December 19, 2007
And the Winner Is....
The South Bay gets it.
California's High Speed Rail Authority picked the Pacheco Pass as the future route for the 200-mph train that will help you get from SF to LA in record time. According to SFGate, "without a vote, the authority accepted its staff's recommendation last month to run trains from the San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area over Pacheco Pass, east of Gilroy." Well then.
After a four-hour meeting with Mayor Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who both "pleaded for the route over Pacheco Pass," the decision was made. Newsom also recommended "campaigning for a November bond measure that would raise $10 billion to start building a high-speed rail" that goes from the nifty yet always controversial Transbay Terminal to Union Station in Los Angeles.
And now? We wait. Any guesses as to when this already-11-year-long process will result in us zipping down to LA ever so fast?
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Once more, the East Bay bites the dust.
Suck it, 510!
Just like the Bay Bridge and other major projects... get ready for one hell of an expensive and time consuming project with tons of delays.
Damn... now if they could do it as fast as that overpass repair near the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge, that'll be sweet. Super low bid, major bonus for finishing.
Ehhh....if this route decision makes it more likely that HSR even gets built at all, it's worth it even from the East Bay's perspective. And doesn't this map show the route going beyond SF into Oakland?
Yes, the map does show that, but it's deliberately misleading. There are no plans of any kind to take HSR over the bay from SF to Oakland, and there are no plans to take it under the bay, either. Both options would be tremendously expensive, especially the bridge option since after the breathtakingly shortsighted construction of the new east span that can't hold the weight of a train.
This is a very disappointing decision. They picked the option that costs the same as Altamont but serves 1M fewer people. Good job!
Good choice .... probably will result in the least amount of additional sprawl, for one.
How does building through a greenfield site prevent sprawl? I would expect the opposite, actual: tens of thousands of households moving to the area around Los Banos because they have a straight shot right into Diridon for their morning commute.
Buy any and all property on the route. The new gold rush is here! I'll jib out of course, I always miss the boat. Steady Eddy and all that.
This route bypasses both the East Bay and Sacramento (population 3+ million) in favor of Los Banos (population 50k). This project will be seen not as useful transportation infrastructure, but a development project. It follows a disturbing trend of other transit projects, which also serve development purposes: BART subway extensions have been built not in the urban core, but out on the suburban fringes. VTA and Muni light rail extensions were built not in existing corridors, but to serve new development parcels (i.e. SOMA luxury condos). Perata's ferry plan is clearly designed to promote waterfront development. And so it goes...
I wonder how fast the trains will go once they hit the Caltrain SJ>SF right-of-way?
It seems like someone gets splatted by a train every month or so there now.
A 200MPH hit must look lovely.
I was on the HSR in France a few years ago and someone got splatted. No one on the train noticed - we just heard about it later. Apparently a 200MPH hit turns you into a cloud of mist. Poof!
Mariconsoy,
HSR is not just fancy trains running on today's right-of-way. The Caltrain corridor will be grade-separated, so like BART it won't have surface crossing and run above or below ground.
Additional tracks will be added to let HSR trains pass up the slower local and limited trains like the select locations Caltrain added tracks for baby-bullet service, except they'd run along the entire corridor.
As commented above the opposite of this comment is true
"Good choice .... probably will result in the least amount of additional sprawl, for one."
I am reading that this is the faster alignment for the SF to LA route and if it is politically the most acceptable and facilitates it being built that's good
It is bad for building up our rail network in the Bay Area though as this cuts off a good portion of the population of the Bay Area and Central Valley
One way or another we really need that rail crossing in the mid Peninsula
Where the hell is South Bay?
I want to correct my comment
The chosen alignment is fast for the San Jose to LA trip but virtually the same for SF to LA
Poor choice for the Bay Area
East Bay and San Francisco folks often forget that the South Bay is the dominant population region of the state.
Also, the South Bay lacks good public transit. The East Bay, on the other hand, can easily transit to SF or San Jose and THEN get on this train.
