Expo Yard Belongs Downtown (Souce: Santa Monica Dispatch)

Link: Santa Monica Dispatch » Blog Archive » Expo Yard Belongs Downtown

Expo Yard Belongs Downtown
By: Peggy Clifford
Published: October 8th, 2009

The Expo Construction Authority and City staff persist in saying that the Verizon property at Stewart Street and Exposition Boulevard, just south of the Lantana complex is the only suitable location in this area for the Expo light rail maintenance yard.

Finding it impossible to believe That there weren’t other likely stets

Along the line in West L.A. or Santa Monica, my friend Craig Bowie and I went exploring.

We found a couple of likely sites in West L.A. near Anawalt Lumber, another under the 405 freeway and still another next to a small government complex.

But the two most likely sites are right here in Santa Monica. One is on the south side of Colorado west of 20th Street. It’s a kind of building junkyard now, but it’s large and well-located.

We’re sure someone, the City, a developer has big plans for this tumbledown site. But Santa Monica is choking on big plans, and is in desperate need of some sensible plans.

What could be more sensible and sustainable than creating a transportation center on and around the bus yards? The freeway is there. the bus yard has just undergone an $80 million renovation, so presumably it has everything it needs. The western terminus of the Expo light rail line is a block away.

The Expo maintenance yard could be located under either the bus yard or the western terminus, which would reduce its negative impacts and muffle its noise. The cost of the big dig would be less than the cost of any surface acreage.

City Hal ls teeming with planners and consultants who should be able to fashion a multi-model transportation center that would fuse the freeway, Big Blue and the Expo light rai line into one smooth coordinated operaton. It’s either that or an endless collision of both vehicles and the jurisdictions.

We can assume that both the Big Blue and Expo bosses, and their bosses will resist any effort at o-mingling, but our traffic problems are bigger than all of them, and urgent. And it’s our town. Later this month, City staff is scheduled to show the City Council revised plan for the Verizon site.

But, however “suitable” it may be for the City or Expo, it is an utterly unsuitable site for the Expo maintenance yard. A lawyer for Lantana appeared at the last hearing, and suggested that the noise from the yard would wreak havoc with Lantana tenants’ sound, recording and editing operations. He went on to say that Lantana would take whatever steps were necessary to protect its production company tenants.

The people who live on Exposition at the south end of the site would

suffer a drastic diminution in their way of life, if the maintenance yard were installed across the street.

It’s a pretty, quiet tree-lined street. The houses and apartment buildings are compact, attractive. Their gardens are very green. It’s an altogether pleasant prospect.

But if the City and Expo have their way, it will be another victim of “progress.”

As Pico Neighborhood residents pointed out at previous hearings, their neighborhood has endured more than its share of so-called progress, while enjoying little real progress. Residents cited the loss of a thriving section of the Neighborhood to the Freeway in the 1960s, and the freeway noise and pollution teat have assaulted them daily for more than 40 years. The City’s “waste management” division is also located in the Pico Neighborhood.

When they learned that the City and Expo were planning to put the maintenance yard in their neighborhood, some residents described it as “environmental racism.”

Expo maintenance yards operate on their own clocks, employ dozens of people, who come and go in cars and trucks, use all manner of chemicals for cleaning and general maintenance, some of which are bound to be toxic 230-ton cars roll in and out at grade, crossing neighborhood streets.

In sum, it’s a noisy, busy, toxic, high volt factory that does not belong in a residential neighborhood.

City staff has spoken of isertung a “buffer” between the yard and its residential neighbors to the south – a two or three-story “mixed use” complex, with stores on the furst floor and apartments on the upper floors.

But even if there were a developer desperate enough to build such apartments overlooking the noisy, noxious yard, there probably aren’t tenants desperate enough to live In them. Besides, while the current residents might find a neighborhood grocery store useful, they may not welcome a couple

of blocks of stores right across the street. Nor would they welcome a block of three story buildings casting long shadows on their houses and gardens.

