CHSRA Staff Recommendation for Phase 2 Stimulus Funding

California High Speed Rail Authority staff have released their recommendations for funding applications for the Phase 2 of the federal stimulus this fall. They focus on "design/build" in four corridors:

1. San Francisco to San José ($1.28 billion)

2. Merced to Fresno ($466 million)

3. Fresno to Bakersfield ($819 million)

4. Los Angeles to Anaheim ($2 billion)

The application also includes funding for preliminary work in all the corridors of the planned HSR route, including the Sacramento and San Diego extensions.

The four "design/build" corridors would enable actual construction of trackage to commence, though to varying levels of completion. Only the Caltrain corridor would include full electrification, and there it would also include Positive Train Control (PTC), along with the San Bruno curve and other "high-priority" grade separations. Merced to Fresno and Fresno to Bakersfield would see tracks built, but no electrification or PTC. (Merced to Fresno is to be along the UPRR/CA-99 corridor, which is obviously going to be an issue; Fresno to Bakersfield is via BNSF corridor.) LA to Anaheim would be everything except electrification (including PTC).

Given the limited possibilities of the way the stimulus is written, this is a pretty sensible approach. Getting PTC and electrification on the Caltrain corridor is an extremely high priority both for Caltrain's survival and for getting HSR seeded on the Peninsula. The trackwork in the Valley will help enable the test track, and getting LA to Anaheim mostly built means it won't take much to get genuine HSR up and running in an extremely high-profile corridor.

Notice that the Merced-Bakersfield piece has been defined as two segments. CHSRA staff are recommending that both segments be pursued in the stimulus funding application. But the possibility that only one of the two could get funded is generating some unease in the San Joaquin Valley:

On Tuesday the Tulare County Board of Supervisors will vote to intervene in contention centered on a potential high speed rail line in the San Joaquin Valley.

The supervisors will take a stand on whether or not a segment of rail should stretch from Bakersfield to Merced, or only to the halfway point in Fresno.

Federal money to design and build the rail is now available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, however some have suggested that only one of the segments should be submitted to the Federal Rail Administration for funding.

The California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley has suggested that valley officials advocate for the entire system, as voters approved a statewide high speed rail system with the passage of Proposition 1A in 2008.

A decision on how the far the rail should extend, and to what counties, is expected to be made Sept. 23 at a special meeting held by the San Joaquin Valley Policy Council.

As you can see by the staff recommendation, CHSRA is committing itself to funding BOTH segments of the Valley corridor. But that may not be enough for key players in the Valley, who want to ensure that HSR isn't built in pieces.

Overall I think this is a sound approach to the federal stimulus, given the limitations of the ARRA law. The only concern I have is that there's nothing for the construction of the mountainous segments through the Pacheco and Tehachapi Passes, but there's probably no way those plans can be "shovel ready" by September 2012, as ARRA requires.

Have at it in the comments.

CHSRA Project Workshop Presentation Now Available Online

At last week's California High Speed Rail Authority board meeting a project workshop was held to lay out the CHSRA's current approach to project planning, and to lay out what some of the next key steps are. The powerpoint presentation used at the workshop is now available online (PPT file, 91 slides, 6.1MB). The primary purpose is to demonstrate the status of the project planning at the section level, and there is a TON of information on that that I've only now begun to look over.

There is a lot of other interesting stuff, including a mockup of what a morning southbound timetable might look like (slide 14; don't get too attached to it as it's clearly to demonstrate the concept, but may be interesting fodder for discussion in the comments of what an ideal schedule might be); a discussion of the various options for public-private partnerships (slides 69-71); and an in-depth discussion of the construction needs on the LAUS-ARTIC segment as an example of the overall design and planning work that will have to be done on other system segments (slides 76-89), including discussion of the need to move 18 high-tension powerlines, build 49 grade separations, including constructing a 5.1 mile long viaduct over the BNSF Hobart Yard and a big rebuild of the Slauson Ave/I-605 interchange, and discussion of contract requirements.

Should be plenty of conversation starters here. Have fun!

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Note from Rafael: documents from the August 2009 CHSRA board meeting are now available here, including clean PDF versions of the slides from the phasing workshop. These download a little faster and are not subject to the vagaries of whatever application you use to read PPT files, what fonts you have installed etc. Enjoy!

