Sunday, November 30, 2008

CHSRA Board Meeting in San José on Wednesday

NOTE: We've moved! Visit us at the California High Speed Rail Blog.

The California High Speed Rail Authority will be holding its first post-election board meeting this Wednesday in San José. The agenda is online (PDF) and includes mostly housekeeping matters, although there will be an update on the federal funding strategy.

The meeting details:

December 3, 10:00 am
Santa Clara Administration Building
Board Chambers
70 West Hedding Street
San Jose, CA 95110

At this point it doesn't look like I will be able to attend, even though it's only an hour or so away. If there's anyone reading who can attend and provide a report, send me an email - my last name at gmail dot com.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I can make it. I'm trying to find if any friends have a video camera or at least a tape recorder I can take with me.

-Peter

Jay said...

I love to hear a report on this. I have to be at work, why do they make it at a time when everyone that would want to be there, can't.

Rafael said...

Note: for some strange reason, my new post entitled California Rapid Rail Dreamin' was published with an incorrect date. I hope you will look for it and take a gander at the maps I created to illustrate how HSR, rapid rail, local county lines and freight could play nice together.

Robert Cruickshank said...

Rafael, did you begin and save the post on Saturday? Blogger saves posts with the date they were originally created, and if you go back and edit it later, you have to manually change the date and time or else it'll stick with the original created date.

It is a very good post and deserves a lot of discussion.

Rafael said...

@ Robert Cruickshank -

yes, I did save an early draft on Saturday. Pretty braindead that they would use that date instead of the one for initial publication.

Robert Cruickshank said...

Yep, one reason why we're working on a new site. Blogger served our needs well enough in 2008, but going forward we need something less...rudimentary.

Brandon in California said...

It would be great if the CHSRA posted individual agenda items vs the agenda only. Does anyone get these sent to them via mail or email directly?

Agenda items 8 & 9 appear have the most interest to me right now; however, 9 mostly. 9 is on the work program. I suspect that item will speak more to a general time line of expected steps and events.

Anonymous said...

What in the world is the silly Jarvis action for? What are they trying to do? get prop 1a stopped since the business plan was not ready by "their" timetable

Anonymous said...

Anyone make it out to the meeting?

Peter said...

Erm, it's on Wednesday. And I plan to be there, hopefully with a friend's video camera.

(same Peter, no longer Anon)

Anonymous said...

Oh, my mistake. Missed the big "Wednesday".

Marine Layer said...

I attended part of the meeting during my lunch break. I guess I got lucky because board member Curt Pringle had a weather-delayed flight from SNA. Some of the more salient points/questions of which of I took note:

1. Rod Diridon asserted there was a sort of chicken-and-egg scenario regarding trainsets and FRA regulations, which don't quite exist yet in North America for service above 150 mph. Looks like the project team will look to UIC standards, but Diridon wanted to push the envelope, saying "European standards were negotiated to the lowest common denominator for interoperability."
2. The "packaging" of the segments for bidding and operation will be interesting. The urbanized segments should attract lots of attention because of their complexity and potential. What will the operating structure look like in the end?
3. There's hope for early service in the Anaheim-LA and SF-SJ segments.
4. Chairman Kopp wanted to clarify whether the test segment (Merced-Fresno/Bakersfield) would be first. The answer was a bit dodgy, but I think it was affirmative. While it might get built first for testing purposes, there would be no operation until the one or more urbanized sections was complete. It's possible that the urbanized sections, especially SF-SJ, would operate first. The board will have to make a decision on this at some point.
5. When asked about the status of RoW acquisition, Mehdi Morshed replied, "We will need procedures in place, they are not in position to determine which segments are critical." I realize that it's still early in the game, but they have a fairly short period to get all of the planning complete, and RoW acquisition is going to be painful.
6. Some crucial prelim eng work couldn't be completed because of the state budget crisis.

Couldn't stick around for the public comments.