As if Caltrain and high speed rail don’t get enough news coverage already, Mike Rosenberg of San Mateo County times is saying that electrification and high speed rail will make Caltrain run slower – based on a hypothetical schedule with no Baby Bullet trains meant for high speed rail environmental planning. This is another story designed to sensationalize the issue and to divide Caltrain and high speed rail supporters.

The fact is that Caltrain isn’t ready to abandon the Baby Bullet service. As someone who has seen tons of planning documents and a number of transit projects, the hypothetical schedule should be taken with a grain of salt. Read More

Recently the State Auditor issued a report on the High Speed Rail Authority and revealed that HSRA needs better planning and oversight.

Although the Authority’s 2009 business plan contains the elements required by the Legislature, it lacks detail regarding how it proposes to finance the program.

The Authority also needs to improve its oversight and administrative controls. State law creates a peer review group (review group) to assess the Authority’s plans. Most significantly, the review group is to issue an analysis and evaluation of the viability of the Authority’s funding plan for each corridor of the program. As of February 2010, however, only five of the group’s eight members had been appointed, limiting the expertise available to the Authority.

Contractors accounted for 95 percent of the program’s total expenditures over the past three fiscal years. Although the Authority generally followed state requirements for awarding contracts, its processes for monitoring the performance and accountability of its contractors—especially the entity that has been contracted to manage the program (Program Manager)—are inadequate.

The heavy involvement by the contracted consultants and lax oversight from the agency is a reflection of what BART was in the 1960s when the agency was planning and constructing the voter-approved rail system. BART at that time was largely driven by consultants with few agency staff. As a result, BART made poor engineering choices (including non-standard gauge) that drove up costs and hampered performance. The state legislature had to impose a sales tax to provide a bailout for BART.

While BayRail Alliance supports building a better, faster, and larger rail system connecting the state, we also believe that HSRA needs better oversight and accountability. HSRA should follow the auditor’s recommendations and not repeat BART’s mistakes.

It is not hard to imagine life without Caltrain service. Many of us got a taste of that from 2002-2004, when Caltrain suspended weekend trains to facilitate Baby Bullet construction. Although Caltrain provided substitute bus service (which only stopped at three stations), getting up and down the Peninsula was a pain. Many of the weekend train riders (including baseball fans) decided to drive or simply not travel because of the lack of train service.

When Caltrain introduced the Baby Bullet in 2004, Caltrain also resumed local weekend service. The agency offered free service for the first two weekends, which the trains got packed immediately. Even as Caltrain later offered free weekday service on Spare-the-Air days, the trains aren’t quite as packed.

If our region is as pro-environment and pro-transit as we claim, we must not only preserve the Caltrain service that we have, but we must also improve it through electrification. Although Caltrain has been starved of funds for decades because of political neglect, Caltrain planning staff and operating crews are still providing fast and efficient service by stretching the limited equipment they have. Read More

Preliminary alternative analysis documents:

• SF-SJ Preliminary Alternatives Analysis Report
• SF-SJ Alternative Analysis PowerPoint
• Map of corridor
• Map of alternatives to be carried forward
• SF-SJ Preliminary Alternative Analysis Executive Summary

For the San Francisco downtown station, the report rejects a terminal at Beale Street based on feasibility concerns and recommends the planned Transbay Transit Center along with the existing 4th & King station. Further south along the corridor, the report recommends limiting the use of elevated berms in commercial and residential areas.

BayRail urges the HSRA Board to support the staff’s findings regarding the downtown San Francisco terminal so that construction of the Transbay Transit Center can proceed as soon as possible.

Update: HSRA voted 6-1 to adopt the AA report and to reject the Beale Street Alternative. Boardmember Quentin Kopp voted no because of his unprincipled and inconsistent opposition to the Transbay project.

As the HSRA is currently conducting planning and engineering studies for high speed rail on the Peninsula, the communities along the corridor are proposing many alternatives in hopes of reducing the impact resulted from the project. This is not surprising, partly because high speed rail is a new form of transportation for California and because HSRA has not been transparent with the public regarding its decision making process.

One of the alternatives suggested is to build high speed rail between Southern California and San Jose. Under that scenario, high speed rail riders would transfer to Caltrain heading to San Francisco. This alternative is opposed by San Francisco, which has been planning a new “Grand Central Station” at the current Transbay Terminal site since 2001. A Deputy Attorney General also issued a statement advising that ending HSR in San Jose would not be permitted under Proposition 1A.

Despite our differences with the HSRA, BayRail Alliance supports high speed rail service to San Francisco because the city has the highest population and employment density in the region. It also has a vastly better transit access to the East Bay and North Bay via BART, buses, and ferries. It is also important to note that Proposition 1A was passed by a higher margin in San Francisco than any other region in the Bay Area.

By sharing infrastructure with Caltrain, we believe that HSR can serve San Francisco with less impacts than some may believe. For many years, we advocated Caltrain to pursue light-weight electric trains, which in Europe, those very same regional trains share stations and tracks with high speed intercity trains in urban areas.  By the same token, we have opposed many BART extensions on grounds that BART can never be compatible with Caltrain and high speed rail. BART runs on tracks with 5’6″ non-standard track gauge. Caltrain runs on tracks with 4’8 1/2″ standard gauge, the same gauge used by high speed trains in Europe, Japan, and beyond.

For us, a more pressing question is how to complete high speed rail. Currently Proposition 1A bond and funding from ARRA aren’t enough to complete the entire system between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The project will be dependent on future government and private funding that has yet to be identified. If HSRA does not earn the public’s confidence, the statewide network will never become reality.

If HSRA could develop a service plan first and add tracks and other structures on a incremental basis based on realistic ridership demands and service needs, the agency would be able to stretch the funds to support other parts of the network, which would help ensure early success of the system.

Although we are not sure whether HSRA shares our values and vision, we know that it is not necessary to force HSR riders to transfer to get to San Francisco, and that it is possible for HSR to be more integrated with Caltrain.