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.

Some wondered whether the poll’s findings held evenly across the state – particularly on the Peninsula, where HSR opposition has been the loudest. Well, today we have evidence that the Peninsula strongly supports high speed rail.

The San Mateo County Times has just reported on a poll done in April in the 21st Assembly District, including Palo Alto, Redwood City, and Menlo Park. The poll found that 77% of respondents still supported the project:

The survey, which was conducted in April and targeted Democratic voters [and others, see my comments below -Robert] in advance of the June primary, asked two questions of 21st District voters regarding the bullet-train project, and the answers, though old, are a bit surprising.

First, respondents were asked generally whether they supported or opposed the plan to build a high-speed rail line linking the major cities in California. Fifty-four percent said they strongly supported the plan, 23 percent somewhat supported the plan, 9 percent somewhat opposed it, 9 percent strongly opposed it and 5 percent didn’t have an opinion.

Then respondents were asked, “Does knowing that a portion of the high-speed train system will be built through the Peninsula make you more or less inclined to support building the high-speed rail system?”

Twenty-six percent said it made them much more inclined, 25 percent said somewhat more inclined, 24 percent said it made no difference, 11 percent were somewhat less inclined, 10 percent were much less inclined and 5 percent had no opinion.

In other words, 51% said that knowing the HSR project was coming through the Peninsula made them *more* inclined to support HSR, with 24% not caring either way. Only 21% felt that HSR coming through the Peninsula was a problem.

The Times speculates that since the poll was done, as more arguments against the HSR project have come out (such as the flawed State Auditor report and the flawed Berkeley ITS report) that support might have fallen from that high level.

But consider that poll was done after over a year of strong criticisms were leveled at the HSR project by Peninsula opponents, including the city councils of many of the AD-21 cities, and yet strong majorities still backed HSR. There may have been some slippage since late April, but 77% is a huge number, and I’m guessing most of those people have already made up their minds and aren’t going to be swayed against this project.

After reading the article Saturday morning, I checked with some of my own sources to see if I could learn more about this poll. These sources indicated that the San Mateo County Times article did a very good job writing about the poll, but that there is one point that needs to be clarified. The poll was not just of of Democrats – it was of Democrats and independents (known in California as “Decline to State” voters) who were planning to vote in the AD-21 Democratic primary on June 8.

What does that mean? I decided to do a little research to find out. According to the California Secretary of State’s office, Democrats and Decline to State voters represent 70% of the overall electorate in the 21st Assembly District. And in the June 8 primary, 65% of the votes cast in AD-21 were in the Democratic primary. DTS voters are eligible to vote in the Democratic primary, and it appears that many of them did so.

In other words, the poll captured what appears to be a representative segment of the electorate in AD-21. Even if every single Republican voter in the district opposes HSR (which is unlikely, as I’ll explain in a moment) overall support in the district for HSR, based on the poll numbers, would still be at 53%.

As we know, Prop 1A passed with around 60% of the vote in 2008 on the Peninsula (61.1% in San Mateo County and 60.4% in Santa Clara County). It’s reasonable to believe that many Republicans joined in supporting that initiative, as they too understand the economic benefits of HSR, as does the Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So if you assume that at least a significant portion of Republicans still support HSR – which seems reasonable – then it is quite plausible that overall support on the Peninsula (at least in AD-21) is still around the 60% level shown in the November 2008 election.

But it’s not really about the math. The bigger point ought to be obvious, and I’ll bold it because it’s important: the Peninsula still wants high speed rail.

Yes, there is a range of opinion within that bloc of supporters about how it ought to be done. But the poll shows that support is still quite strong. And that brings us to the Peninsula Cities Consortium.

The PCC believes, as a matter of official policy, that “high speed rail should be built right – or not at all.” Some PCC member cities, such as Belmont, are even considering passing resolutions opposing the project. Menlo Park (which was included in the poll) is going to court to challenge the project-level EIR.

This poll provides very clear evidence that this position is NOT shared by the majority of the residents of two key PCC member cities (Palo Alto and Menlo Park), perhaps also of the other PCC cities as well. It also indicates the PCC itself has gotten out of sync with what its constituents actually believe – which is that HSR should be built.

How did that happen? Recall the study done by Stanford University Urban Studies student Katie Martinez that I wrote about in June:

This research concludes that planners are not receiving opinions in the neighborhood workshops representative of the neighborhood going to be directly effected by the change. Unfortunately, city planners are making their decisions for the future of the California Avenue neighborhood based off of a small group of self-selected citizens who are able and motivated to attend the workshops, instead of a representative portion of the neighborhood, who are hesitant or excluded from participating.

