Sustainable Menlo Park Speaker Series

By Bianca

On November 18, the non-profit group Sustainable Menlo Park hosted a presentation on the latest developments on high speed rail. Sustainable Menlo Park is officially "neutral" on the subject of High Speed Rail, but decided to host the event due to local interest in the subject. On the podium were Bruce Fukuji of Caltrain, John Litzinger of HNTB, and Greg Gleichman of AECOM. Turnout at the event was low; there was not a lot of publicity beforehand, and there were perhaps 30 people in attendance. Much of the information had been presented in prior events, but here are a few notes:

Bruce Fukuji made a presentation on Context Sensitive Solutions for the Peninsula. He began, however, by reminding everyone in the room of the big picture: the looming challenge of sustainability. California has led the nation on climate change targets, but meeting future emissions targets is going to be a challenge. He noted that 42% of carbon emissions in California are transportation-related. Even with improvements in fuel efficiency, an expanding population will result in an increase in vehicle miles traveled. Population growth will more than cancel out improvements in combustion-engine technology. It will be impossible to reach our emissions targets simply by relying on hybrids and increases in fuel efficiency. He used the following graph to illustrate the relationship between urban density and gasoline consumption:





Fukuji then went on to discuss the development of Context Sensitive Solutions as a reaction to the DAD model of planning (Design, Announce, Defend). He also explained the concept of "value engineering" and how there is a need to give the functional needs and the context needs equal weight.

The next speaker was John Litzinger from HNTB. He gave a detailed overview of the EIR process, and noted that the goal is to have a fully approved and final EIR at the end of 2011.
During the Q&A session, Litzinger commented that the engineering studies around crossing San Francisquito Creek may likely determine that a bored tunnel is the preferred alignment for engineering reasons; crossing the creek and the approach to El Palo Alto at grade or in a shallow trench is problematic. This may explain why CHSRA representatives at recent meetings have seemed open to tunneling through much of Menlo Park and Palo Alto; if CHSRA engineers conclude that the best way to cross San Francisquito is in a deep tunnel, it may be that Menlo Park and Palo Alto may get some of their tunnel without having to fight for it. I should clarify that this was not in any way an official announcement, just the musings of an engineer. The vast majority of questions from the audience related to tunnels. In some cases, audience members didn't really have questions, they just wanted to state their preference for a tunnel. None of them had any suggestions for how to pay for it.

The last question of the night had to do with subsidies. The questioner stated his premise that all High Speed Rail systems around the world are dependent on subsidies. Litzinger responded by distinguishing the costs of the building the initial infrastructure from the costs of maintenance and expansion. High Speed Rail, like every other form of transportation infrastructure, depends upon government subsidy for construction. After an adoption period to build ridership, all High Speed Rail systems cover their maintenance and expansion costs. Litzinger then noted that High Speed Rail is the opposite of freeways; both need subsidies for construction, but afterwards, High Speed Rail covers its own maintenance and expansion costs, whereas freeways don't charge anything to users and rely entirely on taxpayers forever.

Avoiding Palo Alto Altogether

While I greatly appreciate Andrew Bogan's excellent summary and comments regarding the most recent Palo Alto city council meeting, I think it's time to let the vocal minority in that town know that the state isn't going to play along with its famously drawn-out "process", in which everything gets studied until all the planners die of old age. California needs construction jobs and a new transportation artery. What it does not need is delay, so this needs to get resolved sooner rather than later.

There are alternatives. There are always alternatives, especially if you're willing to zoom out of your own back yard. I had hoped to keep the couple I've come up with under wraps to avoid distracting from plan A, but these fantasies about boring tunnels for four tracks through suburbia to preserve some supposed rustic charm are getting out of hand. In particular, Palo Alto city officials need to be disabused of the notion that they wield some kind of veto power over this state project, which is in the vanguard of a new national transportation policy.

