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 Either the documentation is out of date or, the left hand doesn't know or care what the right is doing.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.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Sacramento Bound
Friday, April 3, 2009
Two Quick Peninsula Updates
1. Caltrain board approves MOU with CHSRA:
One last-minute change to the deal was the elimination of a controversial passage that indicated the bullet train would operate on a four-track alignment, assuming there typically would be two tracks for Caltrain and a pair for high-speed rail.
This was only "controversial" because Palo Alto insists on having veto power over the operations and basic needs of the system, which they have no right to claim. As others have pointed out in the comments, a four-track solution is still expected to be adopted. Personally I think Caltrain and the CHSRA should have kept that language, since NIMBYs cannot be appeased, as they immediately proved:
Palo Alto Council Member Pat Burt, echoing the concerns of other officials and residents, said the cities should have the right to partner with the state as well, not just Caltrain.
"The cities must be allowed to enter into this process in a substantive way," Burt said. "(The Caltrain board) is not designed as its first priority to preserve and protect the quality of life of the cities that the railway passes through."
Right. Their priority is to operate efficient passenger rail service. Burt's words are significant though for explaining what this is all about for him - preserving a 20th century model of urban life that is obsolete and not at all workable in the 21st century. He thinks Palo Alto can live in a kind of permanent 1995. Is this the kind of forward and progressive thinking Palo Alto wants to be known for?
Still, this is a welcome development that shows the high speed rail project is making important progress.
2. Court throws out Menlo Park's letter to CHSRA:
In August 2008, Menlo Park and Atherton joined a lawsuit against the rail authority. One of Menlo Park's arguments in joining the suit was that rail officials had not responded to their letter. Under law, the agency is required to respond to every letter it receives.
But in the March 27 ruling, Judge Michael Kenny said the city did not adequately prove that it had in fact sent the letter, and that it didn't do enough to make sure it had been received. Furthermore, after the release of the final environmental document but before it was certified, there was a 40-day window in which Menlo Park could have resent its letter, the judge said. The city apparently did not do so.
During the City Council's March 31 meeting, City Manager Glen Rojas said the plaintiffs' attorney did not think the exclusion of the city's letter would have much effect on the case, because similar arguments had been made by others, including the town of Atherton.
The article also has an interesting discussion of whether Menlo Park will reconsider its decision to sue. You'd think that in a time of financial crisis for virtually every city in the state, Menlo Park residents would prefer that their taxes pay for libraries and pothole repairs, not frivolous lawsuits against the CHSRA.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Mythbusting the Caltrain Corridor
Over the last few months the debate on the Peninsula over high speed rail has been dominated by lots of myths, misunderstandings, and in some cases, deliberate obfuscation of the truth.
As far as I can tell it's a simple issue - some residents believe their property values are more important than the state's efforts to solve the environmental, energy, and economic crisis by providing sustainable transportation solutions. It's not a new phenomenon and we should not be surprised that "even" Palo Alto, when confronted between a perceived threat to their property values and a very real threat to their economy and environment, are choosing to cling to obsolete models of prosperity rather than take action to solve the much larger crises facing us all.
This would be much easier if we were dealing with a town that prided itself on political conservatism. They'd just say "high speed rail is a waste of money" and be done with it. (Which is pretty much Morris Brown's position anyway.) Since Palo Alto likes to see itself as more progressive they cannot actually openly admit that they'll try and derail HSR in order to possibly preserve the property values of a small handful of people (I am unconvinced that above-grade HSR would actually hurt property values, but I also don't anticipate many in Palo Alto will agree), HSR critics and opponents have to find other reasons to articulate opposition. Unfortunately, most of those reasons are based on myths.
Will Oremus of the Daily News interviewed Dominic Spaethling, regional manager of the SF-SJ section of the HSR project for CHSRA, to determine which of these myths is true and which isn't. In some cases I disagree with Oremus's conclusions, and it's Spaethling's answers that are the most revealing.
Claim: The default plan for the Peninsula is to run the high-speed tracks on an elevated platform, likely in the form of a "retained fill" design that some have likened to a 15-foot-high "Berlin Wall" dividing local neighborhoods.
Status: Mostly fact, with caveats.
Explanation: In its broad, initial study of the high-speed rail line's feasibility, the rail authority assumed that the tracks would alternate between underground, at-grade and elevated alignments at different points along the line. A diagram available on the authority's Web site shows the tracks going underground at points in northern San Jose and southern San Francisco, but above-ground in between. While some parts of the tracks would stay at ground level, the "retained fill" option was chosen for many intersections because that's what was used in Belmont and San Carlos, the sites of the most recent grade separations on the mid-Peninsula.
