LA-SF Nation's Second Busiest Air Route - Shows Need For HSR

The Brookings Institution has released a report today showing that the nation's busiest air routes are growing more congested over time, a condition almost certain to worsen once the economy recovers. And the second busiest corridor in the entire nation is Los Angeles to San Francisco (second only two Miami/Ft. Lauderdale to New York), with one of the main airports in that corridor, SFO, experiencing "worse than average delays."

As even the Wall Street Journal realizes, this is a call for high speed rail:

The Brookings report recommends that these air-travel statistics be used to prioritize investment in high-speed rail. At 400 miles or less, high-speed rail can been air travel in time, typically with less pollution. That makes Los Angeles-San Francisco, Las Vegas-Los Angeles, Los Angeles-Phoenix and Dallas-Houston the most likely candidates for high-speed rail, in that order.

More than 6 million people fly between the Los Angeles basin and San Francisco Bay per year, the study said. In the northeast corridor, Amtrak carried 11.7 million people on Acela and Northeast Regional lines in fiscal 2008, hitting 14 metropolitan areas. The Amtrak ridership suggests high-speed rail would be viable in out busiest air corridors, the study concluded.

This study dovetails with numerous other studies, including not just that of the CHSRA's consultants, but that of SNCF as well, which show the LA-SF corridor as an ideal spot to build high speed rail. We've already seen HSR have stunning success on other busy air corridors: from the AVE on the Madrid-Barcelona corridor, long one of the world's busiest air corridors; to the Acela, which had 40% of the market share of the Northeast Corridor in March 2008. There is every reason to believe HSR will have similar success here in California, especially since it will link the city centers - i.e. the job and business centers - of the state, from SF's Financial District to San José's own growing downtown, to downtown LA and the hub of the city's growing mass transit system.

Every time we discuss HSR and air travel, we usually have to explain yet again the reasons why HSR almost always thrives in competition with airlines on busy corridors. Especially here in California, where people usually say "but I can get a ticket on Southwest to LA right now for $49! why would I take your stupid train?"

And as usual we explain patiently that when you combine total travel time - door to door, including getting to the non-centrally located airport, airport security, time on the runway, and getting from the non-centrally located airport to your final destination, you're about on par with the door to door travel time of HSR. We also explain that Southwest won't be able to offer those fares for much longer - they locked in their fuel costs at $55/bbl through the use of complex fuel hedges that will soon expire and leave them vulnerable to rising oil prices.

Which, we should add, must never be forgotten. Earlier this week Deutsche Bank predicted $175/bbl by 2016 (mark my words: it will happen well before that date) and that such a price rise will "put the final nail in oil's coffin." The key is what happens here in the USA:

US demand is the key. It is the last market-priced, oil inefficient, major oil consumer. We believe Obama’s environmental agenda, the bankruptcy of the US auto industry, the war in Iraq, and global oil supply challenges have dovetailed to spell the end of the oil era.

Deutsche Bank's analysis assumes that electric cars will radically change how we use oil in this country. I hope it does. But electric cars are no substitute for oil-fueled jets for getting people from LA to SF and vice versa. We need electric cars AND electric trains, both for local and statewide travel.

California is poised to lead the path forward. We will use high speed rail to unshackle ourselves from a failing and suicidal dependence on oil, and produce a sustainable economic prosperity, shared broadly, for the remainder of this century.

Deputy AG Letter Supports CHSRA's Transbay Position

Yesterday the California Attorney General's office responded to an August 21 letter from the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. The TJPA letter argued that it is "legally improper" for the CHSRA to study any alternatives to the Transbay Terminal as the San Francisco terminus. Deputy AG Christine Sproul, writing on behalf of AG Jerry Brown, explained the AG office's position that CHSRA is entirely correct to study other alternatives. The letter is reproduced below:

Deputy AG Transbay Letter to CHSRA ED 91709

I have to run and catch a train here in Sacramento, but I wanted to get this up there for everyone on the blog to read and react to. Obviously this means the dispute between CHSRA and TJPA is not going away anytime soon. I continue to believe that political leadership, particularly from San Francisco's powerful federal representatives, is desperately needed to bring CHSRA and TJPA to the table to develop a workable solution.

What's Up With the Transbay Terminal?

Been meaning to write about this for a few days now, as those that I talked to at the Palo Alto teach-in can attest. As you've probably noticed if you've followed some of the blogs and even local news outlets, there's quite a dispute emerging over the Transbay Terminal project, with Quentin Kopp making moves in recent weeks to push for major changes to HSR's interface with it. One of the best overviews of the matter is over at Eric's Transbay Blog:

So what’s the beef now? Rather than employ the downtown extension alignment and station location previously adopted by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the CHSRA would instead like to override the TJPA’s previous efforts and study alternative locations for the San Francisco terminus in its project-level EIR/EIS for the San Francisco-San Jose segment. In particular, the CHSRA has set its sight on another terminal to accommodate its exaggerated capacity requirements — the Beale Street terminal, situated parallel to Beale Street, and stretching roughly from Mission Street to Harrison Street. But this is an alternative that was resurrected from the dead. In the 1990s, a handful of potential Caltrain downtown extension alignments were considered. Most of those, including alignments leading to a Beale Street terminal, were rejected as undesirable or infeasible.

What happened was this: CHSRA obtained a legal opinion from lawyer Duane Morris that claims TJPA is obligated to review the Beale Street alternative under both CEQA and NEPA, under the argument that the existing EIR/EIS was approved on the basis of Caltrain being the primary user of the downtown tunnel extension (DTX). Since HSR's use requirements are different, the opinion goes, a new EIR/EIS is needed that would include the Beale alignment.

As Rafael has charted before, there are legitimate concerns with the design of the train box at Transbay, including the curvature of the "throat." But Eric at Transbay Blog suggests CHSRA is actually motivated by financial concerns:

But it does not seem coincidental that the agency’s temper — presumably largely fueled by, or embodied in, its ever-colorful former chairman, Quentin Kopp — flares up at the exact points in time when the TJPA competes with the CHSRA for access to new pots of funding that are being made available for high-speed rail....California has submitted project requests to the U.S. Department of Transportation, including a $400 million request that, if granted, would allow the Transbay Transit Center’s train box to be excavated sooner rather than later, using a “bottom up” construction approach. Transbay, by virtue of its completed environmental documents, is classified as a “ready-to-go” project, eligible for a Track 1 high-speed rail stimulus grant. In just a few weeks, the Federal Railroad Administration will announce the Track 1 projects that it has selected for grants.

It is this issue that has caused tempers to flare over this dispute. The Federal Railroad Administration is going to decide soon on whether Transbay and the train box will get federal HSR stimulus money. TJPA and the Bay Area transit community are concerned - rightly - that CHSRA's actions will jeopardize that money.

To that end Brian Stanke, Executive Director of Californians for High Speed Rail, has authored the following letter to Joseph Szabo, Administrator of the FRA. It is a detailed argument as to why Transbay Terminal deserves the $400 million, and why CHSRA's claims are invalid and should not be used to withhold that money:

CA4HSR FRA Letter

CHSRA has not offered any official comment on this subject for this post, despite my inquiries. Based on other published reports, including things we have discussed at this blog, we do know that CHSRA has raised concerns about the platform capacity at Transbay. We also know that the relationship between TJPA and CHSRA is very sour. Last December Kopp blasted TJPA's Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan for trying to keep Kopp and CHSRA out of the planning and discussion process. For their part, as Eric noted above, TJPA believes CHSRA has been trying to undermine the Transbay project at almost every turn.

Although the CHSRA may believe any problems with the HSR/DTX project lie with TJPA, it should be quite clear to them they have lost this particular battle in the court of public opinion. Bay Area transit advocates are outraged at the prospect of the Transbay trainbox losing out on badly needed federal funding. The use of development rights - specifically, selling the air rights to build skyscrapers to help pay for the Transbay project - is correctly seen as an innovative model for funding urban transit infrastructure. The DTX and train box are considered vital for bringing more mass transit commuters to the SF urban core - particularly for Caltrain. Proposition H passed by a significant margin in 1999 by SF voters to approve the project, and the project remains popular with San Francisco residents.

