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Is building state high-speed rail - particularly in the Valley - in a disjointed way, a smart move?
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It’ll be kind of like building a bridge or excavating a tunnel by starting at the ends and meeting somewhere in between while fully expecting everything to come together perfectly when all is said and done. Or will it?
From what I understand, in funding Track 2 of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, proposals call for preliminary engineering work to be conducted on ten distinct sections: San Francisco-San Jose, San Jose-Merced, Merced-Fresno, Fresno-Bakersfield, Bakersfield-Palmdale, Palmdale-Los Angles, Los Angeles-Anaheim, Merced-Sacramento, Los Angeles-San Diego and the Altamont Corridor. Meanwhile, the “design-build" corridor programs' total cost for the San Francisco-San Jose, Merced-Fresno, Fresno-Bakersfield and Los Angeles-Anaheim sections is $9.136 billion of which $4.568 billion will, ideally, be the federal share. The application for the federal share (or stimulus money) was submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) by the Governor on Oct. 2, ‘09. In the final analysis, does this make sense?
Here's what Robert Cruickshank in his Sept. 21, ‘09 “CHSR Staff Recommendation for Phase 2 Stimulus Funding” post, wrote:
“The four ‘design/build’ corridors would enable actual construction of trackage to commence, though to varying levels of completion. Only the Caltrain corridor would include full electrification, and there it would also include Positive Train Control (PTC), along with the San Bruno curve and other ‘high-priority’ grade separations. Merced to Fresno and Fresno to Bakersfield would see tracks built, but no electrification or PTC. (Merced to Fresno is to be along the UPRR/CA-99 corridor, which is obviously going to be an issue; Fresno to Bakersfield is via BNSF corridor.) LA to Anaheim would be everything except electrification (including PTC).
“Given the limited possibilities of the way the stimulus is written, this is a pretty sensible approach.” Adding to this, Cruickshank wrote: “Getting PTC and electrification on the Caltrain corridor is an extremely high priority both for Caltrain's survival and for getting HSR seeded on the Peninsula. The trackwork in the Valley will help enable the test track, and getting LA to Anaheim mostly built means it won't take much to get genuine HSR up and running in an extremely high-profile corridor.”
Wait a minute. Building a test track without electrification (or in other words “batteries not included“), isn’t this akin to having a car to drive and the conveyance is missing its primary motive-power source - its engine? Or is it just that this - and other essentials - will come later? They'll have to, obviously.
As I see it, building the Valley line in two distinct sections seems counterintuitive. Apparently, I’m not the only observer to feel this way.
“…CHSRA is committing itself to funding BOTH segments of the Valley corridor,” Cruickshank wrote. “But that may not be enough for key players in the Valley, who want to ensure that HSR isn't built in pieces.”
Meanwhile, Jenna Chandler in The Porterville Recorder of Sept. 20, ‘09 wrote: “The California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley has suggested that valley officials advocate for the entire system, as voters approved a statewide high speed rail system with the passage of Proposition 1A in 2008.”
I have a sneaking suspicion that all will work out in the end, but getting all the stars to line up and all the puzzle pieces to fit will, no doubt, take some doing.
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