L.A.-San Francisco Bullet-Train Bidding May Begin Next Year (Source: www.bloomberg.com/)

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aUk_DvDbFah0&pos=14

L.A.-San Francisco Bullet-Train Bidding May Begin Next Year

By Alan Ohnsman and Chris Cooper

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- California, the top recipient of funds from President Barack Obama’s high-speed rail program, expects to issue a tender for a bullet-train line linking Los Angeles and San Francisco by late 2011.

The state expects bids from about 10 trainmakers and construction may start as early as the first half of 2012, Quentin Kopp, a California High Speed Rail Authority board member, said in an interview in Los Angeles yesterday. The train will whisk passengers between the two cities, 432 miles apart, in less than 2 hours 40 minutes, according to the state-backed group’s website.

California’s push for high-speed rail, backed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, comes as the most populous U.S. state targets cuts in congestion and greenhouse gas emissions from cars and airplanes. The Obama administration in January awarded $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, causing companies such as Alstom SA, Siemens AG, East Japan Railway Co., China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Corp. to boost sales efforts.

“A high-speed line between Los Angeles and San Francisco makes sense given their large populations and the distance between them,” said Yuuki Sakurai, chief executive officer of Fukoku Capital Management Inc., which manages about $8.3 billion. “There might be some companies trying to sell their technologies even if they don’t make a profit, so they can make a name for themselves.”

When fully completed the state anticipates an 800-mile high-speed rail network running from San Francisco to San Diego, near the U.S.-Mexico border. The total cost for the system will be more than $40 billion.

Construction From 2012

California won a $2.3 billion federal grant to help build the high-speed link, which is due to enter service in 2020. That’s in addition to a $10 billion bond sale the state approved in 2008 to fund the rail line. The state has until September 2011 to complete an environmental review, Kopp said.

“Allow four months for the conclusion of proposals and bids, and I estimate conservatively that construction will begin by the first part of 2012,” said Kopp, who was at a U.S. High Speed Rail Association conference in Los Angeles.

Schwarzenegger has proposed running high-speed trains on existing conventional tracks between Los Angeles and San Diego as early as November to spur interest in high-speed rail. Kopp said he doubted whether that timeframe would be met.

“Will that happen in the time variant in the governor’s recent proposal?” Kopp said. “ I don’t think so,” he said without elaboration.

Amtrak Trains

Trains operated by Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, currently don’t run directly between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Travel between Los Angeles and Oakland, which neighbors San Francisco, on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight line takes about 12 hours or twice as long as traveling by car.

Air travel between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area takes about an hour.

“The airlines will certainly lose some of their business,” said Fukoku Capital’s Sakurai. “If you add up the time spent traveling to airports, security checks and delays it makes sense to take the train.”

U.S. Transport Secretary Ray LaHood last month visited Japan, where he tried out a JR East bullet train and rode Central Japan Railway Co.’s magnetic-levitation railway. He also encouraged Japanese trainmakers to compete for U.S. contracts and to set up plants in the country. Japan’s Transport MinisterSeiji Maehara is planning a second visit to the U.S. this year to help stoke interest in bullet trains.

320 kmh Train

JR East will introduce a bullet train next year that can reach speeds of 320 kmh (199 miles per hour). The fastest train in the U.S., Amtrak’s Acela Express, which is built by Alstom and Bombardier Inc., is capable of running at up to 150 mph.

Japanese trainmakers have previously won overseas deals. Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. made the trains for Taiwan’s $15 billion high-speed line that started operating three years ago between suburban Taipei and Kaohsiung in the south. Hitachi Ltd. built high-speed trains running between London and the south- east of the U.K.

China’s Ministry of Railways has teamed up with General Electric Co. in a bid to win U.S. contracts. The two in November agreed a partnership to manufacture equipment for high-speed rail projects.

Japan, which started the world’s first bullet-train services in 1964, carried 308 million people by high-speed train in the year ended March 2009, more than triple the number of passengers on domestic airline routes. Amtrak’s Acela Express carried 3.4 million passengers in fiscal 2008.