We don't yet know if it is too late, but my strong advice to CHSRA is to make peace with the Transbay Terminal project. If the federal funding is denied, it will do nothing to help CHSRA's relationships around the state and could cause a reaction from SF's influential political leadership. If there were enormous flaws with the design then that would be good reason to oppose the funding and redesign the project, but even those who have criticized the design of the "throat" haven't suggested the project be scrapped or that the "throat" design is unworkable (although it is not an ideal design).

I also renew my call for federal intervention. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein are extremely well positioned to play a role as mediator between TJPA and CHSRA. We called for this to occur last December when the CHSRA/TJPA dispute first emerged. It hasn't happened and both the Transbay Terminal and the HSR project are worse off for it.

Quentin Kopp: HSR is "Organic Green"

Responding to a silly Examiner editorial espousing neo-Hooverite claims about the high speed rail project, former CHSRA chairman Quentin Kopp has an op-ed today defending the HSR project against claims it is "pork":

The latest editorial suggests that federal stimulus dollars to the high-speed rail project are attributable to backroom, smoke-filled dealings with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Such leaps of logic would be silly and worth a chuckle or two if not so dangerous in misinforming California residents. On the contrary, federal stimulus dollars will provide needed impetus to our dreary economy. Moreover, California is in the pole position for those critical dollars thanks to decades of vital work by the California High-Speed Rail Authority....

Don’t politicize high-speed rail and lambaste it in some overarching dissatisfaction with the U.S. stimulus bill. “Track to Nowhere” may be an easy, sophomoric chant, to which millions more will chant back, “Build, baby, build.” Construction of a high-speed train system constitutes the premiere opportunity for California to lift itself into the 21st century. I’ll put my faith in independent residents of California who understand the benefits of high-speed rail, not as a partisan policy position but as a nonpartisan solution for our state’s stressed transportation system.

Kopp is right to put his faith there, in the same voters who were bombarded with right-wing distortions and lies about HSR in 2008 and still voted to approve HSR and $10 billion in bonds. Voters understand very well the need for economic recovery, for sustainable transportation, for high speed trains. Republican, right-wing claims that this is "pork" have gained hardly any traction at all with the public. But kudos to Kopp for pushing back against the nonsense anyway.

SF to San José Draft Scoping Report Available

Find it here: Draft SF to SJ Scoping Report (PDF). I haven't had a chance to look at this closely yet, but it apparently includes 950 letters from Peninsula NIMBYs - I love the way SFist described it:

The report includes over 950 letters from assorted cranky Peninsula NIMBYs, hippies, and Howard Jarvis looking Ayn Rand worshippers demanding that the high speed rail project be squashed underfoot like a pesky insect. That, or the rail authority should put the train in a tunnel all the way down the Peninsula from San Francisco to San Jose, because, you know, that would be like cost effective and practical and everything.

So, have a look at the document and post your thoughts in the comments. I'll have a fuller analysis on this either tonight or tomorrow.

New Transbay Terminal Renderings

by Robert Cruickshank



Thanks to Andy at Curbed SF for pointing me to the new design renderings for the Transbay Terminal. Here's how he described it:

[It] shows in more detail in the immediate surroundings of the 1,500-foot-long building, one of whose principal concerns is to not be the dank, enclosed transit station most of us are used to. To that end, large skylights called "light columns" puncture the building from the 5.4-acre urban park on the roof, and penetrate deep into the building— underpasses, notes the architect, also get the airiness treatment. LEED Gold certification is a distinct possibility for the building, whose "urban room" will be similar in scale to Grand Central Station's. The building will almost entirely be naturally ventilated, and there's even talk of tapping into geothermal energy. The park, designed by landscape architect Peter Walker, may also feature a water thing running its length, with fountains spurting whenever a bus passes by underneath. There's room for sky bridges to the park from surrounding buildings, and there'll be a funicular (see: tourist attraction) to take people from ground level to the top.

Ambitious, to be sure, but it's also the right move. A 21st century transit terminal should be an open and inviting place, to suit the renewed interest in mass transit and passenger rail in particular. The folks that redesigned the Ferry Building did a good job with it, but the Transbay Terminal requires a more open design - something that is easy to use and familiarizes San Franciscans and Californians generally speaking with transit as a centerpiece of the city.

Worth keeping in mind the big picture here even as we continue to debate the implementation of the train box and HSR connectivity.

Quentin Kopp On Transbay Terminal

In response to yesterday morning's post on the Transbay Terminal Quentin Kopp, chairman of the California High Speed Rail Authority, called me up to chat about the project and to give his side of the story.

First, he said that there is no agreement yet on the Transbay Terminal capacity issue. The Steven T. Jones article in the Guardian shouldn't be taken to imply that any solutions have been reached. The notion of 8 trains an hour at TBT and 4 at 4th and King came from a meeting with MTC engineers, but again it's just a proposal. I asked Kopp what he thought the right solution should be and he said he needed to hear back from his engineers, and that might take up to 6 more months.

Second, Kopp explained from the CHSRA's perspective the debate over the Transbay Terminal solution. Two months ago engineers from the Transbay Joint Powers Agency, the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (Caltrain) and the CHSRA met to discuss the Transbay project. It was there that the engineers, without dissension, agreed that the existing design was inadequate to accommodate the 12 trains per hour that CHSRA requested.

And where did that 12 trains per hour figure come from? According to Kopp, it's based on the 2035 ridership projections in the 2008 study done by Cambridge Systematics.

Third, Kopp emphasized that the Transbay Terminal remains the CHSRA's preferred SF terminal, has been since 2006, and is of course written into Proposition 1A. Kopp does have financial concerns about the project - he quoted a cost figure of $2.8 billion. He believes that TJPA is moving too quickly on this and that CHSRA will be forced to commit some of its $9 billion HSR bond money to the project sooner than he'd prefer.

This is problematic for Kopp because of the possibility of precedent-setting. As he explained it to me, if SF gets a $2.8 billion tunnel and train station, then many other stations and cities along the route will point to that and demand that similar amounts of money be spent on their own preferred station designs and grade separation solutions. Kopp is determined to bring the project in on-time and on-budget, and doesn't want the Transbay Terminal project to suck up an undue amount of the available money at the expense of the rest of the line.

Kopp also expressed dissatisfaction with the track layout, specifically the curves of the track from 4th and King to TBT, but the above issues seem to be at the heart of his and the CHSRA's concerns.

Transbay Terminal Compromise In The Works?

That's what Steven T. Jones of the San Francisco Bay Guardian reported Friday night:

TJPA spokesperson Adam Alberti tells the Guardian that involved agencies are hoping operational adjustments can be made to handle up to eight trains per hour at Transbay, and that the additional four trains per hour that the California High-Speed Rail Authority says it wants might have to stop at the existing 4th and Townsend station.

Several commenters have floated this idea in our various Transbay posts, of having some trains go all the way to SF Transbay and others terminate at 4th and King. I'm curious which trains would stop where - won't most riders want to go all the way to the Financial District? Do we believe the typical Southern Californian* will understand the difference between SF 4th and King and SF Transbay Terminal on an HSR map, timetable, or website? Perhaps they will, and a 4th and King solution is dependent on the Central Subway - but this is probably the best solution given the politics of the matter.

Operationally, I can live with it, but as you all know by now I tend to take the big picture view of all this - I'm curious what those of you who are skilled in the details of the Transbay Terminal issue think.

Jones's article continues, still paraphrasing Adam Alberti:

He said there is a growing consensus against building a second floor of train platforms, which could add $1 billion to the price of the project. The TJPA board needs to land on a plan by May so current contracts can be issued and so regional agencies can come together on a request for about $1 billion in federal stimulus money when the state makes its formal request for federal high-speed rail funding in June.

That says to me that SF city and Caltrain officials, who have many of the TJPA seats, and the MTC are part of this "growing consensus" against the second floor concept that CHSRA has been pushing. They want to move quickly to get the contracts out and to show the feds that we really are moving on the shovel-ready aspects of the HSR project in order to get some stimulus money. I think that is exactly the right approach to take.

