SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA: Transit/Transportation News

[pesto]

you could be right; let's watch the logic play out.

[BTinSF]

And then there's the >100% of the Bay Area population that lives in the Central Valley and SoCal and wants to travel to SF on HSR, not to the East Bay and in most cases (admittedly not all) not to SJ.

This HSR system works several ways--taking Bay Area residents to LA and SD, and taking SoCal residents to SF, SJ and Sac; and taking Central Valley residents to all. I wonder how many of the people in LA, SD and the Valley would think it worth the money if it didn't go to SF.

[dl3000]

Just curious. This probably sounds like a ridiculous idea but I wonder if it ever came up, but what if they built a train at grade, and then put a sort of structure over the length of the track to mitigate for noise. Pile up some soil near it and do a little landscaping and it could be nice. Sure sight lines would be affected but it is less impact than aerials and its cheaper than tunnels or aerials, or am I missing the core complaint? Does it have to do with land use? If yes then I guess tunneling is it. I thought they were just going to beef up the Caltrain ROW?

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by dl3000

Just curious. This probably sounds like a ridiculous idea but I wonder if it ever came up, but what if they built a train at grade, and then put a sort of structure over the length of the track to mitigate for noise. Pile up some soil near it and do a little landscaping and it could be nice. Sure sight lines would be affected but it is less impact than aerials and its cheaper than tunnels or aerials, or am I missing the core complaint? Does it have to do with land use?

Who knows what it has to do with. Mostly it has to do with the fact that these are over-privileged people use to getting their way and that means not allowing anything to happen they haven't approved in advance, each and every one of them.

If yes then I guess tunneling is it. I thought they were just going to beef up the Caltrain ROW?

The original plan was to electrify and 4-track the CalTrain ROW as well as eliminate all grade crossings and probably fence off the ROW as much as possible since jumping in front of CalTrain seems to be becoming the preferred route of suicide for Peninsula teens and others.

Whether or not "tunneling is it" depends on the courts. Palo Alto et. al are asserting their positions and we'll see how far they get. The problem is that even if it seems they will ultimately lose, they can hold things up long enough to cause major trouble and they know it. But the courts could take that into consideration and throw their suits out quickly. We'll have to see.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by BTinSF

The original plan was to electrify and 4-track the CalTrain ROW as well as eliminate all grade crossings and probably fence off the ROW as much as possible since jumping in front of CalTrain seems to be becoming the preferred route of suicide for Peninsula teens and others.

Just to clarify - the Caltrain ROW is already entirely fenced - except - for the grade crossings.

Whether or not "tunneling is it" depends on the courts. Palo Alto et. al are asserting their positions and we'll see how far they get. The problem is that even if it seems they will ultimately lose, they can hold things up long enough to cause major trouble and they know it. But the courts could take that into consideration and throw their suits out quickly. We'll have to see.

I haven't seen them file a case that has to do with tunneling yet, and I can't really imagine what that would be - the judge last summer that heard their case (to halt all work and invalidate the EIR) dismissed all of their "tunnel or nothing" arguments, and Atherton and Menlo Park lost on all of their complaints. The only "winning" complaint was that CHSRA had to confirm the route through San Jose and send it back through the public input process.

The other lawsuit, where a guy from Menlo Park was trying to assert UP's rights to using the corridor, hasn't been heard yet, but I haven't seen/heard anyone credible give it any chance of even making it past the initial hearing.

It's certainly possible that some of the cities could sue again, but as soon as the EIR is certified on the full SF-Valley segment and it holds up to another lawsuit (the only things they'll likely be able to sue on are the SJ segments, since the other parts already held up to judicial scrutiny), they will have run out of lawsuits to file.

[ardecila]

I'm wondering if it would be cheaper to run an at-grade line through the East Bay combined with a new Transbay Tunnel to reach SF, rather than having to tunnel the entire Peninsula stretch. Plus, it would add more capacity across the bay for commuter service.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by ardecila

I'm wondering if it would be cheaper to run an at-grade line through the East Bay combined with a new Transbay Tunnel to reach SF, rather than having to tunnel the entire Peninsula stretch. Plus, it would add more capacity across the bay for commuter service.

