New Altamont High-Speed Rail Route

On April 26, 2010, TRANSDEF along with its allies the California Rail Foundation and the Planning and Conservation League, filed comments on the Revised Draft EIR for the Bay Area to Central Valley segment of the California High-Speed Rail project. Our coalition, which also included the Town of Atherton, the City of Menlo Park and the Bay Rail Alliance, had succeeded in 2009 in getting the court to throw out the previous Final EIR for this project as inadequate. This Revised Draft EIR was intended to fix the legal deficiencies in the previous EIR, while preserving the Authority’s ability to again choose the Pacheco Route as its preferred Alternative.

The comment letter by our coalition, like the previous litigation, is intended to legally force the Authority to give an objective review to the Altamont Alternative, something the Authority has refused to do for more than ten years.

Exhibit C, the report by the highly experienced French High-Speed Rail consulting firm Setec Ferroviaire, identifies an Altamont Corridor route they find superior to the Pacheco route:

Exhibit C: Altamont Alternatives report
 Appendix A: Altamont Pass Plans
Appendix B: Fremont Route along SF Water Line: CHSRA Standards
Appendix C: Fremont Route along SF Water Line: French Standards
Appendix D: Setec’s railway references
Appendix E: Individual CVs

Context for the Report

The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s predecessor agency, the California High-Speed Rail Commission, had found the Altamont route (the I-580 Corridor) to have higher ridership, lower environmental impacts and lower construction costs than the Pacheco Route. Nonetheless, for the last ten years, the Authority’s choice for connect-ing the Central Valley to the Bay Area has been the Pacheco Route. The Authority did not even evaluate the Altamont Route in its 2005 Statewide Program EIR. Legal pressure forced the Authority to compare the two routes in its 2008 Program EIR, which was overturned after a challenge by the groups here today. As a result, the Authority has not yet chosen which route its trains will take in getting from the Central Valley to the Bay Area. (The Alternatives Analysis process now underway assumes the Pacheco Route, but that work could be made irrelevant if the Altamont were chosen instead.)

The 3 groups, the California Rail Foundation, the Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, and the Planning and Conservation League filed a series of expert reports in comments on the Revised Draft EIR (which the Authority intends to use to replace the defunct 2008 EIR). In particular, one of the reports finds the Altamont route technically feasible, thereby preventing the Authority from using the legal tricks it employed in the past to avoid objective consideration of Altamont.

The Setec Ferroviaire consultant team, with long experience designing and managing construction of high-speed rail lines in France, found that “The Altamont route will provide an improved rail corridor between the northern San Joaquin Valley and the Bay Area to support passenger service between the Bay Area, the Tri-Valley area, and the Northern San Joaquin Valley. In addition, this route will offer a travel alternative that is competitive with the travel costs and time of auto, intercity bus and regional air modes. … For the operation of a high-speed rail service, the route through Altamont has many more advantages than the Pacheco plan.”

Environmentalists, transit advocates, and people who want High-Speed Rail to succeed economically all prefer the Altamont Route because it:
• Avoids the Grasslands Ecological Area, California’s largest fresh water wetlands complex;
• Avoids inducing new sprawl in Santa Clara and Merced Counties;
• Provides attractive rail service linking the Bay Area, Stockton, and Sacramento, with most trips less than an hour;
• Addresses highway congestion on Interstates 80, 880, 580, and 680;
• Adds mobility between the Bay Area and the northern San Joaquin Valley;
• Generates much higher ridership than the Pacheco Route, because it serves the East Bay and the northern San Joaquin Valley, with 2 million more residents within 10 miles of stations.

See previous web page for a helpful map that depicts the Altamont and Pacheco routes.


Revised Draft EIR Comments

Coalition Comment letter on Revised Draft EIR
Exhibit A: Revenue and Ridership Modeling Report
Exhibit B: CAHSRA October 2009 presentation on alternative alignments
Exhibit C: [See above]
Exhibit D: Letter from A. Waller re: Caltrain/HSR operations on a Dumbarton rail bridge
Exhibit E: Coast Guard e-mail concerning Dumbarton ship traffic
Exhibit F: Photosimulation showing Authority’s proposed Dumbarton high rail bridge
Exhibit G: PCJPB – UPRR Trackage Agreement
Exhibit H: Monterey Highway Narrowing Traffic Analysis
Exhibit I: PCJPB analysis of potential passenger train accidents
Exhibit J: Evaluation of Biological Values and Impacts Analysis