Clearly, the only way out is to locate the yard n a truly suitable site—such as the City’s proposed transportation enter in m downtown Santa Monica.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

City Council Greenlights Alternate Plan for Rail Yard (Source: www.surfsantamonica.com)

Link: City Council Greenlights Alternate Plan for Rail Yard

City Council Greenlights Alternate Plan for Rail Yard

By Jorge Casuso

July 17, 2009 – The City Council Tuesday voted to move ahead with a plan that would relocate parts of a proposed light rail maintenance yard despite opposition for neighboring residents and some businesses.

The plan includes using a city-owned parcel at 1800 Stewart Street and a Santa Monica College-owned parcel, as well as the originally proposed site currently owned by Verizon near Olympic and Stewart streets.

The council voted 4 to 2 -- with the four Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR) council members present backing the plan and Bob Hollbrook and Bobby Shriver opposing it -- to pursue the alternative and to continue to explore other possible sites and ensure community involvement.

The move to relocate the noisier functions of the Exposition Light Rail Maintenance facility further away from homes in the Pico Neighborhood came after SMRR opposed the proposed Verizon site on Exposition Boulevard earlier this year.

In a letter to the council, the powerful tenants groups called placing the facility across from an apartment building a case of “environmental injustice,” and warned that the facility would have “many intolerable impacts” on the city’s poorest and most ethnically diverse neighborhood.

The council vote came after a consultant hired by the City to explore alternative sites “confirmed that there were no other sites. . . that met the criteria, particularly with respect to size and ownership,” according to staff.

But the alternative plan failed to please the two dozen residents who testified that it did not adequately address health and safety issues – one neighborhood leader said it created a “toxic triangle" – and that it would snarl traffic on Stewart Street.

Mayor Ken Genser noted that the yard, which would service trains that run on the second phase of the line from Culver City to Downtown Santa Monica, would have little or no impact on health, since the cars are electric and do not pollute.

The plan also was opposed by officials at the Lionstone Group, a real estate investment firm that has a ground lease with the City until 2030 for the land at 1800 Stewart.

"Our ground lease is not for sale and we will actively oppose any effort to take our lawful right to use that for the next 21 years," said Daniel Dubrowski, a founding partner of Lionstone.

College officials, on the other hand, said they are willing to give up the adjacent college-owned student parking lot if the City helped them find an alternative site. The council directed staff to help the college relocate the parking lot.

Shriver, who cast one of the two opposing votes, said the City should continue to look for an alternate site, which should not be difficult to find in today’s economic climate.

Council, Residents at Odds Over Maintenance Yard Location (Source: www.santamonicadispatch.com)

Link: Santa Monica Dispatch » Blog Archive » Council, Residents at Odds Over Maintenance Yard Location

Council, Residents at Odds Over Maintenance Yard Location

By: Peggy Clifford

Published: July 16th, 2009

Expo Light Rail officials and City consultants told the City Council Tuesday night that the only possible location for the proposed Expo maintenance yard is in the Pico neighborhood in Santa Monica.

The proposed line will run from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City and from Culver City to Santa Monica.

A majority of the proposed line is located in West L.A. and West L.A. is far larger than Santa Monica. Yet, according to the officials, the only suitable site is In the smallest and most beset neighborhood in the smallest community on the line.

We find that impossible to believe – especially since Expo has the power to take whatever property it wants, including the proposed Santa Monica site. Indeed, an Expo official suggested that if it didn’t have its way with us, we might lose the line. “It could be a deal-breaker,” he said,

The site is a patchwork job. Located on both sides of the 1800 block of Stewart Street, it would include a busy, multi-track crossing. The land is owned by Verizon and the City. Verizon leases some of its land to Santa Monica College for student parking. The City has a 30-year lease with Lionstone, which plans to build a cancer research center on the site. Lionstone partner Dan Dubrowki told the Council that his company would fight any effort to break the lease and dislodge it from the site.
Most of the 30-plus residents who opposed the proposed location of the maintenance yard live in the Pico Neighborhood.