In other words, Palo Alto (and likely other cities) have a tendency to base their planning decisions solely on who shows up to meetings and complains the loudest. She surveyed the California Avenue neighborhood and found that residents’ views on planning priorities differed from those expressed by attendees at public meetings. Martinez called for Palo Alto to implement reforms to better reflect true public opinion, instead of just assuming that a small, loud group of people reflect the whole community, when often they do not.

We all know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But when it comes to a project that is as important as high speed rail, local elected officials ought to be doing a much better job of gathering and accurately representing the views of their constituents. It’s not only a smart move for these politicians, it’s also the right thing to do in a democracy.

This poll should cause the PCC cities to stop and reflect on what they are doing. They need to go back and get in sync with their constituents. They need to ensure that their interactions with the HSR project are constructive and not oppositional. And they need to make sure that they carry out the will of their own voters as expressed in the November 2008 election.

Everyone wants a good HSR project that is sensitive to community needs. I don’t know of a single person who wants it done badly. But we also want it done, period. And so too does a majority of residents in the mid-Peninsula area. It’s time for their elected officials to reflect this reality, and work constructively to ensure that high speed rail is built.

Florida’s arguments deserve to be read in their entirety at TNR, but here’s the basic points:

the key to understanding America’s historic ability to respond to great economic crises lies in what economic geographers call the “spatial fix”—the creation of new development patterns, new ways of living and working, and new economic landscapes that simultaneously expand space and intensify our use of it. Our rebound after the panic of 1873 and long downturn was forged by the transition from an agricultural nation to an urban-industrial one organized around great cities. Our recovery from the Great Depression saw the rise of massive metropolitan complexes of cities and suburbs, which again intensified and expanded our use of space. Renewed prosperity hinges on the rise of yet another even more massive and more intensive geographic pattern—the mega-region. These new geographic entities are larger than the sum of their parts; they not only produce but consume, spurring further demand.

What Florida is saying here is not at all new. He is repeating arguments that historians and geographers have made for decades: that an economy is inextricably linked to the spatial forms it takes, and that major economic changes are accompanied by changes in humanity’s built environment. And historians and geographers have often understood the role that canals played in the early 19th century economy, that railroads played in the recovery from the Long Depression, that freeways and dams and bridges played in the recovery from the Great Depression.

But Florida has specific reasons why he thinks it’s high speed rail that will be the foundational piece of the recovery from the Great Recession:

As Jane Jacobs identified and the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas later formalized, clustering speeds the transmission of new ideas, increases the underlying productivity of people and firms, and generates the diversity required for new ideas to fertilize and turn into new innovations and new industries…

It’s now time to invest in infrastructure that can undergird another round of growth and development. Part of that is surely a better and faster information highway. But the real fix must extend beyond the cyber-economy to our physical development patterns—the landscape of the real economy.

Florida’s point is that innovation requires “clustering.” But the 20th century form of clustering – based on the automobile and oil consumption – has failed. It has led to malinvestment, unaffordable costs, and is choking cities with traffic that causes people to waste time and waste money.

Florida argues instead that we are already seeing the emergence of a “mega-region,” and that Americans are already moving away from dependence on the automobile and cars. He’s not saying everyone will live in skyscrapers in downtown San Francisco, or that nobody will drive. Instead his point is that as mega-regions emerge – large metropolitan areas that don’t sprawl together, but act more like beads on a necklace – only high speed rail can provide the physical connectivity that is needed to allow a mega-region to thrive.

Some react to this by arguing that everyone will just telecommute – even though many employers refuse to do this even though it’s perfectly workable right now (I telecommute, after all, and work for an organization that has no physical office). Others claim we’ll drive electric cars, even though that doesn’t explain how we solve the traffic problem, the long commute problem, or the shift away from driving that’s being caused by a desire to be connected to our digital devices.

As we know, still others will react by raging against the inevitable change, trying to force a prolonging of a failed status quo by destroying in the cradle the infrastructure that will enable the 21st century economic recovery to emerge. This is what explains the opposition in places like the Peninsula to high speed rail. As we’ve seen, Peninsula NIMBYs and other HSR critics all share the view that the 20th century model of urban geography – where everyone gets around by automobile – is not only still workable, but is the pinnacle of human achievement and anything else is a horrible destruction of their quality of life.

