Fresno Puts Its Money Where Its Mouth Is For Maintenance Hub

We've been following the growing contest among San Joaquin Valley cities for the main maintenance hub for the CHSRA system. Back in March CHSRA said Merced's Castle Airport was their first choice for the hub location, and Merced County officials have been strongly pursuing that. The contest has become more competitive, with Madera County proposing a site near Chowchilla, and Bakersfield proposing a site as well. Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin has been working to bring the hub to Fresno, an effort that may get a big boost from Fresno County:

Fresno County leaders may divert funds from Measure C, the county's half-cent transportation sales tax, to attract a high-speed rail maintenance yard that could employ 1,500 skilled workers....

But Fresno County is assuming it will need to line up a site to get serious consideration.

A task force of county officials and other local leaders has already chosen an undisclosed site along the system's route on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe corridor in rural southern Fresno County. The cost could be as much as $40 million....

But Anderson made clear that she thinks the most likely source is Measure C -- specifically a $37 million fund reserved for "new technologies such as personal rapid transit or similar system."

Although some in Fresno County raised cautions about redirecting Measure C money, I cannot imagine a better or more appropriate use for that $37 million than a maintenance hub. Personal rapid transit is a silly technology that shouldn't take priority over funding an HSR maintenance hub, should CHSRA decide Fresno is the best location for it.

Another possible funding pool is much less desirable for redirecting to the hub:

The council's staff also suggested that part of the measure's $106 million fund for moving the Fresno's BNSF tracks to the Union Pacific corridor could be diverted to the maintenance yard project. That drew fire from rail consolidation advocates.

"Make no mistake, folks: They're not talking about borrowing funds from rail consolidation," said Tom Bailey of Fresno Area Residents for Rail Consolidation. "They're talking about flat taking."

Fresno should move much more cautiously before diverting funds from consolidation to the hub. The Fresno rail consolidation project is a very good project that deserves to be supported, not defunded for a maintenance hub.

CHSRA has also evolved its own stance away from their March comments in favor of Castle Airport:

The authority's Central Valley regional director, Carrie Bowen, said the board is determined "to make this as competitive as possible."

Candidates will have to "identify what they can do" for the project, she said. In most cases, that will mean providing an estimated 154 acres in a shape appropriate for a train yard -- long and narrow.

A competitive process is desirable, but local governments shouldn't toss other worthy projects overboard to win the hub. Of course, PRT does not count as a "worthy project," so moving the $37 million in Measure C money is not only a wise policy move, it would seem to fit the letter and spirit of the voter-approved language, since HSR is after all a "new technology," at least as far as California is concerned.

Friday Open Thread

Some California high speed rail items to keep you occupied and engaged as we approach the weekend. Apologies for not being able to offer a more in-depth post, but after that wild storm came through this week, the beautiful weather here in Monterey calls me outside.

• The Caltrain/California High Speed Rail Authority’s Policymaker Working Group met last night to get their work off the ground in providing advisement to Caltrain and the CHSRA about the rail improvement project. As Gina Papan's comments showed, not only is misinformation widespread, but there's a disturbing willingness of elected officials to believe whatever they hear from constituents.



• Merced Mayor Ellie Wooten and Merced County Supervisor John Pedrozo published a pro-HSR op-ed in the Merced Sun-Star today. It offers some very good restatements of the basic case for HSR, from jobs to the environment, but the main reason for their op-ed is to reiterate their case for building the maintenance hub at Castle Airport.



• A recent HSR scoping meeting in Escondido showed that NIMBYism can be found virtually anywhere in the state. Although most attendees supported the project, one whiner claimed "I'm going to fight it" because he's convinced the noise will lower his home values. Someone living in Escondido, which currently lacks a direct link to either the LA metro region or to the job centers in San Diego, should think twice about leaving their city's fate in the hands of oil and freeways. (Yes, Escondido has a rail link to downtown SD via the Sprinter and the Coaster, but it is indirect, requiring a transfer at Oceanside.)



• Over at the Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark criticizes the FRA's preliminary rail plan that avoids pissing anyone off (a classic trait of the Obama Administration) and therefore doesn't actually offer any specific recommendations about how to develop a national rail program.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

San Joaquin Valley Cities Battle Over High Speed Rail Maintenance Hub

UPDATE by Robert: Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin's office is disputing the Merced County Times report cited below. From an email from the mayor's press secretary, Mike Lukens:

"Just wanted you to know that the comments attributed to her about the maintenance facility are not accurate. She has never made those comments. Had the reporter from the Merced County Times called us about it, I would have said the same thing."

Back to the original post...