To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Cooper in Tokyo atccooper1@bloomberg.net; Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles ataohnsman@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 18, 2010 04:37 EDT 

Senator Boxer, 30/10 and Transit-Oriented Development in LA (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com)

Joel Epstein

Corporate communications, public affairs and philanthropic giving professional

Posted: June 9, 2010 12:40 PM

Senator Boxer, 30/10 and Transit-Oriented Development in LA

One of the interesting things about living in Los Angeles is the contrasting views one sees and hears of what life in the City of Angels should look like. Do Angelenos want a house with a yard, an apartment within walking distance of stores and transportation, or a hilltop townhouse in a gated community miles from downtown? The answer is "yes," or so it would seem from the way LA has developed to include ample examples of all of these visions and more of life in the Southland. It was my interest in what might be for Los Angeles that took me to the recentUrban Land Institute (ULI) Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Summit. The conference held Friday at the Hollywood and Highland Metro Red Line station-friendly Renaissance Hollywood Hotel and presented in partnership with Metro, AECOM, ARUP, CRA/LA, CIM, MVE & Partners,SCAG, Globe Street and others was a chance for ULI presenters and vendors to show the field what parts of greater LA may look like in the years to come. As the future home of what could become America's leading mass transit system, what better place to profile possible mixed use residential, commercial and retail developments built at critical transit hubs?

As these things tend to be, the well-organized conference was as much a chance to shmooze with other attendees about transit-oriented development and vendors like Bike Station (a convenient bike parking solution), as it was an opportunity to hear from ULI's technical assistance panels. During a morning session the panels let loose about the challenges and opportunities faced at the suboptimal Slauson Avenue Blue Line, Vermont Green Line and Jordan Downs/103rd Street Blue Line Metro stations, as well as the promising Monrovia Transit Village along the Gold Line (Foothill) San Gabriel Valley extension. But as I opined in my last blog, what about the parking for bikes and cars? Is this a missed public-private partnership (P3) opportunity? Is it enough that Metro relies on the private sector to build parking at existing and planned transit stations? As one panelist put it, there is a need that has not yet been met, years after the station's construction, for safe, well-lit and mixed-use parking at Slauson so Metro riders don't have to drive south to the Florence station to park safely. This lesson should ring true for the planned Expo, Gold, Green and Purple Line stations as well since the fact is, many Angelenos will be driving to those stations too.

On a more upbeat note, when it is completed in 2014, Monrovia Station Square will be one of the first of the dozen projects built under Measure R, a County voter-approved half cent transportation sales tax. Recognizing the need to create a "place" in Monrovia the project will be a mixed-use transit-oriented development built around an attractive former rail station. The locale will be truly multimodal, conducive to travel by rail, bus, automobile, bike and foot.

For many, the ULI conference was also a chance to hear Senator Barbara Boxer express her unflagging support for the 30/10 Initiative. Based upon the lengthy standing ovation Boxer received before launching into her remarks, I expect if she wanted one the Senator wouldn't have any trouble landing a spacious apartment in the nearly fully rented mixed-use transit oriented development above the Wilshire Vermont Metro Red Line Station. Unlike her opponent in November, Senator Boxer is a proven commodity who has delivered on projects that have significantly benefited the Los Angeles region in terms of economic development, job creation, and a cleaner environment. For example Boxer's unsung work on the Alameda Corridor, a freight rail project running from the busy ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles 20 miles north to downtown LA, is a forecast of what she is, and will be, doing to advance the 30/10 Initiative for LA and the nation as Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Though the Alameda Corridor which moved considerable freight off the roads to more fuel efficient rail is ancient history by current news standards, it is worth a look as voters go to the polls in November.

Aside from hearing Boxer voice her full-throated support for LA's plan for build within a decade thirty years of mass transit projects, the tour of the Wilshire Vermont project was the highlight of the day for me. The visit started with a quick door-to-door trip on the fast, clean Red Line subway from Hollywood and Highland to Wilshire and Vermont. Exiting the station on the building's plaza we were greeted by a weekly farmers market brimming with fresh fruit and vegetables and prepared foods. Our tour of the rental complex continued in the lobby of one of its two connected seven story buildings. In addition to amenities including a pool, fitness center, party room and business center, residents of the smartly appointed, light and spacious apartments can sleep that much later on work days as they live at one of LA's most transit friendly locations, a straight shot to downtown and to North Hollywood. Though the project has had its bumps along the way and is now with a new management company (the old one didn't accommodate tenants who sought convenient bike parking, etc.), how often in LA does one get the chance to take the subway door to door from home to work?