Plan B: The Alviso Gambit

The whole tedious discussion regarding HSR through Palo Alto would of be moot if trains could stop in Redwood City, then head out to Dumbarton and use a causeway to reach Alviso (see blue line on the map below). It would be possible to thread that past two small portions of the DENWR. Perhaps US Fish & Wildlife would accept this idea if the sections nearest the boundary were enclosed to mitigate noise and other impacts on the birds. Whether environmentalists in the state and in the Bay Area would go along with that is open to question, there's the issue of methyl mercury levels in the bay mud to consider.

The next problem is that the UPRR ROW is too narrow to accommodate two HSR tracks down to SantaClara/SJC. Besides, that railroad wouldn't sell any of it even if it were. Still, it might make sense to at least consider tearing up Lafayette Street one lane at a time to obtain two individual subway tunnels for HSR tracks. This street runs right through the Golden Triangle, but mostly next to Guadaloupe creek. Trenching should not pose as serious a flood risk as it would in the mid-peninsula, but the high water table could be an issue. Vibration and other impacts during and after construction might still present major obstacles, especially if nearby chip factories are affected.

CHSRA would have to grade separate against UPRR in Alviso, probably by flying over both its tracks and CA-237. Down in Santa Clara, the alignment would have to switch to under De La Cruz Blvd, the employee/long-term parking lots at SJC, Aviation and Coleman. That's about 7 miles, though, so there would need to be an open trench section for emergency access between the Lafayette and De La Cruz sections.

Construction cost and impacts would be high, but implementing dozens of grade separations in the mid-peninsula was never going to be a picnic, either. CHSRA is currently planning a tunnel from San Tomas Expressway to SJ Diridon to avoid CEMOF and accommodate BART's desire to run at grade under I-880. The causeway alternative would get trains as far as the HP Pavilion, emerging east of the UPRR tracks just north of Diridon Station. If HSR can manage to stay on that side through south San Jose, there would be plenty of room for HSR to get out of UPRR's hair on the way down to Gilroy.

Plan C: Out Of The Fire, Into The Frying Pan

However, if UPRR or local NIMBYs block CHSRA's path through San Jose, there would be no point in pursuing Pacheco Pass any further. A much shorter causeway-cum-tunnel (cp. Øresund bridge, but on a much smaller scale) between Dumbarton and Newark would preserve the shipping lanes and avoid permanent impacts on the DENWR. Construction impacts would be significant, though, especially in light of the creosote-soaked timbers of the old rail bridge, which would almost certainly have to be removed. A tunnel-only concept from Dumbarton to Newark would also be possible, that decision should be made on the basis of cost alone.

Cargill Salt would have to be persuaded/forced to permit the construction of a low aerial structure above its still-active ponds, rising only to pass over the UPRR line. This viaduct would skirt the DENWR boundary, possibly with another enclosure section. Tracks would dive under I-880 to connect to another tunnel under CA-262, a short but busy city street in south Fremont that connects to I-680 on the other end. Residents there are no more likely to welcome construction with open arms than those in Palo Alto. However, in this case the tracks would stay in a tunnel to cross over to Calaveras Road. The active Calaveras fault would have to be crossed deep underground, which ought to give pause.

In Haynes Gulch, the tracks would run essentially at grade up to the I-680/CA-84 interchange and across via yet another tunnel to an intermodal station with the BART extension to Livermore at El Charro Road, bypassing Pleasanton to shave some time off the trip. There are some ponds at that location, not sure what they are used for - could be a problem. Burrowing under Livermore municipal airport, which is only used for general aviation, the alignment would then essentially follow the I-580 median to the Central Valley. The HSR tracks could cross UPRR/ACE, the ponds and the BART extension on an aerial, but only if the airport is turned into a parking lot.

An intermodal with BART in Fremont Warm Springs would be challenging to construct and require BART to move its station some 4000ft (~1km) south. A spur down to San Jose via the I-880 median would be possible, but that would make building ridership harder as any given train would only have a fraction of the catchment area to draw passengers from. There would be fierce opposition from San Jose, the entire Gilroy catchment area and CHSRA to any plan that would fork the starter line in the East Bay.

