It is hearing season in Sacramento, and several bills relevant to Caltrain funding have hearings scheduled this coming week. SB 557 is up for hearing on April 23. This bill nails down funding from the High Speed Rail appropriation for the Northern and Southern California bookends. A loophole in the law could enable money to be diverted to the Central Valley. This bill ensures the funding stays where it was allocated. The bill was developed in partnership with the state finance department, meaning that the ambiguity in the language is unnecessary and it’s reasonable to lock in the funding.

The bill has a second provision requiring concensus among the 9 MTC funding partners in order to expand capacity beyond the primarily 2-track blended system. (The partners are High Speed Rail, Caltrain, Transbay Joint Powers Authority, MTC, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, San Mateo County Transportation Authority, VTA, San Francisco, and San Jose.) At the last Caltrain Modernization Local Policy Maker Working Group, Caltrain board member Adrienne Tissier noted that capacity expansion funding would include local match, so the local partners would already need to agree, so this bill does not add much extra protection beyond what is already in place. This part of the bill seems to be raising more concerns, and given Tissier’s caveat may be less important.

Click here to urge the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee to approve the bill and keep funding for Caltrain electrification.

Also, a key program to fund Caltrain electrification, the Carl Moyer program, is being re-authorized by two bills, SB11 (Pavley, Rubio) and AB8 (Perea, Skinner). This program provides incentives to businesses and public agencies to replace or clean up old, dirty vehicles. Caltrain plans to use this program as part of its Electrification funding, and has used it in the past to fund projects reducing idling at Diridon.

AB8 (Perea, Skinner) is up for hearing on April 8 in Assembly Transportation. SB 8 is up for hearing at Senate Transportation and Housing Committee on April 9. It passed Environmental Quality on April 3.

Another transit funding bill on the table is Assembly Member Gordon’s AB416 creates a grant program for local greenhouse gas emissions projects, potentially including transit-related projects. It is being heard next in the Assembly Local Government Committee on April 10.

Also in Sacramento, the California Air Resources Board is deciding how to invest Cap and Trade auction revenues to support greenhouse gas emissions reductions. A campaign led by Transfom encouraged the use of the funds for public transit, access to transit, and affordable housing during a comment period that ended in March. The next step will be a hearing later this month. Stay tuned for opportunities to encourage Cap and Trade revenues to be spent on transit and increasing transit use.

Lastly, a local funding note: San Mateo County is seriously considering investing some of its new sales tax on SamTrans, which would help it keep buses running and keep its commitment to Caltrain. In an online forum, investing in public transit was in the top 3 voter recommendations, along with affordable housing and pedestrian and bike funding. The next step for the allocation of funds will be a series of hearings – the hearing for Transit, Bike and Pedestrian investments is scheduled for July 9. We’ll also post an update closer to the date.

According to the Friends of Caltrain post-holiday survey, the most popular recommendations to improve transit to San Francisco International Airport: bring back the Millbrae Shuttle, and save the KX! Both of these are SamTrans services. SamTrans is currenty wrapping up its plans to revamp its services. The deadline is April 15 to give them comments – share your feedback before it’s too late.

After the winter holiday season, we asked Friends of Caltrain participants how they get to SFO when they travel. Among our network of supporters and users of public transit, the most common answer to the survey was “driven.”

The main reason by far to not to take transit is that it takes too much time, followed by other risks and inconveniences, including complicated payment with the Caltrain to BART transfer, luggage limits on the bus, long waits to connect to Caltrain, especially evenings and weekends, and risking missing the flight due to delays.

So, what can be done to improve transit to SFO?

The top two suggestions were:

Bring back the shuttle bus from Millbrae Caltrain! People who don’t remember it re-invent it, and people who remember the old shuttle wish it could be brought back.

Save the KX! Make it even more of an express route, run it more frequently, and market it better! One rider suggests calling it the SFO Express.

If these solutions would help you, click here to tell SamTrans while they are still reviewing their service plan until April 15.