In other words, the retained fill option was a possible solution that was being considered based on what has been done elsewhere on the Peninsula. Whether one likes the Belmont and San Carlos grade separations, they are part of the Peninsula's urban geography now, and it made sense to offer them as an option - as Spaethling explains:
The big caveat is that the preliminary study was just that — preliminary. Spaethling described it as a "proof of concept" to show just one way that the marriage of high-speed rail and Caltrain could work. The next step is the project-level environmental study, which by law is required to evaluate all options put forward in the public scoping process that concludes Monday. That means the rail authority will look at underground as well as above-ground options in places such as Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and downtown San Mateo.
This has been true for months. But to the small NIMBY contingent in those cities, options aren't enough. They believe they have the right and the power to dictate solutions to the rest of the state, and that unless their preferred option is chosen, then the project is illegitimate. They don't want an open process at all.
A second caveat is that the "Berlin Wall" analogy is exaggerated. The purpose of the retained fill is to lift the tracks over certain key cross streets, meaning it wouldn't be one continuous wall. Many in Belmont and San Carlos would likely dispute the idea that their cities are divided like East and West Berlin.
Here I think Oremus is hedging unnecessarily. The Berlin Wall analogy is bullshit. The Berlin Wall was meant to be an impenetrable barrier crossed only upon pain of death. An above-grade solution on the Peninsula would be designed to be a passable barrier to be crossed often and safely. We have previously examined elegant above-grade solutions and yet these appear to have not been discussed in any great detail, if at all, on the Peninsula. That leads me to further question just how open a process some HSR critics and NIMBYs actually seek. In particular it is objectionable that the Palo Alto city council does not appear to have given much consideration to these kind of options before voting to file a brief in support of the HSR deniers' suit against the CHSRA.
Claim: El Palo Alto, the historic redwood tree that gave Palo Alto its name, will almost certainly be fatally damaged or removed due to construction of the high-speed tracks just north of the downtown Palo Alto Caltrain station.
Status: Myth, hopefully.
Explanation: It's true that El Palo Alto stands perilously close to the Caltrain tracks, and the city's arborist has determined that any expansion in its direction, even underground, could doom it. But Spaethling said officials know it's there and will aim to avoid it. The authority's initial study showed trains running at-grade at the Palo Alto station and the San Francisquito Creek bridge, meaning construction there would be less intensive. Though nothing has been decided, Spaethling said the natural approach would be to build the tracks to the west of their current location — the opposite direction from the tree.
An interesting thing I learned recently was that El Palo Alto used to have a twin trunk and that by the 1950s the tree was severely damaged by train pollution. The tree is intensively managed today in order to stay alive. One has to imagine that the near-total removal of diesel emissions would help preserve the tree's health. And of course, it has been known for quite a while that any new tracks would go west of the tree, but that hasn't stopped the critics.
Claim: There is a chance that construction will force the authority to acquire private property, perhaps through eminent domain.
Status: Fact.
Explanation: The authority has been reluctant to discuss eminent domain, pointing out that it would be used only as a last resort. Gary Kennerly, regional manager for the San Jose-to-Merced section, said an initial review estimated 85 percent of the Caltrain corridor is wide enough to accommodate four tracks side-by-side. But that leaves portions where engineers may have to get creative.
Spaethling said they'd look at solutions such as stacking the Caltrain and high-speed tracks two-by-two before resorting to acquiring property. If they do have to acquire property, he added, they'd prefer friendly negotiations to the legal process of eminent domain. That said, no one is prepared to rule it out.
The chance is certainly there that eminent domain may have to happen, but I wish Oremus had gone into further detail about what that might actually mean. It's not anticipated that many houses will have to be torn down. The most common impact would be a yard, and I have no sympathy for that whatsoever - if someone has to lose part of their yard so California can get off oil dependence, cut carbon emissions, and grow its economy, then that's what needs to happen. That being said, it's right for a city like Palo Alto to debate the best way to implement HSR for their community. But it's absurd to argue that yards > HSR.
I would be VERY amused to see a stacking solution used, especially in Menlo Park and Atherton. It'd be like the spite fence built on Nob Hill back in the 1800s. Again, if they want a tunnel, they will have to pay for it out of their own pocket. It is highly unlikely federal money will be forthcoming - things have changed dramatically in the 40 years since Berkeley was able to use some redevelopment funds, along with a local tax, to bury BART.
Claim: It's too late to push for the tracks to follow a different route; the decision to use the Caltrain corridor has already been made.
Status: Fact, pending court ruling.
Explanation: In 2008, after years of debate, the California High Speed Rail Authority approved a report that selected the Pacheco Pass alignment over the Altamont Pass option, meaning trains would reach San Francisco via the Peninsula rather than the East Bay. Included in the report were plans to use the Caltrain corridor rather than alternatives such as Highway 101 or Interstate 280. Officials said all the overpasses that cross the freeways presented an almost insurmountable design challenge.
