HSR Stimulus and Project Timetables

The CHSRA's recent application to the US Department of Transportation for federal HSR stimulus money may wind up causing construction on the HSR project to begin not in the Central Valley as was originally planned, but in the Bay Area and Southern California, as this article from the Valley Voice explains. Keep in mind though that this doesn't mean the Central Valley is being left behind, but only that construction will commence slightly later, and that the Valley is still the key to the whole system:

High Speed Rail Authority spokesperson Kris Deutschman said it is true that both the northern and southern segments of the rail system are further along in the planning stage than the Central Valley, but what actually gets built first is yet to be determined. At one time, it was believed the Valley segment would be one of the first constructed.

However, earlier this month, the Authority approved a list of shovel-ready construction projects likely to qualify for $8 billion in federal stimulus funding for high speed trains.

According to the Authority, one of the project elements selected was the entire Los Angeles-to-Anaheim and San Francisco-to-San Jose corridors, where the Authority is expected to have completed the project level environmental documents this year and qualified and selected design build teams to begin construction of the sections by the 2012 deadline.

The Authority also selected a second stimulus project that would be the identification, selection and negotiation of right-of-way acquisition in the Merced-to-Bakersfield section, including the system's planned maintenance facility, but not the rail system.

That Merced-to-Bakersfield ROW is key because that's where the all-important train testing will occur:

Georgiana Vivian, with the Authority, told members of the Tulare Sunrise Rotary Club that because of the federal stimulus funding, the projects first considered “shovel ready” must be built first. Right now, the San Francisco-to-San Jose segment is by far the farthest along, with the Los Angeles-to-Anaheim segment second.

Vivian said construction on the Central Valley segment may not begin for another seven years, but Deutschman said that does not mean that portions of the Valley line could not be built sooner and there is a key reason at least a portion of the Valley line is important.

“We need to test trains on long stretches of flat land and the Valley would be best for that,” she said. Vivian said the timetable is to begin testing trains by 2015 and that the Authority must test the trains and tracks for three years before passengers can be carried. That means the earliest riders will be able to get aboard the high speed rail is 2018.

I think what Vivian meant to say was that construction on the full buildout of the Valley segment might not happen until 2015 or 2016, but that a test track will be built much sooner. As I understand it, that's about the same as what occurred with BART, where an East Bay test track was built in the late '60s even though the first segments of the system did not open until 1972, with the full buildout (as of the 1970s) not occurring until 1974.

The article also examines the status of a Visalia-Hanford station (the CHSRA is studying it but isn't committing to anything yet) and notes that Castle Airport near Merced is likely to be the location of the primary maintenance hub, with two smaller maintenance facilities "at either end" of the line (i.e. somewhere in the Bay Area and somewhere in SoCal). As to what we can expect from the stimulus:

Deutschman said the Authority should hear by the end of June if it is going to get any stimulus money, but it is confident some will come. When asked how many dollars the high speed rail might get, she replied, “All I'm hearing are billions.”

That sounds about right, given what we've heard from Ray LaHood. Just how many "billions" it'll be is an open question. I'd like to see something in the vicinity of $3 to $4 billion.

Where Should a Hanford-Visalia Station Go?

I'm spending the weekend in beautiful downtown Fresno, and as a result I've been thinking more about the San Joaquin Valley section of the HSR route. Now that the California High Speed Rail Authority has agreed to study the possibility of adding a station in the Hanford-Visalia area (and it should be emphasized that as far as I know, it's merely a possibility; no firm decision has been made whether to actually include such a station), the region must now debate where the station ought to go, as this Fresno Bee article examines. First, some background:

"In 30 years, there's going to be a million people in Tulare and Kings counties, southern Fresno County and northern Kern," said Visalia Mayor Jesus Gamboa. "I don't want the train to zoom by and we just look at it."...

This week, the Visalia City Council got a word of encouragement from Bob Schaevitz, project manager for the Fresno-Palmdale stretch of the 800-mile rail line.

"This station makes a lot of sense," Schaevitz said. "I've heard nothing negative about the station."

But the community should make its voice heard before the environmental impact report is written, he said.

There's precedent in speaking up. Two years ago, a coalition of city managers and elected officials from Visalia, Tulare, Corcoran, Kingsburg, Selma and Fowler went to the authority and asked for a station.

The group succeeded in getting the authority to change its route maps to include one potential station between Hanford and Visalia, and four more sites around Tulare and Goshen.

Now the goal is to get one of the sites changed from "potential" to "designated," Gamboa said.

