Odd Stacking

The odd stacked alternatives shown in the figure at right (ripped out of a recent technical working group presentation) make little sense, for a number of reasons that were previously discussed.

Recall that track stacking, besides entailing very intensive and profitable construction of complicated earthquake-resistant civil structures on the taxpayer's dime, is intended to reduce the right-of-way width required to build a four track corridor, presumably to appease neighbors and minimize residential property takes. A brief glance at the above drawing (which should also reinforce fears of a separate-but-equal approach that is disastrous for Caltrain) necessarily leads to ONE of the following two conclusions:

1. The planners have lost sight of what they were trying to achieve, in effect destroying our village in order to save it. The stacked solution on the left requires "only" 87 feet of ROW width, while the one on the right requires 119 feet of ROW to make room for a Caltrain platform down in the trench. These elephantine structures, making use of enormous amounts of concrete, seem to miss the whole point of stacking: to save space. If you were to nibble back just 4 feet out of the 13 feet (thirteen!) devoted to drainage and third-party utility easements, you could simply stick all four tracks down in that trench on 15-foot centers. Dear peninsula communities: do you prefer 13 feet for drainage and utilities, and oh, by the way, a viaduct that looms 30 feet above ground level (16 feet of road vehicle clearance, 10 feet of viaduct box + rails, and 4 feet of sound wall) with another 30 feet of overhead wires towering above that? Or would you rather we cut back to 9 feet for drainage and utilities, and the viaduct disappears entirely? Let's think it over, for about a microsecond.
   
   
2. The planners are not so subtly trying to sand-bag the stacked options to gain community buy-in for property takes. Making the stacked alternative look this bad on paper fulfills the dual goal of giving it environmental due diligence under CEQA and ensuring that public opinion will be "stacked" against it, setting it up for being "not carried forward" in a way that is impervious to future litigation. These are the lengths to which we must go to take 5 feet of somebody's back yard.
   

Since one would prefer to assume that planners are not stupid, and that they don't take peninsula residents for idiots, #2 seems more likely. Stay tuned for the answer: the supplementary alternatives analysis report for the peninsula high-speed rail project is scheduled to be revealed to the public on Thursday, August 5th in San Francisco.

Stacked Nonsense

A preview of the alternatives analysis provided to Palo Alto residents reportedly included several stacked track alternatives. In a Palo Alto Weekly article, track stacking is described thusly:

Tim Cobb, whose firm HNTB is performing engineering work for the Peninsula segment, said the alternatives analysis is also considering stacking train tracks in sets of two. This could entail keeping the two existing Caltrain tracks in their current alignment and building two new high-speed-rail tracks either above or below them. This appears to be a particularly viable option at areas where the right-of-ways are narrow, such as Churchill Avenue, rail officials said.

Track stacking is a design that communities should beware. While it may solve the problem of threading four tracks through narrow right-of-way pinch points without taking adjacent properties, it has many disadvantages.

1. If the tracks are stacked, one pair of tracks (Caltrain's) will remain at grade. This will result in continued noise from grade crossing bells and train horns (especially from freight trains, which will operate between midnight and 5 AM), and continued accidents and service disruptions caused by the occasional trespasser or stalled car. The impact will only get worse as Caltrain traffic increases from the current 90 trains/weekday.
   
   
2. Grade separations can provide important community benefits such as reduced noise, smoothed traffic flows across the tracks, and a safer environment with a lower risk of accidents. Track stacking not only precludes these benefits, but it permanently prevents the future grade separation of Caltrain.
   
   
3. If the HSR tracks are stacked above the Caltrain tracks, they will need to clear tall freight trains and high-voltage overhead electrification. That means the free clearance underneath such a structure must be ~25 feet, with the HSR tracks ~30 feet above ground level rather than ~16 feet for a conventional overpass grade separation. Sound walls and overhead electrification poles would raise the overall height of such a viaduct to a neighborhood-blighting sixty feet (as shown in the figure above, with a viaduct taken from TM 1.1.21). The noise and visual impact could spread far beyond the immediate vicinity of the crossing, affecting several blocks on either side of the tracks.
   