Of course, Quentin Kopp still isn't happy:

CHSRA Chair Quentin Kopp continues to question the Transbay Terminal project, saying its schedule and location have been dictated by its bus component and noting that its costs have been creeping ever higher. “This has all the earmarks of San Francisco’s Big Dig.”

I don't really understand what is up with Kopp's opposition to the Transbay Terminal project, but this does not reflect very well on him. It will only cause more people to think that his whole "we need a second floor for unspecified operational reasons" was in fact an effort to kill the train box idea entirely and terminate the line at 4th and King. And that may well be exactly what is going on here. But Kopp isn't doing himself or the Authority or the project any favors by his stance on this. And his use of the "Big Dig" canard is really not a good idea at all. The HSR deniers have been using that frame against us for months, and although we've done well in beating it back, the last thing we need is for an official of the CHSRA to start using it themselves. There is in fact NO indication whatsoever, at this point, that the Transbay Terminal project will be plagued by the kind of massive cost overruns that hit the Big Dig - and as many have noted, one of the reasons for those overruns was constant meddling in the design process by various authorities.

At a time when Kopp has a much bigger problem on his hands - the unrealistic demand of mid-Peninsula cities for a tunnel - he should not be going around pissing off and alienating potential allies with attacks on the Transbay Terminal project. Let's hope that this compromise is workable, that it holds, and that we can move on with the overall HSR project.

* - I was born and raised in Southern California and while I love that place dearly, not everyone there is skilled at grasping these kinds of details.

BruceMcF on Transbay Terminal

Note from Robert: Bruce McF has been generous enough to allow us to post this excellent discussion of the Transbay Terminal trainbox and track issues that he wrote. In addition to the link to his own site he gave below, he posted it over at the European Tribune as well, where as usual there is a good discussion on this.

From Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I was able to get an interesting look into the proposed future of Intercity Travel in the Bay at the Transbay Terminal (TBT) in San Francisco.

Senate Info Hearing on High Speed Rail in California

Note that I am not trying to give "objective reporting" on this issue but rather to give vent to my reaction to watching the hearing online ... see The Troubling Discord Between Transbay and High Speed Rail Authorities for a less hot under the collar reaction..

One piece of information is that in California, when one public authority has the funding for sufficient staff and another doesn't, and it comes to a fight, it is considered fair game for the staffed up authority to toss up spin and red herrings and biased analyses, confident that the other authority does not have the capacity to answer promptly.

Late on in the piece is the technical guy from the Transbay Terminal (TBT) project putting in all sorts arguments against changing the design of the TBT "train box", without concern or regard for whether the arguments would be considered fair or impartial by a disinterested third party. He compared:

• the station stopping time at a through platform to the station stopping time at a terminal platform;
  
• the terminal turn-around for a regional rail service running between San Jose and San Francisco with a long distance rail service for a train that arrived from Anaheim/LA (or even, in Stage 2, San Diego); and
  
• the number of services on single routes in Japan and Europe with the number of services for the main northern terminal for multiple routes in California
  

He wasn't the only one with tricks up his sleeve ... one of the Senators asked after the terminal capacity at Anaheim. The answer, by the way, was six platform tracks for what is supposed to be the secondary Southern Terminus when the full system is complete ... two more than the TBT proposes for HSR, at what is supposed to be the primary Northern Terminus.


How many HSR services should be allowed for?

On the other hand, the California High Speed Rail Authority (CAHSRA) seems to be making claims that are difficult to support. They seem to have asked for an ability to support 12 trains per hour (tph), with 40 minute platform dwell times, claiming that they need 9 to 10 platform tracks.

First, the basic math ... 12tph with 40 minute platform dwells, inclusive of headways, is 8 platforms.

More fundamentally, though, where are 12 trains per hour coming from? That is a technical requirement for through stations, because the HSR line is designed to permit trains to pass at five minute intervals, and along the line, you cannot allow one service to block the next in line.

For the terminal station, the question is the number of services that might start or end at the station. For the California HSR system:

• LA and the Bay is the backbone transport market for the HSR system ... there could well be demand for one LA/Anaheim Express and, half an hour later, one LA/San Diego Express
  
• Running Express Routes drops off very useful trip pairs, so there will be demand for a Semi-Express, and the likelihood is that the hour that supports two Bay/LA Express services will support a Bay/LA/San Diego Semi-Express.
  
• The Central Valley will be within three hours by an all-stops HSR to both LA and the Bay ... and within two hours of one, the other, or both. So in addition, one all-stations LA/Anaheim HSR service per hour providing access to and from the CV ... bearing in mind that while this is a smaller transport market, the HSR will grab a larger share of the total market
  

So this is 4 trains per hour ... 1 train per hour on four distinct services ... without even considering a Fresno special, or a spur at Mojave for Las Vegas.

And when the 400 seat single level, single set trains start filling up, its better for building ridership to increase frequency than to increase capacity. 2 LA/Anaheim Expresses per hour, split the all-stops CV into Express Fresno then all-stops to LA and all-stops to Fresno and Express to LA, and a mix of Express LA/San Diego and Express to LA then all stops to San Diego, and we are already at 6tph.

Indeed, as blogger DoDo on the European Tribune notes, the service schedule that the HSR ridership modeling is based upon (pdf) implies up to 8 trains per hour at the TBT.

Twelve trains per hour may be aiming too high, but six trains per hour clearly risks aiming too low.

Given the massive cost of building more capacity after the original foundation has been laid, the capability for eight (8) HSR trains per hour seems to be a perfectly reasonable expectation for the primary northern terminus for the system.


Following the trail of red herring

Now, when someone deploys deceptive comparisons and unbalanced comparisons, I have a reflex reaction ... a pile of red herring is normally used to cover something up.

And that something seems to be is a design flaw.

The TBT "train box" includes two "tail tracks", allows trains to get off the platform, either for overnight parking or for non-passenger operations like restocking and cleaning, without using up space in the tunnel.

What this means in theory is a train can arrive at an arrival platform, unload passengers (which is a very quick operation, since trains have far fewer passengers per door than airplanes), move to the tail platform to make room for the next train, get trach unloaded, seats needing deep cleaning looked after, food and beverage restocked, and then get move to the departure platform.

And the TBT tunnel access is designed with three tracks, which eliminates all sorts of potential bottlenecks:

• Both Caltrain and HSR services arrive in the TBT on the central track
  
• A Caltrain service departs from the Caltrain island platform using the "inner" tunnel track, which opens up the platform for an arriving Caltrain service
  
• After the departing Caltrain service has left, the arriving Caltrain service switches over to the "inner" track to get to the Caltrain island platform
  
• HSR services run directly to the central arrival island
  
• Passengers depart the HSR services, the train goes to the tail track for restocking and to clear the platform for the next service, from the tail track to the departure platform, then depart using the "outer" tunnel track
  

This is a system that allows three different islands to be accessed with little interference, because only two islands receive incoming trains, and because each type of service has its own dedicated departure track ... so they can arrive in sync, dwell in station for different lengths of time, and leave on their own schedule.

In particular, it allows the HSR trains to be in the station for over 40 minutes, while only occupying the platforms for 30 minutes each, raising the capacity of four platforms from six trains per hour to eight trains per hour.

This also makes it easier to organize efficient movement of passengers, since passengers are either leaving or arriving at each HSR platform ... there isn't a the problem of departing passengers getting in the way of arriving passengers.

With this approach, 4 platform tracks support 8 trains per hour ... which is to say, adequate to the needs of the planned HSR system with enough spare capacity to allow for some growth.


The Design Flaw



The design flaw ... for supporting 8tph, that is ... may not jump out at you, but its in the picture, taken from the 2003 "locally preferred option" design for the TBT Environmental Impact Report. The right hand side is the tunnel from the present end of the rail line. The left hand is the turn to the tail tracks.

Now, the HSR platforms have to be designed for long trains ... once the capacity is filled with 8 car, 400 seat trains, they can be extended to 16-car, 800 seat trains, and then by moving to bi-level trains, 1400 seat trains. That means a 1,320 foot long platform. That means that the bottom two islands are for the HSR and the top island is for Caltrain. The bottom two platforms need to be stretched a bit, and the middle one straightened somehow ... but the TBT technical person said that that had been fixed up.

