CA4HSR Submits LA-SD Scoping Comments

Yesterday was the deadline to submit scoping comments to the California High Speed Rail Authority for the Los Angeles to San Diego project segment. Californians For High Speed Rail submitted the following comments to the CHSRA regarding the route and station choices. You can read the whole document here, and below I excerpt the main elements.

CA4HSR - Los Angeles to San Diego Scoping Comments

Note that the first part of the comment letter are planning guidelines that emphasize station locations should be considered with respect to walkability of surrounding area, opportunities for transit-oriented development (TOD), and easy connectivity to existing and planned mass transit. These principles guided the comments on stations and alignments.

Inland Empire

• All corridors from LA to Riverside County should be studied, except Metrolink corridor from LAUS to Ontario Airport. City of Industry station should be considered for elimination - not a good site for TOD nor is it easily walkable for residents. Locate Ontario Airport HSR station adjacent to air terminal.



• Continue to study stations in downtown San Bernardino (Santa Fe Depot) and downtown Riverside, due to surrounding population, TOD opportunities, transit connectivity.



• Do not further study I-15 alignment/Corona Station due to lack of large urban centers, higher population along I-215 alignment. Do not further study March AFB station due to lack of walkable, dense, TOD opportunities.

San Diego

• Study both Escondido options (city center and I-15). For I-15 alignment, however, move transit center and Sprinter station to I-15 adjacent location and promote TOD around it.



• Do not further study or include station in University City along existing Rose Canyon rails. Consider University Towne Center station, and consider a bored tunnel under it to bypass Rose Canyon. However, also consider eliminating this station due to 24 station limit.



• Consider new alignments to bring HSR from I-15 to I-5 corridor, including SR-56, SR-163 to SR-52, and SR-163 to I-8.



• Qualcomm Stadium should only be studied if it is part of an alignment to downtown San Diego (Santa Fe Depot), significant TOD at Qualcomm Stadium, and elimination of possibility of sending trains to Tijuana via I-805. This would basically be another route to downtown, and downtown SD is the key in these comments.



• Opposes ending HSR at airport terminal. Instead proposes "dual stations" - one at airport and one downtown (Santa Fe Depot); or just downtown SD without an airport stop.

Routes to San Diego

by Rafael

Dave Schwab reports in the LaJolla Light that CHSRA has postponed the Sep 29 project-level scoping meeting in University City to the following date and time:

University City, Tue Oct. 13, 3-7pm
Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center
4126 Executive Drive

There will be two additional scoping meetings held in the San Diego area:

San Diego: Wed Oct. 14, 3-7pm
Ramada Limited San Diego Airport
1403 Rosecrans St.

Escondido: Thu Oct. 15, 3-7pm
Escondido Center for the Arts
340 N. Escondido Blvd.

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Of particular interest to readers of this blog are the route options that CHSRA is now looking at (cp. our earlier post LA - San Diego: Quo Vadis). In the draft map shown below, the original route is shown in purple.



However, since UPRR doesn't look like it will sell any of its rights of way or air rights above them the San Gabriel Valley, the technical working group (TWG) for the segment headed up by consulting firm SVG has had to look into alternatives. Note that the purple line now includes a section along I-605 and and aerial above Holt Ave, a city street in Pomona.

The TWG has also been looking at several alternative routes. A promising candidate would use hwy 60, hwy 57, I-10 and head south on I-15 via the city of Corona, well west of Riverside UC. In that scenario, the HSR station would apparently end up well south of the hwy 91 interchange and not be intermodal with established Metrolink services. Except for a short section south-west of Pomona where highways 60 and 57 codeshare, these highway medians are still available.

A second alternative would eliminate Metrolink's San Bernadino line to free up a right of way to reach an HSR station there. That city has always lobbied for one, but the sharp curves in the transition up from Ontario Airport would be problematic. The continuation down to Riverside also looks challenging. Note that leveraging SBD isn't even being considered, LAWA has clearly insisted on a station for ONT to relieve LAX, after deciding to shelve plans for PMD. With a good HSR connection, Ontario Airport might also provide limited relief to Lindbergh Field (SAN).