Where should the San Joaquin Valley high speed rail maintenance hub be built? As we've discussed on this blog before, particularly in some of Rafael's posts, Merced's Castle Airport seems like a perfect place for the primary maintenance hub. The CHSRA agreed - as of March they claimed Castle Airport was their "first choice" for the hub.

However, the momentum for Merced to be the site of the hub apparently isn't sitting well with other cities in the Valley. According to a report in the Merced County Times, Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin is upset that Merced has been the beneficiary of some major projects in recent years, at Fresno's expense:

Dr. Lee Boese, co-chair of Merced County’s High Speed Rail committee, met Fresno’s Mayor Ashley Swearingen in Sacramento recently and she told him “You got the University, you got the WalMart distribution center, you’re not getting the high speed rail maintenance facility.”

“I was surprised she even knew who I was,” said Boese who said Merced was keeping a very low profile on its efforts to complete the first phase of the track from Fresno to Merced,” he said.

[See above update - the Fresno mayor's office disputes this report.]

This is a side effect of having split the Central Valley segment into two pieces, a decision that many Valley leaders opposed - potentially to head off divisive problems like this.

California is suffering worse than most other states from the economic crisis, and the San Joaquin Valley has been one of the hardest hit regions in the state. As of the most recent numbers, released in mid-September, Merced County's unemployment rate is 16.7% and Fresno's is 14.7%. Both cities would therefore have a strong argument for needing the jobs that the maintenance hub would create.

What Merced County has that Fresno doesn't is a readily available location for the maintenance hub. The county owns Castle Airport, making the construction of the hub that much easier. To my knowledge, Fresno does not possess anything similar.

That shouldn't put Fresno out of the running. But it does suggest that despite the Fresno mayor's annoyance, Merced is again in the lead for this piece of infrastructure. And Fresno isn't exactly going to lose out - it is poised to reap enormous benefits from HSR, from potentially becoming a commuter suburb of SF and/or LA to being able to land its own jobs and businesses using the easy connections to those larger urban centers that HSR will provide.

A Closer Look at San José to Merced

Last night the CHSRA held a public meeting in San José to discuss the plans for what may well be the most challenging segment of the entire SF-Anaheim route: the San José to Merced segment. The battles north of here, on the Peninsula, have gotten a lot of attention, but that segment is much more straightforward - the route has already been chosen (Caltrain ROW) and it's now just a matter of how you implement it.

Further south, the situation is much more complex, additionally so because it is this segment for which the judge ruled the EIR was inadequate in Atherton v. CHSRA, specifically the matter of using UPRR ROW between San José Diridon and Gilroy.

As a result, some of the key route decisions are still very much up in the air. And here too you have NIMBYs fighting what seem to be the most commonsense solutions, including the Gardner neighborhood (which, I should correct, did actually exist before the railroad - the neighborhood was subdivided in the 1880s and again in the 1900s, whereas the SP line was built during the Depression in the mid-1930s). Down in south Santa Clara County Gilroy residents have voiced concerns about using the existing rail alignment, especially based on the factually incorrect statement that trains would run at 220mph through central Gilroy. And there is the matter of a protected grassland near Los Banos that the HSR trains are currently planned to use.

The CHSRA produced a useful document showing the alignment options along this segment, focusing on the three toughest parts: how you get from Diridon Station to either the UPRR ROW or Highway 101; how you run trains through Morgan Hill/Gilroy, and the Los Banos section.

One of our commenters, Peter, attended the San José meeting last night and had these comments, shared in the comments to yesterday's post and reproduced here:

The presenters were brutally honest regarding expected noise levels, eminent domain, frequency of trains, etc.

People definitely preferred the relatively straight tunnel at an angle to Diridon as the alignment they thought the Authority should adopt. They weren't very concerned that it meant the station would be over 100 feet underground.

They were very surprised to hear the maximum permissible noise levels for freight trains (the locomotive) at 55 mph and HSR at 150 mph are the same at 90 dba. The freight cars can apparently be even louder.

They were very upset at the planned peak level of operations of 11 tph in each direction. They were upset despite the fact that the presenter made clear that this was for 2035.

In other words, HSR through the Gardner and Willow Glen areas wouldn't be louder than the existing trains, and like their counterparts on the Peninsula, believe they have some right to dictate the operations of the train corridor (which they don't). Peter continued:

And when I say above that the presenters were "brutally honest," I mean that when they didn't have the answer yet and had not yet studied the issue in-depth enough to have an answer, they said so.

I know people are going to claim they were hiding things, but I just didn't get that impression.

The presenters stated that they were shooting to go as fast as they could between Diridon and Gilroy. It sounded like they liked the idea of the curve around Morgan Hill in order to enable them to possibly 220 mph.

