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by Chris Jones
The California High Speed Rail Authority released a scoping report [.pdf] yesterday for the San Jose to San Francisco section of the proposed state high speed rail system that will eventually whisk people from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in just over two hours. Won't that be fun? Well, not if the folks down on the Peninsula have their way. 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.
If the thought of having our own version of a TGV running down the Peninsula wasn't bad enough, a piece of legislation that would give the Rail Authority the power to acquire property for purposes of creating a right of way - either through purchase or eminent domain - flew through the Assembly last week and is now being tossed about the State Senate. This has downtrodden Atherton and Menlo Park NIMBY hippies hopping mad and the political future of various South Bay politicians is already in question. Before you know it, both towns will be seized in their entirety and turned into vast rail yards for the high speed rail! Yay! Uh, we mean, oh no!
Now that scoping is finished, the High Speed Rail Authority will consider the public's comments in creating various alternative alignments down the Peninsula from San Francisco to San Jose. This process will be completed this fall before commencement of an EIR that is expected to be completed by 2010. Expect much wackiness and anger from Atherton ladies who lunch in the meantime.
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I fear the high speed rail because it will be tax-subsidized at the rate of something like $375 per rider. It's a stupid idea.
I'm sure with a figure as precise as that you can cite a reputable source for it.
I believe it may be $372.42
Irrelevant to argue that if my estimates may be off by 20% then the rest of my argument is completely invalid. I assume: Price tag: $33 billion. Assumed ridership: 12,000 per day.
Divide 33 billion by 20 years, 365 days, 12,000 riders per day, you get $375. ($376.71 to be exact).
I invite you to pull some other numbers out of your ass that will bring the cost down into the $100 per rider subsidy range. You can assume 120,000 riders per day, or that it can be completed for less than the $6 billion they are allocating to just *study* the damnfool thing, it's not going to affect the figure much one way or the other.
Plus the ridership estimates are something like 25,000 per day. I5 traffic is probably about half that, so we assume half the drivers on I5 will abandon their cars. And all these people live within a few miles of a train station?
I'm not against building it out incrementally, but as proposed it's the biggest most expensive boondoggle in the history of the state.
And we know how effective the state is at getting projects in on time and under budget... just look at the fine job they are doing on the Bay Bridge.
Let's quadruple car registration fees and increase the gas tax to $1 per gallon first if we're serious about the "envionment".
This is incorrect.
That calculation means nothing.
Say, you're not the policy director for the Howard Jarvis Tax Payers Association, are you?
And how much does it cost to build freeways, then bail out the car companies?
And how much does it cost to build freeways, then bail out the car companies?
Does anyone know how much tickets would actually cost?
I believe it's about $50 to LA from SF.
Two good blogs on HSR are:
http://cahsr.blogspot.com/ - politics, etc
and
http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com - track layout, rights of way, etc
yes. if you go to California's HSR website, you can enter your start location and destination, and it calculates the cost of the ticket.
Ah..yes. The Peninsula - the folks who voted down BART how many times?
We are blessed to have such forward thinkers underfoot.
If you're implying Menlo Park and Atherton are full of Republican (Howard Jarvis looking Ayn Rand worshippers)Nimby's, you've got your demographics wrong. These NIMBY's are solid Democrats.
Boulder was full of democrats too, until they proposed adding some low income housing. Homogenous environments don't really put liberal values to the acid test. Fortunately their votes count the same.
Fuckem.
Seriously. It's too late for them to complain about the route. (Right? Didn't they settle that before the 1A vote?)
A little background into the minds of the Lower Peninsulans:
The way Caltrains' right-of-way has looked and been operated remains practically unchanged since the 1860s. In Redwood City and in Mountain View, older industrial areas were built up along the tracks. Many of these old industrial areas have since been redeveloped into high-density transit-oriented housing. Not surprisingly, these cities, so far, remain in support of High Speed Rail despite concerns over track seperation.
Meanwhile, in between RWC and MV (Menlo, Atherton, Palo Alto) single-family homes were built up along the tracks 50-100 years ago. (You can peer down into their backyards when you ride the 2nd level of Caltrain.) These neighborhoods have remained virtually unchanged and residents are used to trains going 70mph running behind their backyard fence stopping at cute little train stations nearby in their cute little downtowns. In these cities, High Speed Rail opponents are using a natural fear of change (in the form of the elevated track platform) to try to stop the project.
Grade seperation, in general, remains a tricky urban design issue for these cities. So much of the planning for areas along the track area has focused on bridging the divide the track-right-of-way creates. A surface level right-of-way presents less of a visual barrier, but is dangerous now and will be twice a deadly with High Speed Rail. Lowering roads to go below the tracks would force the removal of many historic buildings and loss of private property.
Elevating the track seems like the most logical choice - but just think about how happy San Francicans were when the elevated Embarcadero Freeway and Central Freeway were torn down. You have to remember, many of these neighborhoods haven't changed in a century and what the Authority is proposing - in their eyes - is the visual equivalent of building an elevated freeway through the middle of the city.
The High Speed Rail Authority needs to work to ease fears over an elvated track platform before people become too entrenched in their opposition and demand for a tunnel kills the project. They need to be shown how an elevated track could be integrated into their neighborhoods.
The slow trains kill something like 3 people a month on the Peninsula -- I can't imaging what a 100mph train is going to do.
Perhaps they should build a long bridge up the center of the Bay all the way to San Francisco.
Caltrains doesn't kill people, people stepping in front of Caltrains kills people.
3 kills a month would be 36 deaths a year.
Which is *completely* incorrect.