In a word, no.

There is no available ROW in the East Bay, so you're talking billions and billions in eminent domain. A Transbay Tunnel would be $10 billion, at least, probably more.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by dl3000

Just curious. This probably sounds like a ridiculous idea but I wonder if it ever came up, but what if they built a train at grade, and then put a sort of structure over the length of the track to mitigate for noise. Pile up some soil near it and do a little landscaping and it could be nice. Sure sight lines would be affected but it is less impact than aerials and its cheaper than tunnels or aerials, or am I missing the core complaint?

The core complaint is "I don't want anything to change." At one of the meetings, one speaker in the crowd actually came out and said, "I've only got 15-20 years left. I don't want to deal with construction in my city for 20% of my remaining life."

The ROW is wide enough for four tracks with almost no eminent domain needed (something like 98% of the route would require NONE). If you built earthen barriers on either side, eminent domain would be needed, as it would probably double the width of the ROW - keep in mind for most of the route Caltrain runs right next to 6-8 lane El Camino Real, and often another busy, wide road on the other side, so you'd be talking about rebuilding roads too.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Gordo

The ROW is wide enough for four tracks with almost no eminent domain needed (something like 98% of the route would require NONE). If you built earthen barriers on either side, eminent domain would be needed, as it would probably double the width of the ROW - keep in mind for most of the route Caltrain runs right next to 6-8 lane El Camino Real, and often another busy, wide road on the other side, so you'd be talking about rebuilding roads too.

No new land would be needed if sound barriers were built instead of earthen barriers.
A new build sound barrier being built on a railroad corridor

[mwadswor]

Originally Posted by Gordo

In a word, no.

There is no available ROW in the East Bay, so you're talking billions and billions in eminent domain. A Transbay Tunnel would be $10 billion, at least, probably more.

Not to mention the time and cost of running a campaign to get a new voter approved route. Under prop 1A, it would be illegal to change the route that drastically without a new voter approved proposition, wouldn't it?

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by electricron

No new land would be needed if sound barriers were built instead of earthen barriers.

I cannot imagine Palo Alto et. al. wanting concrete sound barriers making something resembling the Berlin Wall running through their tony towns (median home price about $1.6M):


Source: http://www.altosresearch.com/research/CA/palo-alto-real-estate-market

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by mwadswor

Not to mention the time and cost of running a campaign to get a new voter approved route. Under prop 1A, it would be illegal to change the route that drastically without a new voter approved proposition, wouldn't it?

Correct.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by BTinSF

I cannot imagine Palo Alto et. al. wanting concrete sound barriers making something resembling the Berlin Wall running through their tony towns (median home price about $1.6M):


Source: http://www.altosresearch.com/research/CA/palo-alto-real-estate-market

True. Sound walls can be made of glass though - the Czech Republic just built a huge chunk of them along some new freeway.

For those not from the area - sound is not much of an issue on this route (and not really something that the towns are complaining about much - they don't want the construction time or the visual element). Caltrain already runs more than 100 trains a day, with loud diesel locomotives blasting horns at every crossing and bells at every stop. The grade separations and conversion of Caltrain to electric would drop the noise produced now by significant amounts. It's possible that some of the express Caltrain runs and the HSR runs (both of which are planned to be limited to 125 mph on the peninsula) will have more wind noise than the current Caltrain runs do, but will have ZERO horn noise (the horns are MUCH louder than the trains themselves) and much less engine noise.

[sammyg]

Originally Posted by dl3000

Just curious. This probably sounds like a ridiculous idea but I wonder if it ever came up, but what if they built a train at grade, and then put a sort of structure over the length of the track to mitigate for noise. Pile up some soil near it and do a little landscaping and it could be nice. Sure sight lines would be affected but it is less impact than aerials and its cheaper than tunnels or aerials, or am I missing the core complaint? Does it have to do with land use? If yes then I guess tunneling is it. I thought they were just going to beef up the Caltrain ROW?

The few people in my mom's area of Los Altos mostly complain about the fact that the train line will close off the small roads that cross the tracks at grade - East Meadow, Charleston, Rengstrorff, etc., forcing them to detour a half-mile at most out of their way to an under/overpass.