There was one crazy still trying to get Altamont, and he even had a handout ("This is a better choice")with an alignment splitting in Pleasanton and one spur going south to San Jose International and another going via a Transbay Tube and ending beneath SFO.

Two San Jose Board of Supervisors members were there and they made their pitch for the "straighter" tunnel alignment that allowed the trains to go faster, and oh, by the way, would mean they would be out of sight, out of mind.

Oh, and supposedly they are now considering a Morgan Hill station instead of Gilroy....they are considering the Morgan Hill station because the City of Morgan Hill asked them to. All of the alignment alternatives raised are being considered because they have to be. I highly doubt they'll put a station in Morgan Hill, same as I think a 100 foot deep underground station at Diridon is ludicrous.

Here again I'll say the same thing I said about the Palo Alto HSR design workshop: if San José and/or Santa Clara County want a tunnel from Diridon Station southward, they need to come up with a way to pay for it. That strikes me as even less likely given that the county is already on the hook for a multibillion dollar tunnel, to bring BART to downtown San José.

As Clem noted, the CHSRA does listen to and incorporate public feedback - in this case, the "Thread the Needle" plan floated by Gardner/Willow Glen residents, which as you can see on the image below, has been incorporated by the CHSRA as an alignment option:



The simplest solution to me looks like the existing Caltrain corridor through the Gardner neighborhood. If residents want another solution, whether a costly tunnel or a costly and tightly-curved aerial structure shown in green, they'll have to find a way to pay for it. It's not government's nor the public's job to subsidize their home values.

For getting the trains out of central San José, there's the issue of what to do if the UPRR ROW along Monterey Highway is unavailable. The solution as proposed below involves using the Highway 87 and Highway 85 corridors.



I wish I had more specifics on this, because those corridors are already being used by VTA light rail. I do not believe it is either wise or desirable to sacrifice VTA light rail for HSR, and the cost of widening the ROW along both routes would be quite high. Still, if there's no federal pressure put on UPRR to come to an agreement about the ROW, this may have to be explored.

Next up is Morgan Hill, where a station is being considered at the request of the city of Morgan Hill:



As Rafael noted, a Morgan Hill station would not be optimal for those of us living in the Monterey Bay Area (and there are almost a million of us, not an inconsequential number). A Gilroy station is both ideal and still the most likely option.

Of course, the other interesting thing about this map is the possibility of following the Highway 101 corridor. I drive that corridor pretty frequently, including last Saturday, when I took a close look at the options for placing HSR tracks alongside the road. This is very doable. The east side of 101 has more space in the Morgan Hill area, and the west side has more space through San Martin. Because the 101 corridor here is straight and not built up, unlike the Peninsula, it strikes me as an appropriate place to put HSR tracks.

I'm skipping over the slide on the Pacheco Pass and moving directly to the Los Banos region, where a wide range of options are on the table:



As you can see, there are three main issues here: Can the CHSRA build through the grassland? What do you do with the wye at Chowchilla? And can you use the UPRR/Highway 99 alignment? I have no strong preferences here, although the Firebaugh alignment would seem to rule out a maintenance hub at Merced.

Obviously there's quite a lot going on here. To me the best solution is to use the existing Caltrain ROW through Gardner, use federal mediation to reach an accommodation with UPRR in the Monterey Highway area and along the Highway 99 corridor, and use the straightest and most direct route through a narrow portion of the grassland.

I would prefer the HSR trains go through central Morgan Hill and particularly central Gilroy. Those cities are under intense pressure to build urban sprawl, and an HSR station in downtown Gilroy, where the existing Caltrain station is located, would instead help channel that growth back into the existing urban center. That being said, I'm open to a 101 alignment, especially east of Morgan Hill, if that can enable trains to go at a faster speed.

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.

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.

HSR Comes to Merced

Wednesday night's HSR scoping meeting in Merced brought out numerous supporters of a project that promises to bring dramatic improvements to a city that could use sustainable transportation and the jobs it would provide:

Community members at the session were interested in seeing the project get under way. On one comment board, the suggestion scrawled in red marker was simple: "Start digging now." Another person added: "Go for it -- and hire local consultants."

Jim Sutherland, a 63-year-old retired Merced resident said he was "100 percent behind the project."

He even said he would consider working part-time if the Castle maintenance hub goes from blueprint to bricks and mortar.

Now that's the spirit.

The meeting also produced some actual news, which I'm sure Rafael will be glad to hear:

Gary Kennerly, a project manager for the authority, also said the authority considered Castle Air Force Base its first choice for a major maintenance hub.

Still, "There is nothing in stone," he said. "(Castle) will be looked at, as will the other locations."

