SOCIAL: [Party_Car] DETAILS: 'Deep Slate November 2008: VOTE TUESDAY NOVEMBER 4TH
Tom Radulovich
tomrad at well.com
Tue Oct 21 17:32:24 PDT 2008
On Oct 21, 2008, at 4:29 PM, Eric Arons wrote:
> Tom (et. al.),
>
> Interesting and thoughtful responses as usual. My understanding
> though is that wrt "regional" transit, prop. 1A only has about $950
> million. Spread that over San Diego, LA, San Jose, Sacramento, and
> San Francisco, and it comes out to not very much.
Local/regional transit will benefit from the Bond in two ways. The
first is what you talk about above; $950 milllion will be disbursed to
transit agencies that provide connecting services, on a per-passenger-
mile basis. This capital funding goes directly to the transit agencies
(LA county MTA, BART, Muni, AC transit, etc.), and they can spend it
as they like.
What I was talking about was direct investment in right-of-way, grade
separation, multi-tracking, expanding stations, etc., which will
benefit regional commuter and intercity services that use the same
stations and tracks. Caltrain is the chief beneficiary of this
investment, as the HSR bond will upgrade, grade separate, and
electrify the entire Caltrain line. The southern California corridors
will also benefit, but they aren't as far ahead in planning which
local and inter-city services will run on the improved tracks.
>
>
> HSR is a nice to have, but regional transit is an essential. So the
> concerns I have w/HRT: how many Bay Area residents want to travel
> to SoCal each day vs how many want to get from the east bay to their
> jobs on the peninsula or in SJ? Do we really think that HSR is
> going to relieve congestion in the bay area? What worries me is
> that it could suck up all the available funding for transit, making
> it impossible to fund the regional network that will actually
> relieve congestion.
'Congestion relief' is not necessarily an environmentally responsible
public policy goal; transit investments should be targeted towards
improving mobility, social inclusion, and reinforcing a sustainable
land use pattern, rather than fostering free-flowing highways. In my
experience, traffic congestion encourages transit ridership.
Sadly, transit advocates in the US are quite often either/or thinkers
-- -- bus vs. rail, BART vs. Caltrain, etc. (latent American
fundamentalism?), or "magic bullet" thinkers -- "The answer to all our
transportation problems is (fill in the blank -- bus rapid transit,
light rail, personal rapid transit, plug-in hybrids, etc.) Europeans
plan comprehensive networks; High speed rail links metropolitan
cities, and complements intercity rail that serves smaller cities and
suburbs, with urban mass transit systems (metro, regional metro, light
metro, light rail, trams, BRT, local buses) within metropolitan areas,
and quality pedestrian and cycling access to transit stations. It is
the entire network that reduces automobile dependence and improves
livability, rather than any one element.
If the HSR bond was taking money from worthwhile transit projects, I
might think differently about it, but it isn't.
There are also cost-effective and cost-ineffective transit projects;
Regional Measure 2 put billions towards transit, but mostly low-
ridership BART extensions and ferry projects. I would rather have the
HSR improvements in the region than BART to San Jose, for example.
Again, HSR will serve the SF-LA market, but it will also serve a
number of smaller markets; intra-Bay Area; intra-Central Valley,
Central Valley to Bay Area, Central Valley to Greater Los Angeles,
intra-Greater LA, Greater LA to San Diego, intra-San Diego. Presuming
it passes, I'll use HSR to go to Los Angeles, but the improvements to
Caltrain will help me when I travel to San Jose, Palo Alto, or even
Visitacion Valley.
> Stopping the "high speed" part of HSR in SJ does make sense. Let
> some HSR trains come all the way to SF, but just travel at a max
> speed of 79 mph. There are some 50 or so grade crossings between SJ
> and SF. Separating them all is going to eat up a large chunk of the
> bond money. Grade separate the key crossings (like Ravenswood in
> MP), put in more passing tracks, electrify the line, use positive
> train control, use quad gates, but leave the basic layout as it is
> today. You will get nearly the same level of service at a fraction
> of the cost. And can we even put four tracks in some parts of the
> corridor w/o taking some houses?
Effective rapid transit service necessitates grade separation. Imagine
if BART were built at grade; with BART frequencies (2.5 minutes in the
peak) the gates would be closed almost all the time, and all traffic
would stop (maybe it's not such a bad idea, but certainly not a
practical one). Also, the Federal Railway Administration will probably
insist on grade separation to allow the lightweight trains; its just
safer. Neither the Japanese nor the French High Speed technology (the
French technology is also in use in Spain, Italy, the UK, Belgium,
Netherlands, and Germany) has ever experienced a passenger fatality in
millions of trips.
The system may not need four tracks everywhere. Plus so what if it HSR
buys a few houses, and/or shortens a few backyards? Every big transit
project usually takes property, but they typically need much less
space than expanding the region's freeways and roads would take.
>
> The ultimate cost of this project is probably being low balled. I
> think it will be at least double the $45 billion estimate.
Perhaps, but the alternatives (expanding highways and airports) are
probably subject to the same price inflation.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Tom Radulovich <tomrad at well.com>
> wrote:
> The great thing about prop 1A is that it accommodates several
> different high speed, intercity, and regional services -- high speed
> from LA to SF, but also services that connect the main Central
> Valley towns to one another, the Bay Area, LA, and the international
> airports. Right-of-way improvements for High Speed Rail will benefit
> regional metro services and faster intercity services, too.