But among the lessons shared by the candid guides were the added cost and inconvenience of doing one of these projects above an existing subway station. Considerable time and money went into relocating subsurface Metro infrastructure that would not have been located where it was if Metro had anticipated building on the site when the station was first constructed. Going forward, one would expect that Metro will consider transit-oriented construction opportunities at all of its stations and will plan and build accordingly.

The most sobering thing for me about the day-long conference was to see how, from an architectural and planning perspective, many of the most exciting projects are ones the conference sponsors are building in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere rather than in the United States and more pointedly, Los Angeles.

If you care about LA, congestion, energy consumption and the environment, and support mass transit and a plan that will jump start the economy, now is the time to vote. And if you are a company or individual who can afford to, now is the time to step up financially and support broad based business, labor, environmental and civic coalitions like Move LA (for which I consult) andThe Transit Coalition.

Senator Boxer gets it and is in the bus driver's seat on the 30/10 Initiative that Move LA and The Transit Coalition are so effectively advocating for. So if all goes well, in the future, more of those transit-oriented development plans for Shanghai, Singapore and Dubai will be built right here in LA. With that in mind I'm already on the waiting list.

2 Articles on High-Speed Trains

Articles 1

L.A.-San Francisco Bullet-Train Bidding May Begin Next Year

June 18, 2010, 4:40 AM EDT

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• Alstom May Partner With SNCF for Florida High-Speed Train Bid
• JR Central Has No Plans to Sell Its High-Speed Trains to China

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By Alan Ohnsman and Chris Cooper

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- California, the top recipient of funds from President Barack Obama’s high-speed rail program, expects to issue a tender for a bullet-train line linking Los Angeles and San Francisco by late 2011.

The state expects bids from about 10 trainmakers and construction may start as early as the first half of 2012, Quentin Kopp, a California High Speed Rail Authority board member, said in an interview in Los Angeles yesterday. The train will whisk passengers between the two cities, 432 miles apart, in less than 2 hours 40 minutes, according to the state-backed group’s website.

California’s push for high-speed rail, backed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, comes as the most populous U.S. state targets cuts in congestion and greenhouse gas emissions from cars and airplanes. The Obama administration in January awarded $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, causing companies such as Alstom SA, Siemens AG, East Japan Railway Co., China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Corp. to boost sales efforts.

“A high-speed line between Los Angeles and San Francisco makes sense given their large populations and the distance between them,” said Yuuki Sakurai, chief executive officer of Fukoku Capital Management Inc., which manages about $8.3 billion. “There might be some companies trying to sell their technologies even if they don’t make a profit, so they can make a name for themselves.”

When fully completed the state anticipates an 800-mile high-speed rail network running from San Francisco to San Diego, near the U.S.-Mexico border. The total cost for the system will be more than $40 billion.

Construction From 2012

California won a $2.3 billion federal grant to help build the high-speed link, which is due to enter service in 2020. That’s in addition to a $10 billion bond sale the state approved in 2008 to fund the rail line. The state has until September 2011 to complete an environmental review, Kopp said.

“Allow four months for the conclusion of proposals and bids, and I estimate conservatively that construction will begin by the first part of 2012,” said Kopp, who was at a U.S. High Speed Rail Association conference in Los Angeles.

Schwarzenegger has proposed running high-speed trains on existing conventional tracks between Los Angeles and San Diego as early as November to spur interest in high-speed rail. Kopp said he doubted whether that timeframe would be met.

“Will that happen in the time variant in the governor’s recent proposal?” Kopp said. “ I don’t think so,” he said without elaboration.

Amtrak Trains

Trains operated by Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, currently don’t run directly between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Travel between Los Angeles and Oakland, which neighbors San Francisco, on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight line takes about 12 hours or twice as long as traveling by car.

Air travel between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area takes about an hour.

“The airlines will certainly lose some of their business,” said Fukoku Capital’s Sakurai. “If you add up the time spent traveling to airports, security checks and delays it makes sense to take the train.”

U.S. Transport Secretary Ray LaHood last month visited Japan, where he tried out a JR East bullet train and rode Central Japan Railway Co.’s magnetic-levitation railway. He also encouraged Japanese trainmakers to compete for U.S. contracts and to set up plants in the country. Japan’s Transport Minister Seiji Maehara is planning a second visit to the U.S. this year to help stoke interest in bullet trains.

320 kmh Train

JR East will introduce a bullet train next year that can reach speeds of 320 kmh (199 miles per hour). The fastest train in the U.S., Amtrak’s Acela Express, which is built by Alstom and Bombardier Inc., is capable of running at up to 150 mph.

