight,” which is after all a nebulously defined concept.

Some Peninsula residents point to the San Carlos overpass as an example of what they’re afraid of, but it is no “Berlin Wall.” Neither are the other above-grade HSR tracks we showed back on Thursday. Continuing that post’s theme, since HSR is “strange and unfamiliar” to most people, they’ll try and understand it by thinking of what they believe to be comparable situations. In this case, it’s the freeway overpasses, and the few rail overpasses they know.

The two San Carlos overpasses described here are different not only in form and in use, but in location. The city of San Carlos overpass is in the city center, along one of the major streets and at the foot of the city’s historic business district. The San José overpass near San Carlos Street is in an industrial part of town that lacks a community atmosphere and generally feels abandoned. Those who assume that any overpass produces blight need to pay attention to context as much as anything else.

Still, the notion that overpass = blight is strong, and showed up at a recent CHSRA public event at Bellarmine College Prep in College Park, directly adjacent to the Caltrain and future HSR line:

“Our main concern is the potential blight,” said Shawnee Grossmann, who has lived near the corner of Myrtle and West Hedding Streets for 10 years. “If the train has to be elevated, lower the elevation.”

The proposed roue follows current Caltrain tracks to De La Cruz. Caltrain would continue to run and the College Park and Santa Clara Caltrain stations would remain. Rail planners are trying to design a new elevated or trenched line within Caltrain’s right of way. It could mean building an elevated structure with 16-foot pylons and electrical wires that reach 40 feet above the tracks.

Engineers said they are open to many options, including reconfiguring the Hedding Street overpass, digging trenches and building sound walls on the roughly 3-mile stretch from Diridon Station to De La Cruz.

Here again you see the concerns about “blight” arise. For College Park residents, they’re almost certainly more familiar with the tracks near Diridon Station than with the overpass in San Carlos. Their concerns are sensible, but this is exactly the kind of situation where the ability to show real-world examples of successful above-grade HSR implementations would be extremely valuable, for both the CHSRA and the community. In fact, that’s exactly what the community is asking for:

Scott Soper, a leader of the College Park Neighborhood Association, expressed frustration because the railroad’s design is still vague.

“If we want to make this process work, we need to know what this thing is going to look like,” said Soper, who lives on Asbury Street.

If one could show residents the choice between something like the Caltrain San Carlos overpass and the loud, smelly diesels that currently serve the tracks in their neighborhood, I have to imagine many of them would come around to seeing the benefits of above-grade tracks in their neighborhood.

Concerns about “blight” are real, and are based in the slow decay of California’s urban infrastructure and social safety net. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. Overpasses can work well, and it begins by showing the community how they work well along other rail lines in the region, the nation, and the world.

Now, a group of Palo Alto parents are pushing a petition to demand Caltrain slow down to a 5 mph crawl between West Meadow and Charleston Road in Palo Alto:

We ask Caltrain to implement a schedule, effective immediately, of slowing all trains from West Meadow to Charleston to a speed of 5 MPH in order to prevent further suicides on the tracks in this area.

In preparing this request our research has turned up a number of facts that support this measure.

1. They will not go elsewhere. Research has shown that individuals bent on suicide at a hot spot will not simply move further down the tracks. See links.
2. If you restrict access to the ‘means’ you will reduce the number of incidents. It has been proven that even a small impediment at a suicide hot spot reduces the number of incidents at that spot. This is why we are also watching the tracks. We believe that this vigilance, in combination with slower trains will reduce the number of incidents and perhaps stop them.
3. In the case of a suicide hot spot the threshold for the individuals who may be considering suicide is lowered. This is especially true for teens . This means the existence of the hot spot and access to it is increasing the number of incidents.
4. Although teen suicide has many possible causes and there are many preventive measures we may take as a community, slowing the trains is a short term solution.

Although a train at 5mph may be no less deadly, we believe it will be less attractive while giving us the chance to clear the tracks and giving the driver time to stop.

Currently it takes the commuter trains less than a second to clear the crossing at 60mph. At 5mph this would increase to approximately 4 seconds, a negligible delay for drivers when compared with a human life.

Slower trains will reduce the allure of this area, allow time for track watchers to clear the tracks, and give Caltrain engineers the chance to stop the train if necessary. Most importantly, slower trains now will give us time as a community to work together in launching a multi factorial effort to curb teen depression and suicide over the long term.

Caltrain takes these suicides, and any other safety hazard along the tracks, extremely seriously. And it’s hard to fault parents who want their kids to experience safe conditions.

That being said, you might as well stop the trains entirely if you’re going to insist they crawl through at 5 mph. I don’t know if this is a good short-term solution or not, but it is clearly not a long-term solution for either the parents, Gunn students, or Caltrain.