Several of them described the plan as “environmental racism.” Recent studies show that air pollution from the 10 freeway, which cuts through the neighborhood, lingers longer than previous studies showed. Several people noted that the City Yards, including recycling and waste management facilities, are located in the neighborhood, too.

Many of the speakers have lived in the neighborhood all their lives and are now raising their own children there. They recalled one of most shameful events in the town’s history when, in the early 1960s, City Hall allowed Caltrans to drive the new freeway through the Pico Neighborhood and demolish several blocks of handsome houses.

After a long discussion, four of the six City Council members took a staff recommendation that it approve the site, and directed staff “to continue to explore other possible sites…and ensure community involvement.”

Mayor Ken Genser, Mayor Pro Tem Pam O’Connor, and Council members Richard Bloom and Gleam Davis voted for approval. Council members Bob Holbrook and Bobby Shriver voted against approval, in the belief that belief that better sites were available in West L.A.

Council member Kevin McLeown was absent.

Ironically, earlier in the evening, Planning Director Eileen Fogarty described plans to create “conservation districts” in residential neighborhoods.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 2:34 am and is filed under Daily.

From KCBS San Jose: Still No Regional Consensus on High Speed Rail

KCBS - Still No Regional Consensus on High Speed Rail

Still No Regional Consensus on High Speed Rail



SAN JOSE (KCBS) -- Although the mayors of the Bay Area’s two largest cities agree on the priorities for high speed rail, some cities between San Francisco and San Jose harbor reservations about the project.

Leaders in several peninsula cities are concerned about the impact trains running 120 mph will have on the quality of life in communities adjacent to the existing Caltrain right of way.

Listen KCBS' Mike Colgan reports
Audio link: http://podcast.kcbs.com/kcbs/1794645.mp3

“The track design, for example in Palo Alto, would run right up to or in some cases potentially need to take some of people’s back yards,” said Palo Alto City Councilman Pat Burt.

Burt said communities up and down the peninsula could find themselves divided by large, physical barriers to mitigate noise and danger from the engines.

Such discord could jeopardize federal funding for the rail line that would eventually connect Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento with the Central Valley.

A unified plan will ease the competition for stimulus dollars in particular, said San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed.

“It’s really important for us all to work together because we want to make sure that high speed rail, the California part of high speed rail, has the best chance possible,” Reed said.

Commentary: I have never seen the total blurring of the distinction between journalism and editorials. Here, we have a writer publishing an opinion piece and it's not mentioned anywhere in this newpaper that it's an opinion piece. This is one worst examples of writing I have seen lately. After reading a number of articles, the consistent theme is knee-jerk NIMBYism and opposition to any change. Cities grow and change just like people do. After all, cities are populated by people.

Santa Monica Dispatch » Blog Archive » City “Solution” Far Worse Than Problem

City “Solution” Far Worse Than Problem
By: Peggy Clifford
Published: May 7th, 2009

These days, when City Hall people speak of “improvements,” “enhancements,” “beautification,” or ‘opportunity,” an ever-increasing number of residents shudder seismically.

Too often, City “improvements,” “enhancements,” “beautifications” and “opportunities” have turned out to be MORE of something we need less of.

“Less” is a concept that City Hall rejected some time ago. Invariably, quantity tops quality, trendy trumps style, and confusion smothers clarity.

Only City Hall people would see the prospect of a light rail station in the most congested area of the city as “an exciting opportunity.”

We’re speaking of the area where what City Hall now calls the “Station District,” the “Civic Center District” and the “Downtown District” converge. Not so long ago, neither downtown nor the Civic Center were “districts,” and they didn’t converge. They were separated by the10 freeway. It was a clean and useful break, as it held the downtown commercial commotion at bay and prevented the traffic tsunami from rolling across the Civic Center and swamping Ocean Park.