Vegas Maglev Supporters Strike Back

On the heels of months of favorable publicity for the DesertXpress steel-wheel HSR project, crystallized by Senator Harry Reid's shift of support away from maglev and toward DesertXpress, the backers of the SoCal-Vegas maglev project have countered with a op-ed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal by Richann Bender, executive director of the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, criticizing DesertXpress's claims and arguing that maglev hasn't been given a fair shake:

Construction on the first segment of the maglev train -- the fastest train in the world -- can begin in 2010 and would be built entirely in Nevada by hard-working Nevadans.

The backers of the high-speed, conventional-rail DesertXpress would like to "reprogram" this guaranteed $45 million away from Nevada, and instead expect us all to just wait five years for their privately owned train to nowhere to get taxpayer-backed loans. This is not in the best near-term or long-term interests of Nevada jobs or Nevada's economy.

Bender isn't starting off on a good note. The op-ed suggests that the maglev project is really about connecting Las Vegas to a proposed airport site at Primm (along the CA/NV border), undermining the claimed benefits of a train to bring people from Southern California to Las Vegas.

Worse in my mind is Bender's embrace of the deeply misleading anti-rail frame of a "train to nowhere." In fact, it was the Vegas maglev project that led Congressional Republicans to adopt that term during the February debate over the stimulus. While I can understand Bender's desire to undermine the rival DesertXpress project, employing this kind of framing is a monumentally stupid move, for it will merely fuel its usage - which will come back and bite the maglev project, especially when they go to Congress looking for more funding. I don't like to use the disparaging "gadgetbahn" term that is sometimes used to attack maglev, partly because I don't like using phrases and frames that are designed to serve an anti-rail agenda.

Bender lists some other claimed advantages of maglev - it's faster; it's a success in Shanghai; and:

Maglev is also greener than traditional forms of ground and air transportation, and unlike DesertXpress, it complies with all state and local land use and environmental regulations.

I would be curious to see substantiation of this claim. Obviously it's difficult to provide in-depth evidence in a short newspaper op-ed, but that kind of charge does need supporting evidence.

The heart of the op-ed are three points designed to raise fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the DesertXpress project: lack of connectivity to SoCal urban centers, costs, and public funding. First up is the issue of the route:

The maglev project also addresses the primary reason for constructing a high-speed rail system: congestion on Interstate 15 throughout the region, connecting Las Vegas to the heart of the population and business centers in the Southern California Basin.

DesertXpress' proposed ending of Victorville, Calif., falls well outside of congested highway areas.

This isn't a fair criticism for two reasons. Number one is that ending at Victorville actually does include many of the primary congested highway areas on the trip to Vegas - where Interstate 15 narrows north of Victorville is where most of the traffic delays on the trip to Vegas commence. So a terminus of Victorville would do much to avoid most of the worst congestion, even if the rest of the journey into the SoCal metroplex won't yet be covered by DesertXpress.

But that journey could well be completed if DesertXpress built an extension westward across mostly empty desert to link up with the California HSR project at Palmdale. This has been discussed by the two projects, and while it would be fair to criticize this as being no guarantee at all of a future connection, neither is it right to exclude that possibility.

Next up is cost:

Second, maglev costs about the same as traditional high-speed, steel-wheel-on-rail trains. DesertXpress supporters have repeatedly cited a nonexistent $40 billion price tag as a reason for not building the maglev project. A March 2009 Government Accountability Office report lists the true estimated cost of the Las Vegas to Anaheim maglev project as $12.1 billion.

In fact, the Federal Railroad Administration also estimates the cost of traditional high-speed, steel-wheel-on-rail trains at $30 million to $50 million per mile, which would mean DesertXpress could cost up to $9 billion for the Las Vegas-to-Victorville route (far more than the $4 billion reported on the organization's Web site). If you put the two projects side by side, this puts maglev in the same cost per mile range.

There's been a lot of debate about the FRA's cost estimates. Certainly any project built in the desert between Victorville and Vegas would be on the low end of those estimates (once you go from Victorville into the SoCal megalopolis those costs will rise significantly). But maglev's history on costs is just not favorable. Consider the fate of Munich's maglev:

Plans to build a magnetic levitation train from the center of Munich to the airport were trashed on Thursday after construction costs almost doubled from €1.85 billion ($2.90 billion US) to €3.4 billion ($5.33 billion US). This is a major disappointment to Siemens, the company who exported the maglev to Shanghai, China, but cannot build a commercial maglev system within its home country.