It’s difficult for transit infrastructure to be designed in a way that can stop someone truly determined to kill themselves from doing so, as the Golden Gate Bridge and BART have discovered. That being said, this rash of suicides reminds us of the inherently dangerous nature of grade crossings where fast, heavy trains are operating. (Light rails and streetcars have potential issues – but then so does any other vehicle operated on the roads.)

Back in June this blog asked why the death toll of at-grade rail crossings was being excluded from the conversation about high speed rail on the Peninsula. The fact is that Caltrain on the Peninsula as it stands right now – at-grade through a densely populated urban area – is unsafe at any speed. A 5 mph slow order is no lasting solution to the problem of how to operate a modern passenger railroad safely through such a landscape.

Some may accuse me of “politicizing” the issue. But it has already been “politicized,” long ago, by those who argue that their own property values and their own personal, idiosyncratic vision of urban aesthetics and what their community should “feel” like trumps the safety needs of the general population, including Gunn students.

“Politics” is the process by which individuals and groups make collective decisions, and how they weigh competing needs and desires. Right now in Palo Alto, there is a politics that prioritizes preserving the status quo over providing for safe, affordable, reliable, clean, and economically stimulating passenger rail. Whether the tracks go over or under the grade crossings, it is clear that the status quo for Caltrain and Palo Alto no longer works.

The community needs to come together to find a long-term solution to make the railroad as safe as possible, balancing that against the need for that railroad to continue operating at improved efficiency. They need to recognize that while there is no way to provide for perfect safety, some ideas, like grade separations, are such obvious parts of the solution that anyone who argues against them out of a desire to preserve their own pocketbook or their own sense of aesthetics should be, at best, questioned relentlessly about their priorities.

Unfortunately, the vocal NIMBYs in that community have begun to jeopardize the city’s position of leadership in support of sustainable and forward-looking policies. Led by those who continue to sow the misinformation about HSR acting as some kind of “Berlin Wall,” Palo Alto is in danger of opposing high speed rail outright, and in the process fatally undermining Caltrain – and therefore, fatally undermining the city’s own stated commitments to mass transit.

This November, Palo Alto voters will fill five seats on the city’s nine-member council. Unsurprisingly, high speed rail is a major issue in the race, as evidenced by this report of a recent candidates’ forum:

“I was opposed to high-speed rail in November, and I voted no on the bond,” candidate Leon Leong said, referring to state Proposition 1A, which launched the rail plans with $10 billion in funding. “I believe the city needs to budget funds for litigation, for advocacy in Sacramento, hiring lobbyists, as well as in the federal government, to either get the route changed or get it stopped in San Jose.”

The comment drew a burst of cheers from an audience that had been asked to hold its applause. For most of the two-hour forum at the Palo Alto Art Center, sponsored by a group of Palo Alto neighborhood associations, the crowd obeyed. Not when it came to high-speed rail….

Leong and a few others said the city should be pushing back harder against the California High Speed Rail Authority, the board charged with implementing the plans.

Tim Gray, who lives along the tracks, said, “I’ve got my back against the rail and I’m going to keep on fighting. I’m like a mother bear with her cubs.”

What exactly does Leong want the city to do? Find some grounds for another frivolous lawsuit? People like Leong and Gray haven’t accepted the fact that high speed rail is going to happen, and think that it is best to waste everyone’s time – and the city’s money – battling it instead of determining the best way to live with it.

Gray’s position is even more amusing. He’s not protecting “his cubs” – he thinks he is protecting his property values, as if government existed for that purpose alone and that everyone else in Palo Alto should sacrifice their need for affordable, sustainable transportation in order to pad his assets. Ironically, HSR would boost his property values – unless there’s a huge pool of buyers out there eagerly awaiting the chance to live next to a railroad with loud horns and spewing diesel fumes at all hours of the day.

John Hackmann pulled out an oversized white poster board on which he had written in magic marker, “No to rail wall.” Like Leong, he said he voted against the bond measure, as did candidate Chris Gaither.

If Palo Alto residents believe that the ability to write on a poster board is qualification to serve on city council, well, OK…

Karen Holman said an underground high-speed rail line might not be much better, even if the city could afford it.

“Opposing the above-ground option is a no-brainer,” she said. But an underground rail line comes with its own problems, she said, including possible eminent domain takings due to construction and conflicts with freight trains that now use the Caltrain tracks.

Holman touted her experience on the city’s planning and transportation commission, saying it prepared her to pick apart environmental reports. The report approved by the high-speed rail authority last year is “not a serious document,” she said.