Aside from those active in transit boards, Peninsula officials largely sat out the battle, which raged in San Jose and the East Bay. Several have said recently they weren't even aware of it.
I have less and less confidence in the basic competence of "Peninsula officials" every day. We discussed this decision frequently last year - prior to July it was THE #1 topic on the blog. There is no excuse at all for any public official representing a jurisdiction along the Caltrain corridor for not knowing about the battle.
The decision left several transit groups angry, arguing the East Bay alignment would have served more Bay Area riders. They, along with the cities of Menlo Park and Atherton, filed a lawsuit in August challenging the environmental report. Unless they prevail in Sacramento Superior Court, however, the Caltrain alignment is likely a done deal.
I have yet to see a compelling reason why these groups should expect to win in court. They are merely unhappy with the decision in the final EIR/EIS.
As the article shows, there could be a lot more truth and evidence interjected into the debate over HSR on the Peninsula. I don't think any of that matters to the NIMBYs. But it should matter to everyone else, and especially to the members of the city councils along the route.
Note: we'll shift focus away from Palo Alto tomorrow and on Saturday, so get your Palo Alto-related comments in today, as I'm going to request that comments on the next two posts stay on-topic.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Avoiding Palo Alto Altogether
There are alternatives. There are always alternatives, especially if you're willing to zoom out of your own back yard. I had hoped to keep the couple I've come up with under wraps to avoid distracting from plan A, but these fantasies about boring tunnels for four tracks through suburbia to preserve some supposed rustic charm are getting out of hand. In particular, Palo Alto city officials need to be disabused of the notion that they wield some kind of veto power over this state project, which is in the vanguard of a new national transportation policy.
Plan B: The Alviso Gambit
The whole tedious discussion regarding HSR through Palo Alto would of be moot if trains could stop in Redwood City, then head out to Dumbarton and use a causeway to reach Alviso (see blue line on the map below). It would be possible to thread that past two small portions of the DENWR. Perhaps US Fish & Wildlife would accept this idea if the sections nearest the boundary were enclosed to mitigate noise and other impacts on the birds. Whether environmentalists in the state and in the Bay Area would go along with that is open to question, there's the issue of methyl mercury levels in the bay mud to consider.
The next problem is that the UPRR ROW is too narrow to accommodate two HSR tracks down to SantaClara/SJC. Besides, that railroad wouldn't sell any of it even if it were. Still, it might make sense to at least consider tearing up Lafayette Street one lane at a time to obtain two individual subway tunnels for HSR tracks. This street runs right through the Golden Triangle, but mostly next to Guadaloupe creek. Trenching should not pose as serious a flood risk as it would in the mid-peninsula, but the high water table could be an issue. Vibration and other impacts during and after construction might still present major obstacles, especially if nearby chip factories are affected.
CHSRA would have to grade separate against UPRR in Alviso, probably by flying over both its tracks and CA-237. Down in Santa Clara, the alignment would have to switch to under De La Cruz Blvd, the employee/long-term parking lots at SJC, Aviation and Coleman. That's about 7 miles, though, so there would need to be an open trench section for emergency access between the Lafayette and De La Cruz sections.
Construction cost and impacts would be high, but implementing dozens of grade separations in the mid-peninsula was never going to be a picnic, either. CHSRA is currently planning a tunnel from San Tomas Expressway to SJ Diridon to avoid CEMOF and accommodate BART's desire to run at grade under I-880. The causeway alternative would get trains as far as the HP Pavilion, emerging east of the UPRR tracks just north of Diridon Station. If HSR can manage to stay on that side through south San Jose, there would be plenty of room for HSR to get out of UPRR's hair on the way down to Gilroy.
Plan C: Out Of The Fire, Into The Frying Pan
However, if UPRR or local NIMBYs block CHSRA's path through San Jose, there would be no point in pursuing Pacheco Pass any further. A much shorter causeway-cum-tunnel (cp. Øresund bridge, but on a much smaller scale) between Dumbarton and Newark would preserve the shipping lanes and avoid permanent impacts on the DENWR. Construction impacts would be significant, though, especially in light of the creosote-soaked timbers of the old rail bridge, which would almost certainly have to be removed. A tunnel-only concept from Dumbarton to Newark would also be possible, that decision should be made on the basis of cost alone.
Cargill Salt would have to be persuaded/forced to permit the construction of a low aerial structure above its still-active ponds, rising only to pass over the UPRR line. This viaduct would skirt the DENWR boundary, possibly with another enclosure section. Tracks would dive under I-880 to connect to another tunnel under CA-262, a short but busy city street in south Fremont that connects to I-680 on the other end. Residents there are no more likely to welcome construction with open arms than those in Palo Alto. However, in this case the tracks would stay in a tunnel to cross over to Calaveras Road. The active Calaveras fault would have to be crossed deep underground, which ought to give pause.