So, stepping through the pictured design:

• Counting access tracks, three tunnel tracks split up to make six platform tracks. So far, so good.
  
• For Caltrain to operate as described above, a switch will have to be added so Caltrain services can get from the middle tunnel track to the "inner" tunnel track which leads to the Caltrain platform. And since the outbound train has to leave the Caltrain platform before the inbound train can arrive, that will work just fine.
  
• The two Caltrain platform tracks are connected directly to the Caltrain exit track, so that will work just fine.
  
• For the HSR trains to operate as described above, the central island is the arriving platform, connected directly to the tunnel track that brings trains in. That will work just fine.
  
• That leaves the bottom island as the departing platform. The two platform tracks at this island are connected directly to the HSR exit track, so that will work just fine.
  
• And the tail tracks ... are not connected to the bottom platform track. Instead, the bottom platform track comes to a dead end. That is not just fine. Indeed, assuming that the TBT has the staff that they likely know all of this already, that might be what the pile of red herring is supposed to cover up.

What can be done to straighten up the mess? One approach is to swap the Caltrain platform from top to bottom ... and trim a substantial piece from the front (right hand side) of the bottom platform. In fact, trim enough from the front that the switch between the two platform tracks is after the single tunnel track has rounded the corner.


Note that this is just a rough sketch

Trimming off the front of the bottom island allows the middle island to straighten up. Straightening up the middle island allows the top island to straighten up.

The middle island can be straightened up a bit by extending the tail track directly from the middle platform, with switches connecting the top island, which gives more room before the platform track must bend to form the rail track..

This might not be enough for 1320 ft. of straight platform, but it'll be a lot closer ... and, after all, the CAHSRA is probably overstating how much straight platform they need, since the platform only needs to be straight for the passenger car portion. A little bit of bend for the driver cars at the front and rear of the train can be tolerated. If this can get 1200 ft.. of straight platform with a 60 ft. curved part on either side, that certainly seems like it ought to be OK.


So, if both sides are wrong, who is going to admit it?

The question that puzzles me the most is not the technical one ... as tight a squeeze as it may be ... but the political one. The TBT authority have made public claims that present a picture of basically being ready to go, except for the fantastical demands of the CAHSR authority. The CAHSR authority has made fallen into the trap of making an ambit claim that they will have to strain to support ... but if that costs them the political argument, the fact that the TBT train box is an inadequate design is likely to be lost in the collapse.

The only player that strikes me as having the opportunity to say, "wait a minute, here's a fix that won't cost all that much to implement" is Caltrain. But ... under the solution above, they are giving up a 900 ft. platform, connected to the tail tracks, for what could end up being a 800 ft. platform, with only one connection to the tail track, and that connection only available when the closest HSR platform track is empty.


To Be Continued ...

Anyway, that's the puzzle. But there's another possibility ... one which might be of more appeal to Caltrain ... so I am going to end this with an ellipses.

...

-Bruce

Your Weekend Transbay Terminal Update

We've been touching on this subject in the comments section of some of the recent posts, and it's time we devoted some space on the front page of the blog itself to the recent developments in the Transbay Terminal planning. The California High Speed Rail Authority is calling for a train box capable of accommodating 12 trains per hour to be built at the outset of the project, instead of the currently planned box capable of handling four trains an hour. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle SF politicians are skeptical of the need to do this:

"We need to see whether high-speed rail's demand of a train every five minutes is bogus, which is what I believe, or if there's actually merit to it. Then they have a money problem," said San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, who serves on the Transbay Joint Powers Authority board. That agency is overseeing construction of the new transportation center at First and Mission streets...

Like Daly, [Transbay project manager Emilio Cruz] questioned the assertion by representatives of the California High Speed Rail Authority that the station needs to accommodate so many trains. Only Tokyo - a city of more than 12 million people, or nearly 15 times larger than San Francisco - has a station that accommodates more high-speed rail service than the authority proposes.

The article quotes Mehdi Morshed as arguing that "We want to build something that will last 50 or 100 years" - a sentiment I agree with in principle. But as others have noted, the CHSRA has yet to detail the reasons for wanting a train box capable of handling 12 trains an hour and why it should be built up-front, instead of down the road when a burgeoning ridership could create the political will to finance an expansion. (If anyone at the CHSRA wants to share that info, I'd be happy to pass it along - my email is my last name at gmail.)

Eric at Transbay Blog can't find any clear answer for the 12 trains per hour argument:

But even in that worst-case scenario, combining the CHSRA’s ridership projections with its new alleged need for increased peak capacity, the trains would only be 12-43% full at the newly increased service levels. Note that there are still other design options that were once considered — including tail tracks and an underground track loop — which would improve the flow of trains in and out of the station.

And in the long, long, term, beyond 2030? An additional tube under the Bay has long been discussed in hushed tones, even though it is not yet being planned outright. If an additional tube contained four tracks (with two broad gauge tracks for BART, and two standard gauge tracks for intercity and high-speed rail), it would dramatically increase pinched transbay capacity. It would open up new possibilities for regional connectivity, and it would finally integrate Oakland and the East Bay directly into the state’s high-speed rail network. It would also mean that trains would run through Transbay, rather than terminating there, which would put less stress on that station.

So is this really about CHSRA's desire to keep open the option of an extension across the bay to Oakland? If so, it could explain their lack of specificity on the plan for 12 trains an hour - why give ammunition to the Peninsula NIMBYs by holding out a transbay tube and a possible East Bay route that these NIMBYs could point to as a reason to kill HSR.

That's blind speculation, of course. And we've seen worse suggested in the comments, that this is all somehow a Quentin Kopp effort to undermine the Transbay project for his own goals. I have always resisted the groundless conspiracy theories that some toss out there about Kopp, or Rod Diridon, or the CHSRA, and I continue to resist those here. But it must be said that such theories abound when there is a lack of information. The CHSRA needs to release its studies and reasoning that explains why they need a train box capable of handling 12 trains an hour so that we can give them open and honest discussion. That's to their benefit and ours as well.

Ironically, the dispute is doing something usually not thought possible in SF politics - uniting Chris Daly and Gavin Newsom:

"I find myself on the same side as Gavin Newsom,” Sup. Chris Daly, who has long supported the Transbay project as a TJPA board member and regularly battles with Newsom. “We’re going to pull together San Francisco officials around this issue."

Daly said he has had recent discussions with Newsom’s economic policy head Michael Cohen and with Newsom-aligned Sup. Sean Elsbernd, and they’re all on the same page.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

Gavin Newsom Wants To Be the HSR Governor

SF Mayor and gubernatorial hopeful Gavin Newsom held a town hall in Oakland last night, and my friend sean mykael of Bear Flag Blue attended and gave a great report on the event. Becks of Living in the O was there as well, and focused on Newsom's answer to a question from AC Transit Director Joel Young. Newsom pretty much evaded Young's question on transit funding, but did use the opportunity to make a paean to high speed rail:

Joel explained that the state had defunded public transit and asked if Newsom, as governor, would restore public transit funding.

Newsom responded that public transit is so important for the environment and briefly answered, “Yes,” that he would restore the funding. But then instead of explaining why or how, he jumped into a long-winded speech about high speed rail. He started off by saying that he wanted to tell us about a project that he knew not all of us supported because it barely passed. This is a strange thing to say because 63% of Alameda County voters voted in favor of Prop 1A.

He then explained how high speed rail was going to change the state, creating jobs and changing how we thought about and used transportation. He talked about his vision for the “Grand Central Station of the West,” which is what some are calling the Transbay Terminal. Energetically, he explained how this would greatly improve the Bay Area region, making it easy to get from downtown to downtown (Oakland to SF).

And that was it. That was his answer to an AC Transit Director.

I'm sure Newsom and his staff will quickly learn that a large chunk of the SF Bay Area did support Prop 1A (or that they need to have different talking points depending on their audience!), but this is a nice statement of support for the HSR project from one of the Democratic candidates. It would also be worth noting that John Garamendi, another Democratic candidate for governor, has also been a strong backer of high speed rail.

