SJ, SF Mayors Push Transbay, Diridon, Caltrain Upgrades

Yesterday, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a joint press release announcing the Bay Area region's preference for stimulus and other HSR spending the Bay Area to be directed towards upgrades to the Caltrain corridor, the expansion of SJ Diridon Station, and the establishment of the new SF Transbay Terminal as the SF terminus.

Newsom had already come out in support of Transbay. Enhancing Diridon was a foregone conclusion. But the announcement apparently portends a broader regional agreement.

We should learn more about this announcement of regional aspirations at this morning's meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is brokering the agreement. More details from the Chronicle:

The proposal would turn the Diridon Station in downtown San Jose and the planned new Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco into major regional transit hubs.

In addition, the Caltrain Station at Fourth and King streets in San Francisco's South of Market would be expanded to accommodate high-speed rail.

The proposed package also seeks funding to electrify Caltrain and to equip its rail cars with automated train-control equipment that senses impending danger on the tracks. The train tracks in San Bruno would be separated from truck and auto traffic.

Together the projects would cost $3.4 billion, said Randy Rentschler, government affairs manager for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The region will ask for $1.6 billion in new federal stimulus money to help pay for the improvements. Additional funds would come from the nearly $10 billion funding pot backed by California voters for high-speed rail.

The Bay Area will seek additional funding later to pay for other projects.

One could argue that the explicit advocacy of Caltrain upgrades is a rebuke to NIMBY calls for taking HSR off the Caltrain corridor altogether, but I'm not sure the powers that be would bother to dignify such fringe proposals. This could turn out to merely be formalizing exactly which upgrade projects should come first. (Incidentally, Caltrain was awarded $9 million in stimulus funding for unrelated projects this week.)

It's encouraging to see a regional consensus emerging around Transbay, which should hopefully end the public political squabbles. What do you think? Will this announcement put an end to the issue, or merely galvanize opposing forces and bring the funding and technical challenges of Transbay further into the fore?

Gavin Newsom on HSR

by Robert Cruickshank

In a meeting with bloggers yesterday at the California Democratic Convention here in Sacramento, Gavin Newsom answered questions on a wide range of topics, including one from Becks who writes at Living in the O on restoring transit funding.


(I'm the one sitting next to Gavin)

Newsom's answer was that California is a wealthy state, and that we should be able to find the means to support transit. He pointed out the absurdity of the federal stimulus supporting spending on infrastructure and rolling stock but not on operating expenses - "we can buy buses but can't pay people to drive them." Newsom specifically mentioned high speed rail in his answer - that when he was younger he took a trip to Europe and rode their high speed trains, but when he came back "all we had was Caltrain." Newsom was a strong supporter of last fall's Proposition 1A, and has been one of the leading forces behind getting the Transbay Terminal done. Newsom wants to build HSR as governor of California - if he won two terms he might be able to preside over the opening of the LA-SF route in 2018.

Of course, his leading rival for the Democratic nomination for governor, Jerry Brown, is also a longtime supporter of HSR, having created the state's first HSR project back in the early 1980s when he was governor. Both men, if they became governor, would presumably be strong supporters of HSR.

I'm headed back to Monterey on the Capitol Corridor this afternoon - use this as an open thread.

Your Weekend Transbay Terminal Update

We've been touching on this subject in the comments section of some of the recent posts, and it's time we devoted some space on the front page of the blog itself to the recent developments in the Transbay Terminal planning. The California High Speed Rail Authority is calling for a train box capable of accommodating 12 trains per hour to be built at the outset of the project, instead of the currently planned box capable of handling four trains an hour. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle SF politicians are skeptical of the need to do this:

"We need to see whether high-speed rail's demand of a train every five minutes is bogus, which is what I believe, or if there's actually merit to it. Then they have a money problem," said San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, who serves on the Transbay Joint Powers Authority board. That agency is overseeing construction of the new transportation center at First and Mission streets...

Like Daly, [Transbay project manager Emilio Cruz] questioned the assertion by representatives of the California High Speed Rail Authority that the station needs to accommodate so many trains. Only Tokyo - a city of more than 12 million people, or nearly 15 times larger than San Francisco - has a station that accommodates more high-speed rail service than the authority proposes.

The article quotes Mehdi Morshed as arguing that "We want to build something that will last 50 or 100 years" - a sentiment I agree with in principle. But as others have noted, the CHSRA has yet to detail the reasons for wanting a train box capable of handling 12 trains an hour and why it should be built up-front, instead of down the road when a burgeoning ridership could create the political will to finance an expansion. (If anyone at the CHSRA wants to share that info, I'd be happy to pass it along - my email is my last name at gmail.)