The "million people" figure posited by Mayor Gamboa is open to question, which would be roughly double the current population of the area. Still, 500,000 people is nothing to sneeze at, and if there's a way to build the station without encouraging low-density sprawl, it ought to be examined.

Visalia would be a good place for a stop - it has a downtown with some actual density to it and is a larger urban center than Hanford. Unfortunately, Visalia is on the Union Pacific line, and since UP has made it clear they want no part of HSR that would seem to rule out a station east of Highway 99.

That leaves Hanford, 20 miles to the west of Visalia, as an option. Although it is not a binding indication, the CHSRA's own Merced to Bakersfield Notice of Preparation surmises that the most likely location of a Hanford HSR station would be just east of Hanford along Highway 198, somewhere near the 198/43 interchange:



The CHSRA map seems to preclude an alignment through Hanford, as the BNSF line and therefore the Amtrak California San Joaquin currently uses. That would indicate that a station would be placed on the edge of town, which could provide for some transit oriented development opportunities, but of an inferior quality to those that could be built in an existing urban center.

Update:See also this PDF map of the existing SJV rail network and Rafael's detailed look at how this might be upgraded.

I'm going to guess that unless the Hanford-Visalia region comes up with the money to build a station, it's not going to happen. And I'm OK with that. Amtrak California would still serve the San Joaquin route and could be timed to coincide with HSR trains at Fresno or Bakersfield, enabling residents of the Hanford-Visalia area to use a connecting service to get to the HSR system. It's not quite as robust a solution as an HSR station, but then, the Hanford-Visalia region has yet to make a strong case as to why they really need to have an HSR station.

That's my view. What's yours? The California High Speed Rail Authority is hosting public meetings on the Merced-Bakersfield route this month, at the following dates and locations:

• March 18: Merced Community Center, 755 W. 15th St., Merced
• March 19: Madera County Fairgrounds, 1850 W. Cleveland Ave, Madera
• March 24: Visalia Convention Center, 303 E. Acequia Ave, Visalia
• March 25: Fresno Convention Center, 848 M Street, Fresno
• March 26: Rabobank Theater, 1001 Truxtun Ave, Bakersfield

Show up and let your voice be heard.

Central Valley HSR to Open In 2015, With a Station in Visalia

UPDATE: The California High Speed Rail Authority has issued a correction to the reports on the "first" section of the HSR spine to open:

Some news reports Tuesday suggested the state's first completed high-speed train segment would connect Bakersfield and Merced. No decision has been made on which section of the backbone link between Anaheim/Los Angeles and San Francisco will be the first to become operational. Current plans anticipate that a test track may be built on a flat stretch in the Central Valley somewhere between Bakersfield and Merced.

Original post begins here:

Shifting to more productive news, the plans to build the first a segment of the California HSR project in the Central Valley are well under way, with the Merced to Bakersfield line projected to break ground in 2011 and open around 2015. It will be this track, of course, that will be used for testing trainsets as the CHSRA determines which train models to use on the entire statewide system.

And as the Visalia Times-Delta reports it is likely that a station will be built after all in the Visalia-Hanford area:

An earlier environmental study did not consider Visalia for a station. But input and intensive lobbying by Visalia officials led the rail authority to consider five possible stations in the Visalia-Hanford-Tulare area.

The most likely site for a station is on Highway 198 near Hanford, about 12 miles west of downtown Visalia. That location looks promising because Burlington Northern railroad company, owner of the railroad right of way, has expressed interest in partnering with the high-speed rail authority.

Four other proposed locations — all along Highway 99 — are near existing Union Pacific railroad lines.

"Union Pacific has stated it is not interested in high-speed rail," Schaevitz said.

High speed rail is an essential part of economic recovery in the San Joaquin Valley, which has some of the nation's highest unemployment rates, and has virtually no intercity travel options aside from overburdened freeways and the San Joaquins Amtrak California route, a great line but one that doesn't have high speed and that doesn't connect to Los Angeles.

This is further confirmation also that the CHSRA plans to follow the BNSF route through the Valley and not the UP route, although within Fresno there are still plans afoot to try and unite all the rail corridors in one place through the city, hopefully leveraging HSR funds to help accomplish that goal.

It's nice to see that we finally have some solid timelines on when to expect construction and first testing of trains. 2015 is only 6 years away - time will fly when we're turning dirt.

Again, I'm going to direct people who want to discuss the Peninsula to the previous thread - posts on that topic will be deleted from this particular thread.