The revolving door at the High Speed Rail Authority continues to spin. As a member of the Community Working Group (courtesy of the city of B'game), I got an update from the Northern California HSR Authority team last night. There were a lot of new faces from a year ago including a new Regional Director (Boris Lipkin) and a new Project Manager (James Tung). But the working group attendance was sparse to say the least. I am using the term "update" loosely, since there is not a lot of news and very little of it is good for the Peninsula, taxpayers or people looking to go somewhere at high speed. There were some other attendees who appeared interested in handouts for of all things, "affordable housing" from the HSR money train.
Decisions that are still pending include whether to have passing tracks from 9th Ave in San Mateo south to Whipple with all that implies for taking property and whether to build a viaduct in the South Bay to get to Diridon Station more easily. The big kicker was an apparent lack of progress on how to get through Pacheco Pass via tunnel. It's estimated to cost from $6-9 billion, but the engineering studies have yet to start. And the extension to the Transbay Terminal is totally in limbo as SF Supe Aaron Peskin considers withholding funds until project management improves. And anything south of the metropolis of Bakersfield just doesn't get mentioned. But the gravy train continues to ladle out money at least until the election in two weeks. Even if Newsome wins the governor ship as expected, he may have to flip-flip a third (or is it fourth?) time and kill HSR in hopes of paying for even 10% of what else he says he wants to do. Here is the new team for Norcal.
And here is the timeline that still shows "Valley to Valley", i.e. Silicon Valley to the Central Valley up and running by 2029.
The only good news of late is that the Western U.S. earthquake warning system is plodding along so that by 2029 when a high-speed train goes off the tracks it will do so at a slower speed.
More people are willing to speak up about the boondoggle:
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are on the same page when it comes to California’s $77 billion high-speed rail project.
“Trains leave when you don’t want to leave, from a place you don’t want to leave from, and take you to a place you don’t want to go to, at a time you don’t want to get there, and then you have to get into a car and go wherever you’re going. It is a crazy system,” said Ellison during an exclusive interview with Maria Bartiromo on "Mornings with Maria Opens a New Window. " on Thursday. Ellison, who said he hasn’t spoken to Musk about the train, noted that their views are in-line.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/californias-77-billion-bullet-train-will-be-one-of-the-states-great-embarrassments-larry-ellison
Posted by: Joe | October 27, 2018 at 11:38 AM
I attended the most recent HSR Community Working Group session last week and here are a few take-aways:
--The full complement of 8 FTE’s and a consultant are still there and getting paid
--Their take on the Gavinor’s comments were that HSR is “not curtailed or scaled back or scrapped” and they have the new challenge of building out 52 miles MORE than they were working on before (that is the incremental distance to Merced on one end and Bakersfield on the other).
--The bookend project we actually care about, Caltrain electrification, seems to have firm financial footing.
--The believe they have met the scope of the project to date so the Fed Railroad Administration is wrong to try to clawback federal money. (no surprise there)
--Some clueless Millbrae city councilwoman I didn’t recognize was there to welcome the CHSRA-CWG and tell them how much Millbrae is looking forward to HSR and that they have active projects that will benefit from it.
--The “Early Train Operator” (ETO) presented their ideas on the project. This is Deutsche Bahn (DB). The spokesperson was competent in the operations of German HSR which they manage, but: they still have no decision on whether the CA HSR will be reservation-only a la the French TGV or reservation + walk on; nor do they have a plan for baggage screening which they punted to TSA.
All in all, it sounded like "business as usual" for the Northern Region of CHSRA.
Posted by: Joe | March 21, 2019 at 02:42 PM
Potholes and pensions first.
Then dams and infrastructure.
Like with Burlingame.
But, no.
HSR and a Rec Dept.
Posted by: Peter Garrison | March 22, 2019 at 07:37 AM