Other maintenance sites are being considered near Chowchilla and Madera.

"We have the lines already going into Castle," Atwater Councilman Joe Rivero said. "It is centrally located. It would be a good choice for us and a good choice for the system."

Note that this won't be the only maintenance hub for the system, but would be the prime hub for the Central Valley. Merced does strike me as the best choice, but it's worth doing the due diligence on Chowchilla and Madera as well.

One thing it's NOT worth doing the due diligence for is a station at Los Banos, which was specifically forbidden in AB 3034 and therefore in Prop 1A as well. That hasn't stopped some Merced County officials from hoping against reality that such a stop can be revived:

County supervisor Jerry O'Banion said he supported the project, but hoped a stop in Los Banos might be added before the plans become final.

O'Banion noted that much of the information at the meeting was still speculation.

"It is the future. It is not going to happen overnight," he said. "But if you don't start planning sometime, it will never occur."

While that's true in a general sense, it is NOT true of a Los Banos station. It will never happen and that's as it should be. I had the chance to drive through Los Banos two weekends ago on the way to and from Fresno. It's a fairly typical San Joaquin Valley town that had the misfortune to be exurbanized in the late and least sustainable phase of the great housing bubble. On the west edge of town are a couple shopping centers still half-built, with vacant storefronts and big-box stores that are likely having a difficult time remaining profitable. Several newer housing developments in and around town are half-finished with many foreclosed and empty homes. The central part of town is still nice, but future growth in the San Joaquin Valley ought to be channeled into the existing urban centers - Modesto, Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield. Not to Los Banos.

Upcoming HSR scoping meetings:

• March 24: Visalia Convention Center, 303 E. Acequia Ave, Visalia
• March 25: Roosevelt Community Center, 901 E. Santa Clara Street, San Jose
• March 25: Fresno Convention Center, 848 M Street, Fresno
• March 26: Rabobank Theater, 1001 Truxtun Ave, Bakersfield
• March 26: Hilton Garden Inn, Monterey Road and US 101, Gilroy

(I'm going to try and attend the Gilroy meeting, but my schedule for that day is still a bit up in the air.)

The View From the Valley

I've spent two very interesting days here in Fresno organizing for another issue, but have had some time to talk to people about high speed rail (because really, what sort of HSR activist would I be if I didn't?!). I've found that the project actually has a fairly high profile here - most of the diverse group of people I've talked to actually know about it and support it. As there are at least 2.5 million people living along the HSR route between Merced and Bakersfield, their backing of the system is crucial - lest we forget, Merced, Fresno, and Kern Counties ALL voted FOR Prop 1A back in November.

What's behind the support? In my conversations there are some common reasons given:

1. Desire to connect to the rest of the state. Whether they love living in the Valley or not, most people here want to be able to get to and from the bigger parts of the state quickly. They may have family or friends going to school in LA, or want to see a show in SF. Typically they're going to drive, which is usually at least 3 hours in each direction. A rapid train will help make that easy.



2. Desire to cut pollution. Even though it's an early spring day, the air quality here in Fresno hasn't been so great this weekend. It reminds me of the 1980s in Southern California, where smog was commonplace. The San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air pollution in the entire nation. Asthma and other respiratory diseases are extremely common, and given the frequent traffic on Highway 99 it's no surprise. People here WANT a method of travel that will not make their health problems worse.



3. Desire to stop sprawl. To hear some people tell it Valley residents love sprawl. That's always been a debatable point; in reality it's the Valley's political leaders who have promoted it, along with the inexorable logic of having built an entire national, even global economy on sprawl. With the housing bubble collapse, which has hit the Valley harder than probably any other place on the globe, there is a clearer desire for preserving farmland, stopping sprawl, and channeling growth inward. The people I talked to get this.



4. They're sick of being ignored. With at least 2.5 million people along the initial HSR route, and with over 5 million in the Valley as a whole (including Sacramento), Valley residents have watched state funds and projects go to the "cities" - SF Bay Area, Southern California, while Highway 99 has been ignored. And that enables opponents of mass transit, for example, to demagogue on the issue - "don't vote for this project, it's just going to help those Bay Area liberals who don't care about you." Which in turn emboldens those voices here that tell Valley voters "the cities will just take your tax money and give nothing in return" (if the Valley elected more Dems the 2/3 rule would no longer be an issue). San Joaquin Valley residents feel, quite reasonably in my view, that they deserve to be part of this system.
   
   And it makes practical sense in this case to include them. The flattest route between SF and LA involves the Central Valley. The 2.5 million people who live along the San Joaquin Valley portion of the LA-SF route are an important part of the potential ridership base of a financially viable HSR system. And it will play an essential role in achieving the kind of long-term shift in land use policy in California, a shift that cannot succeed unless the Valley is included. Otherwise the Valley plays the role of a kind of China, undercutting the efforts at higher labor and environmental standards elsewhere in the state.