And the Shanghai maglev has had ridership problems - running trains that are 80% empty, unable to recoup any part of the enormous construction costs.

Part of the problem in Shanghai was that the maglev system route isn't ideal - it doesn't connect the highly traveled corridors. This would seem to be a problem with the proposed Vegas maglev route. As noted above, the initial segment would run from Primm to Vegas - not exactly a high-traffic route. If/when a new airport is built there to relieve McCarran, then perhaps there will be high ridership on this maglev route. But without firm plans to build the entire line from Vegas to Anaheim, it is still much too likely that the costs on this first segment will balloon and kill the rest of the route, leaving Nevada with something of a white elephant.

Finally there is the issue of public funding:

Third, and perhaps most important, from the beginning maglev has made clear that it intends to use a combination of both private capital and government funding. To date, no high-speed rail project in the United States has been constructed solely with private capital.

This didn't stop DesertXpress from actively selling the idea of a privately funded train. In fact, advocates of DesertXpress have for years cited the "private" element as one of the primary reasons their project deserves support.

As recently reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, however, their focus has now shifted to seeking taxpayer funded federal loans to cover the majority of financing for the project.

I never thought it was good or beneficial that DesertXpress made a virtue of being privately funded, given the extreme unlikelihood that they would be able to keep that promise. That being said, the reason Bender mentioned this is to sow doubt about DesertXpress's claims and plans. There's nothing wrong with seeking federal funding for HSR or maglev, but the mere fact that DesertXpress has shifted its plans doesn't imply any inherent problem with their project.

It's a typical line of attack for critics of passenger rail - anytime the details change, they use that change as supposed evidence that the project is not viable, is being mismanaged, should not be trusted, etc. As with the "train to nowhere" frame, Bender is playing with fire here, especially since the op-ed hasn't offered any actual reasons or explanation as to why DesertXpress made the shift.

It's a shift that makes sense. It's become much more difficult to raise billions in private capital for anything, as banks hoard their funds and as the recession continues to deepen. That's not the same as being impossible to raise those funds, and private investors are much more willing to get involved with something that has federal financial involvement, as will the California HSR project. A good project with sound management will change parts of their plan when conditions warrant, instead of plowing ahead with an obsolete model. DesertXpress's shift is in itself not a bad thing, and shouldn't be taken as such.

I can understand why the Vegas maglev project feels the need to strike back at the DesertXpress project, which has all the momentum these days. Maglev backers have a much tougher case to make, particularly on the cost angle, and they are in very real danger of seeing their project fall apart. I'm all for a close comparison of the two plans to link California to Nevada, and all for criticism when the evidence supports it.

But Richann Bender and the Vegas maglev project haven't made that case here. Instead they have used anti-rail arguments to undermine a rival without offering solid evidence to back up their claims. It's an unfortunate and desperate move that isn't necessary and isn't welcome.

ARTIC Designs Unveiled

The design proposal for the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center (ARTIC), which will be the southern terminus of the HSR route (at least until the San Diego line is built), was released recently. The image above is of the station, which will be wedged in between the Santa Ana River and the 57 freeway just across from Angels Stadium and the Honda Center (formerly The Pond). HOK Los Angeles and Parsons Brinkerhoff are the designers and builders for the ARTIC project. According to the release, the building will be of a sustainable design and will aim to receive a LEED Platinum certification, currently the highest rating for sustainable building.

The release also notes that the ARTIC design is modeled in part on the blimp hangars at the old MCAS Tustin. Which I have to say I find a bit unusual and not exactly inspiring. I never really understood the attraction some people had to the blimp hangars (the hangars at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale are exact copies of the Tustin hangars, for you Bay Area folks). Having grown up in Tustin, and having had several opportunities to take extensive tours of the hangars, I always thought they looked like rather ugly blights on the landscape that should have been torn down once the Marine Corps and US Navy stopped using blimps in the 1950s. (Apparently the hangars made good storage space for helicopters, which is why they were preserved.)

One of my favorite train stations is located just down the road in Santa Ana. I'm a sucker for the Mission Revival style, and that would seem to be more fitting for an Orange County HSR station. The Old Orange County Courthouse, which isn't Mission Revival but is still a great bit of 19th century architecture, would also make a good basis for ARTIC. At minimum there should be some orange trees around the station, to mark Anaheim's history and especially given how few orange trees are actually left in the county.