It might create some traffic problems, but it's privelege and shortsightedness, in many different ways.

[mwadswor]

Is running the train at grade and putting the cross streets in underpasses an option being considered? That would eliminate the visual impact from an elevated structure, still be grade separated, and presumably be significantly cheaper than trenching the entire line.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by mwadswor

Is running the train at grade and putting the cross streets in underpasses an option being considered? That would eliminate the visual impact from an elevated structure, still be grade separated, and presumably be significantly cheaper than trenching the entire line.

In certain areas on the peninsula. Not in Palo Alto or Menlo Park because of various reasons, but mostly dealing with the fact that El Camino Real runs very close to the tracks on one side (6-8 lanes plus parking lanes) and Alma St runs right next to the tracks on the other side (4 lanes). If you had roads passing under the tracks, they'd also have to dive under both roads and the descent would start several hundred feet away on either side (and the cross streets are mostly of semi-urban development, so you'd kill off a lot with that tactic).

Somewhere on the CHSRA site you can look and see exactly what the different proposed solutions are for each mile of the peninsula section. I don't feel like looking for it now, but I know it's there

[dl3000]

Interesting. Thanks for the info all.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Gordo

In a word, no.

There is no available ROW in the East Bay, so you're talking billions and billions in eminent domain. A Transbay Tunnel would be $10 billion, at least, probably more.

There's no available ROW? It looks like there are several, including the one that BART uses, or the one that the Capitol Corridor uses. The BART alignment already has many underpasses and overpasses (because of, well, BART) and excess room for new tracks.

The new transbay tunnel would probably have to extend through downtown Oakland to a point east of the Lake Merritt Channel, which brings the length to about 8.2 miles. The ARC Tunnel in NYC (8.7 miles) is costing $8.7 billion, and a substantial portion of that is the underground station in Manhattan. Plus, it's my understanding that the submerged tunnel process is cheaper than bored-tunnel, which ARC Tunnel is using.

If you built the line along the BART corridor after the tunnel portal, the costs of grade-separation would be minimal - you'd just have to lay tracks and build wider bridges over existing underpasses. You could get the whole line between SF and SJ done for about $11 billion. I doubt you could tunnel the entire route on the Peninsula so cheaply.

Another advantage for an East Bay alignment is that the Caltrain route goes through quite a few pedestrian-heavy town centers (since it's been a commuter route for ~100 years) while the East Bay alignments are mostly fronted by suburban development. The majority of growth in the Bay Area is expected to happen to the east anyway, so more capacity across the Bay is an inevitable thing.

I understand the desire to stick it to NIMBYs, but that's no reason to ignore the full range of options.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by ardecila

There's no available ROW? It looks like there are several, including the one that BART uses, or the one that the Capitol Corridor uses. The BART alignment already has many underpasses and overpasses (because of, well, BART) and excess room for new tracks.

The one that the Capitol Corridor uses is owned by UP. Unless our federal congressional delegation is ready to help out in some way, that one is a non-starter. UP has stated specifically that they want NOTHING to do with HSR sharing ROW and will not sell that ROW under any circumstance.

I'm not sure where you're looking on the BART ROW, but I don't know of many spots on it where there is room for two at-grade tracks. Now, if you're talking about elevated structures or tunnels, sure, that could be done, but I'm not sure how that would be cheaper or easier than the Caltrain ROW. The BART ROW has residential neighborhoods sandwiched up against it for most of its route, where the Caltrain ROW has busy commercial streets and industrial areas for most of its route. The East Bay neighborhoods may not be as rich as the ones in Palo Alto and Atherton, but they're not exactly lower income areas for much of the stretch.

The new transbay tunnel would probably have to extend through downtown Oakland to a point east of the Lake Merritt Channel, which brings the length to about 8.2 miles. The ARC Tunnel in NYC (8.7 miles) is costing $8.7 billion, and a substantial portion of that is the underground station in Manhattan. Plus, it's my understanding that the submerged tunnel process is cheaper than bored-tunnel, which ARC Tunnel is using.

