Time to Kill High-Speed Rail Project, Panel Says

By Mike Rosenberg, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Jan. 04–Warning of an “immense financial risk” to the state, a renowned group of transportation and financial experts advised lawmakers Tuesday to pull the emergency brake on funding California’s $99 billion high-speed train. 

Problems Piling Up High-Speed Rail Study: Tunnel Impractical

By Tracy Seipel: San Jose Mercury News
tseipel@mercurynews.com
11/15/2011

High-Speed Rail Authority confirms engineering challenges, but push to
go underground won’t die. Add one more to the ever-expanding list of problems facing California’s grand plan for high-speed rail: It can’t go underground in San Jose, the backers of the system say.

Concepts of a station and track alignment for high-speed rail at the Diridon site in downtown San Jose. (California High Speed Rail Authority and Newlands & Company, Inc (NC3D)) Courtesy San Jose Mercury News

Echoing previous studies, a report released Monday by the California High-Speed Rail Authority concluded that there is no viable tunnel option to accommodate high-speed trains below downtown’s Diridon Station.  

High-Speed Rail: Judge Again Orders Peninsula Route Scrapped

San Jose Mercury News, 2011-11-11
By Mike Rosenberg
mrosenberg@mercurynews.com

Once again, a judge on Thursday ordered the state to scrap its plans to zip high-speed trains from Gilroy to San Jose and up the Peninsula, saying officials failed to show how the massive route would harm local traffic and homes.

An artist's rendering of the proposed high-speed rail line station_Courtesy LA Times

Even so, the California High-Speed Rail Authority signaled it would reapprove the route along the Caltrain corridor after completing more studies to appease the judge. That could trigger yet another lawsuit, extending a three-year long legal battle against the polarizing $99 billion bullet train project.

The cities of Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton don’t want the elevated tracks to divide their communities, create an eyesore and lower property values. So they sued in October 2010 to ax the Bay Area route for the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line. They prefer a railroad that would run through the East Bay and across the Dumbarton Bridge to San Francisco.