Florida’s article helps explain why that view is so deeply flawed and indefensible. Neither he nor I are saying that, for example, Palo Alto should be rebuilt to resemble Manhattan. But in the 21st century economy, a high speed rail system is going to be essential to economic recovery and prosperity by providing an affordable way for people to “cluster” – to share ideas, create, and innovate – while making the most of 21st century technologies that you can’t use while sitting behind a wheel.

In this way, city councils like Belmont that are threatening to oppose the high speed rail project are doing an enormous disservice to their residents. PCC members who are up in arms about the alignments are missing the big picture. Convinced – quite incorrectly, as their friends across the bay in Albany and Rockridge would tell them – than an aerial structure would doom their property values, they’re willing to blow up the HSR project and their cities’ future prosperity just to appease a small but loud group of people who are clinging to a 20th century model of urbanity that has failed – without realizing that, with small adjustments and adaptations, they can improve their city while leaving most of its built environment as-is.

Richard Florida has often spoken in Silicon Valley about how cities can plan for and thrive in the 21st century economy. Next time he’s out here, perhaps he can head up the Peninsula and help explain to the PCC cities that they have better things to do for their constituents and their futures than threaten the HSR project.

Photo from Congressman George Miller
(From L to R: Willie Brown, John Burton, Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan (TJPA), George Miller, Gavin Newsom, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Ray LaHood, Barbara Boxer, Curt Pringle, Nathaniel Ford (Muni) and David Crane (CHSRA board))

The California High Speed Rail Authority collected some of the remarks via their Twitter account, @CaHSRA:

“We’re finally going to have high speed rail here in California” -SF Mayor Gavin Newsom

“The Transbay Transit Center is a bullet train for job creation” -Senator Barbara Boxer

“CA got the most HSR funding because you all have your act together” -USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood

“We need to get into the HSR business in America and there’s one way to do it: make the investment.” -LaHood

“Transbay will boost the dream of HSR in CA and across America.” -Speaker Nancy Pelosi

The CHSRA put out a press release with this quote from Chairman Curt Pringle (who probably can’t wait to have a groundbreaking in his own city of Anaheim for the ARTIC project):

“We are all committed to building a world-class high-speed rail system and this groundbreaking signals another step in the process of making that system a reality. We’re pleased that the Transbay Joint Powers Authority has made the future development of a high-speed rail system a centerpiece of its planning for this multi-model transit center. Projects like these if done right have the potential to truly transform a city and reinvent the way Californians travel – making it faster, cheaper, more convenient and better for the environment,” said Authority Chairman Curt Pringle.

There were times in the last year or two that this day didn’t look like it’d ever come. Sure, there was always going to be a new Transbay Terminal, but the CHSRA and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority were squabbling over the details of where the station should be located. However, Attorney General Jerry Brown, Speaker Pelosi and Senators Boxer and Dianne Feinstein intervened to ensure that the existing TJPA project went ahead as the SF terminus for the HSR project and that the all-important “train box” was funded with $400 million in federal high speed rail stimulus money.

It’s good to see the HSR project breaking ground. We’ve got a long way to go, obviously, but we’ve gotta start somewhere. And here on August 11, 2010, we did.

Needless to say, this should be seen as another blow to the HSR critics and opponents on the Peninsula. As SF Supervisor David Chiu (likely SF’s next mayor, after Gavin Newsom is elected Lt. Governor this November) said at last week’s CHSRA board meeting, anyone who thinks that SF is going to let the Peninsula cut off the HSR project in San José is crazy. With HSR playing a key role in the multibillion-dollar Transbay Terminal project that is now officially under way, it seems even less likely than ever that the Peninsula can avoid HSR. Since clear majorities of Peninsula residents support HSR, despite what some city councils claim, that’s an outcome that will make most Peninsula residents very pleased indeed.

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.

Three options will be the focus of further study. All leave the Transbay Terminal in a covered trench to the Fourth and King streets Caltrain station, then travel at ground level to South San Francisco.

– One option relies almost entirely on ground-level and elevated structures – either earthen berms or concrete or steel viaducts – to travel from San Francisco to San Jose.

– Another option uses ground-level and elevated rails until Atherton, then mixes ground level, elevated, trench and tunnel designs on the southern part of the Peninsula with tracks placed in open trenches in stretches through parts of Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Mountain View.

– A variation of the second option would place tracks in a long trench stretching from Atherton to Sunnyvale.