   
4. If the tracks are sunk, all the surface disruption and expense of tunnel construction will be incurred with none of the benefits. After the dust settles, trains will still make noise, grade crossings will still close a hundred times a day, the tracks will still form a barrier through the community, and crossing accidents will still occur. The tunnel plus at-grade solution is now favored in Anaheim, where there is a 1.5-mile stretch of 50-foot right of way, far narrower than anywhere on the peninsula.
   
   
5. Building stacked tracks will require land takes anyway, since stacked tracks cannot be built directly over or under active Caltrain tracks. Any stacked scenario would require temporary shoofly tracks to keep Caltrain operating during construction, and those shoofly tracks might require the very same land takes that stacked arrangements are intended to avoid in the first place. Whether temporary (for construction) or permanent, such land takes have the same legal and material impacts to residents.
   
   
6. Stacked tracks are a waste of taxpayer money. For roughly the same cost and the same level of disruption, a simpler and functionally more effective four-track grade separation can be built instead. The only people who benefit from the tens of millions of dollars spent to stack the tracks are (a) the engineering and construction firms who build these complex structures, and (b) a handful of property owners immediately adjacent to the tracks, who get to hang on to their land in somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory.

One might reasonably conclude that stacked tracks are a badly overwrought solution to the perceived problem of residential takes.

Bloated Requirements

Taken for granted in this crazy talk about stacked tracks is an assumption that a 100-foot wide swath is required if all four tracks run on the same level. That 100-foot peg won't fit in some of the 60 or 75-foot holes that dot the peninsula corridor.

As it turns out, this 100-foot figure includes expansive margins for cable ducts, utility easements, maintenance walkways and drainage structures. In a pinch, the tracks can be spaced just 15 feet center-to-center. So are we going to build a 60-foot tall structure just so drainage trenches will fit and AT&T can run some fiber optic cable on the right of way? No, we shouldn't. With some creative engineering, four tracks can and do exceptionally fit within a 75-foot right of way, even with drainage and utilities. It makes no sense to build tall viaducts or tunnels because we're short a few feet for these ancillary items.

Which brings us to land takes, a.k.a. eminent domain... the third rail of peninsula HSR politics.

Destroying the Village In Order To Save It

With growing opposition to HSR on the peninsula, program managers are walking on eggshells, especially when it comes to taking any residential land. What they fear most in eminent domain proceedings is neither cost nor delay (both would likely be minimal), but the political fallout and galvanized opposition to the project.

Seemingly bending over backwards to avoid residential land takes at all possible costs, HSR designers are now contorting themselves into these stacked design alternatives possibly as a veiled signal to the communities. Perhaps it is their calculation to elicit such a negative response that the communities themselves will suggest far more reasonable solutions--solutions that may involve a residential take here and there. Whatever the underlying motives might be, peninsula cities should be suspicious of stacked tracks, and weigh the relative community benefits of carefully optimized and very limited residential takes. And communities will need to take the initiative on this, because the HSR project politically can't and won't.

In some cases, eminent domain is not just a last resort: it may be part of the "best" and overall lowest-impact design solution.

Focus on: Atherton

If the term wealthy enclave means anything, Atherton (per capita income about 20 times population) is it.

The leafy town of Atherton abuts a mere 0.8 mile of the peninsula rail corridor, and yet may turn out to be the greatest friction point for HSR on the peninsula--and possibly anywhere in California. This is not because of technical difficulty, but rather because the town is more willing and able than most to employ legal means to get its wishes: as a first priority, a routing of HSR that is not through Atherton (namely, via the Altamont Pass), and as a last resort, the construction of a tunnel to put Caltrain and HSR completely out of sight.

In an 11-page letter sent to the CHSRA in late 2007, the Town of Atherton detailed its concerns about the HSR project. Refer to Chapter 22, p. 101 of the Bay Area to Central Valley Program EIR/EIS. The letter includes the following claims:

1. properties will need to be condemned to build HSR through Atherton;
2. partially condemned properties are subject to remainder damages "easily in excess" of the value of the entire property, to compensate owners for noise and visual impacts in perpetuity;
3. the remainder of the property may not be condemned unless it is actually needed for the project; condemnation to limit remainder damages is not sufficient to support the taking.
   