Other recommendations from fellow riders to improve airport service include:

* seamless payment transfers. The Caltrain+BART payment confuses people who go to the airport occasionally, and is perceived as costly
* earlier and later service to serve more flights, and more frequent service
* eliminate the bus luggage restrictions to and from San Francisco
* shelter for Caltrain users at the cold, windy, damp Millbrae station

Riders strongly dislike the two-step BART connection to the airport – click here for the full list of comments, including colorful rants and pained laments from people who want to take transit to the airport.

SFO (whether or not the name of the airport changes) is one of the top 10 busiest airports in the US. The region deserves good airport transit service. Thanks for sharing your feedback – hopefully this can motivate the transit services to do a better job serving the airport.

Today, the Caltrain Joint Powers Board signed a Memorandum of Understanding agreeing to work with the High Speed Rail authority to work together to implement the “blended system.”   But they will need to wait until the High Speed  Rail Authority Board’s next meeting in April to get the High Speed Rail Authority’s consent, after an unsuccessful attempt to approve the MOU yesterday in Redwood City.  HSRA Northern California representative Ben Tripousis assured the Caltrain board that the Authority Board would have the votes in April.

Yesterday in Redwood City, HSRA board member Lynn Shrenk surprised her fellow board members by saying she plans to vote against the MOU, having voted for the earlier 9-party Memorandum of Understanding which funded the blended system. This vote requires a super-majority majority of the full board. However three board seats are vacant, and Board Member Rossi, who is reported to support the MOU, was not present, so there were not enough votes to approve.

The blended system is the plan, originally floated by legislators Eshoo, Simitian and Gordon, to have High Speed Rail and Caltrain share tracks, instead of creating a dedicated set of tracks for High Speed Rail. The blended system is expected to provide lower capacity than the dedicated plan, with six Caltrain trains per hour per direction at peak, and up to 4 high speed trains per hour.  The initial proposal would have created capacity for up to 12 high speed trains per hour, compared to 3 tph from Paris to London and from New York to DC.

The bump in the road toward the blended system pleases supporters of maximum high speed rail capacity and opponents of the High Speed Rail project (see some of the comments to this Palo Alto Online article).  At the High Speed Rail Authority board meeting yesterday, the blended system was supported by business groups including the San Mateo County Economic Development Association (SAMCEDA), Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Bay Area Council, and grass roots advocacy group Friends of Caltrain, contributor to this blog. It seems likely that the compromise measure will be approved next month.

On February 22, the bill filing deadline in Sacramento, Senator Jerry Hill filed SB 557 to protect Caltrain electrification funding from being diverted to other High Speed Rail projects, and to add regional control over controversial future design decisions.

The bill addresses two concerns that remained after the passage of SB1029, which funded High Speed Rail, and with it, Caltrain electrification as a northern segment early investment.

The first concern is whether Caltrain will actually get the funds for electrification.  SB1029 contains a provision allowing money to be transfered among subprojects of the High Speed Rail system with authorization from the State Department of Finance.   If there are cost overruns in the Central Valley, where High Speed Rail still needs to buy land and schedules are starting to slip, the High Speed Rail Authority would legally be able to move the money, preventing the implementation of Caltrain electrification, which is scheduled to be in place by 2019. SB557 specifies that the funds for the Northern and Southern California early investments must be spend for those purposes, and would limit funds transfer to temporary account management.

The second concern regards the status of the “blended system”, the plan for High Speed Rail and Caltrain to share tracks, in Caltrain’s current right of way.  Senator Hill’s bill has a provision requiring agreement among all 9 Bay Area funding partners in order to extend the High Speed Rail design beyond the currently planned blended system, essentially giving the region’s agencies veto power over expanding the system.  The bill language requires “any track expansion for the San Francisco to San Jose segment beyond the blended system approach to be approved by all 9 parties to the Bay Area High Speed Rail Early Investment Strategy Memorandum of Understanding.”   This provision is designed to allay anxieties in the region that the unpopular 4-track proposal could return.

While current High Speed Rail funding and project plans all refer to the blended system (including the funding plan in the Bay Area 9-party Memorandum of Understanding; the new 2-party MOU between Caltrain and High Speed Rail currently being finalized; and the work in progress on environmental review for Caltrain electrification), there remains an overarching program-level environmental report that provides environmental clearance for the 4-track design, contributing to continuing local concerns that the 4-track design could come back despite local opposition.