These criticisms should not be taken as a criticism of the ARTIC project itself. It's a long overdue and welcome project to improve the woefully inadequate existing Anaheim station (located in the parking lot of Angels Stadium), providing a centrally located place for trains, buses and pedestrians to meet.

OCTA is hosting a scoping meeting for ARTIC next Thursday, July 30, from 5 to 7 pm at OCTA HQ on 600 S. Main Street in Orange. You can submit comments online if you can't attend the meeting in-person.

Orange County Takes Over The CHSRA Board

That's one way to look at the news that the California High Speed Rail Authority board has a new chair and vice-chair, and they're both from Anaheim. According to the press release:

Earlier in the meeting, the Board elected Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle to be its chairman, replacing Judge Quentin L. Kopp who had served two terms as chairman. Former California Assemblymember Tom Umberg was elected vice-chairman.

Pringle is a moderate Republican; Umberg is a Democrat who narrowly lost a primary for a State Senate seat to Lou Correa in 2006. Both are well-known in Sacramento and may have better relations with the Legislature than Quentin Kopp. Pringle is a strong supporter of HSR:

“High-speed trains are needed in California,” said Pringle. “The state must find a viable surface transportation alternative to ease auto and air traffic congestion between major urban centers and high population growth areas like the Central Valley.

Pringle clearly understands the need for the HSR project and for it to be kept whole, unlike Sen. Alan Lowenthal who wants to chop it into a glorified commuter rail for the Bay Area and Southern California.

I wouldn't read too much into the change of leadership on the CHSRA board. Quentin Kopp has been the chairman for several years now, taking time away from his spot on the San Mateo County Superior Court bench. Kopp's term as chair was a clear success, as California voters approved Prop 1A and the federal government approved billions in HSR stimulus money - and California will likely be largest recipient of that money.

Now it's Curt Pringle's turn to lead the HSR project through this crucial moment. On the plus side the project has the support of the people of California, of the Congress and of President Barack Obama. It has as much as $13 billion ready (assuming we get $4 billion of the HSR stimulus, and that is likely to be the high end of the likely funds) and is well along the way of finalizing the project plans in some of the key corridors.

The HSR plan also has some challenges, from the Peninsula NIMBYs to people like Sen. Lowenthal who want to gut the project. Pringle can help sway more Republicans to support a project that will create a lot of jobs and opportunities for business up and down the corridor. And hopefully he can help navigate the project through the state legislature.

So this blog welcomes Curt Pringle and Tom Umberg to their new positions as leaders of the CHSRA board and of the HSR project. Besides, as an Orange County native myself, it's good to see leadership from OC stepping up for high speed rail.

HSR Phase One Yards

8 May 2009: In response to a complaint regarding slow downloads of the home page, I've modified this post such that previously embedded videos and maps are now hyperlinks. My apologies for any inconvenience this causes.

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by Rafael

While there has been a lot of debate about the route CHSRA prefers and the throughput issues of San Francisco's new Transbay Terminal Center, the issue of maintenance and overnight storage of high speed trains has not received as much attention. However, given the distance between the end points of the starter line for the California network, the success of the service absolutely depends on having enough trains on hand to support operations in the first hours of each day, until the first trains from the other end arrive and are turned around.

Castle Airport: Primary Maintenance Hub

The starter line will be between San Francisco, Los Angeles and Anaheim. AB3034 doesn't explicitly mention San Jose, but the primary reason Pacheco Pass was selected was to ensure that all trains would pass through South City's Diridon station. In addition, phase I will include the wye at Chowchilla and spur up to Merced.

There's been talk of siting the primary maintenance hub at the nearby but underutilized Castle Airport (formerly Castle AFB), which is adjacent to the BNSF right of way. CHSRA wants to prioritize the construction of a test track in the Central Valley, both to help FRA draw up a "rule of special applicability" to enable operations of non-compliant equipment at 220mph and, to help narrow down the list of track and train technology vendors.

So far, CHSRA is holding out for UPRR to cede part of its ROW along CA-99 through Fresno and up to Sacramento to obtain a straight alignment and access to downtown areas, but it's an open secret that rival BNSF has been much more receptive to overtures from the Authority. If CHSRA ends up sticking with BNSF from Bakersfield all the way to Modesto, it would be possible to site the Merced county HSR station at Castle Airport and implement a bypass around the town.

