Published Friday, May 28, 2004, by Silicon Valley Biz Ink

SJ lobbies to be hub for planned bullet train

Others say Union City makes more sense as transportation center

BY Radhika Kaushik

The first salvos in a growing debate were launched this week over the
route of a so-called bullet train -- a dispute that could have major
implications for San Jose.

At stake is whether San Jose will be a major hub for the $37 billion
high-speed rail line, or whether a key Bay Area center will be located
further north in Union City. [BATN: No, the question isn't whether
San Jose is a major hub, but whether every train in the state is to
be forced to stop in San Jose, regardless of passenger destination,
and whether it is worth spending more than two billion extra dollars
(estimate in 1999 dollars) to achieve that dubious goal.]

A final Bay Area public hearing was held May 26 (after Biz Ink went
to press) in Santa Clara County to allow residents to voice their support
for and opposition to the competing routes.

The city of San Jose and the California High Speed Rail Authority
(CHSRA), the Sacramento-based organization charged with the planning
and construction of a high-speed rail system, favor two possible routes
in which the train will enter the Bay Area via San Jose. The first, the
Old Mount Hamilton Route, runs south of Modesto and then north through
the mountains to San Jose. The second, the Pacheco Pass Route, veers
out of the Central Valley south of Merced and runs along Highway 152
before turning north into San Jose. Both routes cut through huge tracts
of unbroken wilderness. From San Jose, the two routes branch out to
Oakland and San Francisco.
<http://www.arch21.org/CaHighSpeed.dir/hsrindex.html>

"We [San Jose] would like to be the commercial center of the Bay Area.
Having every train stopping in San Jose would be advantageous to
commerce and the economic viability of the downtown area," says Rod
Diridon, member of the CHSRA board [BATN: and Father of VTA Light Rail,
which was also going to revitalize downtown San Jose.] He believes
activist groups are wrong to consider using an alternative "commuter"
route, since frequent stops defeat the purpose of a high-speed train.

[BATN hopes that our readers can grasp the concept that different
trains with different stopping patterns and serving different passenger
markets can use the SAME tracks, even though this level of reasoning
appears beyond that abilities of the Executive Director of the Mineta
Transportation Institute, Chair Emeritus of CHSRA, and Father of
VTA Light Rail Rod Diridon.]

But environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and the
BayRail Alliance, are pushing for an alternate route, called the
Altamont Route. In this case, the train would travel through Stockton
to Union City before branching out to serve Oakland, San Francisco
and San Jose.

"The Altamont Route was summarily rejected by the [Metropolitan
Transportation Commission] board both in 1999 and 2000, primarily for
operational reasons," says Diridon, who also is the executive director
of the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University.
[BATN notes that a "summary rejection" is not what would expect from
a planning organization with professional and ethical staff, but
rather what one has come to expect from a deeply political organization
with a proven record of failure and a demonstrated contempt for wise
expenditures.]

The primary reason for dropping the Altamont Route was ridership and
speed.

"If [the route] branched out from Union City, there would only be
one-third of train service available for each hub, which is a less
desirable level of service," Diridon says, adding that 90 percent of
trips come from the Los Angeles area and only 10 percent come from
the Sacramento area.

In addition, the route would add 26 minutes to the two and a half
hours a high-speed train would take to get from Los Angeles to San
Francisco, he says. [BATN: Diridon is quite simply lying.]

Meanwhile, environmental groups are pushing for an environmental
impact report on the Altamont Route, as there are environmental
concerns over the two San Jose routes proposed by CHSRA.

"You duplicate existing commute routes, not create new ones for
increased ridership [in the future]," says Alan Miller, executive
director of Train Riders Association of California, a Sacramento-based
nonprofit consumer group. "The CHSRA has done these ridership studies
that talk about how important commute traffic is, but are downplaying
that now because of misguided interests [in originating the Bay Area
route via San Jose]."

Proponents of the Altamont Route argue the three-way split from Union
City to Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose would result in fuller
trains, among other benefits.

High-speed rail appears to be the only viable way to meet increased
traffic demands in the future.

"California is adding 400,000 residents a year -- [equivalent to
the population in] a city the size of Oakland. There is a problem
with airport congestion and the huge environmental impact of airports
expanding into the bay. A high-speed rail route is the only other
option," says Margaret Okuzumi, executive director of the BayRail
Alliance, a Palo Alto-based volunteer transit group.
<http://www.bayrailalliance.org>

For any route, there are bound to be environmental concerns like
noise, providing a fully fenced corridor for high-speed trains --
a wall that runs down the length of the state -- and the issue of
urban sprawl, says Patrick Moore, a member of the Loma Prieta chapter
of the Sierra Club.

"If you look at the population distribution, you'll see along the
Altamont corridor there already is an established infrastructure.
We have been talking to a number of environmental groups and all of
them favor the Altamont Route," Moore says. Even a CHSRA document
reports that the Altamont route will affect one-tenth of the wetlands
as the proposed Pacheco Pass route, he adds.

Construction of the first phase of the high-speed rail will begin by
2007 or 2008; the project is scheduled to be completed in 2012 or
2014.


Radhika Kaushik is a Biz Ink reporter.
You can reach her at rkaushik@...