Holman is actually raising a good point here – a tunnel is no panacea for Palo Alto. It would likely mean greater eminent domain takings (whereas an above-grade solution will produce hardly any at all in Palo Alto), and it would indeed cause conflicts with freight trains that could hinder or block the city’s ability to replace the at-grade railroad with development to help pay for the tunnel.

On the other hand, Holman shows her lack of familiarity with environmental and mass transit planning when she calls the statewide program EIR “not a serious document.” For someone who touts her experience on the planning and transportation committee, this is a serious charge to make – and it is utterly ridiculous. The judge in Atherton v. CHSRA found that the EIR conformed to CEQA requirements, with the exception of the matter of the UPRR ROW between San José and Gilroy. For a massive statewide project EIR, that’s actually a pretty good performance in court.

One candidate took some credit for publicizing the rail plan’s potential pitfalls before most others, including the city council, saw any cause for concern. Nancy Shepherd pointed out that she hosted a heavily attended meeting for her house in the Southgate neighborhood, a meeting some say sparked Palo Alto’s activist movement on the issue.

“I would like to see the city council play a much larger role, perhaps even hiring our own engineer” to evaluate a key upcoming environmental document, she said. That way, she said, the city would not be “hoodwinked, like we were last November when we were voting on this.”

It’s a shame Shepherd prefers to repeat the dishonest “hoodwinked” claim. That implies an intent to deceive which wasn’t there; she should retract the accusation. Palo Alto voters had plenty of resources at their disposal, including copious amounts of local TV and print news coverage, to explain to them the details of the HSR project when they voted en masse to approve Prop 1A last November.

And that raises the real issue at stake in the Palo Alto election. It isn’t a battle over HSR. It’s really a battle over who will be allowed to benefit from city policies for the next several decades. It is about who gets to enjoy economic security and prosperity – and who is going to be denied those benefits.

What the anti-HSR candidates are saying to Palo Alto is that the only people who should benefit from city council policy are those who already own homes near the Caltrain corridor. Everyone else, whether homeowner or renter, young or old, student or townie, rich or poor, comes second to those privileged few, who are mobilizing to seize control of the city council.

As Michael Scanlon pointed out at the Menlo Park Town Hall and as Bob Doty reinforced at the Palo Alto teach-in, without high speed rail bringing the money to electrify Caltrain, Caltrain is not likely to survive.

It sure doesn’t sound like any of these candidates are even aware of that fact. If they are, it doesn’t seem as if they much care. By prioritizing their own property values over the needs of everyone else in Palo Alto, they’re happy to consign other city residents to dependence on ever-rising oil prices and automobile congestion, as well as condemning the city to continue to suffer from the deadly toll of at-grade tracks.

Palo Alto, like California, stands at a crossroads. It has two basic choices. The first is what the anti-HSR candidates propose: preservation of the 20th century model of urban living, dependent on the automobile. It is an obsolete model, one directly responsible for the present economic crisis and guaranteed to produce economic stagnation and immiseration as fewer and fewer people can make ends meet in a place dependent on oil and lacking sustainable methods to move people around.

The second choice is what other visionaries, including some of the council candidates, desire for Palo Alto. It is the realization of the city’s environmental and smart planning projects begun in recent decades but now in serious jeopardy at this election. It is a choice that would produce a sustainable city, much less dependent on oil, with a vibrant downtown, a community where the railroad is a permeable yet safe feature instead of a deadly and divisive barrier. It is a city where economic opportunity is available to the many and not to the few.

I have no idea how this will turn out. NIMBYs are notoriously successful at drawing attention and making themselves look more numerous than they actually are. Palo Alto DID vote for Prop 1A in large numbers, and the recent efforts to provide sensible HSR planning have been very well-attended by residents eager to find a way to make HSR work for Palo Alto. Perhaps those who want a better future for Palo Alto will outnumber those who want to abandon that future so that a small group of people can enjoy the benefits of the present for a couple more years.

We’ll know the answer in November.

That being said, I cannot imagine that the depictions of the above-grade solutions, whether the viaduct or the retained fill, will please the Peninsula NIMBYs. As Clem noted in the comments to yesterday’s post, we have to unpack the term “barrier”:

As a San Carlos resident, I can’t agree with this at all–unless you meant a visual barrier. Visual barriers don’t prevent you getting from point A to point B, which is what a physical barrier does (like the tracks in Palo Alto).

San Carlos = high visual, low physical barrier

Palo Alto = low visual, high physical barrier

The whole “division,” “barrier,” and “Berlin Wall” debate needs to be separated into physical and visual components before it starts to make any sense. Conflating the two is confusing and is often used to scaremongering advantage.

