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Option A Option B Option B1
Three options for traveling through Palo Alto are currently proposed by the state rail authority: ‘A’ includes both aerial and street-level tracks; ‘B’ combines open trench, street-level and aerial tracks; and ‘B1’ consists of an open trench alone.
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OPEN TRENCH
high-speed trains. Palo Alto was not a plaintiff in that suit but filed a “friend of the court� brief in support of its Midpeninsula neighbors. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny did not require the rail authority to revisit the issue of route selection. Flashman hopes the new lawsuit — along with a recent report by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) that found the ridership projections “unreliable� and recent evidence that the rail authority’s ridership models weren’t publicized or peer-reviewed before the EIR was issued — will change that. The new lawsuit also seeks to slow down the rail authority’s design process for the San Francisco-to-San Jose segment of the 800-mile line. The rail authority is scheduled to release a highly anticipated Project Environmental Impact Report in December that would analyze the various design options — including trenches, aerial viaducts and at-grade tracks — along the Peninsula. Flashman said the group wants to make sure the rail authority doesn’t certify this new document until it resolves the outstanding issues with the broader document and proves that the Pacheco Pass is indeed the proper alignment for the new line. “They haven’t made the basic decisions about the Program EIR but they’re going ahead with the new (Project) EIR,� Flashman told the Weekly. “It’s kind of like putting on your coat before you put on your shirt.�
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Jeffrey Barker, the rail authority’s deputy director, declined to comment on the cities’ planned litigation other than to point out that “this kind of thing is not unexpected for an infrastructure project of this size and scope.� The authority’s goal, he wrote in an e-mail, is “to work with every community to help shape the best highspeed rail project possible, and (the authority) would hope that elected officials choose to engage meaningfully in that process.�
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he Midpeninsula’s gradual insurgence against the rail project has not gone unnoticed by rail proponents, both in Sacramento and in the Bay Area. Authority CEO Roelof van Ark recently joined officials from Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton and Mountain View for a tour of the Caltrain corridor, where the rail officials hope to place the new system. Van Ark, who did not respond to a request from the Weekly for comment, also wrote a letter to Peninsula officials on Aug. 24 assuring them that “the trench option through many Peninsula cities remains an option to be further studied and evaluated,� despite recent analyses indicating that it’s an unlikely option further south along the Midpeninsula. Schwarzenegger’s phone call to the San Diego (continued on next page)
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