In Haynes Gulch, the tracks would run essentially at grade up to the I-680/CA-84 interchange and across via yet another tunnel to an intermodal station with the BART extension to Livermore at El Charro Road, bypassing Pleasanton to shave some time off the trip. There are some ponds at that location, not sure what they are used for - could be a problem. Burrowing under Livermore municipal airport, which is only used for general aviation, the alignment would then essentially follow the I-580 median to the Central Valley. The HSR tracks could cross UPRR/ACE, the ponds and the BART extension on an aerial, but only if the airport is turned into a parking lot.
An intermodal with BART in Fremont Warm Springs would be challenging to construct and require BART to move its station some 4000ft (~1km) south. A spur down to San Jose via the I-880 median would be possible, but that would make building ridership harder as any given train would only have a fraction of the catchment area to draw passengers from. There would be fierce opposition from San Jose, the entire Gilroy catchment area and CHSRA to any plan that would fork the starter line in the East Bay.
Any future spur up to Oakland would be substantially harder, since Caltrans will almost certainly want to retain the median north of CA-92 (San Mateo Bridge). That means cutting across to the unused ROW just west of the BART tracks at Industrial Pkwy in Union City. Light commuter rail traffic could probably squeak by there with the existing single-track ROW, but HSR would require some eminent domain against businesses. Fortunately for them, a spur up to Oakland isn't likely to happen this side of 2030.
Perhaps the biggest issue is that of SF-LA express line haul time, which AB3034 limits to 2h42m. While Altamont-via-Dumbarton is shorter than Altamont-via-SantaClara/SJC, it would nevertheless add a few minutes that have to be clawed back somewhere else. Worst case, the whole Tehachapis vs. Grapevine question would have to re-opened just to achieve the time target. That in turn would make it harder to connect Las Vegas to the network. On the plus side, service between SF and Sacramento would be time-competitive with driving, even more so for SJ-Sacramento. If CHSRA is forced to partner with BNSF in Merced and Stanislaus counties and there is an HSR station at Castle Airport (instead of Merced town) on the starter line, its catchment area would extend well beyond the Central Valley into the Bay Area, serving as a relief/complementary airport for OAK and SJC.
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NOTE: black lines indicate the relevant DENWR boundaries.
Consequences
Either approach would pretty much nix Dumbarton commuter rail because FRA has strict rules regarding FRA-compliant and non-compliant equipment to share track, but that's probably a survivable loss. Much more painful would be having to do a significant portion of the Bay Area to Central Valley Program EIR/EIS yet again just because Palo Alto couldn't be bothered to throw a spanner in the works at the appropriate time - basically, any time before the November election. Each year added to the schedule for planning reasons adds around 6% to estimated project cost, i.e. around $2.5 billion because of knock-on effects on phase II. That's on top of actual escalations due to more involved construction techniques. And make no mistake, dear Palo Alto NIMBYs: whatever the personal miscommunications of Messrs. Kopp and Diridon may have been, it will be you the rest of the state will blame for the resulting cost escalation if plan A falters on your account at this late juncture.
Consider for example Lodi, a small town out in the Central Valley that managed to secure a bypass for itself without a whole lot of fuss because it spoke up clearly and early. LA county persuaded CHSRA to run the route past Palmdale instead of across the Grapevine because it acted early. You had 12 years to get involved but instead - to be blunt - your elected officials chose to sit on their collective duff until just a few weeks ago. There's a time to raise a red flag and a time to accept the consequences of failing to do so. Now, it's perfectly reasonable to ask for a couple of alternatives to be priced out if the initial concept is flawed. However, it's not acceptable to expect the rest of the state and nation to pay through the nose to increase your property values while the tent cities in places like Fresno are growing larger by the day. If you want something over-and-above the norm, you're going to have to figure out a way to avoid breaking CHSRA's time and dollar budget in the process.
Note that if plan A falls through, all of the mid-peninsula cities between Redwood City and San Jose would have to fund any new grade separations of the Caltrain ROW themselves if and when commuter rail traffic reaches the high levels Caltrain is forecasting in its 2025 plan. They'd also need to pay for electrification and other improvements south of Redwood City themselves. As for the Transbay Terminal, there may not be any money left over for any HSR contributions to the DTX tunnel and the train box in phase I if CHSRA needs to switch to plan B, let alone plan C.
Conclusion
Let's hope cooler heads prevail and Palo Alto doesn't become the state's new poster child for NIMBYism, after a clear majority of its residents endorsed prop 1A. As soon as CHSRA gets its funding, HNTB needs to get cracking on affordable and acceptable solutions for sticking with the Caltrain ROW all the way to San Jose. Meanwhile, CHSRA needs to secure a ROW down to Gilroy, which means talking turkey with UPRR. Alternatives do exist, but each would create as many problems as it solves.