Further south, there is the issue of the I-15 managed lanes project between Escondido and Miramar (already under construction, VIDEO), which is eliminating the wide freeway median CHSRA had hoped to use. However, SANDAG's Linda Culp has been in the loop on HSR planning since 1999. It's not immediately clear if HSR tracks are now supposed to run next to I-15 in this stretch or, on an aerial made possible by extra-tall on/off ramps to the managed lanes.

Note also that I-10 and hwy 57 were originally penciled in for the Las Vegas to Anaheim maglev, but that increasingly looks like it will never be more than a paper tiger. Like it or not, California decided in favor of steel wheels HSR last November. Nevada would be wise to set aside its petty internal squabbles and push for electrified DesertXPress at 220mph plus a connector between the towns of Mojave and Barstow.

In San Diego county, there are apparently a few route details left to be sorted out near Escondido and past/through Miramar, in addition to exact station sites. In particular, the Lindbergh Field vs. Santa Fe Depot downtown question is still unresolved, as is the location of a yard for overnight stabling and minor maintenance.

Keep in mind that there has been and continues to be a great deal of negotiation regarding the route and station placements in the LA to San Diego spur. The situation is still very fluid and the map shown above could already be slightly out of date in some respects. The LA-San Diego spur was included in the statewide program EIS/EIR, but CHSRA has always sought to position it as phase 2 of the entire project. Even so, the fact that this the route and station options are still under discussion underscores that the program-level planning effort did not include actual right of way acquisition.

Making Tracks Down South

by Rafael

while CHSRA continues to face widely publicized opposition in the SF peninsula, there is active competition for the alignment that the phase 2 spur from LA Union Station to San Diego will follow. We already discussed the ROW issues in an earlier post.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise explains that the City of Riverside is competing with the much smaller City of Corona for a station, as both recognize the economic value of having a stop on the network. The Corona concept is based on an alignment alternative down I-15 and is supported by Riverside county as well as Lake Elsinore and Temecula. This would be the shortest option that still allows for a station close to Ontario airport, but the proposed station at Cajalco Rd would be several miles south-east of downtown Corona; an old freight spur could be leveraged for new Metrolink routes, but most passengers would presumably drive or take a bus to a giant parking lot in the middle of nowhere (cp. Victorville). The city could probably improve its chances by proposing instead a new station for both HSR and Metrolink at the intersection of the BNSF Transcon line and I-15, between Quarry St. and the CA-91 interchange in Corona proper.

On the other hand, CHSRA's completed and certified program-level EIR/EIS calls for trains to run further east past UC Riverside, before joining I-15 by way of I-215. Three separate connectors down from the I-10 corridor near Colton are being studied, but running above or below Iowa Ave, Chicago Ave or S Riverside Ave/Main Street is non-trivial. Note that the existing Riverside Metrolink station is located approx. 1.5 miles south of the CA-91/CA-60/I-215 interchange, rendering it useless as a regional feeder service to the HSR station for Corona, Perris and San Bernardino. This last city would very much like to have an HSR station of its own, but its downtown is out of the way of the preferred route described in the program-level EIR/EIS.

There is, of course, one heretical idea that might be worth considering now that DesertXPress looks like it may go ahead: continuing HSR along the BNSF Transcon line and/or CA-91 past the phase 1 section to Fullerton. Bullet trains would then run to San Diego via Corona without any need for additional HSR tracks along I-10. Eventually, a connector would put Riverside and San Bernardino on the spur to Victorville and Las Vegas. Anaheim ARTIC would also be on a spur, though there is a railroad ROW running north from Orange that could perhaps be used to allow a subset of trains to include that station on a run-through detour. The biggest problems are NIMBYs in the Santa Ana Valley and, the fact that this route would not run anywhere near Ontario airport. That would mean redoing part of the program-level EIR/EIS for this phase 2 spur, something I am sure CHSRA would prefer to avoid.