(UPDATE: Mike Rosenberg’s Mercury News article has a very good graphic showing the different options.)

The Supplemental AA report noted that the long tunnel would not only be extremely costly to build, but has two other problems that contradict the expressed desires of those in the community that spoke out:

• It would be difficult to build the tunnel while maintaining existing Caltrain operations

• It would be difficult to build the tunnel without an expanded right of way at the transitions into and out of the tunnel, requiring more property takes than the public would likely support.

As the article indicated, a tunnel could still happen in the southern Peninsula area, including Palo Alto – and if the public expresses a desire for a tunnel and is willing to accept Caltrain disruption and more property takes, a longer tunnel could be back on the table.

That would still require it to be funded. Here, the Peninsula Cities Coalition would do well to help their own case and stop attacking the HSR project and instead work collaboratively and constructively to ensure HSR is funded by Congress. When PCC member cities such as Atherton or Menlo Park sue the Authority and play up claims that the ridership numbers are flawed, it does not help the cause of getting more HSR funding from Congress, which the Peninsula cities will need to construct their desired designs.

The fact that aerial structures are still on the table will likely revive discredited claims that it would be a “Berlin Wall” that would “divide” communities, a claim that does not acknowledge the fact that Peninsula cities are already “divided” by the existing tracks, whether they’re at grade or above grade, and that an aerial solution would actually help reunite these communities by making the rail corridor more permeable and safer.

Of course, some of these cities already have built their own aerial structures and haven’t suffered as a result, with San Carlos being a high-profile example. Clem reminds us of another example from San Mateo:

The elevated structure spans across several blocks of San Mateo, like a gash through the heart of downtown. Its 67-foot width casts vast shadows onto downtown shoppers, like a freeway overpass, although women and children seem to pass underneath without being attacked. The concrete structure, strangely free of graffiti, provides a full 16 feet of free clearance underneath it for trucks. Three stories up above, the side walls of the elevated bridges loom a full 25 feet over the street. To add insult to this injury, metallic poles tower another 18 feet above the structure, bringing its overall height to an incredible 43 feet!

If you know San Mateo, you might have guessed this describes the Central Parking Garage, a structure with presence, visual impact, and context-sensitivity resembling the elevated, four-track high-speed rail corridor that residents fear.

There are examples of aerial passenger rail structures that are integrated well into their communities and have spurred growth and activity. We highlighted several in March 2009. Unfortunately, there still remains a bias in the US against aerial structures, equating them with blight.

One of these biased sources is, once again, the folks from KALW News, who for some reason that I cannot quite understand, have been given a platform at the SF Chronicle’s website on their Bay Area Transit blog. This is despite the fact that these reporters appear to not have much familiarity with the HSR project, or with the years of accumulated knowledge built up by the transit blogging community, and despite the fact that other writers for the Chronicle’s Bay Area Transit blog, such as Greg Dewar and Matthew Roth, have far more experience, knowledge and insight on Bay Area transit issues.

Today’s post by Casey Miner is a great example. Miner, who apparently had little understanding or familiarity with the HSR project until very recently, had this reaction to the Peninsula Supplemental AA report:

As anyone who’s lived near an elevated BART station knows, the noise, vibration and general aesthetics of those kinds of tracks aren’t always the greatest. And they can indeed wreck a neighborhood—just look at what happened to West Oakland’s 7th Street.

This is quite ridiculous, to claim that West Oakland’s 7th Street was “wrecked” by BART. As Miner may not know, the true damage was done by the Cypress Street viaduct, which collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It also didn’t help that West Oakland suffered 40 straight years of economic dislocation, brought on not by freeways or BART (in fact, BART was welcomed by local residents as a bringer of jobs and access to other employment centers around the region) but by state and federal economic policies that starved the community of jobs and other economic resources. I’ve studied Oakland history, and am very familiar with the work of others that have done the same, and no historian has yet claimed that BART was what “wrecked” West Oakland.

In fact, one can see places where BART aerial structures haven’t “wrecked” a community – Albany is a pretty good example – and places where it may even have helped, with Fruitvale being another example.

But that error is minor compared to Miner’s next statement:

But what seemed more salient to me was a comparison to this country’s last big infrastructure project: the interstate highway system.

The dream of futuristic highways soaring over the land led many cities to build freeways right through the middle of neighborhoods. By the time people started to rethink those ideas the damage had been done. It’s only now that some groups are gaining traction in their efforts to take down sections of freeway and re-unify the areas they divided. The push to tear down part of Interstate 280 is the latest local example.

