Government Follies: EPA Urges Veto of SF-Sacto High Speed Rail

[Leopolds Ghost]

Quoting the revised CAHSRA DEIS

The USEPA recommended “eliminating from further consideration a high speed rail alternative connecting Bay Area to Central Valley that includes both an Altamont and a Pacheco Pass alignment, termed, “Pacheco Pass with Local Service” in the Draft PEIS. This scenario would effectively result in twice the habitat fragmentation, noise, and indirect impacts to aquatic resources. This alternative would likely result in CWA Section 404 permitting challenges because it is difficult to demonstrate that mountain crossings at both Pacheco and Altamont Passes represent the LEDPA given the increased indirect impacts to aquatic resources and habitat fragmentation associated with this alternative.”

Here's two maps of what I'm talking about:

Altamont Pass is a dotted line on California High Speed Rail's official <Interactive Map>:

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/map.htm

Here's a more detailed look, probably illegible to thoise with no knowledge of the area
or mapping expertise:

Altamont Pass is to the center of the bay Area region, going straight across the bay on an existing 100-year-old rail alignment (Dumbarton Crossing) the only railroad across the bay, the only railroad alignment AT ALL into SF other than Caltrain. That's right, SF doesn't have a dedicated freight line thanks to 100 years of pro-car, anti rail policies.

which local pro-HSR enviros, anti-rail NIMBYs and developers don't want to re-open said bridge for commuter rail, each for their own reasons, because it would conflict with their goal of setting up competing, non-networked systems of transit on the east and west bay (whether they side with BART or Caltrain, it is a zero sum game for them. They want to build a facility they can brag about, not an integrated system).

Pacheco pass is the one that goes far south of San Jose into undeveloped greenfields part of Silicon Valley, which is the option EPA and the local governments want to pursue for high speed rail from SF-LA, to avoid the developed communities of Union City near Oakland, Livermore, Tracy, Stockton... places which have people who might thus be "impacted" by high speed rail. Check out Pacheco Pass on Google Maps and click on satellite view to see the difference in development patterns.

They want people from Sacramento to follow HSR down to Fresno and make a sharp turn north and call it HSR service between Sacto and SF, and NOT introduce frequent, local, speedy intercity rail between Fresno or Sacroamento and Oakland, Fremont, or downtown SF via Dumbarton.

The EPA apparently agrees.

Bay Area To Central Valley Revised EIR
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/library.asp?p=9274
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20100305150026_hsr_ba-cv_draft_materials_mar4.pdf (LARGE file)

Altamont Corridor Options
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20090928161948_AltamontCorridorMapforNOP.pdf (map)
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/library.asp?p=8392



(CAHSRA opposes the Altamont route, which is the only direct route available between the Sacramento Valley and populated parts of the San Joaquin exurbs and the Bay Area, especially because Altamont already incorporates a planned resumption of service across a 100-year old rail route, the only railroad bridge across the bay, known as Dumbarton Bridge.

It seems that having successfully killed rail on the 10 billion dollar Bay Bridge replacement and tearing down the Bay Bridge streetcar loop serving Transbay Terminal in favor of a purely underground, stub-end terminus surrounded by new, 100 story high-rises, SF Mayor Gavin "f*** yuppie" Newsom and his corporate cronies have turned their attention to environmental matters, such as ensuring no more trains come across the bay or up the Peninsula from the Central Valley.

You see, repairing the Dumbarton Bridge, which is sandwiched between the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct and a (recently widened, natch) road bridge and railroad yards on both ends, would "stir up Bay Mud containing chemicals from gold-mining days", to quote one rail enthusiast.

But building a second transbay tube or more highway lanes over the bay is A-OK since it doesn't threaten Bart or Caltrain's f***-up excuse for a West Coast child's imagination of what a functioning transit system looks like, namely, exclusive service (they are even willing to let Union Pacific tell them that the HSR -- the largest public works project in the nation -- can't use existing RR right-of-way anywhere in the state, and they certainly don't want other services sharing each other's tracks when a forced connection would generate more revenue for them and screw competing transit agencies out of a viable route into the city).