I know that there have been some comments suggesting that we just bypass the Highway 99 corridor when building the LA-SF route, that the inclusion of Fresno and Bakersfield was just a political ploy, that it's just not necessary to build HSR in these places. I could not disagree more strongly. California High Speed Rail will not be successful unless it includes the Valley.

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.

Merced Steps Up

This is one good way to proactively shape the impact of HSR on your community:

Merced renewed its support for California's high-speed rail system Monday with a plan to join a financially backed committee that will lobby on the city's behalf as the project moves forward.

Rail system planners have selected Merced to have a downtown station. Castle Commerce Center may be a maintenance hub for the entire system, creating hundreds of jobs in the county....

The Greater Merced High-Speed Rail Committee, a group of citizens, formed to support the project. Now that it's looking more likely that 220-mph trains will zip across the state, it's asked city and county governments to increase their support by giving cash and having elected leaders join its ranks.

The Board of Supervisors pledged $40,000 to do a study on whether it'd be possible to create a maintenance hub at Castle Commerce Center.

While there was some discussion about whether a maintenance hub should be built in the middle section of the line the last time this subject came up (I think this would be a good idea) the overall point is that Merced, like Fresno and San Francisco, is actively trying to plan for HSR to have a maximum positive impact on their own. When it comes time for the CHSRA to decided where a maintenance hub will go, Merced will be able to offer a plan that has been publicly vetted. That can only help matters.

Let's hope more cities take the proactive approach when it comes to HSR. It's an opportunity, not a threat.

Merced County Approves Castle Area HSR Study

Rafael has long called for Castle Airport in Atwater, just outside Merced, to become a relief airport for the Bay Area by using HSR to bring passengers to and from the airport. While not exactly endorsing that specific plan, Merced County has approved a study of putting an HSR maintenance facility at Castle:

Merced County leaders junked their contract with the private investment firm that had been pegged to transform Castle Commerce Center into a thriving economic hub.

In another move aimed to stimulate the local economy, supervisors authorized money to be spent to show that the Castle center could work as a maintenance hub for the statewide high-speed rail project....

Plans to build a 700-mile passenger rail system that would connect Los Angeles to the Bay Area were first proposed more than a decade ago. With the November approval of a $10 billion bond measure to pay for the first phase of the project, it now appears it may actually be built.

On Tuesday the Board of Supervisors voted to revive the county's dormant High Speed Rail Citizens' Committee and spend $40,000 to prepare a feasibility study on building a train maintenance hub at Castle.

County officials hope both moves will help convince the state's high-speed rail board that Castle is the right choice for the hub. Several nearby counties are also vying for the designation.

On its face this seems like a very smart move for Merced County. Turning an old airport facility into an exurban office and service hub is no longer a viable economic proposition. The Merced region will soon have a glut of office and light manufacturing space, if it doesn't already. An HSR maintenance facility, however, would provide long-term green jobs for Merced County, the kind of economic base that the San Joaquin Valley desperately needs.

I'll let the more technically minded among us debate the practicalities of putting an HSR maintenance facility at Castle. From a political and economic perspective it seems like a sound concept, and could leave open the possibility of developing Castle Airport in the way Rafael has long advocated.

So I like this move by Merced County. The San Joaquin Valley governments, particularly Fresno, have been especially proactive in looking at how to make HSR work well for their economy, their landscape, and their residents. It's exactly the kind of sensible planning work that HSR ought to be encouraging around the state.

Why We Need A Greener Stimulus

The Merced Sun-Star editorialized today for a greener, more sustainable economic stimulus, offering some excellent reasons for using this economic crisis as an opportunity to finally move beyond the now-failed policies of automobile dependence:

Environmentalists must understand that roads, bridges and highways are going to be an important part of our transportation infrastructure for a long time to come. We have neglected that infrastructure to the point of real danger, and that must be urgently addressed.

But proponents of the conventional wisdom in transportation must also recognize that we cannot build our way out of congestion and air quality problems by simply adding more freeway lanes.

That contributes to urban sprawl, with its attendant environmental damage, and does nothing to reduce our dependence on imports of foreign oil. Also, transit and rail systems are often less expensive to build than more highways to carry similar capacity.

One thing is clear: The time has passed for the heavy emphasis on roads and highway now enshrined in federal policy.

