Sacramento Bound

In recent months, whenever we mentioned Sacramento on this blog, it was in the context of state politics - especially the saga of AB3034 (the bill enacted by proposition 1A), the even more tortuous state budget process and its impact on CHSRA. Yet there is also a bona fide HSR spur from Merced to Sacramento that is planned for phase II of the project and that we've not given the attention it deserves. Like the spur to San Diego and the extension to Irvine, this will be funded using non-state bonds backed by net positive operating revenue from the starter line, which may take several years after start of operations (2018-2020 time frame) to materialize.

In other words, actual construction on the spur to Sacramento won't begin until 2023-2025 and the first trains won't run into the state capital until several years after that. That's a very long time to wait, but the city is already busy planning for its bullet trains. Specifically, a huge 240-acre site northwest of downtown is being developed as a mixed-use transit-oriented development that will preserve and partially re-purpose the historic rail yards at its center.


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The part of greatest interest to us on this blog is the Sacramento Intermodal Transportation Facility (SITF), which will be located just south of the historic yards. UPRR and Amtrak will remain at grade but the alignment between the rail bridge across the Sacramento river and 7th/D will be straightened out starting this year.

An overview of the SITF component of the redevelopment project was presented at a recent workshop. Still to be decided is if the historic depot (station) should remain where it is or be moved 500 feet north. The latter would create a more compact facility and free up space for general development on the downtown side of the site.

Either way, the light rail transit (LRT) station for the SITF will be relocated to the east, near 5th Street. Among other lines, Sacramento is planning one out to SMF airport via the Natomas district. It will be a slow ride with a total of 13 stops and, the airport station appears to be far removed from the two terminals. It's unclear how successful the service will be at attracting passengers with baggage - most of those connecting at the SITF will probably prefer a taxi or shuttle bus. The project has progressed to the project EIR/EIS stage for the first mile along 7th Street, but it doesn't appear to integrate into the design options for the SITF depot at all well. Either the documentation is out of date or, the left hand doesn't know or care what the right is doing. It's not intermodal if you have to walk two blocks.

Just north of the new LRT tracks will be the relocated run-through tracks for UPRR and Amtrak. The area reserved for these will accommodate two island platforms for a total of 4 platform and two through tracks on the outside. To avoid the freeway supports, designers moved the islands further from the river than strictly necessary and tacked on severely curved sections at the eastern end. The straight sections are approximately 250m (800ft) long. The HSR station would be a terminus featuring what appear to be 10 full-length tracks on an upper level, with a concourse in-between. It's not immediately clear if the current plans for the SITF already reserve enough space for all ten elevated tracks.



Elevating the HSR tracks implies two things: first, that HSR trains will never cross the Sacramento river. And second, that UPRR agrees to let CHSRA run an aerial structure above its own tracks on the way to that station. Please zoom in on Sacramento for details of the implementation CHSRA used for cost estimation purposes.

As we have recently discussed (How Important Is UPRR To California HSR?, Union Pacific Speaks), it is far from clear that UPRR will in fact agree to this concept. If so, CHSRA could find it very difficult to reach the SITF at all. East of 46th Street, CHSRA intends to run at grade, except for short sections in Elk Grove, the Lodi bypass and downtown Stockton. All of those aerials are overpasses of other rail lines or freeways. South of Stockton, CHSRA is counting on the UPRR ROW that runs east of the Sharpe Army Depot and is currently used by ACE. Between Manteca and south Fresno, CHSRA would prefer to keep running alongside UPRR tracks and I-99.

It very much remains to be seen if UPRR will go along with all that, early indications are that CHSRA might have to partner with BNSF instead for the south Stockton-south Fresno section. That might mean greenfield bypasses for both Fresno and Merced plus relocating several stations. For example, Merced county may well prefer a station at Castle Airport to the Amtrak stop on W 24th, in a residential neighborhood at least eight blocks from downtown. Considering that express trains will run through the Central Valley at 220mph (as opposed to just 125mph in the mid-peninsula), it's not clear that CHSRA has fully communicated the noise impacts to Central Valley towns hungry for the construction work.

None of the videos produced by NC3D features audio, something that may well come back to haunt the planners. Just how much would it cost to send a sound recording specialist to Europe or Asia, anyhow? Example: grade separations in Fresno.



Sticking with BNSF would mean all of the stations in the Central Valley would be intermodal with Amtrak San Joaquin trains, though it's unclear if that service will remain viable once the HSR network is fully built out. One problem for HSR is that the BNSF tracks UPRR's at very nearly a right angle, with insufficient room for a high-speed corner. One possibility would be to cross over between Escalon and Ortega/French Camp, roughly along an existing secondary rail ROW. The ever-useful 2005 Rail Rights of Way and Abandoned Corridors Study commissioned by Caltrans' Division of Rail (aka Amtrak California) shows this section as active. My guess is UPRR owns it now.


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Even if CHSRA were to bypass Stockton to the east on a brand-new ROW - something that it never even considered - it would still have to deal with UPRR north of Lodi and up in Sacramento. For this spur, even more than any other part of the planned network, CHSRA needs to be in UPRR's good graces.