The above is meant to illustrate how integrated planning of the California network and DesertXPress line could open up new and possibly superior alternatives for HSR development. One slide at the recent press conference announcing the inclusion of Las Vegas in the federally designated California HSR corridor already included a connector between Palmdale and Victorville, though frankly one between Mojave and Barstow would be more useful for SF-LV and hew close to an existing road/rail traffic corridor (CA-58) The latter point is relevant for CEQA. For the moment, though, all of this remains wishful thinking: there appears to have been zero formal contact between CHSRA and DesertXPress to date and, neither planning body has taken ownership of getting any such connector funded and built.

The Keys to the Magic Kingdom

One of the relatively late changes to the definition of the HSR starter line was the inclusion of the segment from LA Union Station to Anaheim ARTIC, OCTA's planned multimodal transit hub. Nothing wrong with that at all, after all Orange County is the second most populous in the state. Besides, OC needs the grade separations along BNSF's core "91" line to support future capacity growth for container freight out of the LA/LB harbors. A similar billion-dollar project is to improve grade crossings with UPRR's lines in the San Gabriel valley, dubbed Alameda Corridor East, is already underway. Grandiose plans for using fancy, unproven freight maglev technology to shuttle containers to a new Inland Port in Mira Loma appear to have bitten the dust and those for maglev to Vegas along with them.


Anaheim ARTIC on YouTube

The hoped-for quid pro quo for grade separation is that BNSF will offer CHSRA enough land to run dedicated tracks between Redondo Junction - the northern terminus of the successful Alameda Corridor - and Fullerton. To date, BNSF has been receptive to CHSRA overtures, but that was in the Central Valley. The company's ROW between Richmond harbor and Bakersfield is arguably not fully utilized, much of the alignment is single track.

The "91" line, named - this is Southern California for you - after the adjacent freeway through the Santa Ana river valley, is a whole different ball of wax. It is the only ROW out of California that BNSF actually owns outright. All its other routes out of the state depend on trackage rights on competitor UPRR's network. Up to a point, those could be restricted or canceled without falling foul of anti-trust laws. The price for the trackage rights is also subject to change.

Therefore, we should expect BNSF to take a much tougher line in negotiations regarding the sale of part of the "91" ROW. The Alameda corridor currently carries about freight 40 trains a day, but sooner or later that may double, even triple. With prescient investment in modern signaling, diligent track maintenance and professional operations, two track ought to be enough for BNSF to handle its share of that. But what if there is an accident or an earthquake. UPRR has multiple rights of way that it can use to re-route its trains. The companies may well have secured mutual emergency trackage rights on each other's lines. Still, BNSF risks putting itself at something of a competitive disadvantage if it sells part of its most precious asset in California. Once you give up a right of way, you never get it back. Not ever. BNSF may want to be a good corporate citizen and it knows that grade separation will reduce the risk of accident-related disruptions to its own service. But does that mean CHSRA will get to lay down tracks? We'll see.

Between Fullerton and the OC/SD county line near San Onofre, the right of way is owned by the Southern California Regional Railway Authority (SCRRA) which operates Metrolink. Amtrak Pacific Surfliner and some BNSF freight trains also use this alignment. BNSF owns the connector that runs north from Orange to the "91" line as well as the bit from National City to San Diego. The harbor down there is not a container terminal, it appears to be used for importing cars. All of these trains use FRA-compliant locomotives and rolling stock.

The SCRRA ROW in Orange County is quite narrow, really only wide enough for two tracks in most places. Widening it via eminent domain for the sake of laying down dedicated HSR tracks would be massively unpopular and ruinously expensive. The plan is therefore to seek FRA approval to operate mixed traffic, i.e. to add a limited number of non-compliant bullet trains to the mix via time separations guaranteed by signaling upgrades that prevent engineers from running red lights by accident. Top speed for this last stretch would be down to 79mph, but it's so short that presents no object. After last year's disaster at Chatsworth, HR 2095 mandated the installation of positive train control technology on busy rail corridor and those carrying hazardous materials by 2015.