HSR Phase One Yards: Castle Airport

Unfortunately, Merced county lacks a major population center. Without any commercial flights (high speed cargo and/or passenger), an HSR station at the airport would struggle to attract enough ridership to justify running more than a a small number of trains per day to SF or LA/Anaheim in phase 1. That means early construction of a spur up to Castle Airport would primarily be for testing and maintenance. A secondary objective would be a show of good faith that the planned extension to downtown Sacramento really will be built in phase 2.

Here are a couple of videos showing SNCF's and JR's maintenance yards in Villeneuve (near Paris) and Tokyo, respectively. The equipment required depends on the train technology selected. Note that JR has special "Dr. Yellow" trains that measure track geometry, the condition of the overhead catenary system and verify signaling performance while running at 270km/h (approx. 170mph).

• SNCF's Villeneuve maintenance yard
  
  
• JR's Tokyo maintenance yard
  
  
• JR's Dr. Yellow series 923 shinkansen

Overnight Parking: Northern California

In addition, it's common for railroads to operate yards for overnight storage and at least minor maintenance (incl. thorough cleaning and provisioning) near both ends of major lines because that where trains naturally end up at the end of the day. In the specific case of the starter line for California's system, that means San Francisco and Anaheim, but throughput constraints on the Fullerton-Anaheim section mean that many trains will have to terminate in Los Angeles instead.

Considering that non-stop express runs between SF and LA are expected to take 2h38m, it seems reasonable to say that the first three hours of operation on weekdays have to be supported by trainsets that were parked overnight. Businessmen and tourists looking to make day trips between these cities will likely generate above-average demand for express service in the early morning (departure 6-9am) and afternoon (departure 3-6pm), with additional demand for red-eye service in the evening (departure 8-9pm). CHSRA's target is to build an infrastructure with sufficient capacity to last for 50, perhaps 100 years. Inevitably, that means planning for ridership levels well beyond anything that can be achieved in the first decade of operations.

In particular, CHSRA insisted that it needs capacity to run 12 trains per hour (tph) each way through the new Transbay Terminal (TBT) in San Francisco. The issue was discussed extensively on this blog, leading to these general conclusions:

• SF wants to stick with the current, imperfect design to secure a slice of the HSR funds in the ARRA (aka H.R. 1-111th aka the stimulus bill).
  
  
• HSR trains can be actually turned around in less than 10 minutes, provided the TBT is considered a terminal station on a route that nominally begins and ends in Southern California, rather than an old-fashioned "Grand Central of the West" terminus station. Unlike steam and diesel locomotives, EMU trains do not need to be reprovisioned with fuel and water, nor do they need to be brought up to operating temperature before departure.
  
  
• the station throat and tunnel can be improved with relatively minor modifications, there is no need for a radically different solution. Given that Caltrain will also heavily use the TBT, headways inside the tunnel for both services combined could be as short as 3 minutes during peak periods such as morning rush hour. That implies a combined total of 20tph, though such a schedule would leave little room for recovering from a delay caused by an off-design condition.
  
  
• given the long walk to the nearest BART station, there is considerable doubt that the TBT could attract enough HSR ridership to justify operating 12tph. For long-term capacity planning purposes, a target of 8-10 HSR trains per hour (each way) was suggested, especially in light of the fact that HSR trains are up to 1320 feet (400m) long and that bi-level rolling stock officially rated at 200mph has been in commercial operation in France since 1996. Each full-length TGV Duplex offers 1090 seats, about 8-9 times the number on the Boeing 737s operated by Southwest Airlines. It will be a while before duplex HSR trains are needed in California.
  
  
• if need be, some northbound trains could terminate in Millbrae or else in San Jose and return south the next morning, without ever having reached the TBT.

The TBT itself will feature six full-length platforms, of which four are supposed to be reserved for HSR trains. This hard allocation relates primarily to differences in platform height, an issue the two operators ought to resolve by seeking the requisite waiver from CPUC. As things stand, this would imply the ability to store four full-length trains overnight at the downtown station.

Assuming a frequency of 10tph for the first 3 hours of each weekday and, that each train could one day be a full-length assembly of two trainsets, that implies a need for a yard near SF with space for at least 26 full-length trains - preferably 28 so one can be a spare while another undergoes maintenance. Caltrain's 4th & King station does not have enough capacity and anyhow none to spare.