It’s been a long time since we built BART and the freeways, and it may be that engineers are able to solve some of the problems with aerial tracks. I’ll be looking into those issues in the coming weeks and will let you know what I find.

This is a totally inappropriate comparison for several reasons, all of which indicate Miner’s basic lack of understanding of transportation issues and therefore call into question her fitness to write the Bay Area Transit blog for SFGate.com:

1. The Peninsula HSR project is entirely unlike the Interstate projects because, unlike those projects, the HSR project will not be built on a new alignment. The tracks already act as a barrier. An aerial structure would, in practice, not be all that different, except things would be safer and more permeable to vehicles and pedestrians. This is totally unlike a freeway project, however, because the HSR project isn’t being blasted through a neighborhood on a totally new alignment.

2. Rail corridors behave very differently for communities than freeways. This is especially true for the Peninsula corridor, which was built up around the tracks. Downtowns and urban development patterns emerged around rail stations, which is totally and completely different from most freeways, which ignored existing development patterns and blasted through them, causing disruption. Whether the Peninsula rail corridor is aerial, at-grade, or in a trench/tunnel, it would still act to bring the community together through its stations, whereas a freeway does not bring community development activities toward it by its very nature.

Miner then compounds her already-flawed post by not showing any understanding of the backstory between the CHSRA and Peninsula HSR opponents:

People’s reactions to the plans weren’t only about the engineering. They also revealed a deeper mistrust of the Authority board’s motives. Several objected to the fact that the plans had not appeared on the Authority’s website until some time after the meeting started, when they had been promised to the public earlier. And when the time came to vote on the staff recommendations, Authority board member Rod Diridon sparked yells of disbelief when he declared that “the board doesn’t have an entrenched position.” It seems clear that some trust issues will need to be ironed out if this project is going to move forward effectively. The board seemed to acknowledge this fact, even making a point of asking that all information be posted online in a timely manner. But there’s still a long way to go.

Miner basically assumes that the critics and “yells of disbelief” are authentic displays of community anger, when in fact they are calculated statements by known project opponents designed to discredit the Authority and its work by giving the inaccurate appearance of a lack of community support.

In other words, it’s exactly the same thing as the teabaggers who disrupted town halls across the country a year ago.

I really do not understand why KALW News has such a prominent perch at SFGate.com when their reporting is so consistently flawed on the HSR project, including Nathanael Johnson’s notoriously biased HSR report that failed to interview a single HSR project supporter.

Miner, Johnson and the KALW News folks appear to suffer from what I would call the “Tracy Wood problem” after the notoriously anti-HSR biased reporter for the Voice of OC. Like Wood, the KALW News folks don’t appear to have very much knowledge of transit issues at all, especially HSR. But they are attuned to the idea that government sometimes screws up and sometimes doesn’t listen to the public. So they walk into the HSR issue, see a bunch of HSR critics complaining about this and that, and suddenly believe they’ve found some huge story about a flawed government agency.

In reality, they’ve found no such thing. But like Donny from The Big Lebowski, they’re like someone who walks into the room in the middle of a movie: they have no frame of reference. Lacking an understanding of transit issues or the HSR project and its critics, they misinterpret what they see without even doing the basic due diligence that once was taught as standard practice in journalism school.

The HSR project remains popular around the state, and thank god for reporters like the SF Chronicle’s Michael Cabanatuan who understand the HSR project and the debate around it, and who can provide fact-based, neutral reporting that is useful. The KALW News folks could learn a thing or two from that model.

Robert Cruickshank, chairman of Californians for High Speed Rail (www.ca4hsr.org), citing the Bay Area Council’s 275 corporate members, said he found Wunderman’s letter “extremely significant, coming from an organization that represents the Bay Area’s and the state’s largest employers. It shows the PCC needs to be more constructive on the issues it raises.

Jim Wunderman of the BAC is also quoted in Ross’s very good overview of the situation:

The last straw for Wunderman was a July 6 statement issued by the group demanding the rail authority “take a step back and resolve troublesome issues with high speed rail before proceeding with the project. High speed rail should be built right or not at all,” it said.

The statement also called for “local communities (to) be empowered in the decision-making process” – including how the rail lines are to be routed, regardless of cost – and to be “given sufficient time to evaluate proposed alternatives and environmental impacts.”