I'm glad to hear that Newsom understands the importance of the Transbay Terminal and HSR more broadly. And I am also pleased to hear that he is not just promoting this at campaign events, but is working with Speaker Nancy Pelosi to lobby the feds for HSR funds:

San Francisco officials are teaming up with their Los Angeles counterparts to jointly push for a huge chunk of the $8 billion the stimulus plan will devote to high-speed rail. California believes the federal funds could accelerate the state's plan for a bullet train that could whisk passengers between the two cities in 2 1/2 hours.

At a closed-door meeting Tuesday, Pelosi told the San Francisco delegation the city was more likely to have success in winning the funding from federal officials if it presented a united front along with other California cities.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu said the city was facing tough competition for the dollars from other regions, including President Obama's hometown of Chicago, which is seeking high-speed rail links to Milwaukee and St. Louis. But he said California is the only state to have passed bonds for high-speed rail and completed an initial environmental planning process.

"From a readiness perspective, we're ahead of probably any other comparable project in the country," Chiu said.

And as to the dispute over the train box? SF Supervisor Bevan Dufty says that high-level meetings between all the key agencies are happening, but Senator Dianne Feinstein is throwing a monkey wrench into the works:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a supporter of the project, said the city should be able to make a good case for the high-speed rail money, but only if state and local entities come together behind a realistic plan.

"My greatest fear is that it's not going to get done right," she said Tuesday. "Now I hear discussions that it has changed to fit a train every five minutes. Well, I know San Francisco, and there ain't going to be a train that gets in and out of there in five minutes. So I'm worried about how realistic the planning is. It used to be (one train) every 15 minutes, which is much more reasonable."

Someone needs to tell DiFi that if you want to "get it done right" then you need to build the train box to handle the desirable capacity now instead of doing a costly rebuild decades down the line. And I'm not the technical expert here, but I'm not sure the choice is between a train every 5 minutes or every 15 minutes - or that every 5 minutes isn't viable.

The worst thing that could happen is to limit the expansion capacity of the system - to prevent it from being "scalable" to borrow from web development jargon - just because a moderate Democratic Senator felt like being stingy way back in 2009.

Still, it's good to see Newsom taking a strong position publicly and privately for HSR. If he really wanted to help he could talk about the need to secure the $29.1 million (I got it right this time! yay me!) that the CHSRA needs to complete its work. And if he wanted to be bold he would go to the Peninsula and explain why they need to stop obstructing and start collaborating with the Authority and the project.

Let's hope Newsom's lead encourages the other gubernatorial candidates to demonstrate their support for high speed rail and provide some leadership that has been severely lacking these last few years.

Tight Squeeze At Transbay Terminal?

The San Francisco chronicle reports that CHSRA is now publicly complaining that the train box and tail tracks planned for the new Transbay Terminal Center in San Francisco (SFTT) may run out of capacity as early as 2030. For those who have followed the development of that project and its relationship with both HSR and Caltrain, this latest issue is in fact old news. To recap:

The design of the SFTT train box calls for six underground platform tracks, of which four will be reserved for HSR and two for Caltrain. Two tail tracks plus evacuation route will run down Main St. as far as the freeway supports. The tail tracks will enable offline cleaning/provisioning of HSR trains during the day and, provide additional overnight parking capacity for four trainsets. Caltrain would perform its cleaning in San Jose/Gilroy and use its existing station at 4th & King as an overflow overnight parking lot.

CHSRA is planning ahead for the possibility of one day running as many as 12 trains per hour (tph) in each direction during peak periods. That corresponds to headways of 5 minutes, i.e. de facto maximum line throughput capacity. Whether this volume of HSR traffic will materialize on peak traffic days in 2030 is of course uncertain. Indeed, it may take far longer or, never happen at all. The point is that CHSRA does not want to build a very expensive network only to have throughput capacity limited by one of its anchor stations.

Most likely, there have been behind-the-scenes discussions on this for a while, but adding platforms would be far from trivial. However, now that TJPA intends to apply for a slice of the $8 billion reserved for HSR in the recent stimulus bill, CHSRA has decided to pull the rip cord by going public.

So, does Quentin Kopp have a valid point regarding capacity limitations at SFTT?

The math suggests that he does: 12tph each way means using two platform tracks for alighting and two for boarding. Just 9 minutes would be available for each operation, with one additional minute reserved for moving away from the platform. Cleaning/provisioning time would likewise be limited to just 9 minutes plus one minute for moving the train back out. Total turnaround time would therefore have to be limited to just 30 minutes, which is very aggressive.

A single single-level HSR trainset (8 EMU cars including 2 conductor cabins) can support around 400 seats, comparable to a Boeing 747. A bi-level trainset is more akin to an Airbus A380. Full-length trains consist of two trainsets - SNCF regularly operates 16-car TGV Duplex consists offering a total of 1090 seats on the busy Paris-Lyon-Marseille route. JR's largest shinkansen trainsets, the E4 Max, feature five seats abreast to support 817 passengers each, yielding a maximum of 1634 passengers per train - fully three Airbus A380s! Ideally, operators would like at least an hour of turnaround time for such monsters, but at full line capacity the SFTT design would require cutting that in half. Is that even remotely feasible?

Theoretically it is, but only just. Here's how:

1. A train, with up to 1200 passengers on board, pulls into an empty track at SFTT. The side of the wide platform is empty. Within 9 minutes, passengers alight through two doors per car and proceed to the building's concourse level. By the time the train is empty, a separate one will emerge clean and provisioned from the tail tracks and quickly proceed to the empty departure platform.
   
   Meanwhile, the first passengers booked on the outbound train 30 minutes later are already passing through security (if required) and sitting down in a waiting area that is sectioned by car number and row groups. Each passenger already holds an e-ticket with a mandatory seat reservation (cp. TGV in France) that specifies the departure time, train car, row number and seat identifier.
   
   
2. The now empty train quickly proceeds to an empty tail track, where a cleaning/provisioning crew of 4 (6 for bi-level trainsets) per car gets cracking for 9 minutes. For a full-length, bi-level train that comes to a brigade of 96 persons. Up to two trains must be cleaned in parallel and, there are two shifts per day. Accounting for 5% break time, staff out sick/on vacation/absent, this adds up to roughly 225 workers per shift or 450 personnel on the payroll. A few specialists would always be held in reserve to deal with unusual issues such as severely soiled seats or mechanical problems in the cafe car.
   
   Such a large operation will require a staff-only section at the east end of the SFTT concourse level. A walkway would get them to the north end of the tail tracks, where they would descend to a narrow, full-length island platform. A separate walkway at the south end of the tail tracks would serve as a secondary exit. Drivers of arriving trains would use it to reach grade level, where they would walk back the 1/4 mile to SFTT (or use a folding bike or shuttle service of some type). Walking the length of the narrow platform would be possible as well. Fresh drivers would board trains via the north access to the tail tracks.
   
   Meanwhile, departing passengers are permitted to descend to the boarding platform. One side of that is empty, as an earlier train has just completed its boarding process and proceeded into the DTX tunnel. After approximate sorting upstairs (cp. Southwest Airlines), passengers are now expected to queue up at their exact row number as marked on the floor and signposted. Note that staff would only enforce this procedure whenever HSR actually does operate at 12tph and, that 10 minutes are available to execute it.
   
   
3. When the clean, empty trains pulls up, passengers rapidly board through their designated doors. For bi-level cars, a maximum of 80 passengers would have to file through each door within 9 minutes. Because of all the queuing discipline, there should be minimal traffic jams inside the car - ideally, all passengers on the entire train would arrive at their reserved seat at almost the same time. As a matter of etiquette, passengers would be asked to avoid blocking the aisle. Large suitcases, folding bicycles etc. need to be stowed, but small items such as carry-on bags etc. can wait until everyone is on board.
   

Note that this schedule contains absolutely no slack. If any part of the turnaround procedure takes extra time for any reason or, if trains fail to arrive on time, there are knock-on effects on at least several - perhaps many - subsequent trains. Such "brittle logistics" are highly undesirable, cp. the constrained pedestrian flow capacity at BART stations in downtown SF during rush hour.