All of the solutions depicted in this video would create a low physical barrier. As we saw over the weekend in Palo Alto, residents also want a low visual barrier in the form of a tunnel, but it is very, very uncertain whether this is financially possible.

Further, there is a third kind of barrier that must be considered – a “mental geography” barrier. Californians have been trained to see above-grade structures as creating spatial divisions and separations within communities, between neighborhoods. An above-ground high visual barrier is usually seen as a something that causes separation and division – which is why the totally ridiculous term “Berlin Wall” used by NIMBYs to describe the above-ground solutions is able to gain any currency at all on the Peninsula. Those barriers are often permeable and people learn to adapt to them, just as Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton have apparently maintained a high quality of life with the much more obtrusive physical barrier of at-grade tracks. But these images are likely to reinforce the perception of an above-ground solution as an undesirable barrier, no matter how positive the effects are likely to be.

I don’t know who produced this video, and that would be a rather important matter, especially in determining whether the depiction of the above-ground solutions are fair and realistic or not.

If you were there, by all means, post your thoughts in the comments. For now, I’m going to have to rely on the local press. Sue Dremann at Palo Alto Online had a good overview:

The two-day workshop, sponsored by the Peninsula Cities Consortium, brought together residents, city and Caltrain officials, architects, and experts in transportation, geology, tunneling, historic resources, finance and public art to discuss the visionary futures for the rail corridor.

The consensus was for undergrounded tracks with parks, community gardens, a bicycle boulevard, green spaces, shops and streets to connect neighborhoods now divided by the at-grade and elevated tracks….

Most groups said tunneling the trains seemed the best alternatve — but they recognized the complexity and cost. The groups considered boring deep beneath creeks and avoiding damage to El Palo Alto, the city’s iconic redwood.

Dremann’s article goes into some detail on the various neighborhood proposals, but I want to focus on the bigger picture. Assuming this is an accurate reflection of the event, I am extremely pleased to hear this. I’ve always been open to a tunnel – the question is instead the cost, and according to Dremann, the locals fully understand it:

Some groups suggested the project could be funded by a one-percent sales tax hike, as was done in Berkeley when Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) was built. Others suggested a voter-approved 30-year property-tax fee could cover costs.

Both funding models are sensible, since they rightly recognize that they will have to pay for a tunnel themselves. If these cities can muster the public support to approve such a tax, and if they can show it will pay for the costs of the tunnel, then I’ll be one of the biggest supporters of such a plan.

Funding an underground solution is not likely to be a simple matter. Gennady Sheyner’s Palo Alto Online article makes that pretty clear:

But speakers at Sunday’s workshop also acknowledged a major obstacle standing between them and their idealistic vision: the high cost of creating underground tunnels. While rail officials don’t expect to have a cost estimate for the project for another year, they have estimated the cost of boring tunnels to be about 6.5 times as much as building at grade.

The cost of building underground tunnels is also expected to be beyond the rail authority’s $4.2 billion budget for the Peninsula segment.

Glenn Isaacson, principal at Conversion Management Association, said cities would have a hard time funding a tunnel, but offered several ways in which it could be done. Aside from passing bond measures or enacting special taxes, cities could sell land currently occupied by the Caltrain right-of-way and use the proceeds to pay for the tunnels, he said.

Workshop participants have also singled out a downtown stretch between El Camino Real and Alma Street as a possible site for dense, revenue-generating developments, including multi-story condominiums. But Isaacson warned that the project would still likely require significant additional funding from the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

“I’d urge you to watch your pennies in the cost of what you select,” Isaacson advised the audience. “You’ll have a hard time covering 100 percent of the gap.”

My guess is they’ll have to do all of the above – property assessments, passing a bond, and selling air rights – to fund an underground solution. One possible solution is for the CHSRA to lay out the cost of an above-grade solution (some of these articles mention an “at-grade” implementation as a possibility, which it is not) and then tell the locals that if they want to go above and beyond by building a tunnel, they have to pay for those added costs.

If you want to get public support for paying those costs locally, you have to sell not the process, nor the technical solution, but you have to sell a vision. A vision of a better Peninsula. And that too is something that the locals understand:

California’s high-speed-rail project could offer Palo Alto and its neighboring cities a rare opportunity to revitalize their downtown districts, transform old train tracks into leafy gateways and bring neighborhoods closer together, a group of leading urban designers and architects said at a Sunday workshop….

Judith Wasserman, a member of Palo Alto’s Architectural Review Board, gave the plan a special name: “Together Again for the First Time.” Wasserman said an underground system could offer the city a long-awaited chance to connect its neighborhoods.