The Civic Center has long been a kind of oasis in the midst of the rising hubbub. wide, open, pleasantly aloof, coherent.

But, for all its crooning about open space, City Hall abhors nothing so much as passive land, and, in 1993, it commissioned a Civic Center Specific Plan. Since then, the Plan has been revised regularly — with each iteration more muddled and misbegot. At the same time, it began adding buildings that in design, scale and location insulted the original buildings.

The latest iteration of the Plan includes a multi-million-dollar remodel of the Civic Auditorium, as well as a kind of joint use partnership with Santa Monica High School, facilities. The school campus is just across Fourth Street from the Civic Center, and is now part of the “Civic Center District.”

Owing solely to City Hall’s continuing inability or unwillingness to commit itself to preserving the unique character of the Civic Center, it has been in planning limbo or more than a decade.

The Santa Monica Pier has always been a major traffic attraction. City Hall’s decision to brace the pier with Santa Monica Place and “hotel row” and to spend millions promoting this fabled beach town as a “regional commercial hub” and romper room were the genesis of Santa Monica’s now-legendary gridlock.

In 1996, in response to residents’ mounting complaints, then-planning director Suzanne Frick announced that a “comprehensive” traffic plan was in the works. But, 13 years have passed, Frick decamped for Long Beach several years ago, and no such plan has ever appeared, because City Hall is much better at cause than effect.

Specifically, according to City Hall, this latest “exciting opportunity” deals with an “anticipated increase in pedestrian activity” by making radical changes in “the patterns of traffic and movement in the downtown area…that incorporates additional park areas, smooth circulation with pedestrian, bicycle and transit access, and a vibrant gathering space, while simultaneously achieving the goals in the Civic Center Master Plan, the LUCE Strategic Framework and Creative Capital.”

The most striking, and ominous, aspect of this plan is the weight it gives the station, and the license it gives City Hall to remake the heart of Santa Monica.

Downtown Santa Monica and the Civic Center can fairly be called “districts,” but the proposed station certainly doesn’t rate the designation on its own. Clearly, it’s not just a station to City Hall, it’s salvation, and it will require millions of dollars and spreading rather than reducing the congestion.

The “Station District” at Fourth and Colorado, will inject more pedestrians into the Downtown District, which is already choking on traffic of every sort. It will add a plaza at the station, as well as “wider and improved pedestrian access routes between the Santa Monica Pier, the beach and the Civic Center,” and a trolley or shuttle from the station to the Pier and back.

It will also “modify the grid” by adding a new street from the Freeway’s Fourth Street off-ramp to divert freeway traffic away from the station – and, not incidentally, from downtown Santa Monica. Thus, motorists would have to go south into the Civic Center and/or Ocean Park in order to go north into downtown Santa Monica.

This “modification” will displease drivers, Ocean Park residents and downtown business owners, but this plan isn’t about pleasing people.

It would be far simpler to close the Fourth Street off-ramp, which is it a branch of the Fifth Street off-ramp, and wave everyone off at Fifth. But this plan isn’t about simplicity either.

And why is the station on Fourth anyway? Some years ago, the City paid $34 million for the Sears auto shop for some sort of transit station.
At the time, we wondered at the efficacy of locating it hard by the principal downtown freeway exit.

Since the light rail is still five years away, the City could find a more functional location, but, as we have learned, City Hall people would rather change Santa Monica than change their collective mind.

The plan also calls for creating more open and park space, by “capping” a portion of the freeway east from McClure tunnel in order to “reconnect” the Civic Center District’s green space with the Downtown District’s ungreen space.
Surely decking the freeway and calling it open or park space amounts to consumer fraud—especially since the Downtown District has been connected to the Civic Center District for decades by the landmark Main Street bridge, so “reconnection” via the freeway deck would also be redundant…and utterly mad — especially when the bogus open space is less than a block from the ocean.