Eric at Transbay Blog can't find any clear answer for the 12 trains per hour argument:

But even in that worst-case scenario, combining the CHSRA’s ridership projections with its new alleged need for increased peak capacity, the trains would only be 12-43% full at the newly increased service levels. Note that there are still other design options that were once considered — including tail tracks and an underground track loop — which would improve the flow of trains in and out of the station.

And in the long, long, term, beyond 2030? An additional tube under the Bay has long been discussed in hushed tones, even though it is not yet being planned outright. If an additional tube contained four tracks (with two broad gauge tracks for BART, and two standard gauge tracks for intercity and high-speed rail), it would dramatically increase pinched transbay capacity. It would open up new possibilities for regional connectivity, and it would finally integrate Oakland and the East Bay directly into the state’s high-speed rail network. It would also mean that trains would run through Transbay, rather than terminating there, which would put less stress on that station.

So is this really about CHSRA's desire to keep open the option of an extension across the bay to Oakland? If so, it could explain their lack of specificity on the plan for 12 trains an hour - why give ammunition to the Peninsula NIMBYs by holding out a transbay tube and a possible East Bay route that these NIMBYs could point to as a reason to kill HSR.

That's blind speculation, of course. And we've seen worse suggested in the comments, that this is all somehow a Quentin Kopp effort to undermine the Transbay project for his own goals. I have always resisted the groundless conspiracy theories that some toss out there about Kopp, or Rod Diridon, or the CHSRA, and I continue to resist those here. But it must be said that such theories abound when there is a lack of information. The CHSRA needs to release its studies and reasoning that explains why they need a train box capable of handling 12 trains an hour so that we can give them open and honest discussion. That's to their benefit and ours as well.

Ironically, the dispute is doing something usually not thought possible in SF politics - uniting Chris Daly and Gavin Newsom:

"I find myself on the same side as Gavin Newsom,” Sup. Chris Daly, who has long supported the Transbay project as a TJPA board member and regularly battles with Newsom. “We’re going to pull together San Francisco officials around this issue."

Daly said he has had recent discussions with Newsom’s economic policy head Michael Cohen and with Newsom-aligned Sup. Sean Elsbernd, and they’re all on the same page.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

Gavin Newsom Wants To Be the HSR Governor

SF Mayor and gubernatorial hopeful Gavin Newsom held a town hall in Oakland last night, and my friend sean mykael of Bear Flag Blue attended and gave a great report on the event. Becks of Living in the O was there as well, and focused on Newsom's answer to a question from AC Transit Director Joel Young. Newsom pretty much evaded Young's question on transit funding, but did use the opportunity to make a paean to high speed rail:

Joel explained that the state had defunded public transit and asked if Newsom, as governor, would restore public transit funding.

Newsom responded that public transit is so important for the environment and briefly answered, “Yes,” that he would restore the funding. But then instead of explaining why or how, he jumped into a long-winded speech about high speed rail. He started off by saying that he wanted to tell us about a project that he knew not all of us supported because it barely passed. This is a strange thing to say because 63% of Alameda County voters voted in favor of Prop 1A.

He then explained how high speed rail was going to change the state, creating jobs and changing how we thought about and used transportation. He talked about his vision for the “Grand Central Station of the West,” which is what some are calling the Transbay Terminal. Energetically, he explained how this would greatly improve the Bay Area region, making it easy to get from downtown to downtown (Oakland to SF).

And that was it. That was his answer to an AC Transit Director.

I'm sure Newsom and his staff will quickly learn that a large chunk of the SF Bay Area did support Prop 1A (or that they need to have different talking points depending on their audience!), but this is a nice statement of support for the HSR project from one of the Democratic candidates. It would also be worth noting that John Garamendi, another Democratic candidate for governor, has also been a strong backer of high speed rail.

I'm glad to hear that Newsom understands the importance of the Transbay Terminal and HSR more broadly. And I am also pleased to hear that he is not just promoting this at campaign events, but is working with Speaker Nancy Pelosi to lobby the feds for HSR funds:

San Francisco officials are teaming up with their Los Angeles counterparts to jointly push for a huge chunk of the $8 billion the stimulus plan will devote to high-speed rail. California believes the federal funds could accelerate the state's plan for a bullet train that could whisk passengers between the two cities in 2 1/2 hours.