“The town has always been divided by the train,” Wasserman said. “We’ve never had good cross-town connection. This is an opportunity we’ll never have again.”

Of course, Wasserman has it backwards; the train was there before the town. But that shouldn’t take away from what is a very reasonable and supportable vision for how HSR can enhance and improve the local community.

That all being said, there are two huge, related caveats that we all need to keep in mind before we pronounce the corner being turned on the Peninsula HSR debate.

The first is the above-grade solution. It makes sense for everyone involved to have the community do work on determining how to implement an above-grade four-track solution in a way neighbors can live with. Neither Caltrain, the CHSRA, nor the Peninsula cities can afford to pin their hopes on getting voter approval for a tax increase to build a tunnel. Such work may have been done this weekend and just didn’t make its way into the reports, but it is vital that the design workshops include an emphasis on planning above-grade solutions.

The second is freight rail. As we saw at the Palo Alto teach-in last month, the Peninsula Freight Rail Users Group is adamant that freight rail continue to operate much as it does today, and Union Pacific has its trackage rights that have to be considered as well. It’s theoretically possible to design a tunnel that could accommodate freight rail, but the design for that is very, very different from tunnels for passenger trains alone. Since many of the proposals for tunneling in Palo Alto and neighboring cities revolve around using the at-grade land for purposes other than a railroad, that means they’re going to have to build a tunnel big enough to possibly accommodate 4 tracks and high enough to accommodate today’s containerized double-stacked freight consists.

I don’t know if that all was discussed at the workshop. But it should have been, and it needs to be discussed going forward. Otherwise what was a very productive and valuable planning workshop may not actually be as effective as it ought to be.

The LA Times has published an article on Metrolink’s safety record, charting the 244 grade crossings deaths on its far-flung network over the past 15 years. On average, that works out to more than one a month.

Source: LA Times Sep 26 2009

While it is true that Metrolink has suffered safety lapses, most notoriously the case of a train engineer who was texting on a cell phone when he should have been paying attention to trackside signals at Chatsworth, it is also true that the agency has to operate on a shoestring budget. The article complains bitterly about a corporate culture that supposedly prioritizes ridership growth over grade crossing safety, comparing it to MTA. That agency is far better funded precisely because it has higher ridership. Metrolink is caught in a Catch-22.

The article also cites the example of a confused elderly lady driver who made a right turn at the Buena Vista Street intersection in Burbank. When the crossing gate came down on her car, she panicked and stepped on the accelerator. Tragically, she was killed in the ensuing train crash. Metrolink concluded it was a clear case of driver error and have made only minimal changes to the intersection in response to the fatality. Without additional public funding, there’s not a whole lot it can do.

Up in the SF peninsula, Caltrain has a program for rail safety enforcement, but this public outreach effort hasn’t made a significant dent in the grim statistics. It seems that in addition to suicidal persons, there will always be a small contingent of motorists who either don’t know how to behave at railroad grade crossings or flout the rules.

What both commuter rail services have run up against is that the only proven way to eliminate or at least massively reduce grade crossing fatalities is full grade separation plus sturdy fences for the rail corridor.

Caltrans did promise to grade separate the aforementioned Buena Vista Street in Burbank against the single rail track in the context of a project to widen I-5, but that’s just one one grade crossing among hundreds. Elsewhere in Southern California, a large number of grade crossings were eliminated or had their rail traffic sharply reduced by the Alameda Corridor project. More are either planned or under construction in the context of the Alameda Corridor East project in the San Gabriel Valley. For its part, OCTA is lobbying Congress to close a funding gap for 19 new grade separations on the BNSF Transcon line in Orange County, a critical artery for getting goods in and out of the LA and Long Beach harbors.

One of the reasons the California HSR project is so expensive is that it will feature all-new fully grade separated tracks. In the SF peninsula, part of the Central Valley and in the Lancaster-Anaheim section of the Metrolink service network, the starter line will run immediately next to existing regional and commuter as well as freight trains. While AB3034, the bill made law by the passage of prop 1A(2008) last November, does not explicitly require CHSRA to grade separate any but the HSR tracks, also including adjacent tracks for legacy services should be a high priority wherever that is technically and economically feasible and, it is not already done or planned in another context.

Voters/taxpayers should demand nothing less, even if it doing so entails exercising strictly limited and generous eminent domain against a relatively small numbers of businesses and home owners. This applies in Fullerton just as much as it does in the SF peninsula, Fresno, Bakersfield and elsewhere in the state. The benefits extend well beyond safety, e.g. to rail corridor capacity, reduced dependence on oil in the transportation sector plus the elimination of train horns and warning bells.