There simply aren't that many locations where so many full-length trains could possibly be stored and secured near SF, so it makes sense to buy the land now to avoid a capacity bottleneck down the road. One obvious option is the huge old SP yard at Bayshore (h/t to Clem), which is undeveloped but part of a development project (h/t to DaveO) that does not yet account for HSR. The location is still being decontaminated but actually has space for at least 50 full-length trains. Part of the area could be used to store Caltrain equipment or, as a transshipment facility for High Speed Cargo. All this is assuming the City of Brisbane is interested in once again hosting a rail yard, perhaps with development of the airspace above.

A big issue is that CHSRA currently intends to switch from the inside tracks south of Bayshore to the outside tracks north of it because of the four Caltrain tunnels. However, accommodating UPRR may yet force CHSRA to switch to the two western tracks instead - the issue of track assignments along the Caltrain ROW is fundamental but not yet resolved.

HSR Phase One Yards: Bayshore yard

A second-best alternative to a Bayshore yard might be found in the relatively undeveloped southern part of Mission Bay.

Either way, HSR trains could make the short run from the yard to the TBT in the morning (and vice versa at night) or else, some trains could make Millbrae/SFO their first stop of the day. While CHSRA is pessimistic about boardings/alightings at that station, a number of commenters have pointed out that it would be cheaper to build and use multi-story car parks there than in downtown SF once the area around the TBT is converted into a transit-oriented district. In addition to customers hailing from the north peninsula and central East Bay, residents of western SF may well prefer to ride BART out to Millbrae rather than board at the TBT.

If San Jose Diridon is expanded to two levels, there should be space for an additional 4-6 full-length trains there. The Merced county maintenance facility could easily contribute another 12. All in all, Northern California would have more than enough overnight parking, maintenance and HSC capacity if CHSRA acquires the Bayshore yard. It should not matter that BART will usurp the entire Newhall yard in Santa Clara.

Overnight Parking: Southern California

The number of trains traveling north between 6 and 9am need not be the same as the number traveling south. Over the course of a staggered 15-hour day, any train can comfortably travel twice in each direction, such that it would always be parked overnight in the same yard. That means the division of trainsets between northern and southern California can be based on passenger demand during the peak periods. It also means crews can be operated in two shifts of 7.5 hours each. Depending on the contract, weekend and holiday service could be implemented via a scheduled 45-hour six-day work week and a total of six weeks paid vacation per year.

In the absence of directional ridership data, I will assume a requirement to operate 10 tph out of LA and Anaheim combined to SF during the morning peak period, which spans 3 hours in LA but 3h30m in Anaheim, incl. a 10 min layover at Union Station. LA Union Station will feature a second level with perhaps six full-length platform tracks for HSR plus run-through tracks on aerials. Anaheim ARTIC will have room for perhaps four full-length platform tracks. That means one or more yards for an additional 21+2 full-length parking spaces may be needed.

One option would be a new yard just west of ARTIC in a utility ROW between I-5 and South Claudina Way, sufficient for 13 tracks in addition to the electricity pylons and telephone poles already present. Normally, trains would only use the turnoff toward ARTIC. Note the brown line representing a potential extension of the Metrolink network in Orange County, linking LA US, Long Beach airport, Disneyland, ARTIC and John Wayne Airport (zoom out to see the route). Some tunnel sections would be involved, in those the locomotives should switch to third rail electric power (e.g. 1500VDC).

HSR Phase One Yards: Anaheim

However, note that the Fullerton-Anaheim section will be dual track and limited to about 3 HSR trains per hour. That means only 7+2=9 slots will actually be needed, leaving plenty of room for the utility poles and pylons plus two potential Metrolink tracks.

That implies a further 14 spaces would be needed in Los Angeles. One option would be a second level above the Metrolink yard at South Santa Fe, just south of Union Station. This could actually accommodate up to 16 full-length trains.

HSR Phase One Yards: South Santa Fe

The snag is that an elevated yard would be very expensive to construct. A better option may be an at-grade yard north of LA Union Station, next to North San Fernando Rd. It may be possible to park 14 full-length trains in that triangular patch of land.

HSR Phase One Yards: North San Fernando

An additional issue is that there will be local HSR trains within Southern California once the phase 2 spur to San Diego is built, so additional yard space will be needed. Palmdale airport would be a good candidate, especially if a new passenger terminal with an integrated HSR station is constructed approximately half-way in-between Palmdale and Lancaster. It should be easy enough to design platform + storage tracks for e.g. 20 full-length trains at this new transportation hub. In practice, fewer may be needed, this depends in part on if and how CHSRA and DesertXPress choose to integrate their services.