Also note that doubling the number of tail tracks gives the cleaning/provisioning staff twice as much time per train. However, unless their numbers were also doubled to 900, each brigade would consist of half as many workers scrubbing just a s furiously as before - not much would be gained. Besides, decades of experience in assembly-line work have shown that workers quickly figure out how to get their tasks done as efficiently as possible.

On the other hand, additional tail tracks would increase the number of trainsets that could be parked right at the SFTT overnight. The question is if the additional expense for tunneling is worthwhile, compared to the overheads of an at-grade overflow yard for both Caltrain and HSR in Brisbane, the site of an old SP rail yard. This might double as a high speed cargo transshipment center, conveniently located for piggy-backing on single trainset non-express passenger trains during off-peak hours.

At SFTT, a far more serious bottleneck might be the very short interval available for boarding, mostly because orderly queuing is not nearly as common in American culture as it is in Japan or the UK. However, when things get crowded, it's human nature submit to sensible flow management procedures if they are properly explained on the ticket, supported by signs and helpful staff. Infrequent travelers, children traveling alone, the disabled and tourists (except tour groups) may need additional help, possibly even in foreign languages.

---

However, it's not all doom and gloom: CHSRA's scenario of 12tph is really quite extreme. First, as general ridership goes up, there will come a point at which it makes more sense operationally to switch to full-length and then to full-length bi-level trains to keep tph count from escalating. As discussed earlier, a full-length bi-level train with 16 cars and 4 seats abreast can offer ~1100 seats today. With distributed traction, the next generation AGV Duplex should support ~1200 passengers as well as top speeds of ~220mph. Alstom and SNCF are reportedly already collaborating on the design.

Taking that as a basis, consider the numbers: 2 x 12 x 1,200 = 28,800 passengers either boarding or alighting in a single hour. If the pace were maintained for a single 16-hour day of operations, there would be ultimate capacity for 460,800 passenger trips (assuming each seat is only occupied by one passenger for part or all of the route). Considering California's projected population of 50 million by 2030, that still a stupendously large number for intercity travel - even on Thanksgiving.

Side note: SNCF achieves 75% average seat capacity utilization on its TGV network and, tries to avoid letting any one line reach more than 85% to avoid customer satisfaction problems. Of course, individual trains are often sold out on peak travel dates.

Also, keep in mind that SF is not Paris and trains are not short-hop flights. Not every passenger will board at SFTT, there are other stations along the route to LA (at least San Jose Diridon). Therefore, the number of passengers alighting and boarding any given train at SFTT will generally be significantly less than the full complement of seats. Alternatively, it might make a lot of sense to terminate some northbound trains in San Jose on predictable peak traffic days. That would keep tph count at SFTT manageable, giving staff there more time to turn trains around. Some trains departing from SF would then run non-stop to the Central Valley and SoCal.

That means CHSRA's 12tph scenario and the strict turnaround procedure outlined above may not be all that realistic to begin with, even for peak traffic days in 2030. There's really no need to over-engineer the SFTT.

Nevertheless, CHSRA was right to express concerns now, rather than punt the problem to a future generation of planners and engineers. It's also worth pointing out that 12tph for HSR plus Caltrain traffic all day long would severely tax both the DTX tunnel capacity and the patience of peninsula residents whose property abuts the Caltrain right of way. Even if some cities did decide to retain some hardened grade crossings for now, they would have to close or grade separate them at a later date. If ridership on the two railroads really does reach such high levels, any above-ground solution would have to feature very effective sound and vibration damping to avoid real estate blight.

On the other hand, spending additional billions on a tunnel alignment through at least Atherton, Menlo Park and north Palo Alto up front - regardless of who pays for it - would be overkill if ridership grows much more slowly than CHSRA is projecting. Food for thought but again, there's a risk of very expensive over-engineering.

---

On the other hand: if the state's population really does keep growing as predicted and, HSR really does prove so wildly popular that SFTT introduces brittle logistics, there will be knock-on effects for transportation within the SF-Oakland region (and elsewhere). In particular, capacity and earthquake resilience considerations alone combined may prompt the construction of a second transbay tube after the HSR starter line is becomes operational in the 2018-2020 time frame (assuming no construction delays). CHSRA has already explored the option of running tracks up to Oakland, terminating in an intermodal station with West Oakland BART, to prepare for that possibility.

Unfortunately, like it or not, West Oakland isn't a significant draw for passengers and BART already occupies the available rights of way in downtown Oakland. However, a much more interesting option is emerging: the US Navy has turned over the former Alameda NAS to the city of Alameda, which has re-named it Point Alameda. Granted, the clean-up of this superfund site is ongoing. Meanwhile, most of the area has been designated a wildlife refuge for a little-known but endangered species of grey bird (the Least Tern) that has taken a shine to the old runways, because they help to hide nesting sites from predators.

For argument's sake, let's suppose the superfund cleanup can be completed in the next decade and the Least Tern colony recovers sufficiently to permit relocation to a permanent, perhaps smaller, refuge elsewhere in the Bay Area. I'm no ornithologist, but perhaps the uninhabited island just south of Richmond Harbor might be suitable. The issue would definitely require close scrutiny.

With these provisos, the city of Alameda could then consider careful, strictly transit-oriented development of the old Navy base, which is the largest patch of contiguous land available in the region. Readers may want to compare the suggestion below to what the existing community near Point Alameda is already working towards. Again, what type - if any - development happens at the point is up to the city (h/t to commenter Alameda?).

What I have in mind is primarily a large urban park / open space preserve, in addition to the already planned golf course across from Oakland harbor. Historic buildings worth preserving would be re-purposed, new construction would be limited to the southern and eastern edges of the area occupied by the old runways, plus the area just north of Seaplane Lagoon. Since virtually all of that is landfill (cp. Marina district in SF and Treasure Island), the focus would be on few high-rises separated by low-rise with green roofs. The model for the development in downtown Vancouver (BC) and its beautiful Stanley Park. On Point Alameda, trees and meadows (plus the golf course) would be irrigated with recycled water from the city of Alameda.

The catalyst for this effort could be a successful bid to host the 2028 Summer Olympics in the Bay Area.

Perhaps most importantly, motor vehicle access to the entire area occupied by the former Naval base would be restricted to permit holders. Alameda is famously averse to traffic, especially through the Webster and Posey street tubes across to Oakland. Therefore, the primary ways of getting to this new regional park and the new districts would be public transit. Local streetcars, buses, rental bikes (cp. Velib' in Paris), personal folding bicycles and bicycle rikshas (plus plain old walking) would all supplement heavy rail service.

Specifically, BART would be extended from downtown Oakland via a tube and run mostly underground out to the Point. The much longer second transbay tube would extend the SFTT tail tracks to new Caltrain/HSR stations on the Point, with an at-grade terminus/yard at Atlantic Ave. If desired, a parking lot there could be restricted to Alameda residents.

Here's a map of what the end result might look like:


View Larger Map

This concept of extending both broad and standard gauge systems into Point Alameda would give millions on both sides of the bay convenient access to a beautiful new urban park, open space preserve and golf course as well as new housing, office and commercial/nightlife facilities, including a large urban beach. Conveniently, it would also reduce the capacity constraints at SFTT, which would become a through station. Many passengers hailing from or destined for the East Bay would transfer to BART there rather than to buses or BART in SF. This would free up bus terminal capacity at SFTT for beefing up service to Marin county, connecting to SMART trains bound for Santa Rosa in San Rafael.

An optional feature would be an underground gauge change station for BART rolling stock retrofitted with variable gauge trucks. A regular standard-gauge locomotive operated by Caltrain would tow the BART train - possibly without any BART staff on board - across to SFTT and if desired, out to Millbrae/SFO on Caltrain tracks. It may sound a little funky, but variable gauge technology has been in commercial service in Europe for 40 years. FRA would have to approve the arrangement.