High-speed rail supporters say this would put the San Francisco-San Jose leg, at the very least, on semi-permanent hold, and perhaps kill the statewide project outright. Prolonged second-guessing could also prompt Sacramento and Washington to reconsider their multibillion-dollar funding commitments to the project in these cash-strapped times.

“These folks are smart enough to understand that delay is good enough to kill the project,” Wunderman said in an interview. “Time is not our friend on this.”

That part about “high speed rail supporters say” refers to the longer conversation Ross and I had over the phone yesterday. Right now our primary concern as HSR supporters isn’t the PCC, but Congress. If the PCC is going around calling for the project to be slowed or stopped, then it undermines the overall case Californians are making for the federal government to fully fund HSR. And it doesn’t help the PCC’s own cause – if they want a tunnel, for example, they’ll need Congress to help fund it. The PCC would do well to take a less adversarial tone and work more constructively to ensure HSR is built in a way that everyone can live with.

Meanwhile, PCC member Menlo Park is having a city council election this November. Two candidates are some of the leading anti-HSR voices in the city: Russell Peterson and Mike Brady have both announced their candidacy for the council. Reports continue to swirl that HSR backers who live on Stone Pine Lane, home to many of the Menlo Park HSR critics, are having a hard time getting their voices heard by city officials.

It seems like we might be approaching a tipping point on the Peninsula. Powerful new voices are calling for a more constructive approach to move forward on the Peninsula rail corridor to both improve Caltrain and build HSR. Yet some still want to adopt a confrontational approach that risks the entire HSR project. We’ll see whether, as we all hope, constructiveness and collaboration win the day.

That’s the first and perhaps best response to this letter to the Peninsula Cities Coalition from Bay Area Council President and CEO Jim Wunderman regarding what he calls the PCC’s “obstructionist policies towards California high speed rail and the grave danger that they pose for our state.” Read the whole thing:

BACtoPCCreHSR

This is an extremely powerful statement from a very important and influential person, with key ties in the Bay Area. Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, once served on Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s staff and as chief of staff to SF Mayor Frank Jordan, from 1992 to 1995. The BAC, as they’re often known, represents a who’s who of Bay Area corporations, including Chevron, Wells Fargo, Google, Safeway, and others.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jim and others at the BAC in the past, although it was on other projects (namely, their efforts to call a Constitutional Convention for California), and respect their work greatly. However, I had no idea this letter was in the works until it was emailed to me just minutes ago.

The Bay Area Council played a major role in helping bring mass transit to the Bay Area. They were the ones who proposed the concept that became BART and provided the political backing to get it supported both in the Bay Area itself and in Sacramento. They weren’t responsible for the specific design details of BART, so if you’re not happy with where it goes or how the system works, don’t blame the BAC. But without them, there would have been no mass rapid transit system in the Bay Area of any kind.

They’ve played an important role in recent years in supporting the high speed rail project, in the state legislature and on the ballot. As the voice of Bay Area business, they quite well understand the importance of HSR to the region’s future. While some claim the HSR project will cost too much, the Bay Area Council and its members clearly understand that, in fact, the cost of doing nothing isn’t zero – that HSR is necessary for these companies and the region as a whole to remain competitive and prosperous in the 21st century.

So in that sense, it is very welcome for the Bay Area Council to call on the PCC to reconsider its approach to the HSR project. They echo statements made to the PCC last week by Californians For High Speed Rail Vice-Chair Daniel Krause and Executive Director Brian Stanke, who both expressed a desire to work with the PCC but also to have them dial back their rhetoric on the project.

CA4HSR, and now apparently the BAC, know that the people of the Peninsula, including these five cities, strongly support HSR and want it built. We agree with the PCC that it also needs to be built right. And we seek to find the common ground that enables us to work out any issues and ensure that the will of the voters is respected and the HSR project built – a project necessary to a high quality of life on the Peninsula.

Let’s hope this letter leads to positive outcomes on the Peninsula, and a new approach to ensuring HSR is built, Caltrain saved and improved, and the Bay Area’s future strengthened.

Five cities on the San Francisco Peninsula called today for suspending planning for the state’s high-speed train project until vexing environmental and economic issues are resolved.

The demand by the Peninsula Cities Consortium – Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame and Belmont – follows a report by the University of California’s Institute of Transportation Studies that’s highly critical of the High-Speed Rail Authority’s projections of ridership on the proposed bullet train that would link Northern and Southern California.

I am shocked, shocked to hear that the PCC would seize on the flawed Berkeley ITS report to use to justify their demand to stop the HSR project.