Japanese trainmakers have previously won overseas deals. Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. made the trains for Taiwan’s $15 billion high-speed line that started operating three years ago between suburban Taipei and Kaohsiung in the south. Hitachi Ltd. built high-speed trains running between London and the south- east of the U.K.

China’s Ministry of Railways has teamed up with General Electric Co. in a bid to win U.S. contracts. The two in November agreed a partnership to manufacture equipment for high-speed rail projects.

Japan, which started the world’s first bullet-train services in 1964, carried 308 million people by high-speed train in the year ended March 2009, more than triple the number of passengers on domestic airline routes. Amtrak’s Acela Express carried 3.4 million passengers in fiscal 2008.

--Editors: Anand Krishnamoorthy, Neil Denslow.

To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Cooper in Tokyo at ccooper1@bloomberg.net; Alan Ohnsman in Los Angeles at aohnsman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Neil Denslow at ndenslow@bloomberg.net; Kae Inoue at kinoue@bloomberg.net

Articles 2

New 'Hayabusa' bullet train rolls into Shin-Aomori Station for first time

Residents welcome the E5 series bullet train as it pulls into Shin-Aomori Station for the first time on June 17. (Mainichi)

AOMORI -- The new E5 series bullet train rolled into an extended section of the Tohoku Shinkansen Line between Hachinohe and Shin-Aomori stations for the first time on June 17, greeted by hundreds of locals.

At Shin-Aomori Station, the northernmost bullet train station in Japan, some 500 people including residents chosen from among the public welcomed the train.

Dubbed "Hayabusa," the new train has a maximum speed of 320 kilometers per hour. At 10 a.m. on June 17, an E5 series bullet train departed from Shichinohe-Towada Station, which will open together with Shin-Aomori Station. Traveling at an average speed of 140 kilometers per hour, it arrived at Shin-Aomori Station about 20 minutes later.

As the green train with its distinctive long nose pulled into the station, residents waiting with cameras snapped pictures.

"I want to ride it soon," one of the happy-looking onlookers said.

East Japan Railway Co. and the Japan Railway, Construction, Transport and Technology Agency were conducting a test run of the train to make sure that it was on an even level with station platforms. Further tests at increased speeds are planned on the extended line until September.

Click here for the original Japanese story

(Mainichi Japan) June 18, 2010

Wilshire Bus-Only Lanes Move the Environmental Review Stage (Source:http://la.streetsblog.org/)

Link: http://la.streetsblog.org/2010/06/16/wilshire-bus-only-lanes-move-the-environmental-review-stage/

Wilshire Bus-Only Lanes Move the Environmental Review Stage

by Dana Gabbard on June 16, 2010

It won't be separated as this BRT in the PRC, but it will be nice.  Photo:我爱铰接巴士/Flickr

Sometimes I enjoy having dinner at the Wilshire/Western Denny's for the opportunity it affords to watch the amazing dynamic transit action occurring at that intersection. This includes frequent and very busy bus lines (local and Rapid) along both streets plus hoards of people entering and exiting the rail station. It reminds me how tremendously heavy transit use in the Wilshire corridor is. And partially explains why a Wilshire Bus Rapid Transit Project has been in gestation and has now reached the draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Assessment stage.

Next week Metro is holding four public hearings on the proposed Wilshire BRT project. Details on time and place are below. But 
please indulge me as I lay out some of the history behind it all. I hope you are comfortable because it takes a fair amount of exposition to sketch out, stretches back decades and includes a mind-boggling number of zigs and zags to where things stand now. But trust me, I have a purpose in laying out the highlights of how we came to this point and the significance of the project. And yes despite the several lengthy paragraphs of history that follow this is just the cliff notes version of what has happened. Which is sort of a scary thought in itself.

Improving transit service in the Wilshire corridor has been a regional goal since at least the 1970s. Originally the hope was for it to have mass transit. In fact the original subway alignment was to run along Wilshire as far west as Fairfax. Then in 1985 a methane explosion occurred in the basement of the Ross Dress for Less near the Farmer's Market. This provided the pretext for subway opponents in the Miracle Mile and Hancock Park areas to champion a ban of federal funds being used in what was dubbed the "methane zone" along Wilshire essentially between Crenshaw and Fairfax. The subway instead was re-routed along Vermont and Hollywood Blvd. with a stub west on Wilshire ending at Western.