>
> Caltrain will be thoroughly transformed by the HSR bond, and for the
> better. Caltrain will finally become a fully electrified, frequent,
> reliable rapid transit system connecting SF to the Peninsula, San
> Jose, and Morgan Hill -- the same concept as in their 2025 plan, but
> a decade or two sooner. The current plan, if HSR passes, will
> introduce lightweight, European-style trains for High speed service,
> but will also replace Caltrain's lumbering diesels with electric
> multiple-unit trainsets. Lightweight electric trains will save time
> (faster acceleration and deceleration) energy (Japan's high speed
> trains use much less energy than US and British intercity trains,
> despite operating at much higher speeds), and reduce air pollution,
> noise, and vibration. Adding more third- and fourth tracks will
> accommodate Caltrain's current pattern of local, limited stop, 'baby
> bullet' service (15-30% faster, thanks to electrification and
> lightweight trains) as well as HSR. Grade separation is expensive,
> but essential if one is going to use the lightweight trains; they
> can't risk running into whatever might wander onto the tracks. No
> fast, frequent, and reliable rail rapid transit service can exist
> without grade separation, and the HSR bond will complete Caltrain's
> grade separation program in less than a decade.
>
> Caltrain is the furthest along in taking advantage of High Speed
> rail's right-of-way upgrades to improve regional service, but a few
> other corridors are promising ones for supplemental commuter
> service, including the Palmdale-Sylmar-Burbank-Glendale-LA, LA-
> Whittier-Fullerton-Anaheim-Irvine, LA-Pomona-Ontario-Riverside, and
> Murrieta-Escondido-San Diego. The HSR program will make LA Union
> Station a through-running station, which will improve existing
> Metrolink and Amtrak operations. The HSR bond also allows funding
> for upgrades to the Altamont corridor as a rapid (but not high
> speed) intercity and regional rail corridor.
>
> Serving city centers is expensive, but essential. European and Asian
> intercity rail systems rarely dump folks on the edge of town to take
> local transit the rest of the way in, even though it may cost
> billions more to get all the way downtown; high speed trains are
> designed to reinforce existing urban centers, and to provide the
> shortest point-to point journey between centers. It would make
> little sense to, as Supervisor Scott Haggerty has proposed, build a
> high speed service to, say, Livermore, and then add an hour to the
> journey by making folks to transfer to BART and make every local
> stop on the way to downtown SF. Bringing HSR into town centers will
> relieve existing transit capacity problems by providing
> complementary service, rather than exacerbate capacity problems, as
> edge-city stations would do.
>
> The other issue is that bypass stations and big park-and-ride hubs
> outside city centers will draw development out towards them, just
> like airports do, which creates a less sustainable land use pattern
> across the state. Park and ride hubs also abet sprawl. HSR made the
> decision to locate stations in existing town centers, serve them
> well with local transit, walking, and cycling, and foster transit-
> oriented infill development, as a deliberate sustainability and land
> use strategy. Spending the extra billion, or billions, may be worth
> it, if it draws tens of billions of private development back to the
> town centers.
>
> On Oct 21, 2008, at 1:51 PM, Eric Arons wrote:
>
>> I do feel like I need to comment on (at least, and at this point,
>> no more than) one of these recommendations.
>> High Speed Rail. I've had a lot of conversations down here with a
>> co-worker and vice-mayor of Menlo Park, and we're not so sure high
>> speed rail makes much sense in its current incarnation (beyond the
>> sexiness of it). It will be ridiculously expensive, and ultimately
>> it does exactly what Deep says, gives people a convenient way to
>> get from here to LA and back. It requires major rework of the
>> infrastructure (grade separation all the way up and down the
>> peninsula), and integration of current use of the rail (Caltrain
>> and freight) with this new use. Do we need this long distance
>> transit solution for lots of money? Or would that money be much
>> better spent for regional transit planning that would allow us to
>> get around the Bay Area more easily? Would a better plan be to
>> stop the train in SJ and then let it connect to better local
>> service, saving billions? A large part of the cost will be in
>> revamping the current rail line. Yes, I know that money is not
>> immediately transferable from project to project, but there is a
>> massive budget shortfall right now. And there are some real
>> concerns about the particular plan for this potential boondoggle.
>> Anyway, I'm not necessarily opposed to it, and we were actually
>> hoping to have a debate on it here at SRI, but it's worth looking
>> into more carefully. Maybe this isn't the right plan.
>>
>> A few relevant links (some from people actually supporting the
>> prop, but not the current plan):
>> http://service.govdelivery.com/docs/CAMENLO/CAMENLO_1/CAMENLO_1_20080925_en.pdf
>> http://www.transdef.org/HSR/HSR.html
>> http://www.bayrailalliance.org/statement_on_high_speed_rail_and_lawsuit_against_hsra
>>
>> And a debate on the issue on the radio Wednesday:
>> http://www.kalw.org/listen.html
>>
>> KALW Radio, 91.7 FM, on Wednesday, Oct. 22, debating Quentin Kopp,
>> the Chair of the CA High-Speed Rail
>>
>>
>>
>> Authority. Please call in with questions and comments during the
>> second half of the show.
>> The number is 415-841-4134.
>>
>>
>> State Initiatives:
>> 1A: YES - HIGH SPEED RAIL
>> This much delayed bond measure will start the funding for
>> California to build a new High Speed Rail system connecting SF to
>> LA but eventually Sacramento to SF to LA to San Diego. If I didn't
>> love it because it was a great way to get people out of cars, or
>> love it because it would represent a hugh Green House Gas emissions
>> win (it will reduce instate plane flights DRAMATICALLY as well as
>> reduce car trips), or love it because it represents a big
>> investment in CAs decaying infrastructure & will dramatically
>> improve service on our very own CalTrain, I'd vote for it because
>> it will get me to LA in 2 & a 1/2 hours door to door (4 by air? 8
>> by car?) & I'll probably be able to bring my bike :-) YES YES YES
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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