The Caltrain board and Peninsula cities support the bill. Caltrain board chair Ken Yeager spoke at the press conference, and board member Ash Khalra attended.  City Council members from Peninsula cities including Palo Alto, San Carlos, Mountain View, and other cities attended.

Staffers from Jerry Hill’s office and Seamus Murphy of Caltrain say that High Speed Rail has been involved in the drafting of the bill, but there were no representatives of High Speed Rail at the press conference.

How might the bill change in the legislative sausage factory? Palo Alto’s lobbyist, John Garamendi Jr. commented that it’s just the beginning of the game.  For Garamendi’s next report from the halls of Sacramento, come to the Palo Alto City Council Rail Committee meeting on February 28 starting at 9am.

For last week’s Transbay Joint Powers Authority Board meeting, the Transbay project staff prepared a presentation with a response to the San Francisco proposal to transform the Caltrain/High Speed Rail corridor.   In summary, the Transbay team believes that proposed San Francisco land use concepts need study but are compatible with the Downtown Extension. However, the team contends that changes to the DTX alignment would have no benefit.  Other items at the board meeting ran long and the agenda item was deferred to the March 14 board meeting, so the full presentation, with staff explanation and board discussion will wait until March.

The Lee administration has been circulating a proposal to smooth the alignment for the Downtown Extension to the Transbay Terminal; to grade-separate the congested 16th street crossing by undergrounding the rail; and to transform parts of the rail right of way, which are currently used for train storage and shadowed by the 280 freeway, into mixed use neighborhoods.

The Transbay team believes that the 16th street grade separation, the development of railyard lands, and the removal of the freeway, are all ideas that would need further study, independent of the Transbay program and Caltrain electrification.

(San Francisco and Caltrain have already agreed to conduct a study in 2013 about alternative locations to store trains in San Francisco County.  If there are feasible alternatives, Caltrain could plan to electrify 4th and King in a way that would permit moving the train storage.)

However, the Transbay team make the case that there would be no benefit to smoothing the alignment of the Downtown Extension of the railway to Transbay Terminal.  The presentation contends that a revised alignment would not be cheaper to build, since it would be longer; it would not be quicker to build, since the schedule change would set the project back by at least a decade, and improvements to the operating speed of High Speed Rail would not be substantial or cost-effective.

The Lee adminstration disagrees, according to its application to the Federal Transportation Authority to fund a study of alignment alternatives.  The grant application proposes to analyze rail alignments for High Speed Rail and Caltrain, and station locations for Caltrain in a 7 mile corridor, to assess opportunities to improve travel times, minimize construction costs, and reduce conflicts with surface streets and highways, while optimizing livability and land use. The study would be used to identify a “locally preferred alternative” for a supplemental Environmental Impact Report that would likely be needed to authorize construction and initial service.

The study would examine the potential for:

* increasing the turn radius of the alignment, which currently includes two stairstep curves to improve travel times and decrease maintenance costs

* modifying tunneling locations to minimize surface disruption and reducing costs,

* eliminating at-grade crossings to reduce travel delay and improve safety;

* reconnecting the street grid across the rail corridor for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers;

* changing station locations to optimize ridership and local transit access;

* analyzing opportunities for Transit Oriented Development at the site of Caltrain’s current 4th and King railyards, and other locations in the 7 mile study area.

The options to be studied include the scenario that the Mayor’s Transportation Policy advisor Gillian Gillett described at a January SPUR meeting to extend the tunnel to 16th street, to take down the end of the 280 after 16th, and move the station currently at 4th and King, as well as other scenarios to extend the tunnel to 25th street, to relocate the 22nd street station to 16th, and to remove or retain the freeway (see the grant application for the full set of alternatives).

The application requests $700,000 in federal funds with $300,000 in local matching funds, including $100,000 from Caltrain and $200,000 from San Francisco’s Proposition K funds.

So, the Transbay team argues that changing the alignment would not save money or time, and would not materially improve rail performance.  The City of San Francisco contends that these are open questions that need further study.

For more of this important discussion, you can attend the next Transbay Joint Powers Board meeting on March 14, or watch it online.