Any future spur up to Oakland would be substantially harder, since Caltrans will almost certainly want to retain the median north of CA-92 (San Mateo Bridge). That means cutting across to the unused ROW just west of the BART tracks at Industrial Pkwy in Union City. Light commuter rail traffic could probably squeak by there with the existing single-track ROW, but HSR would require some eminent domain against businesses. Fortunately for them, a spur up to Oakland isn't likely to happen this side of 2030.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that of SF-LA express line haul time, which AB3034 limits to 2h42m. While Altamont-via-Dumbarton is shorter than Altamont-via-SantaClara/SJC, it would nevertheless add a few minutes that have to be clawed back somewhere else. Worst case, the whole Tehachapis vs. Grapevine question would have to re-opened just to achieve the time target. That in turn would make it harder to connect Las Vegas to the network. On the plus side, service between SF and Sacramento would be time-competitive with driving, even more so for SJ-Sacramento. If CHSRA is forced to partner with BNSF in Merced and Stanislaus counties and there is an HSR station at Castle Airport (instead of Merced town) on the starter line, its catchment area would extend well beyond the Central Valley into the Bay Area, serving as a relief/complementary airport for OAK and SJC.


View Larger Map

NOTE: black lines indicate the relevant DENWR boundaries.

Consequences

Either approach would pretty much nix Dumbarton commuter rail because FRA has strict rules regarding FRA-compliant and non-compliant equipment to share track, but that's probably a survivable loss. Much more painful would be having to do a significant portion of the Bay Area to Central Valley Program EIR/EIS yet again just because Palo Alto couldn't be bothered to throw a spanner in the works at the appropriate time - basically, any time before the November election. Each year added to the schedule for planning reasons adds around 6% to estimated project cost, i.e. around $2.5 billion because of knock-on effects on phase II. That's on top of actual escalations due to more involved construction techniques. And make no mistake, dear Palo Alto NIMBYs: whatever the personal miscommunications of Messrs. Kopp and Diridon may have been, it will be you the rest of the state will blame for the resulting cost escalation if plan A falters on your account at this late juncture.

Consider for example Lodi, a small town out in the Central Valley that managed to secure a bypass for itself without a whole lot of fuss because it spoke up clearly and early. LA county persuaded CHSRA to run the route past Palmdale instead of across the Grapevine because it acted early. You had 12 years to get involved but instead - to be blunt - your elected officials chose to sit on their collective duff until just a few weeks ago. There's a time to raise a red flag and a time to accept the consequences of failing to do so. Now, it's perfectly reasonable to ask for a couple of alternatives to be priced out if the initial concept is flawed. However, it's not acceptable to expect the rest of the state and nation to pay through the nose to increase your property values while the tent cities in places like Fresno are growing larger by the day. If you want something over-and-above the norm, you're going to have to figure out a way to avoid breaking CHSRA's time and dollar budget in the process.

Note that if plan A falls through, all of the mid-peninsula cities between Redwood City and San Jose would have to fund any new grade separations of the Caltrain ROW themselves if and when commuter rail traffic reaches the high levels Caltrain is forecasting in its 2025 plan. They'd also need to pay for electrification and other improvements south of Redwood City themselves. As for the Transbay Terminal, there may not be any money left over for any HSR contributions to the DTX tunnel and the train box in phase I if CHSRA needs to switch to plan B, let alone plan C.

Conclusion

Let's hope cooler heads prevail and Palo Alto doesn't become the state's new poster child for NIMBYism, after a clear majority of its residents endorsed prop 1A. As soon as CHSRA gets its funding, HNTB needs to get cracking on affordable and acceptable solutions for sticking with the Caltrain ROW all the way to San Jose. Meanwhile, CHSRA needs to secure a ROW down to Gilroy, which means talking turkey with UPRR. Alternatives do exist, but each would create as many problems as it solves.