The request for the mixed traffic exemption will be rolled into that for a "rule of special applicability" that CHSRA will anyhow need for its entire network. FRA currently has no rules at all for passenger train operations at speeds in excess of 150mph, nor any for the safe design and operation of 25kV AC overhead catenary systems. The agency had already begun to draft such rules for Florida HSR some years ago but they were shelved when Gov. Jeb Bush killed that project. They will soon be dusted off and completed, presumably many will be cribbed from the regulations Asian and European countries have already drawn up.

However, there's always a chance that one or more domestic - or at least North American - would-be HSR vendors will emerge. They might seek to gain a competitive advantage by getting FRA to draft rules that would force more established global players to modify their designs. That would be foolish from a safety/reliability/cost point of view, but protectionism-by-red-tape is one of the oldest games in town. Bureaucrats, too, love to draft special rules under the guise of "special conditions" that supposedly exist in the territory they are responsible for. In the US, some freight operators may well seek some regulatory overkill to push back against states that suddenly want to acquire part of their ROW, just so they can benefit from the federal largesse that is now being heaped - ok, spooned - onto high speed rail projects. Well-connected organizations that oppose HSR in principle, a particular project or impacts on their back yard might also try to lobby FRA, in the hope that this might kill or at least delay HSR implementations. We should be vigilant and push back against such selfish efforts.

The rules for California will set a national precedent for both true bullet trains running at well over 125mph on dedicated tracks and, for rapid rail below that speed, with freight and passenger trains each using the equipment best suited to their business model yet sharing a ROW and even tracks. Let's hope President Obama and Secr. of Transportation LaHood realize the importance of FRA's rulemaking on HSR in the years to come.

Clem Tillier over at the Caltrain-HSR compatibility blog has published the following diagram in his analysis of SF Peninsula Rail Traffic in 2030. It shows statewide train traffic on the HSR network, based on CHSRA's 2008 business plan. It does not include non-HSR trains that HSR will share track with in sections such as Fullerton-Anaheim.


Hi-Resolution Version

For Anaheim, CHSRA is apparently forecasting 2-3 trains in each direction per hour during a six-hour peak window. Of those, 60% would head up to the SF peninsula and 40% to Sacramento. There appear to be no plans to terminate trains in Los Angeles. Today, Metrolink's Orange county line between LA and Oceanside is served by up to 3 trains per hour each way during rush hour, but far fewer during the day. Amtrak Pacific Surfliner adds one more. If there were a 100% increase in legacy train operations by 2030, we'd still only be talking about 10-11 passenger trains running on the existing dual track alignment between Fullerton and Anaheim. That's a 6-minute headway, quite busy but not extremely so, provided that all trains run pretty much on time. I don't know how many freight trains run through Anaheim station today, let alone in 2030. That's a wildcard.

In a comment on the March 10 post entitled LA - San Diego: Quo Vadis?, yeson1a suggested that CHSRA might want to keep it simple and stupid (KISS): continue on to San Diego by staying on the 91 corridor from Fullerton through Corona and switching to the I-15 median there. This option has not been studied by CHSRA and would not be considered unless securing a ROW past Ontario airport proves impossible or too expensive. Yeson1a's alternative would leverage the investment already made for LA Union Station - Fullerton in phase I. A connector from Anaheim to Atwood would permit a capacity-defined subset of HSR trains to detour from the main line to Anaheim. If desired, some of the rest could stop at a no-frills auxiliary station in Fullerton. Norwalk/Santa Fe Springs would then only be served by some of the trains that make the detour into Anaheim. The route would probably feature and intermodal with Metrolink in Corona, with the option for a regular secondary station in Lake Elsinore, though Murietta would be fairly close by.


View Larger Map

The principal downside of this idea is that neither Ontario airport not Riverside are on the route. However, a possible phase II/III spur up to Las Vegas could give the downtown areas of Riverside, San Bernardino and Victorville HSR stations. Passengers hailing from Northern California would likely prefer a shorter spur off the starter line at Mojave. Perhaps both will end up getting built someday, with tracks joining up in Barstow. Such a full build-out would, however, require quite a bit of magic dust from the money fairy.