Deaths on Caltrain tracks in past five years
» 2007: 8
» 2006: 17
» 2005: 10
» 2004: 9
» 2003: 10
Source: Caltrain
http://tinyurl.com/locy3h
100mph? Dude, this thing will go 220mph.
And the tracks would be elevated and fenced in -- that's why the NIMBYs are complaining.
Will the Bay Area portion of the high speed rail run on Caltrain tracks? If so, the speed limit will definitely drop.
Interestingly, the Northeast Corridor could run the high speed Acela Trains 200mph, but the feds said that they can't because the regional trains (NJ Transit and Amtrak) also share the tracks, so the limit is set at 150.
The speed limit is set on the Northeast Corridor according to track conditions and track geometry. The Acela can go 150 MPH on a short stretch of track in Massachusetts and Rhode Island I believe. Elsewhere the speed limit is constrained by tight curves and aging infrastructure. The average speed for Acela service is 86 MPH.
Actually, they are going to be replacing much of the Caltrain tracks and making all the crossings separated grade so that even Caltrain can run faster. The NIMBYs in the peninsula are mostly concerned that the wording in prop 1A means HSR isn't limited to just running in a tunnel as they wish it would. Instead, grade separation means that it can run either in a tunnel, in a ditch, or on a platform, or a combination of all three options. What it won't do is run at-grade with vehicle traffic.
The Caltrain corridor will be rebuilt, grade separated like BART and will mostly be a 4 track corridor allowing high-speed and express trains to bypass slower local trains like the Caltrain Baby Bullets do now at Bayshore. Again like BART, the electric trains will have a faster start and stop time allowing even local trains to run faster than they do now.
textbook example of why sacramento should flip these fuckers the bird....
they voted down a 1/2 cent sales tax to pay for bart in the 70's.
fuck em!
As someone who has lived in San Mateo County since '93, I can understand the logic that says, "Samtrans will not conveniently connect me to this intercounty rail system, therefore I will not pay for it, as I will not use it." BART is inaccessible or useless (either b/c of its own schedule or Samtrans') for the majority of people in SMC.
aside: BART is inaccessible/useless because these fools parents voted down a half-cent tax in the 70s.
I doubt CA is going to let the same demographic of idiots slow down progress for the rest of us.
Oh, so BART was going to go coastside to Pescadero? And it was going to reach all the way down to the county seat in Redwood City?
2,042 people live in Pescadero - I fail to see your point?
OK, I'll go slower this time. BART is useless to people in the majority of San Mateo County because it was never designed to serve the people of San Mateo County. Therefore, it is logical to see a resulting lack of support for the BART system in San Mateo County.
Now can we please enter 2009 and discuss the original topic of this post?
Yeah! Who brought up that durned BART straw man in the first place? Oh, wait...
Yes indeed, suckafree @18. Or do you have an actual point?
High Speed Rail seems to really stick in your craw, KatyG!
;-)
If you were paying attention, you'd notice I've said nothing about HSR (I actually am all for it). What pisses me off is your anti-Peninsula sentiment.
Fair enough.
I moved to San Jose in July of 1993 and other than 2 years in Santa Cruz lived in: Cupertino, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View until I moved to SF in May of 2007.
So as much as you dislike my "anti-peninsula" sentiment.
I must say: I FUCKING EARNED THOSE STRIPES!
Cheers!
You obviously never saw the original BART maps, KatyG -- all the way to Palo Alto, largely along a similar right of way as now:
http://sonic.net/~mly/www.geolith.com/bart/figure1.html
And I agree with hql about Pescadero -- that's a silly idea.
Btw, I am surprised how little some of the folks here who are discussing CA HSR actually know something about CA HSR. 125mph (max) planned on the Peninsula, 220mph (max) through the Central Valley, for the record.
And the Menlo Park/Atherton NIMBYs knew they lived on a railroad right of way. Are they really so stupid that they didn't realize it could be upgraded at some point?
Thank you for the link. There would still be major problems regarding accessibility and the willingness/capacity of Samtrans to link people to BART, but your point is taken.
Can you be more specific re: Samtrans? My impression is that all the San Mateo County BART stations are decently served by Samtrans. I know there is an express bus from Pacifica to Colma, and there are non-expresses from Pacifica to Daly City and Colma, and there are plenty of other buses to Colma as well. South City and San Bruno seemed served by at least 3-4 bus lines each. And Millbrae is already covered by Caltrain, but note that the 130 bus doesn't go to Millbrae BART.
Well done on that link! I searched and searched for that for a while and came up with nada.
The interweb is hard.
They fear that hordes of smooth-talking HSR riders will bring fancy city ideas, lure away their womenfolk, and unlock that dark secret in the attic.
The high speed rail project is a poster child for why we shouldn't have term limits that are so short. These big vision projects need champions who aren't so worried about finding their next gig every 4 or so years.
My guess is that CA HSR will be quieter than Caltrain during the hours that people care because of the electrification and because HSR won't need to blow whistles at at-grade crossings (because there won't be any!). As an added bonus, the freight trains that use Caltrain's tracks at night also wouldn't need to whistle at grade separations, as they do now on at-grade crossings.
The Caltrain corridor has 100 (whistle blowing) trains on weekdays: 98 passenger Caltrain and 2 freight trains at night.
It is ironic considering Palo Alto became a boom town due completely to the construction of the railway in the early 1900's that splits it in half. oh no. Not another railway! It might just make Palo Alto a reasonable place to live.
Don't be an idiot -- there's only one thing that would make Palo Alto a reasonable place to live and that's a bulldozer.
Bulldoze the McMansions, bulldoze the Starbucks, and then drop a hydrogen bomb on Facebook.
I always understood that the HSR would be a grade seperated track on the penisula similar to the trench configuration in LA for freight traffic.