Gavin Newsom's TGV Trip

San Francisco mayor and candidate for California governor Gavin Newsom is in France this week and toured the TGV, hoping to boost his profile on sustainable transportation. He also took the occasion to reiterate support for an HSR tunnel to the Transbay Terminal:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom took a tour of the French high speed rail system (TGV) in Paris Monday and said that California's new version of the train is a "requirement" for the Transbay Terminal being planned for San Francisco's South of Market area.

"Since the onset of this project, I have been committed to the grand vision of Transbay, including high speed rail, a downtown extension for Caltrain and the visionary multi-use terminal itself," Newsom said. "Including the rail box as part of the terminal construction is necessary for this grand vision to be realized."...

Newsom's office has said that the plans are not certain as to whether the rail would come into the Transbay Terminal. He said it was vital that it did.

“We’re not going to build a $2 billion bus station under my watch,” said Newsom.

The Transbay Joint Powers Board, which oversees development of the Transbay Terminal, has considered building the first phase of the new terminal without the train terminal, and coming back later to excavate under the terminal and build for high speed rail only if subsequent funding materializes.

On Monday, Newsom came out against that idea, suggesting that the Transbay Joint Powers Board should not move forward on construction of the new transit center until funding is secured for the inclusion of high speed rail and it is fully integrated into the first phase of the project.

We've been calling for someone in San Francisco to assert some leadership on this and while it's great that Newsom is stepping up, the fact is that he does not bring much to the table in terms of financing. If he can get Senators Feinstein or Boxer to step up with including funding for the train box and tunnel in the stimulus, that would be fantastic. Newsom and Obama have a famously frosty relationship so that's not likely to help matters. Still, if Newsom can play a mediative role between the Transbay JPB and the CHSRA that would be helpful.

Newsom also said that the DTX and the train box would be ideal targets of an Obama stimulus. Unfortunately those chances appear to be receding. The DeFazio amendment I wrote about last night has been withdrawn:

We received word this afternoon that Rep. DeFazio's amendment that would have provided $2 billion in assistance to transit agencies was required to be withdrawn. We'll post more as we learn it, but had something to do with parliamentary issues.

There's reports out there that Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, is planning to offer an amendment to the stimulus that would add as much as $10 billion in rail funding. I don't know the details on that, but you'll surely get them as soon as I do.

It's YOUR High Speed Rail Project

Public involvement and oversight is absolutely crucial to the success of the California High Speed Rail project. This blog is committed to providing you information about opportunities to get involved, attend meetings, or otherwise give your feedback and input to the various agencies planning high speed rail. We support the goals of the project, and realize that if it is to be successful, it needs to be done the right way - and that public involvement is a good way to ensure we get the best HSR system we can.

So in that spirit I offer the following information about public meetings regarding HSR in California this month. If you have any others to add, either leave it in the comments or send an email to my last name at gmail.

• January CHSRA Board Meeting
  Thursday, Jan. 8, 10 AM
  Sacramento Area Council of Governments
  1415 L Street, Sacramento
  Agenda
  
  Doesn't seem to be much on the agenda other than the usual project updates. The board will discuss a MOU with the Caltrain board, which may be of interest to Peninsula residents. These meetings always have scheduled time for public comments, as is mandatory under state law.



• Peninsula EIR/EIS Meetings
  
  As Clem has so helpfully described on his blog the Federal Railroad Administration has announced the process for the final Peninsula EIR/EIS statement which includes the following public scoping meetings:
  
  San Mateo County: SamTrans Auditorium, 1250 San Carlos Avenue, San Carlos, California, January 22, 2009 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.
  
  San Francisco: San Francisco State University, 835 Market Street, 6th Floor (Rooms 673-674), San Francisco, California, January 27, 2009 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.
  
  Santa Clara County: Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Parkway, Great America Meeting Rooms 1 & 2, Santa Clara, California, January 29, 2009 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.
  
  Written comments on the scope of the San Francisco to San Jose HST Project EIR/EIS should be provided to the CHSRA by March 6, 2009, and can be sent to comments@hsr.ca.gov with subject line San Francisco to San Jose HST. (thanks to Clem for this info)
  
  I am going to try and attend the Santa Clara meeting, as that's the closest to us here in Monterey.

As always, if any of you attend these meetings and want to write a report for the blog, let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.

Transbay Again

Steven T. Jones has a good article on the fight over the Transbay Terminal in today's San Francisco Bay Guardian, giving some important background details on how an all-too-familiar kind of San Francisco political spat is affecting the debate over who will fund the downtown rail extension into the Transbay Terminal.

First and foremost, the dispute is a financial dispute. As Jones writes of Quentin Kopp's basic attitude:

Kopp is more interested in stretching this $10 billion bond far enough to complete his project. So he’s bristling at efforts by the TJPA to ensure that it’s first in line for the money.

My initial take on this last week was that Kopp was trying to make it clear that the Prop 1A funds are no free for all, and Jones's article supports that interpretation. Kopp explained his reasoning in a letter he wrote to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority on November 13:

Your staff continually seek to insinuate the Transbay Joint Powers Authority in activity which pertains strictly to the consummation of the California High Speed Rail Project. Your October 17, 2008 staff report declares that the total cost ‘of [your project’s] rail component is $2.996 billion.’ It then represents that $2,349,000,000 must be obtained for your project. Please do not attempt to secure California High Speed Rail Project funds to defray the enormous costs of the 1.4 mile ‘downtown rail extension.’ Such effort will not be welcomed by me. Moreover, as far as I am concerned, and I will so state publicly, the California High Speed Rail Project can, as necessary, utilize the terminal at Fourth Street and Townsend Street in San Francisco effectively and efficiently, and at a cost less than the aforementioned cost of your moving it.

As most of us agreed when this subject came up last week, while Kopp is technically correct that HSR could utilize the 4th and King terminal, the Transbay Terminal is a vastly superior solution. Jones quotes several unnamed "sources in the transportation world" who reach the same conclusion. And as I pointed out, the CHSRA board unanimously endorsed the Transbay Terminal as the preferred San Francisco HSR terminus, Kopp included. The Transbay Terminal's consultants fully understand the importance of the downtown extension:

Adam Alberti from Singer and Associates, tells the Guardian that Kopp has his numbers wrong and that TJPA will only be seeking $700-$800 million in Prop. 1A funds for the extension (the rest would come from other sources), which is about the same amount as he said it would cost to renovate the Caltrain station to handle the millions of new passengers the trains would draw.

“The facility is being designed to be the northern terminus for high-speed rail,” Alberti told us. “Their business plan is predicated on it coming into Transbay Terminal.”

Translation: the TJPA feels confident that despite Kopp's bluster, the CHSRA cannot and will not abandon the downtown extension. Eyeball to eyeball, they're convinced Kopp will blink first.

Of course there's more to this dispute than just finances. Kopp is upset with the director of the TJPA, Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan and Singer and Associates:

The letter also mocked the expertise of “your executive director, staff or publicity agents,” something Kopp went even further with a few days later when the Chronicle’s Matier and Ross brought the private spat out into the public (although they didn’t reference the earlier letter, which even Singer and Associates didn’t know about until today).

"I am not going to pay $2.5 billion to move a track 1.4 miles," Kopp said in that article, going on to say Ayerdi-Kaplan "is annoying ... and she and her flacks need to stay out of our hair."

Jones thinks Kopp has a point:

Ayerdi-Kaplan has been inaccessible in recent years and has stumbled into unnecessary fights with the Mayor’s Office, members of the Board of Supervisors, and neighbors of the project. It’s also disconcerting that a public agency feels a need to hide behind one of the most expensive and controversial PR firms in the city. So there’s probably a bit more going on here than what Alberti labeled “a personality clash with Maria Ayerdi.”

Still, the downtown extension really is a key part of the HSR project's success. We want the best transportation system possible and while HSR could survive losing the Transbay Terminal, it is immeasurably strengthened by having it.

As I concluded the last time we discussed this, the missing link is leadership. Neither Kopp nor Ayerdi-Kaplan seem to be providing it, instead engaging in a turf war that doesn't do anyone any good. Both of them need to realize that they need each other to be successful. And it's likely going to take outside pressure to make that realization stick.