That dependence on foreign oil, the legacy of the decision to rely on cars alone as the means to provide mobility in America rather than a balanced approach of cars, trains, buses, bikes and feet, is a major reason for our economic crisis. If Barack Obama, Congress, and other policymakers want to get this country back on its feet and to avoid a repeat of the current meltdown, they need to ensure that more of the proposed stimulus goes to mass transit and not to fulfill state DOT highway dreams.

Obama didn't help when he said that the stimulus should fund projects ready to turn dirt within six months - the need for speed is there, but he should have given himself more flexibility to include using the stimulus for transit. Even so, Jim Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, is working to increase the share of transit funding in the overall stimulus plan.

Some of that stimulus should go to high speed rail, of course, and even if our project gets federal funding in a later appropriation outside the immediate stimulus, even $50 million to pay for planning and engineering work would demonstrate a commitment to a sustainable transportation policy. Plus, planners and engineers need jobs too!

The details of the stimulus are still being worked out, and public pressure can help produce a better, greener, more transit-friendly stimulus. Transportation For America is running a campaign to pressure Congress to do exactly that. Sign the petition and let Congress know that we need to provide a big boost to mass transit - and let them know that HSR should be a part of that stimulus.

The Central Valley Test Track, Part 2

In part 1, we discussed why CHSRA needs to construct a high speed test track early on in the project. Here, I'll propose one way how this might be accomplished.

The primary objective for the test track is to achieve speeds of 220mph for extended periods of time. Given that HSR can and will only run that fast in the Central Valley, that's where the track will need to be. In addition, the segment will have to be used in regular commercial service once HSR operation begin, because it would be far too expensive and anyhow not necessary (h/t to commenter thik) to construct and maintain a dedicated facility.

CHSRA appears to have decided that the central maintenance facility will be located in Merced County, quite possibly at Castle airport (formerly Castle AFB of the SAC) in Atwater. The airport is currently only used for general aviation, but its single long runway would be ideal for heavy air lift and air cargo services. Given the low population density of the area, it would be suitable for 24/7 operations. With the addition of a small passenger terminal featuring an HSR station inside the building, it could also support trans- and intercontinental passenger flights using the largest available jets (747, A380). In that sense, Castle airport could serve not just the Central Valley but - eventually (h/t to Robert Cruickshank) - perhaps also San Benito, Monterey plus Santa Cruz counties and, as a relief airport for the San Francisco Bay Area. Capacity at SFO is often constrained by dense fog.

The first part of my proposal is therefore to use Castle airport as the northern end of the test track.


View Larger Map

Legend:

• dark blue = current UPRR ROW
  
• light blue = current BNSF ROW
  
• yellow = proposed HSR test track alignment
  

Given that BNSF already hosts Amtrak San Joaquin trains, it may also offer to share its remaining ROW with HSR. Since UPRR has not, it makes sense to consider an alignment based mostly on BNSF's ROW. CHSRA had anyhow planned to use that south of Fresno, mostly because it affords easier access to the existing Amtrak station at Truxton Ave in Bakersfield. However, CHSRA had wanted to use the UPRR ROW in and north of Fresno because it affords access to the downtown areas of Fresno, Merced and Modesto. In and north of Stockton, UPRR is anyhow the only option. Since BNSF's ROW crosses UPRR's at a right angle in south Stockton, HSR would have to cut over further south, e.g. between Escalon and French Camp.

Merced County would probably be fine with having its station at Castle airport instead of downtown Merced, since it lobbied hard for just that solution. For Modesto, the current Amtrak station at E. Briggsmore lies at the the eastern edge of town. If UPRR is willing, it would be possible to cut over e.g. between the Stanislaus river and Modesto airport. Of course, all of these alignment changes would have to be reflected in the project-level EIR/EIS for the Sacramento spur, but construction on that won't start until the early 2020s.

Other advantages of using the BNSF ROW are that
(a) Amtrak can serve as an HSR feeder without a route change and,
(b) many towns that will not have an HSR or even Amtrak station will not be subjected to a lot of additional traffic through their downtown areas, possibly even high speed cargo operations at night. In Spain, AVE construction was complicated by small towns that desperately wanted to have stations on the high speed line between Madrid and Barcelona. Be careful what you wish for!

As the southern endpoint of the test track, I'd suggest Bakersfield. This will permit limited commercial HSR operations in the Central Valley to begin well before the entire starter line is completed. It also provides enough distance to conduct meaningful testing.

The fly in the ointment is that this means tackling the mess in Fresno early and head-on. Alan Kandel over at the California Progress Report has chronicled this saga in detail (though he has yet to discover Google Maps). The BNSF alignment in Fresno runs right through miles and miles of residential neighborhoods, at grade. Dozens of daily mile-long freight trains cause pollution, noise, vibration and especially, endless delays at the many grade crossings. The city has been trying to kick out BNSF for 90 (!) years, to no avail.