In fact, this plan is an absolutely perfect recipe for terminal gridlock, AKA chaos. . In that sense, it does fulfill the primary goal of the Civic Center plan and the LUCE “Strategic Framework to impose “urban form” on this beach town. After all, nothing is more urban than gridlock.

Ironically, the accumulating hustle and bustle at its perimeter has isolated the Civic Center, and, if the plan is approved, could cut it off entirely. If City Hall is bent on diverting freeway traffic away from the station, how does it plan to route the 2200-plus City employees and 1100-plus RAND workers, the residents of the planned 364-unit monster “Village” project, and audiences coming and going from the revamped Civic Auditorium? They can’t go north on Fourth, and will only be able to go south on Main. If and when Olympic Drive is extended from Main to Ocean Avenue, they can enter the great coastal traffic jam and creep north or south. Or they can choose the east-bound freeway crawl.

In trying to do so many things, the plan fails to do the one thing it should do, which is to integrate the light rail station and riders into the downtown mix.

No one knows, with any certainty, how many riders there will be. City Hall estimates the current daily transient population at 300,000. Some of them will undoubtedly prefer light rail to buses and/or driving. Since this light rail line begins in downtown Los Angeles and travels west well south of the 10 freeway, riders are more apt to be workers than, say, Bloomingdale shoppers, and more apt to arrive in downtown Santa Monica at 8 a.m. than noon. In addition, more riders may disembark at the 17th Street station on their way to jobs at the hospitals or classes at the college. This is all pure speculation. But City Hall’s radical, elaborate and expensive plan is based on speculation, too. The difference is that the planners choose to imagine hordes, mobs of riders, and we don’t.

Welcome to Santa Monica, the city with the highest number of NIMBYs in the universe.

Curbed LA: Santa Monica Resident on the Coming Pedestrian Tsunami

Santa Monica Resident on the Coming Pedestrian Tsunami
Thursday, May 7, 2009, by Neal Broverman



News of the Expo Line reaching Santa Monica by 2014 has been music to most Westsider's ears. Well, count writer Peggy Clifford not among the elated. In a commentary in the Santa Monica Dispatch, Clifford blasts the coming design modifications that will coincide with Expo, including added park space, a remodel of the Civic Auditorium, pedestrian access routes between the Santa Monica Pier, the beach and the Civic Center, and possibly a freeway cap park. Basically, Clifford equates added pedestrian traffic to gridlock, saying "After all, nothing is more urban than gridlock." Some more quotes from Peggy: "Only City Hall people would see the prospect of a light rail station in the most congested area of the city as 'an exciting opportunity.' "The 'Station District' at Fourth and Colorado, will inject more pedestrians into the Downtown District, which is already choking on traffic of every sort." "City Hall estimates the current daily transient population at 300,000. Some of them will undoubtedly prefer light rail to buses and/or driving. Since this light rail line begins in downtown Los Angeles and travels west well south of the 10 freeway, riders are more apt to be workers than, say, Bloomingdale shoppers, and more apt to arrive in downtown Santa Monica at 8 a.m. than noon." Clifford also blasts the proposed 364-unit Village development on Ocean Avenue.
· City Solution Far Worse Than Problem [Santa Monica Dispatch]
· The Village at Santa Monica, Part II [Curbed LA]

My theory: every mile of track for the bullte train will generate one complaint averaged out over the whole line. The Bullet train hasn't been built yet and the complaints are already out there.

GilroyDispatch.com | Letters: Get ready for the bullet train's sonic blast out of the tunnel

Letters: Get ready for the bullet train's sonic blast out of the tunnel
11:17 AM
By The Community

Get ready for the bullet train's sonic blast out of the tunnel

Dear Editor,

After reading a recent letter in the Dispatch, I was alarmed and dismayed to learn that tunnels for Gilroy and Morgan Hill are part of the design for future high-speed trains. I doubt that Gilroy and Morgan Hill residents are aware that when high-speed trains emerge from tunnels, there is a very loud and dramatic sonic boom-like effect.