Oh, and NEVER MIND that Caltrain, which will become a fully subsidiary division of the new HSR, was awarded exclusive rights to operate Dumbarton Rail service to the Altamont corridor junction in Fremont, as a seamless spur of Caltrain service, when Caltrain itself will become a local function of the HSR,

which means that ANY RESTORATION of the Dumbarton rail crossing across the East Bay, especially if it interleaves ACE trains to Stockton, will be a de facto local spur of the CAHSR,

and Sacramento will quickly demand it be extended from SF and San Jose directly to Sacramento via Stockton and Fremont junction, high-speed be damned. But Caltrain and the State are too ignorant of how express rail works to understand or do any of that, and will create a series of forced transfers in parking lots,

like they've done all over that benighted state. did I mention the preferred alternative for CAHSR would go straight through an entirely undeveloped part of the Silicon Valley that developers are itching to get their hands on? To quote "There Will be Blood", "there's a pipeline!")

And then Californians have the gall to bitch about Amtrak, when they've obviously never set foot in a city with decent rail service...

[yorgatron]

1. I live in San Jose,and the idiots here voted to extend BART down here.

Bart is a bloated piece of shit compared to light rail,which could be done for 1/3 the price.
the capitol should be moved from Sacramento to someplace a little more happening,hell,why not move it to L.A.?
all I know is,if we ever actually get any rail built there's some jobs to be had,and that's all I care about right now.

[Leopolds Ghost]

2. I rest my case. You are far more succinct than I. of course I disagree...

Light rail in San Jose is an underused, slow as molasses bus on rail boondoggle. The only decent light rail (and there are plenty examples) is at either end of the spectrum. Either run it high speed on dedicated tracks with street running only at the endpoints, like various interurban systems in Philly, New Jersey, etc. Or run streetcars in the central areas only, like downtown Toronto, SF, Dallas. Streetcars are NOT CONDUCIVE to extending out 40 miles in mixed traffic (or worse, in freeway medians and unused industrial sidings, like on the West Coast!) without becoming a bus on rails.

BART may be a bloated and wasteful POS, but it doesn't have to be. It was modeled on the same platform as WMATA, the most successful modern rapid transit system in the nation. Too bad San Francisco f---ed up the model. Washington didn't. They're building a 23-mile extension as we speak, for much less money than BART is asking for a measly tunnel (but of course, the same contractors -- Bechtel and gang -- blocked a European consortium from proposing a tunnel, because Bechtel wants to keep the price of tunneling in the US artificially inflated by monopolizing the contracts. They also want to cheap out on Metrorail design standards.)

As for claiming that Sacramento be moved so that you guys don't have to build a rail link thru populated areas, I rest my case.

And, god forbid, have a commuter rail link across the bay like you guys had 50 years ago.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. I expect this will get zero replies since people are no longer as in-depth

On issues like development, public housing, public transit, as the "progressive" community used to be.

No longer advocating for the New Deal (thanks, Clinton! Thanks, Rahm Emanuel)
can do that to a party, or group of people who merely happen to be affiliated
with said party, even when it advocates policies indistinguishable from what
Reagan was doing.

In fact, here in DC area, I just read that "progressive" Democrats are by
definition OPPOSED to the politics of the poor and social justice who are
"old-line Democrats" according to one politician who represents Capitol Hill.
It's "us" versus the non-progressives (social justice Dems) you see.

(He got elected after he campaigned on a platform of demolishing Capitol Hill's
scattered-site public housing and converting it into a Gold's Gym, a stadium,
and a barracks for the Marine Corps Band.)

"Progressives" like light rail because it encourages development, whereas
heavy rail moves too many people, who they don't want to sit next to, and
you can't see it so it's less effective at allowing you to demolish low-income
housing to build high-rises and Starbucks. Light rail makes a great bumper sticker;
fast, convenient rapid rail serving a plethora of icky lower-income destinations, does not.

You have to go to a transit blog to find people willing to do more than
mumble "four wheels bad, two wheels good", "I'd ride it if I didn't have
four kids", and similar platitudes.

I mean, you'd think the EPA would consider direct train service between
SF and Sacramento important.

[Taverner]

9. Light rail is slow and useless. Give me high speed and BART any day

There's a reason people pay more to ride bart than 'Light rail'

Light Rail averages around 30mph

BART, 60mph

Crazy me, I'll take the fast train

[Retrograde]

13. Tell us how you really feel

I don't expect to see a BART connection to San Jose in my lifetime: they've already had to come back and ask the Santa Clara county voters for more money. I'd rather see light rail expanded to meet BART. Not that that benefits those of us in the "outlying" parts of the county.

BART won't be happy until its little empire gobbles up all the transit resources in the Bay Area.

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. Did I mention Caltrain is so incompetent, it can't extend Dumbarton, Monterrey, or Santa Cruz?

Despite being the only agency in a position to do so?

