Altamont Corridor Planning Begins

As mandated by Proposition 1A, the California High Speed Rail Authority is beginning its process of studying the Altamont Corridor alignment. Have a look at their announcement newsletter for some details.

The project corridor is defined as San José to Stockton, with a possible spur to Modesto:



As you can tell, this is basically an upgrade and electrification of the Altamont Commuter Express - the full newsletter includes drawings of electric ACE trains traveling along a high speed rail corridor with overhead wires. The projection is that Stockton will be anywhere from 55 to 75 minutes from downtown San José once the corridor is completed, with trains operating at 150 mph or greater.

And the explanation given on the newsletter of the project's scope and goals:

The Altamont Corridor Rail Project will provide a vital link in the regional transit network, connecting our communities like never before. The project will create a dedicated passenger train corridor between Stockton and San Jose, with stops in key cities in between. A spur link to Modesto is also a possibility. The project study area is shown to the right, along with opportunities for strategic intercity rail connectivity. Specific route alignments and station locations will be identified through a community-based planning process. Once developed, alternative scenarios will be evaluated through the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report.

The project could allow operation of trains between the Bay Area and points north including Stockton and Sacramento, as well as points south including Modesto and beyond, within the California High-Speed Train system. The project will provide intermodal connections to Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to serve the Oakland Airport, cities of Oakland and San Francisco, as well as other Bay Area communities. Intermodal connections to BART could be located in the Livermore vicinity, should the Dublin/Pleasanton BART line be extended, as well as in the Fremont/Union City area, meeting either the Fremont line or planned Warm Springs/San Jose extension.

The Altamont Corridor Rail Project could also accommodate a future connection to the Dumbarton rail service in the Fremont/Union City area, as well as connect to the Valley Transportation Authority light rail in Santa Clara County. The project will coordinate with local bus services, providing access to proximate market areas and interfacing with regional bus links where appropriate. Whether for intercity trips, daily commutes, or access to the statewide High-Speed Train system, the Altamont Corridor Rail Project will serve our communities like never before!

My own view is that while faster ACE trains would be nice, this really isn't as high a priority for the state as upgrading the Capitol Corridor, restoring the Coast Daylight service along the Central Coast, and upgrading and speeding up the Pacific Surfliners, to name but a few projects more deserving. The inclusion of the Altamont Corridor in Prop 1A was a sop to Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani and interests in San Joaquin and Stanislaus Counties to compensate for the choice of the Pacheco Pass route for the main HSR trains.

I don't have much of a preference about the implementation on the route, though we will predictably hear from residents in Fremont and Pleasanton concerned about the impact on their neighborhoods. And while it'll be nice to throw that in the faces of the people suing because the Altamont alignment was rejected for the main HSR trains, I'm not entirely sure what the Altamont high speed corridor project gets us. It doesn't deserve to be funded ahead of other higher priority corridors. I'm all for improved passenger rail and I wish the CHSRA and its corridor partners well in the development of a sensible plan, but if this never got funded, well, that's an outcome I could live with.

The scoping meeting schedule is below. All meetings are from 3PM to 8PM.

Livermore - Tuesday, Nov. 10
Robert Livermore Community Center
4444 East Avenue

Stockton - Thursday, Nov. 12
San Joaquin Council of Governments
555 E. Weber Avenue

Fremont - Tuesday, Nov. 17
Fremont Teen Center
39770 Paseo Padre Parkway

San José - Wednesday, Nov. 18
Le Petit Trianon Theatre
72 North Fifth Street

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.