Such an earthquake-like blast several times a day will seriously degrade the quality of life for anyone within a few miles of the train tunnel exits. Anyone in Gilroy who can even barely hear the trains today had better tighten their windowpanes and be ready for the shock waves. I suggest local citizens take note of this and demand a full disclosure before this project is closed to modification. I assure you this will not be tolerated in any city to the north on the path of these trains.

Add to this another concern: Because this concept has been so long in coming, it is for a system that is outdated and soon to be replaced in Japan. Yes, 200-plus mph may seem fast to us, but those trains are being replaced by the new version, which is well over 300 mph which, of course, have slightly different rail bed requirements. Perhaps California can buy the discarded junkers from elsewhere in the world to build our system!

Odd that Americans will be impressed with the equivalent of propeller planes when the rest of the world is converting to the equivalent of jets.

We in South County will be again, where we were with U.S. 101 on the stretch between Morgan Hill and San Jose. When that was planned, it was well known to be an inadequate road on the day it opened. To bring it to where it should be years later, the ultimate cost of that road was triple what it could cost if properly designed from the beginning.

It would be great to hear an official response to these concerns, but it is very likely we will hear nothing, hoping that Gilroy and Morgan Hill citizens will be unaware until it is too late to remedy.

Tony Weiler, Gilroy

The main problem now: a lack of integrity in leaders - locally, too

Dear Editor,

Integrity: an innate character manifest by honesty, truth, incorruptible and able to stand firm in support of his principles against any challenges or ridicule by others.

There was an article in a recent Wall Street Journal titled " Global Crisis." It caught my eye.

In essence it said there are no national leaders in this world who are men of integrity, nor any men of integrity in our United States Government. The net effect is that if you encounter theft, corruption or injustice, to whom can you turn to for redress? No one, NONE! This lack of integrity is found at all levels of our government.

In Washington D.C. the president and his advisors all believe you can spend your way out of debt. They also believe you can lift yourself up by your own boot-straps.

We have a similar lack of integrity at our state level. The Regents at the University of California at Berkeley have salaries above $300,000 per annum. They recently gave themselves raises necessitating increasing the students' tuition fees so the Regents budget could be balanced.

At the local level (Gilroy) we see a number of employees at all levels of the administration have received compensation increases of 30 to 40 percent over the past few years. If you would better understand the soap box opera going on at City Hall, then look up the Gilroy Dispatch issue of April 21. The article lists the salaries of various employees so you get an idea as to where and to whom the taxpayers' largess is going. Favored employees get a nice raise, others less fortunate a "pink slip." With the economy depressed, one wonders just how long the Gilroy budget will remain in balance. Time will tell.

There is an axiom in logic that states, "If you start with a false premise then no matter how correct your reasoning, you can never reach truth." Applying that axiom to the global crisis and locally, we must recognize that until we have men of integrity as leaders, then no end of reform, bailouts, stimulants or earmarks will solve our problems.

How do we develop men of integrity? A step in the right direction might be to restore the Holy Bible in the public schools' classroom.

J. G. McCormack, Gilroy

Petition Amtrak to make Gilroy a 'Starlight' passenger stop

Dear Editor,

For many years, I attempted to generate interest and campaigned to restore passenger rail service to the Monterey Bay Area.

Currently, Amtrak's "Coast Starlight" train passes through downtown Gilroy twice a day on it's route from Seattle to Los Angeles and back. At times, this train is forced to stop in front of the depot as it has to await the arrival of the 7:30 p.m. Caltrain because of single track north of town.

Current regulations do not allow passengers to de-train from the Starlight. It would be prudent for city officials to petition Amtrak to include Gilroy as a station stop. This would enhance travel options, bring added business downtown as people would come from the surrounding area to board the train without the hassle of driving to San Jose or Salinas.