That's why this is the superior choice. This way East Bay folks don't have to backtrack north before heading south which San Jose (the most populous city in the bay, as well as the economic center of the bay) would have had to do. Why should people in the Bay Area's most populous city have to go north before being able to head south to LA?
East Bay has BART to SJ and SF which can connect with the train.
Sacramento will get to the train in Los Banos or the like.
The only downside is there is no high sopeed rail link to Sacramento, but this wasn't really going to happen anyway, and the train ride from SF to SAC is only 2 hours now... which means SF and LA and Sac can all be connected in about the same time, which is better than nothing!
You complain about sprawl and claim this would not be the case in the altamont route... but how is that the case? You'd have simply more people commuting from that part of the central valley region to the bay. You're right that Los Banos will be a hot place to buy, but that's the nature of it. AT LEAST they'll be taking a TRAIN and not driving.
The state's population WILL grow, and it's not sprawl so much that's the enemy, as CARS and FREEWAYS that are the enemy. This is a welcome change!
A mid-peninsula rail crossing is in the works. Dumbarton Rail will run six trains a day from Union City west over the Dumbarton rail bridge where three trains will turn south to San Jose and three with turn North to SF. In the evening, there will be six trains heading back.
Had the Altamont alignment been chosen, the route would have been shared with HSR (and built to HSR requirements, and some of the cost could have been shared) and it could still be rebuilt to HSR standards someday.
Casa de High Speed Rail!
East Bay and San Francisco folks often forget that the South Bay is the dominant population region of the state.
No we don't. We're very aware.
I believe the word you're looking for is "denial".
Speaking as a South Bay person, the Pachecho alignment isn't even in the best interest of San Jose. The commute traffic into the valley from Los Banos is microscopic compared to Hwy 84, I680, I880 (i.e. all corridors served by the Altamont alternative).
Jamison I am less hopeful than you that Dumbarton rail will be a reality without HSR. It would be great for regional rail to Stockton and Livermore etc
San Jose is not the economic powerhouse of the Bay Area. San Jose is the only US city in the top 10 (and likely top 20) city that sees a population decline daily from commuters leaving the city for their jobs. Relatively speaking very few jobs are in San Jose and especially in the downtown.
Its a highly sprawled region low density region (far worse than LA) the kind which is very difficult to serve by transit
And the difference in time between the two alignments LA to San Jose is 10 minutes. Hardly an issue. Are there that many people clamoring to get to San Jose's downtown that it's an issue that every single train needs to got through? Will the demand be there?
I didn't comment that I believe the Pachecho route would result in no sprawl -just less sprawl because I believe it is more reliant on rails already built out for Caltrain compared to the alternative.
Wake me when this gets built. ;)
Bikerider, having just turned down a new rail connection with the east bay, how long do you think it will be before they start whining again over a BART extension so they can have a high-speed rail connection to the east bay?
Zig, I'd be foolish to if I thought Dumbarton Rail would be running by 2012, but I don't think it's out of the question further on.
Bikerider, having just turned down a new rail connection with the east bay, how long do you think it will be before they start whining again over a BART extension so they can have a high-speed rail connection to the east bay?
Zig, I'd be foolish to if I thought Dumbarton Rail would be running by 2012, but I don't think it's out of the question further on.
Bikerider, having just turned down a new rail connection with the east bay, how long do you think it will be before they start whining again over a BART extension so they can have a high-speed rail connection to the east bay?
Zig, I'd be foolish to if I thought Dumbarton Rail would be running by 2012, but I don't think it's out of the question further on.
Bikerider, having just turned down a new rail connection with the east bay, how long do you think it will be before they start whining again over a BART extension so they can have a high-speed rail connection to the east bay?
Zig, I'd be foolish to if I thought Dumbarton Rail would be running by 2012, but I don't think it's out of the question further on.
This is not correct. Once the line departs from the Caltrain line in Gilroy, it is all new ROW, whereas Altamont mostly uses existing ROW through already built-up areas (i.e. cities that got their start as a result of the railroad). HSR should reinforce existing urban fabric, not create new sprawl.