Seriously, this move should be no surprise to anyone following the project. PCC members, including Palo Alto Mayor Pat Burt and Menlo Park Mayor Rich Cline, have been using an unrepresentative planning process to ignore the widespread public support in their communities for HSR and advance their own anti-HSR agenda. Pat Burt called for project planning to be suspended all the way back in January.

The cost of this move would be enormous. Despite the fact that the cost of both borrowing and construction are at their lowest in decades, and despite high unemployment on the Peninsula, and despite the availability of federal stimulus funds, and despite the need to provide sustainable, affordable passenger rail service to promote economic recovery, the PCC apparently believes that everyone can afford to not build the HSR project until it is done exactly the way the PCC wants – which is apparently “not at all.”

This is made worse by the fact that the PCC statement is based on flawed principles:

In a statement issued July 6, the five cities – Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Belmont and Burlingame – announce, “High speed rail should be built right or not at all. By ‘right,’ we mean that the rail line should integrate into our communities without harming their current livability. The best design and community values, rather than finances, should determine the alignment.”

In other words, these cities, among California’s wealthiest, are saying they want the rest of the state to pay for their gold-plated trains. Although the current plans do call for the tracks to be integrated into the community and enhance livability by reducing traffic, reducing noise, and reducing the number of suicides and deaths along the tracks, the PCC has been taken over by a small and unrepresentative group of homeowners who are convinced, against the available evidence, that the HSR project will undermine their property values. These NIMBYs believe it is the job of everyone in California to subsidize their already-considerable property values.

Unfortunately, the PCC takes a disingenuous approach to the issue of planning and cost:

PCC Chair Richard Cline, mayor of Menlo Park, explained that the five cities are concerned that key problems with the project may not be resolved because of the intense pressure being exerted by the Authority’s desire to qualify for federal stimulus funding. Construction needs to begin on the project by September 2012 and finish by September 2017 in order for California to qualify for a $2.25 federal grant.

There’s no argument that there are some issues that need to be resolved, and CA4HSR has identified several of them. But those can be addressed without undermining the project in this fashion.

“Common sense is absent from the high speed rail discussion. Right now the Authority plans to select a final alignment and release its draft environmental impact report by December of this year under an extremely rushed project schedule that is dictated solely by the desire for federal funds,” Cline said.

This is not true. There is plenty of common sense in the HSR discussion. But the PCC has shown a systematic desire to undermine that common sense in the interests of slowing or stopping a project they don’t like. The project schedule is not “extremely rushed” – it is a sensible and standard timeline used across the state. Federal funds are important – without them the trains cannot be built, and the Peninsula will continue to stagnate in the depths of a recession.

He added, “The project is suffering from an enormous credibility problem, due to its widely criticized business plan, faulty ridership numbers and the absence of funding to carry out the project statewide – let alone offer realistic alternatives for the section planned on the Peninsula. There also is no stated plan for paying to operate high speed rail once it is built, and we fear local taxpayers may be left holding the bag.”

This is also untrue. It is as if Cline called someone a liar and then told the press “that person has been accused of lying.” The ridership numbers are not faulty – the Berkeley ITS report did not say that – and there is a stated plan for paying to operate HSR once it is built. Cline may not agree with the business plan, just as he may not agree with the project, but his disagreement alone does not invalidate either the plan or the project.

As to “local taxpayers left holding the bag,” Cline instead seems to believe that Californians as a whole should be paying for the gold-plated system that his city wants. This does not strike me as appropriate.

Cline explained, “Our cities have been frustrated with the Authority’s inability to answer questions and a contradictory message that we should select the alternative we most prefer while, at the same time, being told by board members that our cities will have to pay for anything other than the cheapest alternative.”

That is not a contradictory message. It is consistent – if the cities prefer a more costly alternative, they should pay for it – and it is also realistic considering the need to exercise fiscal responsibility on this project.

Instead, the five PCC cities say high speed rail should be part of a comprehensive regional public transit plan and that the California High Speed Rail Authority should:

* Provide a valid business and financial plan that supports the full range of alternatives proposed and satisfies the requirements of the state Legislative Analyst’s Office

This is already under way.

Demonstrate to state leaders that the plan will not require operating subsidies from local taxpayers in the future

This has already been demonstrated.

Provide ridership studies to support the project that are validated by an independent peer review body that is responsible to the state Legislature

Next time, let’s select a peer review body that is not headed by a known project critic, shall we?