Gary V. Plomp, San Martin

The high-speed rail project will be hundreds of miles. There may be one NIMBYism per mile of rail laid.

www.sfexaminer.com >> Local >> Local News - San Francisco News - Bay Area News - High-speed rail opposition picks up speed

High-speed rail opposition picks up speed
By: Will Reisman

04/29/09 8:00 PM
‘A great idea, if done properly’: Palo Alto City Council member Larry Klein stands at the Caltrain crossing at Churchill and Alma streets, pointing out homes that would have to be moved for high-speed rail.

They backed the funding of high-speed rail, but as plans emerge for the system, Peninsula residents are starting to question the fine print beneath that historic decision.

Just six months ago, a strong majority of Peninsula voters — 61 percent — supported a statewide measure to pledge $9.95 billion for the development of a high-speed rail system in California.

The promise of the $45 billion project is a state-of-the-art train that will whisk passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes. The proposed system is projected to carry 94 million passengers annually by the year 2030, according to the California High Speed Rail Authority.

Next month, a lawsuit challenging the rail system’s planned routing between Fresno and San Francisco will go before a Sacramento judge.

Menlo Park and Atherton are plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Earlier this month, Palo Alto voted to back the lawsuit by filing a friend-of-the-court brief that outlines its shared objection to the project and preference that it run through the East Bay instead.

The high-speed rail route in the Peninsula will follow existing commuter train tracks, according to an agreement Caltrain approved with the California High Speed Rail Authority on April 2. Specific details on whether the high-speed train would run above, below or next to Caltrain won’t be clarified for another 9 to 12 months, but it is certain that the existing trackway that Caltrain uses between San Francisco and San Jose would have to be expanded greatly. The trackway for high-speed rail would also have to be either raised or lowered to prevent any crossings with streets.

The possibility of towering retaining walls and elevated platforms creating barriers in communities is what pushed the cities to pursue a lawsuit against the state’s high-speed rail agency. Several rail watchdogs, including the Palo Alto-based Bay Rail Alliance, are also plaintiffs.

“The more we’ve gotten into it, the more we think the procedures determining the route were flawed,” Palo Alto City Council member Larry Klein said. “We think high-speed rail is a great idea, if done properly.”

If the lawsuit — which asks that the court rescind the decision to move the route through the Peninsula in order to conduct further environmental review — is successful, it would be disastrous for the progress of high-speed rail, according to Ron Diridon, chairman of the CHSRA.

“This would set the timetable back two to three years for high-speed rail, and probably cost another $3 million,” he said. “We wouldn’t be eligible for federal stimulus funds, and we wouldn’t be able to spend the state bond money until the study was completed.”

In addition to the cities that are party to the lawsuit, other communities and officials on the Peninsula have expressed concern about the possible negative effects of the high-speed rail route.

“When the bond issue passed in November everyone here was real excited,” said Redwood City Mayor Rosanne Foust. “But like they say, the devil is in the details, and when it became clear that this could be a reality, we realized there needed to be a whole lot of community dialogue to discuss how this would affect our city.”

State Assemblyman Jerry Hill said the key issue for Peninsula cities is ensuring that high-speed rail doesn’t create a divide.

“You want to avoid creating a scar down the middle of the community,” Hill said. “We want to be real careful that there is no
socio-geographic distinction to being on one side of the tracks.”

Some Peninsula cities want the system to run underground, an alternative that would likely be more expensive, according to Tony Daniels, project manager for the California High Speed Rail Authority.

Syed Murtuza, Burlingame’s public works director, said elevated train tracks would decrease property values of nearby homes, and the constant whirring of trains could be seen as a nuisance.

“It’s questionable if the county’s residents knew enough information about the high-speed rail before they voted,” Murtuza said.

Menlo Park resident Martin Engel has been an outspoken critic of plans for high-speed rail.

“Our home values will absolutely plummet with the prospect of 200 trains a day going by outside,” he said. “While we speculate about what could happen, they’re not telling us anything about what their plans are.”