HSR Phase One Yards: Palmdale

Conclusions

Finding adequate yard space for Phase 1 looks feasible, though there are constraints in both Los Angeles and Anaheim. However, CHSRA doesn't have a whole lot of viable options if it wants to keep the total number of yards manageable. That means it should purchase the Bayshore yard near San Francisco plus land for a new North San Fernando yard and a third near South Claudina Way in Anaheim sooner rather than later.

Yard space at Castle and Palmdale airports should be cheap and plentiful, but its unclear how useful that would be early on. There are currently no firm plans to build a new passenger terminal with integrated HSR station at either one, though LAWA is on the hook to some extent because it used its influence to ensure the route would run past Palmdale rather than across the geologically more challenging Grapevine. Developing the currently-defunct Palmdale airport into a facility that attracts large numbers of passengers and airlines depends critically on a sound development plan. Right now, LAWA is looking at using part of the land for a solar thermal power plant, which could potentially cause glare problems. There are also plans to develop the Antelope Valley, i.e. north-east LA county, via conventional low-rise sprawl rather than transit-oriented high rise towers that are more easily cooled and supplied with non-potable recycled water in addition to a constrained supply of potable water.

Just How Useful is HSR, Really?

That's the question being pondered by one Kent Amberson in a letter to the Merced Sun-Star this morning. While one LTE in a smallish newspaper might not normally be worth talking about, I do believe that our work to promote the usefulness, value, and need for high speed rail continues after Prop 1A's passage. It's likely that many Californians have the same questions as Kent, considering how unfamiliar most Californians are with passenger rail. Here's his question:

How do you get from your house to the train station, and how do you get from the station to where you are going? In Merced you can call Dial A Ride, I suppose, but anybody that has to be in a particular place at a particular time knows that the Dial A Ride is not a solution...

Besides, not every community on the line has a Dial A Ride system. To have somebody drive you to the station is one solution or drive your own car, but where do you park if you need to for several days or even month?...

Then there is the question of when you get where you are going, what do you do?

Imagine getting to Los Angeles by train and your destination is Huntington Beach, Irvine or West Covina to mention a few. How do you get there from here? Perhaps you start looking for a Greyhound bus but again, how do you get to the bus station? Or are you going to try to figure out the local transit system?...

In planning a system like this, there has to be a way of getting to and from the station if it is going to be of any benefit to the paying public....

This is probably the reason most people prefer traveling by their own car.

Some of this is due to unfamiliarity with mass transit options in California - you can get to Irvine from Anaheim via the Pacific Surfliners, for example - and some of it is based on skepticism that other forms of transit will materialize to serve the HSR stations. By 2018 it is likely that the Expo Line will be open from LA Union Station to Santa Monica, and Metrolink service, which reaches numerous communities in Southern California, will be boosted. It's true that Orange County has a lot of work to do in building transit capacity, but a direct bus from Huntington Beach to the Anaheim HSR station (ARTIC) would be a sensible move for the OCTA.

The main problem with Kent's argument, though, is assuming that HSR service is analogous to automobile service. It isn't. The high speed train simply cannot bring you door to door. Neither can an airplane. Driving may solve the door to door issue, but at a very high cost - time, gas, wear and tear on the vehicle. The fuel costs of driving in particular are likely to rise dramatically between now and 2018.

Nor is HSR analogous with airplanes. Instead HSR provides the same travel need - getting from, say, Merced to Irvine - using a third method that provides the speed and convenience of airplanes and some of the flexibility of driving. HSR stations are not going to be located on the edge of town as airports are, but in the middle of the urban area, in places that are already the nodes of local transit systems. It's simply easier to provide transit connections to and from the HSR station than to and from an airport on the edge of town. LAX still lacks a true mass transit link, but LA Union Station is the hub of the entire mass transit system in Southern California.

And HSR will spur better transit connections, just as airports do today. It will bring more people into the city centers, making it easier to get from house to station. Certainly there will be journeys that require a car to complete, but HSR makes that easier and cheaper - you can rent a car at your destination, have a family or friend pick you up, etc, just as is done today.

HSR provides a different option for intrastate travel, matching the quickness of air travel with much of the flexibility of driving (through connections to other transit systems) at a lower price. Certainly California has work to do in expanding its non-HSR transit offerings and this blog strongly supports those projects, such as LA County's Measure R. HSR will never be and isn't intended to be the solution to everyone's point A to point B trip. But it will make those trips across the state much cheaper and much easier.