And locals are perfectly happy to claim the money and the will is not there to do so, or that they wouldn't want Caltrain in charge of such service, and create yet another incompetent, money-sucking agency requiring a forced transfer to Caltrain on the Peninsula.

All of whose agency heads would of course drive to work on the newly-widened California highways that nobody had an environmental problem with, despite being the most "progressive" part of the country. Allegedly. Talk about hypocrisy!

[Xithras]

5. You have GOT to be kidding.

Most people in this part of California supported the original bond measure because it promised to relieve the nightmare commute (the Altamont is already crossed by an 8-10 lane freeway, and is a bumper to bumper crawl during commute hours as more than a hundred thousand people cross it on their way between the Valley and the Bay Area). The original HSRA proposal, after the Pacheco route was selected, omitted any northern crossings. The supporters quickly had the "local service" portion of the project added back in after realizing that it would FAIL in the ballot box without it. It currently takes me about 90 minutes to drive to San Jose from my house during regular hours, and 2.5 hours during the peak commute. The original HSRA propsal would have pushed that commute to 3 hours. Nobody is going to do that, and Cal HSRA saw its Northern California support plummet when they proposed it.

The HSRA project will require several more bond issues before it can be completed. If they follow this (stupid) EPA suggestion and eliminate the northern connections, those subsequent bonds WILL fail. I certainly won't vote for it.

What is the point in building a rail system that AVOIDS connecting to the areas that actually generate the most car traffic? Who the heck do they expect to ride this thing?

[Leopolds Ghost]

6. The worst part is, there's unused rail bridge that connects both sides of bay to Fremont & Stockton

Meaning they could set up direct Sacramento to SF service within two years if they wanted to.

And they won't use it, for various trumped up reasons that amount to "too many people live in the area near the line and will be impacted" (the typical old-school sprawl mentality) and "we can't afford to build rail across the bay, even to fix an existing rail bridge" (but we have plenty of money to spend billions to enlarge the Bay Bridge, but we're afraid to put any rail across the bay!) or "it would disturb contaminated Bay Mud." Which translates into "I'm familiar with the Bay marshes and visit them, I've never been to the south end of San Jose and didn't realize there was any open space left down there tha's worth protecting, especially considering it's on the ass end of the universe from the perspective of anyone living north of Fresno."

Get this, they even said that CAHSR had "no problem" with running "light weight trainsets" across the existing (restored) Dumbarton Bridge to provide "local" service To Fremont, Stockton, etc. via Altamont corridor

"separate from, and beyond the scope of HSR" -- as if "commuter rail" were "lighter" than HSR, or perhaps they felt HSR was incapable of running on non-high-speed (refurbished) trackage near the urban core

-- Apparently UNAWARE that their OWN G-D technology is inherently lighter weight than the commuter rail locomotives and freight rail that the old bridges and tracks were designed for.

-- Apparently UNAWARE that any and all service across the Dumbarton bridge would be interleaved with Caltrain and hence HSR... Oops, FRA won't like that! You can't put REAL HSR on conventional tracks unless you ban local diesel trains or even FRA-compliant commuter trains from said tracks. So we can't do it! That's why Amtrak isn't allowed to purchase real bullet trains for use in the Northeast. See, we're not like Europe! So all ACE trains will have to terminate in the East Bay and local trains won't be able to branch off of Dumbarton Bridge or Visalia or anywhere else in CA, to access the main line.

-- Apparently unaware that the only reason High Speed Rail works in every other country except America, is because it is allowed to share its express-local tracks with mainline compatible trains serving local destinations in suburbs, small towns, etc. that do not need to "justify the investment"

It's as if they've absorbed the FRA's ignorant mentality that all-stops local trains are incapable of interleaving with dedicated HSR.

In their mind, dedicated HSR is a dedicated track, in competition with all other services, and you have to disbark a local train in order to get on the corridor. I mean, Caltrain is "supposedly" going to run service across Dumbarton and they'll be running the whole rest of their operation entirely on the HSR tracks! Which is as good as saying it won't get built, because Caltrain doesn't even know how to run an express-local operation, much less have to worry about interleaving multiple lines from the Central Valley diesel or electric onto "dedicated" track like they do every day on the Northeast Corridor -- that would break their brain!

[Xithras]

7. The mentality of the entire HSR project has been wrong almost since the beginning.

Thee real problem is that the HSRC has been focused on connecting SF to LA above all else. Their rallying cry has been "San Francisco to LA in three hours!". That's a cool idea, but it ignores one glaring fact. San Francisco to LA traffic only accounts for a TINY FRACTION (less than 1%) of the congestion on our roadways. Even the HSR supporters have conceded that point, and are now focusing their arguments on taking traffic from the airlines. In other words, they want it to be a tool for the tourists, and for the business class who frequently transit between the major cities on business.