In short, Atherton warned that running HSR through town would entangle the project in an expensive and drawn-out legal battle. That battle has already begun: Atherton was a co-plaintiff in a partially successful legal challenge brought by environmental and transit activists against the above-mentioned EIR, forcing it to be revised. Doubtless this is only the beginning.

Horizontal Alignment

Despite the controversy around the issue of eminent domain, the Caltrain right of way (see maps for mileposts 27 and 28) is 80 - 85 feet wide and straight as a ruler everywhere along the 0.8 mile section that falls within Atherton town limits. In principle, this is sufficient space to accommodate four tracks, although temporary construction easements may still be required to build the grade separation structures at Atherton's two grade crossings, Fair Oaks Lane and Watkins Avenue.

Trees are highly prized in Atherton, and many large volunteer trees growing on the railroad right of way would have to be removed. Caltrain's electrification EIR identified 80 trees that would need to be removed for a two-track at-grade electrified configuration; a wider four-track arrangement would likely result in even more tree removals.

Vertical Alignment

The existing tracks slope down at a gentle (less than 0.5%) grade to the north, and cross a drainage ditch known as the Atherton Channel at Watkins Ave. The vertical alignment of the tracks through Atherton is intimately linked to the choices made in neighboring Menlo Park, which has several closely-spaced crossings that would require a consistent vertical alignment to be used through both cities. The existing alignment is shown in the figure below, created from Caltrain track survey data.


Even with the program EIR in legal trouble, project-level environmental work is continuing, with the CHSRA's preliminary design alternatives including elevated, at-grade and below-grade variations of the vertical alignment through Atherton.

An elevated alignment, as originally suggested in the program EIR/EIS and as previously studied in neighboring Menlo Park, would raise the tracks about 15 feet and lower the roads by about 5 feet. Pedestrian sidewalks would stay at grade. The tracks would have to be elevated over all six crossings in Menlo / Atherton, as shown in the figure below. Note, the 1% grade specified for freight trains considerably lengthens the northern approach to such an elevated structure.



Putting the tracks in a trench would require lowering the rails by 30 feet, to accommodate tall freight cars under overhead electrification. The solid red line in the figure below shows a trench alignment. The tracks must rise back to grade at the existing Fifth Avenue grade separation to the north, so trains, tracks, poles and overhead wires would be out of sight for only a portion of Atherton. Again, freight-friendly 1% grades are shown.


Atherton's Folly

In the analysis of alternatives process for the San Francisco - San Jose project EIR, the CHSRA requested each city to state its preferred design alternative. Atherton's position is still that the Pacheco Pass HSR routing through Atherton is ill-advised, wasteful, expensive, and adds no transportation value. Should this route be built, however, Atherton proposes a tunnel concept that is ill-advised, wasteful, expensive, and adds no transportation value. An eye for an eye...

A letter from Atherton (see p. 5) states a preference for an unusual two-level stacked tunnel arrangement, with two HSR tracks in a tunnel on the lower level and two Caltrain / UPRR tracks in a trench on the upper level, as diagrammed in the notional cross-section at right. All roads would remain at grade, and the horizontal clearances would "fit well within" the 80 - 85 foot right of way, purportedly allowing trees to be preserved. The vertical alignment for such a tunnel is shown in the vertical profile (above) as a dotted red line. Accounting for the minimum vertical clearances, the HSR tunnel would bottom out about 75 feet below grade, well below sea level. The extensive ventilation head houses, emergency evacuation stairwells and pump houses required to operate such a tunnel are not shown in the diagram.

The claimed benefits of such an arrangement include:

• No property takes and little loss of property value
• No barrier or visual impact, little noise
• Less cost than a twin-bore four-track tunnel
• Upper level usable by diesel freight trains
  

The concept was originally proposed by Redwood City resident James Jonas, who calls it the Hat Trench. Jonas was invited to present the concept to Atherton's rail committee in summer 2009.

It remains unclear who would pay for such a pharaonic tunnel structure. While the price of property in Atherton is high, it remains small in comparison to a tunnel. Less easy to quantify is the price of a view and the price of peace and quiet. Are those truly worth $10,000 per linear inch? Atherton should have plenty of MBA's to figure it out.

NOTE: This post will be updated continuously, as warranted by additional information or new events relating to Atherton.