To such criticism, Diridon counters that the California High Speed Rail Authority held countless public meetings with the Peninsula before the November vote. He said community concerns are currently being carefully weighed.

The development of high-speed rail in California would bring countless benefits to the state, Diridon said. The system would decrease noise and air pollution from cars and airplanes, bring jobs and free the state from reliability on foreign oil.
Many rail-route decisions remain to be made

On April 2, Caltrain and the California High Speed Rail Authority entered into a memorandum of understanding to work together on bringing the proposed rail system through the Peninsula.

Entering into a right-of-way agreement with Caltrain prevents the High Speed Rail Authority from having to buy costly — and rare — tracts of undeveloped land in the Peninsula, according to Christine Dunn, spokeswoman for Caltrain.

In turn, Caltrain is expected to get funding revenue from the high speed rail agency that would benefit capital improvement projects, notably the electrification of Caltrain’s trackway, Dunn said.

While the two sides are working toward the right-of-way agreement, nothing is set in stone yet, said CHSRA board member Rod Diridon. If the rail authority’s environmental review studies indicate that underground tunnels would be the best route for the system, then a contract agreement with Caltrain would likely be unnecessary, he said.
Peninsula stations undecided

The plans for California’s high speed rail system include a maximum of 22 stations spread across the state.

A station in Millbrae — home to existing BART and Caltrain stops — is likely; a second planned depot on the Peninsula is still up for grabs, according to Diridon.

Officials are considering a stop in either Redwood City or Palo Alto — if either city wants it.

“They have to show interest and enthusiasm in rezoning and infrastructure issues that would be necessary to house a station,” said Diridon.

Palo Alto, however, joined a lawsuit earlier this month that questions whether the high-speed rail authority made the right decision in choosing the Peninsula instead of the East Bay for the system’s path.

Redwood City mayor Rosanne Foust said her community needs more information before it is willing to consider the idea of hosting a stop on the high-speed rail route.

“Overall for the state, high-speed rail brings tremendous opportunities, but what would the benefits be for a stop in Redwood City?” Foust asked. “We don’t know yet if this would be an economic advantage.”
Funding flows from federal, state sources

A $9.95 billion bond approved by California voters in November, along with $3 billion to $4 billion potentially coming in federal stimulus funds, is helping move the state’s $45 billion project along its track.

The first phase of the project, which will incrementally build up high-speed rail corridors to eventually connect Los Angeles with San Francisco, is projected to cost about $33 billion, according to Quentin Kopp, chairman of the California High Speed Rail Authority.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama announced $8 billion in federal stimulus funds would be dedicated to high-speed rail. No region in the country has a plan as advanced as California’s, so the state is hoping to get somewhere between $2.9 billion and $3.9 billion of that funding, Kopp said.

The federal government will release criteria for the funding this summer, according to Kopp.

The state’s high-speed-rail agency is also counting on $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion to come from private equity, Kopp said. Federal grants should amount to between $12 billion to $16 billion, and local and regional funding is projected to be $2 billion to $3 billion.

“We feel very confident about our funding approach,” Kopp said.

Rapid Transit

Projected travel times for journeys on the proposed high-speed rail system:

* Burbank to San Francisco: Under 2 hours 35 minutes
* San Jose to Los Angeles: 2 hours 21 minutes
* Sacramento to Los Angeles: 2 hours 17 minutes
* S.F. to San Jose: 30 minutes
* Riverside to Los Angeles: 33 minutes
* Bakersfield to Los Angeles: Less than 1 hour
* Ontario to San Diego: Less than 1 hour
* Fresno to San Francisco Airport: Just over an hour

Source: California High Speed Rail Authority

California express

Details of the proposed statewide high-speed rail system:

800
Miles of proposed system

88-117 million
Passengers projected annually for the entire system by 2030

160,000
Construction-related jobs projected to plan, design and build the system

Source: California High Speed Rail Authority

wreisman@sfexaminer.com