In the meantime, the rest of us working schmoes, who generate 99% of the traffic, 99% of the smog, 99% of the greenhouse gasses, and burn 99% of the petroleum, are being left out of the planning process entirely. They are giving only token attention to the reduction of roadway congestion, and one of the former Cal HSR board members even stated flat out, during a public meeting, that reducing roadway congestion wasn't a "goal or priority" for the project.

Most people were mollified by the promise that additional interconnecting local rail services would be added across the Altamont and North Bay to relieve local traffic, and bring some real local benefit to the project. If that doesn't happen, I don't see the project being finished, much less used.

[Leopolds Ghost]

11. If neither Caltrain, CAHSR, FTA can be conviced that interleaving of local trains is possible

...Much less desirable, well,

how can it even happen if Caltrain -- the agency responsible for the "final fifty feet" -- does not know how to run an express-local system at the required Amtrak levels of service? That has knock on effects because it means local trains won't be allowed to have access to express-local HSR tracks -- they'll claim there's no room for them in the terminal zone, run by Caltrain -- trains will only be able to pass each other in stations, which means you can't put local trains on the same route serving intermediate stations -- or vice versa, FTA won't allow the HSR to build slower electric multiple unit trains capable of running on both HSR and conventional tracks to access EXISTING railroad corridors like Altamont (which the State claims they "cant use" because "Union Pacific won't let us.")

They keep trashing Amtrak, but Amtrak could instantly take over the Caltrain corridor and at least know how to run local trains off of a 4-track HSR. They'd still not be given the funding to do it, but at least they'd know how.

If the high speed rail system is essentially a 400 mile long, above ground tunnel that is not allowed to run spurs, even using its own trainsets, to access existing conventional right of way, then you have a connectivity issue.

Can you imagine the Federal Highway Administration mandating that a project not meet cost effectiveness guidelines UNLESS the road was restricted to a sensible one lane in each direction, or two lanes in each direction with one lane reserved for HOV only, no passing? And all interchanges onto neighborhing arterials would be restricted to truck traffic only.

[Retrograde]

14. Is this the bridge that burned some years back?

If you mean the railroad bridge just south of the Dumbarton, that's no longer intact. Not that it would be that hard to rebuilt it - the right of way's the problems, and it wouldn't be hard to connect it to the existing tracks in Redwood City and then on to CalTrain.

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. I wouldn't blame Northern Californians for at least threatening the next bond measure

Unless the "local" spur is restored.

The long term goal is that we have to dissolve the FRA and FTA, however, and end the corrupt relationship they have with Bechtel, Siemens, Bombardier and the RR trusts. They are worse than MMS.

As long as FTA and FRA are in charge, US policy will continue to preach that all rail improvements are stand-alone corrridors that cannot be justified on the basis of other feeder trains that might intersect with them in the future.

I.e. planners are required to assume that anything they built will never be extended past a starter line and must justify itself economically with no feeder routes, no provision for interchanges or express tracks, none of that stuff the rail experts tell them they will eventually need. Because "we can't afford it! It would cost BILLIONS! and billions is something this country doesn't have!"

Or at least Bechtel and Siemens say it would cost billions, because that's their standard rate for elevated - tunneling - and they've fought hard to keep low-cost railroad manufacturers OUT of the US by getting FRA to pass archaic regulations limiting the functionality of rail transit.

It's an active, ongoing, corrupt system to keep America dependent on foreign oil and keep the railroads in private hands and keep transit money flowing into the back pockets of the big firms, because it would be less profitable for those private firms to build and have to maintain lots and lots of transit all across the country under contract with a privatisation-happy government. So build a single line here, a single line there... and make sure they have to keep coming back to you for service and maintainance.

To quote the director of Omni Consumer Products (Robocop): "I had a contract with the US military for 30 years of service and maintainance! Who cares if it worked."

[Taverner]

10. I want the high speed rail. In the long run, its the greener solution

So no, I don't buy this one bit

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. Hey, I'm with you

I hope it doesn't sound in my OP as if I'm ragging on California too much. I'm just in a bad mood...

[Greyskye]

15. I'd actually travel to the Bay Area more than once a year if I could use HSR from Sac.

A two hour drive to get to the traffic jams? No thanks.