UPRR, for its part, appears quite happy to host the local San Joaquin Valley Railroad (SJVR, now a division of Rail America) and watch its primary competitor BNSF stuck with a PR nightmare. The company has resisted attempts to create a grade-separated joint freight corridor - conceptually similar to the Alameda corridor in LA - along its ROW, which runs next to hwy 99. Besides, Fresno has never had the money to implement all those grade separations and, FRA does not require them for alignment sections rated at less than 125mph - which means everything except the NEC. Its most recent "action plan" on grade crossings dates back to 2004 and suggests the agency spends most of its time writing reports and then mulling it all over some more.

Enter high speed rail, which Congressman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) has worked so hard for. All politics is local, after all...

A number of alternative solutions have been proposed, the one Alan Kandel prefers is called the Metro Rural Loop, subject of a recent regional planning workshop. It's still at the conceptual stage, calling for an enormous ring of bypass freeways around Fresno, stretching north to hwy 152 (Los Banos-Chowchilla) and south to hwy 198 (Hanford-Visalia-Exeter), perhaps even hwy 190 (Corcoran-Porterville).

Much of the area in-between would be gradually filled in with residential developments through 2110, by which time these four counties expect to be home to around 6.5-12 million people (baseline 7.7 million). Side note: it's not entirely clear to me where their drinking water would come from, unless agriculture in this parched section of California were to cease almost entirely.

Each of these bypass highways would consist of (see pp84 of this 8.2MB PDF document):

- 4 HOV, 6 mixed traffic and two emergency lanes (total 12 lanes)
- a two-lane frontage road to either side (total 4 lanes)
- two tracks of light rail, with zero room for express bypass tracks
- one multi-use path (i.e. bikes + pedestrians)
- eight rows of trees

Total width 400-450 feet. Some of the light rail lines would be over 50 miles long.

Grade separated major cross roads would feature:

- four mixed traffic lanes
- two BRT lanes
- two rows of trees

While I'm all for trees and transit, it seems to me the planners are steeped in asphalt lore and more than a little optimistic regarding the amount of gasoline and diesel that will still be available in 2110. Page 19 shows HSR scribbled in as a mere afterthought, several miles west of Fresno.

Transit oriented development - you're doing it wrong!

A slightly less grandiose - but still quite ambitious - alternative would be to focus just on the heavy rail alignments as a first step, since history suggests those are by far the hardest to move. CHSRA has decided - rightly, in my view - that high speed rail stations should be located in the downtown areas of major population centers. In the Central Valley, that means towns with 100,000 or more inhabitants that are expected to grow rapidly in the next few decades. Fresno surely qualifies.

The apparently simplest approach would be to leverage only the BNSF ROW and fully grade separate that. There are 26 road crossings, 23 of them currently at grade. The Fresno Amtrak station at Tulare and Q St. is located at the north-east end of the downtown area and would be an acceptable location for an HSR station. However, the alignment features a number of sharpish turns, which could well prevent operation at 220mph. Besides, even with full separation of the existing grade crossings, there would still be dozens of heavy freight trains running through residential neighborhoods every day, in addition to dozens of HSR and a handful of Amtrak passenger trains.

A more comprehensive, but also substantially more expensive concept has been suggested by Larry Miller in his recent op-ed in the Fresno Bee. What that might look like in practice is shown in this map:


View Larger Map

Legend:

• dark blue = current UPRR ROW/rail yard
  
• light blue = current BNSF ROW/rail yard
  
• green = current SJVR lines
  
• purple = proposed Western Freight Corridor (WFC)
  
• yellow = proposed HSR alignment (elevated for grade separation where appropriate)
  
• black = proposed passenger heavy rail (Amtrak/regional), available for freight only if WFC unavailable due to accident etc.
  
• brown = optional light rail alignments
  

The concept calls for the construction of a Western Freight Corridor (WFC) along a brand-new ROW through prime farmland west and south of Fresno, with access connectors for UPRR, BNSF and SJVR. It also calls for two new rail yards to compensate for the loss of access to the existing ones. The exact location of the corridor alignment and its rail yards would of course be subject to negotations, this map is just supposed to illustrate the basic concept.

This means no heavy freight trains would run through the city at all any longer. Optionally, a bypass freeway could be constructed just west of the WFC. That decision would need to be made early, as it would impact rail grade separation projects at the intersections with hwy 99 and rural access roads. A total of around 70 freight trains run through Fresno every day right now and, this number is expected to grow. During harvest time, slow road traffic would significantly impede freight trains, therefore the WFC should be largely grade separated before the tracks are even laid. It's much cheaper to do when there are no trains running yet.