At a closed-door meeting Tuesday, Pelosi told the San Francisco delegation the city was more likely to have success in winning the funding from federal officials if it presented a united front along with other California cities.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu said the city was facing tough competition for the dollars from other regions, including President Obama's hometown of Chicago, which is seeking high-speed rail links to Milwaukee and St. Louis. But he said California is the only state to have passed bonds for high-speed rail and completed an initial environmental planning process.

"From a readiness perspective, we're ahead of probably any other comparable project in the country," Chiu said.

And as to the dispute over the train box? SF Supervisor Bevan Dufty says that high-level meetings between all the key agencies are happening, but Senator Dianne Feinstein is throwing a monkey wrench into the works:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a supporter of the project, said the city should be able to make a good case for the high-speed rail money, but only if state and local entities come together behind a realistic plan.

"My greatest fear is that it's not going to get done right," she said Tuesday. "Now I hear discussions that it has changed to fit a train every five minutes. Well, I know San Francisco, and there ain't going to be a train that gets in and out of there in five minutes. So I'm worried about how realistic the planning is. It used to be (one train) every 15 minutes, which is much more reasonable."

Someone needs to tell DiFi that if you want to "get it done right" then you need to build the train box to handle the desirable capacity now instead of doing a costly rebuild decades down the line. And I'm not the technical expert here, but I'm not sure the choice is between a train every 5 minutes or every 15 minutes - or that every 5 minutes isn't viable.

The worst thing that could happen is to limit the expansion capacity of the system - to prevent it from being "scalable" to borrow from web development jargon - just because a moderate Democratic Senator felt like being stingy way back in 2009.

Still, it's good to see Newsom taking a strong position publicly and privately for HSR. If he really wanted to help he could talk about the need to secure the $29.1 million (I got it right this time! yay me!) that the CHSRA needs to complete its work. And if he wanted to be bold he would go to the Peninsula and explain why they need to stop obstructing and start collaborating with the Authority and the project.

Let's hope Newsom's lead encourages the other gubernatorial candidates to demonstrate their support for high speed rail and provide some leadership that has been severely lacking these last few years.

Gavin Newsom's TGV Trip

San Francisco mayor and candidate for California governor Gavin Newsom is in France this week and toured the TGV, hoping to boost his profile on sustainable transportation. He also took the occasion to reiterate support for an HSR tunnel to the Transbay Terminal:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom took a tour of the French high speed rail system (TGV) in Paris Monday and said that California's new version of the train is a "requirement" for the Transbay Terminal being planned for San Francisco's South of Market area.

"Since the onset of this project, I have been committed to the grand vision of Transbay, including high speed rail, a downtown extension for Caltrain and the visionary multi-use terminal itself," Newsom said. "Including the rail box as part of the terminal construction is necessary for this grand vision to be realized."...

Newsom's office has said that the plans are not certain as to whether the rail would come into the Transbay Terminal. He said it was vital that it did.

“We’re not going to build a $2 billion bus station under my watch,” said Newsom.

The Transbay Joint Powers Board, which oversees development of the Transbay Terminal, has considered building the first phase of the new terminal without the train terminal, and coming back later to excavate under the terminal and build for high speed rail only if subsequent funding materializes.

On Monday, Newsom came out against that idea, suggesting that the Transbay Joint Powers Board should not move forward on construction of the new transit center until funding is secured for the inclusion of high speed rail and it is fully integrated into the first phase of the project.

We've been calling for someone in San Francisco to assert some leadership on this and while it's great that Newsom is stepping up, the fact is that he does not bring much to the table in terms of financing. If he can get Senators Feinstein or Boxer to step up with including funding for the train box and tunnel in the stimulus, that would be fantastic. Newsom and Obama have a famously frosty relationship so that's not likely to help matters. Still, if Newsom can play a mediative role between the Transbay JPB and the CHSRA that would be helpful.

Newsom also said that the DTX and the train box would be ideal targets of an Obama stimulus. Unfortunately those chances appear to be receding. The DeFazio amendment I wrote about last night has been withdrawn:

We received word this afternoon that Rep. DeFazio's amendment that would have provided $2 billion in assistance to transit agencies was required to be withdrawn. We'll post more as we learn it, but had something to do with parliamentary issues.

There's reports out there that Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, is planning to offer an amendment to the stimulus that would add as much as $10 billion in rail funding. I don't know the details on that, but you'll surely get them as soon as I do.