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias reminds us that significant improvements in bus service can be made with a relatively affordable investment. For our own HSR system to be successful that means we need to push back hard against Sacramento's own efforts to further gut bus funding, which has already taken a significant hit over the last two years.

Orange County Knows Better on Prop 1A

In 2005 the far-right editorial board at the Orange County Register joined conservative Republicans in a deranged attack on Measure D, which would have diverted existing public safety monies to the Orange County Fire Authority to help pay for necessary fire equipment. It didn't create any new taxes, and met a need that nearly anyone who has lived in OC for any length of time agrees is real. But the Register got its way and Measure D went down to defeat. Afterward the Register and their allies, like Jon Fleischmann, celebrated its defeat.

Almost a year ago Southern California went up in flames. As the fires worsened around the region, the OCFA was left without the adequate resources to respond when the Santiago Fire broke out. Equipment that Measure D would have paid for was not available and the fire spread. My hometown of Tustin was threatened, and the fires were within blocks of where my family lives. A sudden wind change saved that community, but doomed Portola Hills. Dozens of families lost everything they had.

I wrote about this a year ago at Calitics in order to show the madness of conservative philosophy, the staggering costs of being cheap. In response to my article the Register devoted their lead editorial page to attacking me. I didn't mind, it was a nice sort of validation from the hometown paper. I was kind of shocked by how they defended their position on Measure D, which had led to the predicted and tragic results in October 2007 - by advocating against public firefighters:

A broader goal would be more privatization efforts and more private ownership of land. Private firefighting firms would have a financial interest to promote prevention, and more private ownership of land would mean better-maintained property. Private owners are far better at protecting their property than public owners, who follow an entirely different set of objectives.

That should help you understand what we're dealing with when the Register editorializes against Prop 1A. Their editorialists represent the farthest fringe of the California right-wing. They are inherently opposed to any new government spending on principle and believe that even effective services like the fire department are bad. They are quite willing to play recklessly with public safety and ignore basic social needs in order to pursue their strange agenda.

So it was a foregone conclusion that they would oppose Prop 1A. And like all the other HSR deniers in our state, their arguments are built on a lack of evidence or a complete misunderstanding of reality. The bulk of their editorial is drawn from the throughly discredited Cox-Vranich study. They go on to make a clearly false claim:

If a high-speed train were economically feasible – that is, if revenue from anticipated operations were projected to be higher than capital and operating costs – private investors would be lining up to put money into it.

Of course, as readers of this blog know, they ARE lining up to put money into it, as shown at the June CHSRA board meeting. What the ostensibly pro-business Register doesn't understand is that private investors are not going to put down money until the state does so first. Californians must make the first move by approving Prop 1A - which as amended by AB 3034 provides firm safeguards to ensure that if federal and private money somehow doesn't materialize, California voters won't be on the hook.

The editorial repeats other common flaws, such as the notion that without a strong train network we can't attract many HSR riders. Matt Melzer discredited that claim as well by showing how California compares favorably to Spain, where HSR is a stunning success. The Register claims California lacks a "train culture" which the editorialists can easily disprove if they walked about two blocks west from their offices on Grand Avenue to the Santa Ana Train Depot, where Metrolink and Pacific Surfliners do a booming business.

The irony is that Orange County voters have already rejected the Register's bizarre anti-government rantings. In 2006 voters renewed a 1/2 cent sales tax which included massive new investment in Metrolink and other passenger rail, as well as improving public transportation links to train stations. Most Orange County Republicans wholeheartedly endorse Prop 1A, including Anaheim mayor Curt Pringle, who sits on the CHSRA board.

Orange County residents will reap significant benefits from HSR. The Anaheim station, part of the first phase, will provide commuters faster trips to Los Angeles and other parts of the region via the many connecting services at Union Station. It will enable OC residents to visit family and friends in the Central Valley, the Bay Area, and yes the Monterey Bay region more easily (and vice versa). It will help sustain the Disney resort as a viable tourist destination especially as air travel becomes unaffordable for most families over the coming years (whether Disneyland tickets become affordable is unfortunately out of our hands). HSR will create good local jobs, save OC residents money, and spur long-term economic development.

Orange County knows better on Proposition 1A. I would not be surprised to see OC vote for Prop 1A come November 4. The Register can write a good rant. But increasingly OC residents are seeing the high cost of far-right dogma.