The straight UPRR ROW within the city would be used for the following:

(1) HSR service, possibly including high speed cargo transshipment at the current BNSF yard in Calwa (south of downtown).

(2) Amtrak San Joaquin using FRA-compliant rolling stock. Note the option of additional county-level service between Firebaugh, Ingle, Pratton, Sanger, Reedley and Dinuba if planners decide to create new transit-oriented developments along part or all of this rural corridor. Heavy freight traffic would be permitted in downtown Fresno if and only if the new WFC were to become temporarily unavailable, e.g. as a result of an accident.

(3) optionally, light rail service using the current UPRR yard at N Weber Ave. The starter line would double back to the BNSF alignment via an existing ROW south of downtown and actually serve existing residential communities all the way out the Gregg, where the connection to the heavy rail tracks would be severed. A spur loop out to the airport terminal would be more difficult because the required ROW has been abandoned for so long. Also shown are optional extensions to Riverbend, Clovis (via the hwy 168 median) and Pinedale (via the hwy 41 median). Between them, these would vastly improve transit within the sprawling city and permit future growth via new transit-oriented developments arranged as a string of pearls.

However, the UPRR ROW is only 100 feet wide, enough for four tracks. Therefore, I'd suggest running HSR on an aerial structure directly above the at-grade tracks for the other services. That means there would still be grade crossings for these, but their gates would only be closed briefly, since passenger trains are short. In addition, they would be upgraded to meet FRA quiet zone regulations.

The new Fresno Central Station would be located near Tulare Street and feature the following:

• 3 underground passages:
  
  
  
  • wide stairwells to at-grade platforms from outer passages
    
  • narrow stairwells plus elevator to island platform from middle passage
    
  • high-capacity elevators to side platforms (both levels) from middle passage
    
  
  
• at grade:
  
  
  
  • station building
    
  • bicycle path + storage racks
    
  • 2 heavy rail tracks (west side)
    
  • room for 2 light rail tracks (east side)
    
  • side platforms plus shared central island platform. Level boarding for all trains would be preferable.
    
  
  
• elevated:
  
  
  
  • 2 express HSR tracks through the center
    
  • 2 HSR side tracks with wide level boarding platforms (1320' long),
    
  • each with 2 stairwells to grade level at ends, plus
    
  • 2 stairwells to ends of grade level side platforms and on to the outer underground passages
    
  • optionally, 2 additional side tracks. In that case, the side platforms would become island platforms.
    

All told, the required width at the station only will be around 150-200 feet. Note that HSR trains that need to stop at the station must not impede express trains as they slow down or come up to speed, so it may be necessary to run four tracks of HSR for as much as a couple of miles to either side of the station. The switches will have to be especially long to support safe transfers between adjacent tracks at what will still be high speeds. Failure to pay attention to this could result in increased headways, i.e. reduced capacity, of the line.

In terms of phasing,

• Step 1 would be persuading the city of Fresno, the four county-area and CHSRA that this concept is worth pursuing at all.
  
• Step 2 would be convincing the railroads - especially UPRR - to also agree in principle.
  
• Step 3 would be finding the money to fund construction of the WFC, likely to be a major sticking point. CHSRA certainly cannot afford to fund it by itself, nor should it.
  
• Step 4 would be constructing the WFC including grade separations, new rail yards and access connectors (including the turnoff for heavy passenger rail near Herndon).
  
• Step 5 would be migrating all freight rail operations out of Fresno.
  
• Step 6 would involve construction of
  
  
  
  • any underpasses Fresno wants for the UPRR ROW
    
  • quiet zone grade crossings for the remaining cross roads
    
  • gantries and tracks for HSR
    
  • the new multi-modal station, prepped for light rail service
    
  
  
• Step 7 would involve
  
  
  
  • migrating Amtrak San Joaquin to the new alignment
    
  • commencing HSR test runs (assuming the rest of the test track is completed by this time)
    
  
  
• Step 8 would be the concurrent
  
  
  
  • introduction of county-level heavy passenger rail services, if any
    
  • construction of the light rail starter line
    
  • remodeling of the two legacy rail yards. Air rights to at least the UPRR yard could be sold to developers of high-rise office buildings.
    
  
  
• Step 9 would be optional extensions to the light rail network in Fresno and the county-level heavy rail service.
  

See, I told you it was ambitious! Btw, the length of the test track as proposed here would be around 176 miles.

UPDATE by Robert: There is a meeting happening right now in Fresno about this topic. It's at the Central Valley Business Incubator, 1630 E. Shaw Ave, #163 next to the Old Spaghetti Factory by Fresno State.