There are any number of people who could provide that leadership. A certain San Francisco mayor with gubernatorial ambitions in 2010, for example. Or Senator Dianne Feinstein, herself a possible candidate for governor, someone who has the heft and relationships to help resolve this situation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, yet another San Franciscan, would also be well positioned to help resolve this - especially if federal money can grease the wheels of a deal between the CHSRA and the TJPA.

We "alternative transportation geeks," as Jones calls us, have a lot at stake here. The Transbay Terminal downtown extension project is too important to all of us to fall victim to such rivalries. Kopp needs to tone down the rhetoric, Ayerdi-Kaplan needs to construct better working relationships with Transbay partner agencies, and leading California politicians need to provide some leadership and not allow these folks to tear the project apart through internecine warfare. And we HSR supporters need to let everyone know that the project, and not the personalities, are what matter most.

The Transbay Terminal Tempest

In the comments on the last post there has been quite a lot of discussion about this SF Examiner article with the hyperbolic and overly dramatic headline "Transbay Transit Center Going Off Track":

However, that would necessitate a $2 billion, 1.3-mile extension of Caltrain’s tracks from their current terminus at Fourth and King streets in Mission Bay to downtown’s Transbay Transit Center at First and Mission streets, as well as a “train box” — a massive space underneath the bus terminal big enough to hold six rail platforms and tracks — that could later be tunneled into and developed into a station for Caltrain and high-speed trains.

Transbay Joint Powers Authority spokesman Adam Alberti said the authority began lobbying for funds from the high-speed rail bond in a letter issued last month.

But at least one authority has eschewed the possibility that high-speed rail will pay for the extension.

“We do not need First and Mission. I am satisfied with Fourth and Townsend,” said Judge Quentin Kopp, chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority. “We are not going to pay an extra billion-plus dollars to take the high-speed rail an extra 1.4 miles.”

Kopp is not wrong, but neither is he right. The HSR project can survive without the Transbay Terminal. However, the project is much better off with it included. That 1.3 miles is quite a distance in San Francisco, the difference between the edge of the urban center and the center itself, the core of California's most densely urbanized place. The Transbay Terminal will be located within easy walking distance of a BART station and all Muni Metro lines, as well as the Ferry Terminal. The HSR line ought to go there.

Kopp is likely posturing here to let all parties know that Prop 1A money isn't a free for all. That has value. And it's likely Kopp has been quoted out of context here. Still, he could dial it down a bit. His strong style has value at times but misses the mark here. The Authority doesn't necessarily have to pay all or even any of the cost of the extension. But Kopp ought to work to build consensus to ensure that the HSR line gets completed all the way to the Transbay Terminal. I don't think these comments get us in that direction.

Especially since everyone else appears to be busy playing "pass the buck":

The extension will have to be resolved — and funded — by The City and Caltrain, he said.

But spokeswoman Christine Dunn said Caltrain has not considered devoting any funds to the project, and it would have to be funded by The City and the Transbay project.

Jerry Hill, a member of Transbay’s board of directors and state Assembly member-elect, said that though Transbay hopes to secure some funding for the extension from the high-speed rail, they are not seeing the project as a “cash cow,” and the success of neither high-speed rail nor the Transbay Transit Center depends on the extension.

Hill's comments are especially important here, as they suggest this is not the "omg crisis!" that the Examiner would have us believe. There is a money dispute here, which should surprise nobody. We're going to have to deal with these kinds of issues for at least the next ten years. The political need for multiple funding sources virtually guarantees it. But that doesn't mean these issues can't be resolved.

HSR and the Transbay Terminal are better off with each other. The city of San Francisco and Caltrain ought to be expected to kick in some money as well. So should the feds. Perhaps this is a more important project than the Central Subway that Nancy Pelosi has been pushing for years. And it really is an either/or - if the Central Subway is built then that would enable BART riders to get to the Fourth and King station more easily, if not exactly conveniently; but if the Caltrain and HSR extension gets built then the Central Subway becomes a less necessary piece of infrastructure.

In any event, leadership is needed here to ensure that the Transbay Terminal project and the HSR project both meet their full potential - which means the trains reach the terminal. The CHSRA ought to negotiate in good faith with the Transbay Terminal Authority and all other parties. The extension to the Terminal is an important part of the overall project that ought to be maintained, although fair and equitable cost arrangements should certainly be made.

UPDATE: It is worth noting that the CHSRA board unanimously selected the Transbay Terminal as the preferred terminus in San Francisco for the route when they approved the Final EIR in July. Specifically, Chapter 8 explains the rationale, repeating much of what I said above:

The Transbay Transit Center site is the preferred station location option for the San Francisco HST Terminal. The Transbay Transit Center would offer greater connectivity to San Francisco and the Bay Area than the 4th and King site (about a mile from the financial district) because of its location in the heart of downtown San Francisco and since it would serve as the regional transit hub for San Francisco. The Transbay Transit Center is located in the financial district where many potential HST passengers could walk to the station. The Transbay Transit Center is also expected to emerge as the transit hub for all major services to downtown San Francisco, with the advantage of direct connections to BART (1 block from the terminus), Muni, and regional bus transit (SamTrans, AC Transit, and Golden Gate Transit). Moreover, the Transbay Transit Center is compatible with existing and planned development and is the focal point of the Transbay redevelopment plan that includes extensive high-density residential, office, and commercial/retail development. Sensitivity analysis on the Pacheco Pass “Base” forecasts (low-end forecasts) concluded that the Transbay Transit Center would attract about 1 million more annual passengers a year by 2030 than the 4th and King station location option.

The capital costs needed for the HST component of the Transbay Transit Center (including the 1.3-mile extension) is estimated to be similar to the estimated costs for the 4th and King option. (Page 8-18)

So that strikes me as a pretty clear indication that Kopp was likely quoted out of context and that the Examiner is trying to stir up controversy where it doesn't legitimately exist. The CHSRA is still committed to the Transbay Terminal, and Kopp probably meant to say that if something were to happen and the Transbay Terminal project fell through, HSR could manage.

Obviously there will be things that need to be resolved as detailed plans get made, especially with the Transbay Terminal. How many trains? Where exactly will the "train box" go and how big will it be? What will the specific funding arrangements be? Such issues are ones we're going to have to deal with up and down the route as the plans near completion.

I do still believe that it is in the interest of all the various transit agencies to continue working together on this. The desire to build all the way to the Transbay is there. Let's not allow a one-off article to distract us from that.

Pelosi, Feinstein, Newsom for Prop 1A

At a press conference in San Francisco today Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom all spoke out in favor of Proposition 1A. Their presence ought to dissuade some of the Prop 1A critics who claim that federal funding is uncertain - in 2009 these two members of Congress will be among the most powerful politicians in America and will be in a VERY strong position to help fund California High Speed Rail. They emphasized the environmental and the economic benefits of the project, and DiFi had some strong words for the HSR deniers:

One newspaper said now is not the time because we can’t afford it. I would say we can’t afford not to do it.

Which is of course the truth. As Paul Krugman explains in today's column deficit spending by government to prime the economic pump is an absolute necessity for getting the country out of the recession.

It's not just leading national politicians and Nobel laureate economists making this point. Average Californians grasp the necessity of passing Prop 1A as part of an overall economic stimulus program, as shown by this letter in the Modesto Bee:

California has budget problems because our legislators have been unable to control spending growth and have been unwilling to raise taxes. The current budget uses gimmicks and tricks and is unbalanced. Our state government is dysfunctional. Killing beneficial infrastructure projects will not solve California's problems. We need to invest in California. In the long run this will lead to better lives for the state's residents and will result in increased state and local tax revenue. We need to approve the high-speed rail measure, and we need to demand that the Legislature do its job. These are compatible goals.

JOHN MENSINGER

Modesto

Thanks John for helping inject some common sense into the debate. Killing Prop 1A will do absolutely NOTHING to help California's economy or budget. Nothing at all. Especially when you consider that the cost of doing nothing is not zero - whether it's the cost to consumers of higher gas prices or the cost to the budget of expanding roads and airports, Prop 1A and HSR is the affordable solution.