Increase and enhance local Caltrain service and improve Caltrain infrastructure as a condition of using the Caltrain corridor

This definitely needs to happen, but it has been inherent in the proposal all along. The PCC could help by brokering meetings between CHSRA and Caltrain staff. Instead they appear to prefer sniping from the sidelines.

In the statement, the five cities also ask that local communities be empowered in the decision-making process by giving transportation goals and community goals equal weight, and by affirming that the best design with the least impact on communities, rather than finances, will determine the alignment chosen for each section of the rail line.

But who defines “community goals”? A small and unrepresentative group of NIMBYs? These nebulous “community goals” cannot be allowed to undermine a statewide project of this importance. And unless these cities plan to pay for the project, they cannot seriously expect the state of California or anyone else living in it to agree that cost should be no object.

They ask for sufficient time to evaluate proposed alternatives and environmental impacts and to carry out the Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) community consensus-building process. While high speed rail officials have endorsed using CSS for the Peninsula section of the project, Cline noted, “CSS is not working. The sped-up timeline for the project has short-circuited and compromised this very thorough eight-step process.”

From my perspective, the PCC has not been willing to participate in CSS in a truly open and engaging fashion. Their frequent statements against the project undermine the spirit of CSS.

The cities also ask for funding that “will allow the full range of alternatives to be considered without expecting local cities to contribute substantially to the cost” and request reimbursement for city expenses related to evaluation of project proposals.

Again, the PCC – which includes some of the state’s richest cities – wants everyone else to pay their bills.

Cline credited the PCC for calling attention to many of the problems with high speed rail that the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state Auditor’s Office and numerous state legislators are now focusing on. “Congresswoman Anna Eshoo said it well in a recent editorial,” Cline noted, “when she said, “The High Speed Rail Authority has to hit the reset button, improve its reputation and assuage Peninsula residents, who have every reason to fear that this project will be a nightmare.”

In fact, the PCC is the source of many of these claims that have been regurgitated without question by these offices and individuals. So it’s disingenuous for the PCC to cite those as independent validators when the PCC itself has generated much of what those “validators” have said.

Once again, we see the PCC acting in an inappropriate manner, unrepresentative of their constituents who still support HSR, and willing to undermine the project and saddle everyone else in California with the costs of either their gold-plated preference, or the cost of delaying the project, or the cost of not having HSR at all.

To be clear, I’m not opposed to a tunnel, never have been. But we’ve never seen any clear business plan for how it will be paid for come from the PCC. In fact, while the PCC is levying charges at the HSR project, those charges can be turned right around on the PCC:

• If cost is to be no object, how will costs above the current budget be paid? Where is the financing plan for this?

• If federal stimulus money is abandoned as the PCC proposes, how will that funding gap be closed?

• What is their justification for making the rest of California pay for the preferences of five of California’s richest cities?

• Can the PCC specify “community values” that are to be used in the planning?

• Will the PCC support a truly inclusive community outreach process, or will they continue with their unrepresentative and exclusive process?

It is very unfortunate that the PCC has chosen to take the path of obstruction, when a path of collaboration remains open to them. But then, the path of obstruction is the one you’d expect a group that has never really supported HSR to take.

Californians For High Speed Rail submitted our draft comments as well, as you can see in the embedded document below. In it, you can see that CA4HSR chose to focus on bigger-picture issues, primarily the lack of coordinated planning between the CHSRA and Caltrain, and some assumptions about the project that are worth revisiting for this corridor. Our goal is to support the construction of a passenger rail corridor that meets the needs of both high speed rail and Caltrain, while allowing for some freight service.

We generally did not make comments on specific alignment issues, such as tunnels vs. trenches vs. above-grade structures, preferring to instead emphasize the need for better coordination among the agencies and pointing out specific areas where that coordination needs to improve.

CA4HSR AA Comment Letter – SF to SJ AA Report

Also included in that file is the letter CA4HSR submitted to Caltrain and CHSRA board members several weeks back, calling attention to these coordination issues. We have heard very favorable responses from members of the Authority about our letter, and Caltrain is still in the process of drafting its own response.

It’s our hope that as in other places on the HSR corridor, the San Francisco to San Jose corridor can be planned and built with the maximal level of coordination between the CHSRA and other local agencies to ensure the best experience for future riders of the system – the people whose needs are the most important in this process, and the people whose voice is so far getting lost amidst the NIMBY ruckus.