As expected, the California High-Speed Rail Authority reaffirmed
its decision to send bullet trains shooting over Pacheco Pass and
through Morgan Hill and Gilroy, forgoing an alternate route over
the Altamont Pass.
As expected, the California High-Speed Rail Authority reaffirmed its decision to send bullet trains shooting over Pacheco Pass and through Morgan Hill and Gilroy, forgoing an alternate route over the Altamont Pass.
Expected to begin full operations in 2020, the $45-billion, 800-mile system is slated to include routes from Sacramento to San Diego and to the Bay Area with a proposed station in Gilroy, transporting passengers at speeds of up to 220 mph.
With seven of the nine members voting at meetings held Wednesday and Thursday in Sacramento, the rail authority unanimously approved the Revised Final Program Environmental Impact Report for the Bay Area to Central Valley portion of the state’s high-speed rail system.
The board originally approved the EIR in 2008 but took a second look to comply with a judge’s ruling in response to a lawsuit brought by the cities of Atherton, Menlo Park and several environmental groups challenging the rail authority’s decision to run bullet trains over Pacheco Pass and up the Peninsula instead of over Altamont Pass and through the East Bay.
“This was us showing our compliance,” said Rachel Wall, spokeswoman for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. “This was just revising a document that was final in 2008.”
The Sept. 2 vote came after consideration of 3,755 comments from more than 500 agencies, local governments and members of the public, Wall said.
City officials from Morgan Hill and Gilroy were unable to attend the meeting, but in December the cities signed a joint resolution supporting the Pacheco Pass option, a single station to be located in Gilroy and that the tracks run east of U.S. 101 and not adjacent to the Union Pacific tracks. In April, the councils recommended that they should review a “visual analysis” to assess “how the alternate alignments aerial structures would impact views of the nearby hills and adjacent commercial facilities,” according to Morgan Hill’s staff report.
City Manager Ed Tewes said both cities are anticipating the next phase of the EIR, which they hope will detail the design ideas, including whether the train will operate at grade or elevated.
“We’re not just interested in a colored-line on a map,” Tewes said.
Tewes and Gilroy City Administrator Tom Haglund, “are asking for a thorough environmental impact review of those options with design concepts sufficient enough for us to investigate,” Tewes said.
The cities’ concerns were documented and sent to the High Speed Rail Authority in December. The impact of construction for the massive project, as well as the effect of the trains’ noise and vibrations as they careen through South County have been at the forefront of rail discussions.
The rail authority acknowledged each of the city’s concerns, but the real work will come during the project-level planning, Haglund said.
“The program EIR is a preliminary document,” he said. “Where it’s really important and critical is in the next EIR, where we dissect piece by piece and part by part what high-speed rail means.”
Along with pushing for the U.S. 101 alignment, Morgan Hill and Gilroy also advocate a station be built in Gilroy, not Morgan Hill.
According to the resolution, the Gilroy station alternative provides better connectivity, travel times, closer access and lower costs to the Santa Cruz, Monterey, Carmel and Salinas markets.
Though if the station is located elsewhere, the cities remain behind running tracks along 101 and not through the middle of both towns.
The cities await more details with particular interest in if the train will run at ground-level or if it will be elevated. The aesthetics of the latter have been a major concern of South County citizens opposed to the rail.
The rail authority will continue to hold its community outreach meetings. It’s expected that a project-level EIR will be drafted for the San Jose to Merced section, by way of Gilroy, by the summer of 2011, Wall said. That EIR will help answer some of the questions residents may feel they are still in the dark about, Wall said.
Authority Chairman Curt Pringle lauded the rail authority’s vote as a major step forward for the project.
“Californians want this project done right, and that means a careful and thoughtful assessment of how to minimize environmental impacts while building a project that creates enormous opportunity for the people of our state,” Pringle said.
The words “careful” and “thoughtful” aren’t likely the first two that come to mind when Gilroy resident Yvonne Sheets-Saucedo describes the planning of the state’s high-speed rail system.
“It’s concerning on every level,” said Sheets-Saucedo, who has organized numerous community awareness and outreach meetings. “It’s all about pushing through this process in a very hasty and, quite frankly, irresponsible manner.”
Although the vote fulfills the judge’s request and allows the rail authority to continue a process that was already taking place – working on project-level plans for the different links that will make up the Bay Area to Central Valley portion of railway – Sheets-Saucedo saw the vote not as a formality, but as a green light allowing the rail authority to spend “millions upon millions” more on a poorly-planned project.
Running bullet trains through South County will change the face of the region, starting with the possibility of a 6,600-space parking garage in Gilroy, said Sheets-Saucedo, who echoed the same sentiments many residents have expressed by questioning the rail authority’s ridership figures.
“Everything about the system and the way it’s designed is triggered by ridership figures,” she said. “Here in quiet Gilroy, we’re going to have ridership figures that require 6,600 parking spaces? That’s absurd.”
The Revised Final Program EIR did not adequately address these ridership issues, Sheets-Saucedo said.
The lawsuit brought by Atherton and Menlo Park raised similar issues. The plaintiffs contended the project’s environmental impact report failed to provide sufficient detail on the Pacheco alignment. The report described an alignment along existing Union Pacific Railroad tracks between Gilroy and San Jose. However, Union Pacific has informed the rail authority that it has no intention of sharing its right-of-way.
According to the EIR, the rail authority is continuing its talks with Union Pacific. If a compromise isn’t reached, the rail authority has pointed out how Union Pacific’s denial of access to its rights-of-way has little effect on the San Jose to Central Valley corridor.
Haglund acknowledges that the project is still in its early stages.
“I think of the program-level EIR as looking at high-speed rail at 100,000 feet,” he said. “The project-level EIR is on the ground. This project is still an infant in the cradle.”