But plans started to move forward for a western extension of the Red Line that skirted the methane zone by being diverted south of Wilshire to Pico/San Vicente. Ironically this effort was stymied by the discovery that it entailed tunneling through an area saturated with hydrogen sulfate, a very lethal gas. By the late 90s the infamous Hollywood Blvd. sinkhole and other controversies led to a cancellation of plans for subway extensions east and west. Eventually the federal Full Funding Grant Agreement for the eastern extension was converted to the funding of a light rail project, the Gold Line eastern extension that opened last year.

In 2000 a pilot Metro Rapid route (line 720) began operating along Wilshire with hopes to eventually upgrade it to BRT as a substitute for the now cancelled subway extension. In the same period planning began of the Exposition light rail project. By 2004 with funds tight the Metro Board siphoned money from the Wilshire project to keep Exposition on track. But Wilshire BRT stayed alive as that same year a demonstration project was commenced of peak hour bus lanes along a one mile stretch of the Boulevard between Centinella and Federal. Metro staff concluded the "demonstration project resulted in a 14 percent bus speed improvement and up to a 32 percent improvement in bus schedule reliability." By late 2006 studies were underway for bus lanes along the entire length of Wilshire. Bowing to NIMBY pressure the L.A. City Council in August 2007 "temporarily" suspended the demonstration until the one-mile segment could be integrated into a larger bus lane project.

Meanwhile the feds responding to the success of Metro Rapid and similar projects created a new category of funding to encourage BRT type projects. In September 2007 Metro and the City of Los Angeles submitted a “very small starts” application for Wilshire BRT which was approved. After a slow process the project has now reached the stage of draft environmental documents being ready for public comment.

A statement I helped draft that Southern California Transit Advocates presented at the May 8, 2010 Special Metro Board meeting included among its bullet points:

We hope L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa will monitor the progress of the implementation of the Wilshire bus lanes to ensure it is done expeditious and does not get bogged down in LADOT’s lamentable foot dragging that had un-necessarily delayed this project for nearly half a decade.

The Mayor's Office has been very supportive of the project and I am hopeful they will assist in not allowing LADOT 1950s traffic engineering myopia continue to stall it.

And I will note one key group of stakeholders who have helped keep the project alive has been the Bus Riders Union, which has long championed Wilshire BRT via letters of support and appearances at key meetings. 

The hearings will be held:

Monday, June 21, 6pm-8pm
Westwood Presbyterian Church 
10822 Wilshire Bl

Tuesday, June 22, 6pm-8pm
Good Samaritan Hospital -- Moseley Salvatori Conference Center 
637 Lucas Ave.

Tuesday, June 29, 2pm-4pm
Wilshire United Methodist Church 
4350 Wilshire Bl

Wednesday, June 30, 6pm-8pm
Felicia Mahood Center 
11338 Santa Monica Bl

The key electeds whose support is crucial to the project going forward are L.A. city council members Paul Koretz, Bill Rosendahl, Herb Wesson, Tom Labonge and Ed Reyes. Contact information for them is on the city website.

If any of them are your councilmember and you support the project, let them know where you stand. While a handful of vocal NIMBYs have been opposed to the project most comments Metro has received to date have been positive so the prospects are good if the electeds and LADOT are made aware of the overall positive response that they will get onboard to allow it to go forward.

The project matters for practical and symbolic reasons. Having dedicated bus lanes will allow service to be faster and more reliable. And by dedicating lanes during peak hours exclusively to buses along such a prominent street our region will send the message that transit as a priority is no longer getting only lip service.

Metro's 1995 Long Range Transportation Plan included 101 miles of arterial dedicated bus lanes among its strategies to improve mobility in the region. No map of this network was ever released but you have to imagine it would have included Wilshire. Of course it never happened. Here we are 15 years later finally on the cusp of the beginnings of such a network.

Yes, it is disappointing the initial implementation will not include the portions of Wilshire that run through Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. But I believe the success of the lanes will help get those two cities eventually on board. We have to start somewhere and the current project is closer to actually happening than any of the previous efforts. And I say it is the right idea on the right street and needs to go forward without delay. With a good positive turnout at the hearings that will happen. The history I've laid out makes clear approval isn't a slamdunk. But I think it is a very hopeful situation as long as voices of reason dominate the discussion. Let your voice be heard.