As Caltrain prepares to embark on its long-stalled voyage toward electrification, Sen. Jerry Hill on Friday unveiled a bill that would bring to the project the funding it needs while, at the same time, ease local anxieties about the controversial high-speed rail line.
Senate Bill 557, which Hill introduced at Palo Alto's Caltrain station Friday morning, seeks to ensure that the $68 billion high-speed rail project allocates funds for Caltrain's electrification, a project that Caltrain has been coveting for more than a decade but that has languished thus far because of nonexistent funding. Officials have long maintained that electrification is necessary to modernize Caltrain, allowing the agency to run more trains and reach financial sustainability.
The high-speed rail project, which California voters approved in 2008 and which remains deeply controversial on the Peninsula, offers Caltrain its first real chance at electrification. Senate Bill 1029, which legislators approved by a single vote in the state Senate last fall, allocates $1.1 billion for train improvements on the Peninsula. Hill's bill specifies that these funds include $600 million for electrification and another $105 million for advanced signal system.
The bill that passed last year also includes a loophole that would allow state officials to funnel money from the Peninsula project and allocate it to Central Valley, where the first segment of the rail system is set to be constructed. Hill's bill would close that loophole by guaranteeing that the money rail officials promised to Caltrain would not be transferred to other segments.
"I'm making it clear that Caltrain will receive the full funding intended by the state," Hill said at the Friday press conference, where his announcement was intermittently interrupted by the sound of passing trains.
The bill also seeks to turn other promises from California High-Speed Rail Authority officials into enforceable laws – namely, the assurance from rail authority officials that the rail system would be a "blended system" made up of two tracks shared by Caltrain and high-speed rail. The authority agreed in its most recent business plan to pursue such a system after a vehement outcry from Peninsula communities about the prior proposal, which called for a four-track system with Caltrain on the inside tracks and high-speed rail on the outside.
Hill's new bill would codify this promise in legislation. It would also give Peninsula communities some leverage over the project by giving Caltrain and eight Bay Area agencies a veto power over any future proposals to revisit the four-track alternative, which would increase the footprint of the controversial project and require more property seizures in Palo Alto and other cities along the Caltrain corridor.
Under the proposed legislation, a decision to revisit the locally unpopular alternative would require approval from nine different Bay Area agencies, including Caltrain, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and the cities of San Francisco and San Jose. Hill called this provision a "critical safeguard" for the Peninsula communities.
"I think it will provide certainty and a peace of mind as we move forward toward electrification and, ultimately, high-speed rail," Hill said.
The proposal is Hill's first high-speed rail bill since his election last November to the state Senate, where his district includes much of the territory formerly represented by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. Simitian, a leading rail watchdog who termed out last year and who now serves on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, was one of the three architects – along with U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, and Assemblyman Rich Gordon, D-Menlo Park – of the "blended system" approach.
Santa Clara Supervisor Ken Yeager, who chairs Caltrain's board of directors and who joined Hill at the Friday press conference, said the board is in "full support" of Hill's legislation. He noted that next year will mark the 150th anniversary of passenger rail service on the Peninsula.
"These early investment funds set us on a course to thrive over the next 150 years," Yeager said.
Under the current plan, Caltrain electrification is slated to be completed by 2019.
Comments
Menlo Park: Park Forest
on Feb 22, 2013 at 1:30 pm
on Feb 22, 2013 at 1:30 pm
The much acclaimed "blended" system of combining both Caltrain and "high-speed rail" on the existing two tracks of the Caltrain corridor is attributed to former Senator Simitian, Congresswoman Eshoo and Assemblyman Gordon.
State Senator Hill now offers legislation that assures funding for electrification and the "blended" two track configuration.
All this is clever, but not clever enough.
1. The anticipated funds will come from legislatively mandated high-speed rail money. It can't be used for non-high-speed rail expenditures like electrifying Caltrain. Nonetheless, it will happen anyway.
2. In order for high-speed rail to meet the legislatively required travel time of 2:40 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the Caltrain corridor would need to include an additional dedicated two tracks (thereby four tracks) to permit the required higher speeds for the high-speed trains. Sharing tracks with Caltrain won't cut it.
3. "Blended" is a sleight-of-hand. It appeases all us Peninsula trouble makers who are happy to have Caltrain electrified and willing to settle for two tracks to be used by both the Caltrain and high-speed trains. That situation -- two tracks -- will exist only as long as there is no more funding for the higher speed second pair of tracks for HSR.
4. The four-tracks plan is not going to go away, regardless of Senator Hill's legislation. The four tracks elevated have always been both the CHSRA and Caltrain intention for as much of the corridor as possible. Initially the plans called for a wall high enough for car traffic to go through at grade level beneath the four tracks. A more economical solution, especially in our mid-Peninsula neck of the woods is the four-track viaduct and that 'solution' remains among the CHSRA intentions.
5. We have been observers of the Governor, Legislature and CHSRA playing fast and loose with legislation for over a decade.
That's not going to stop. We cry "FOUL" and they ignore us. Why? Because they can.
6. No one should doubt that the elevated four-track viaduct concept is not going to go away -- EVER! All that's necessary is enough funding. And when it comes to funding, state or federal, never say never!