I'd be very doubtful if a submerged tunnel in a seismic zone would be cheaper than a bored tunnel in a non-seismic zone. Who knows? You may be right, I'm mostly just looking at the fact that the eastern half of the new Bay Bridge is going to end up costing more than $6 billion, and assuming that a tube crossing the whole way would cost much more than that (as well as looking at the cost of other recent tunnels in the Bay Area - tunnels tend to end up being ridiculously over budget, where at-grade and aerial have a better record at coming close to projected cost).

If you built the line along the BART corridor after the tunnel portal, the costs of grade-separation would be minimal - you'd just have to lay tracks and build wider bridges over existing underpasses. You could get the whole line between SF and SJ done for about $11 billion. I doubt you could tunnel the entire route on the Peninsula so cheaply.

Well, to be clear, no one is talking about tunneling along the whole peninsula except for a couple crazies. The majority of the peninsula cities aren't even asking for a tunnel, as many of them understand that disruption from tunnel construction would be an absolute nightmare. The primary cities pushing the tunnel-or-nothing position are Atherton, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto - that's less than 7 miles of tunnel, I believe.

Another advantage for an East Bay alignment is that the Caltrain route goes through quite a few pedestrian-heavy town centers (since it's been a commuter route for ~100 years) while the East Bay alignments are mostly fronted by suburban development. The majority of growth in the Bay Area is expected to happen to the east anyway, so more capacity across the Bay is an inevitable thing.

Sure. And a new bay crossing will be needed at some point in time, but your proposal would require an entirely new proposition to nullify prop 1A and start from scratch with a new one. It would also require starting a new EIR and CEQA process on the East Bay side, which would probably add at least five to seven years to the process (the EIR for the SF to Merced leg was started in 1999, certified in 2008, de-certified last year, and will likely be re-certified this summer - because recertification only requires fixing what was wrong with the first one). We're like halfway through a 20 year process, and picking a new route would restart the clock (AFTER a new proposition were passed, which could take years - if one could even be passed in the first place).

Also - part of the reason for the Caltrain corridor being chosen is the fact that the improvements made can be leveraged for Caltrain as well (building next to BART wouldn't provide any benefit to BART). There is a significant amount of new development in SF, SJ, Redwood City, San Mateo, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and a few other cities going up or planned around the Caltrian line (we're talking 50,000+ units in the pipeline between those six cities within a half mile of a Caltrain station right now). With the improvements funded primarily by HSR, we'd basically be building the equivalent of a BART line up and down the peninsula (connecting with BART in SF and SJ) - only better than BART, because limited and express services will be possible. You're correct that more population growth is going to occur in the east, but more transit-oriented growth is likely to occur from SJ to SF - if the Altamont overlay HSR project proceeds as planned, I don't really see any benefit running up the east side of the Bay - there isn't really a good spot for an intermediate station that is in an urbanish area or even an area that has the potential to be.

I understand the desire to stick it to NIMBYs, but that's no reason to ignore the full range of options.

It's the timing that's the problem. This has been a work in progress for more than a decade - and for the most part, the public review part of the process has long since passed. Just because they weren't paying attention to the process five years ago when these things were decided doesn't mean that we have to bend over backward to accommodate them now, unless it can be shown that they were deliberately deceived or kept in the dark. The judge tossed out those complaints last summer under the lawsuit because all public review processes were followed - but the press will continue to report on these "issues" as long as people are interested in them. I know that it's easy to assume that there is momentum building for some kind of disastrous fallout simply by reading some of these articles, but that really doesn't match reality.

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by ardecila

There's no available ROW? It looks like there are several, including the one that BART uses, or the one that the Capitol Corridor uses. The BART alignment already has many underpasses and overpasses (because of, well, BART) and excess room for new tracks.

I'm curious: Have you ever taken BART?

I ask because I can't believe what you're suggesting if you have. BART through much of the East Bay west of the hills is elevated and really has no right of way any more than New York and Chicago "Els" do.


Source: http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?19626

On the other hand, the route AMTRAK (including the Capital Corridor) uses goes down the middle of city streets in places in Oakland. I have been delayed on AMTRAK because some jerk parked on the tracks:

• Video Link

There really is not a usable ROW for HSR in the East Bay and the cost of a new tunnel suitable for FRA compliant rail would be absurd.