While the Pelli Clarke Pelli and Hines team might have won the design competition for San Franciso’s Transbay Terminal and Tower, the question remains, what exactly will they be building? And in the context of this article, will they design for a high-speed rail depot or not?
∙ Bay Area route dispute threatens high-speed rail line [Examiner]
∙ Hines And Pelli Clarke Pelli Bid The Most (And Get The Transbay Nod) [SocketSite]
My understanding is that there will be tunnels built just in case a high-speed rail does every see sunlight in San Francisco. I think I’ve seen 4 tunnels – with the middle two reserved for high speed rail if and when it comes to fruition.
See page 19 of this presentation (in PDF):
http://www.transbaycenter.org/TransBay/uploadedFiles/InformationResources/3-26-07%20D5%20Community%20Meeting.pdf
I can’t imagine HSR will be built in our lifetimes
This is the tip of the iceberg with regard to the avalanche of lawsuits
The same problems came up when Disney and Vegas proposed funding a high speed rail between LAX, Disneyland and Las Vegas. The lawsuits from various neighborhood groups were amazing when you consider that the trains would run at normal speeds while in the urban areas of Southern California.
What about the possible Caltrain extension? I read some posts on this site a while back that even that was up in the air? Would this make Transbay only a bus terminal?
The Caltrain extension piece of the project (Phase II) does not have its funding in place ($1.85 billion deficit as of August 2006 according to presentation from PDF link in my first response to this thread). The timeline on that presentation says their doing the first portion of preliminary engineering through the end of 2007. Funding is the next item on the timeline – and if Arnold jerks away the $10 billion bond for high-speed rail item from November’s statewide ballot, that may delay the actual extension (not the building of the rail terminal in the actual transit building) for some additional time as far as I can tell.
Proposition H, passed in November 1999, is an ordinance that required Caltrain to be extended to a new or rebuilt regional transit station (sounds like Transbay Transit Center to me). It also contained language about dual mode engines for the Caltrain system so that an electrified system runs the trains in downtown and diesel runs the trains down the peninsula. Read plenty more at: http://www.bayrailalliance.org/caltrain_dtx
The Caltrain extension is dead. Muni needs those passengers to survive.
Once the joint powers board that runs caltrain got its act together for a building that might actually allow an extension to be built, SF and feds funded the muni chinatown extension so they could argue that federal money to help build the downtown caltrain extension would be superfluous. Without federal funding, a downtown caltrain extension will never be built.
Prop H is a proposition without a deadline. If a downtown extension is built in the year 9957, the city is complying with it. And the longer the city waits to comply, the more money muni makes.
The only way the extension gets built is if Sacramento essentially bankrupts the state to build a high speed rail line there. That will hurt revenue at LAX and SFO, so those interests, along with the airlines, will make sure that doesn’t happen any sooner than caltrain runs to downtown.
So I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for either project to happen.
tipster, you’re talking about stuff that you do not understand.
I posted all kinds of links in another thread disproving your “theory” that somehow the 10,000 passengers using Muni from caltrain each day threaten the viability of a 700,000 passenger a day transit system. Muni would make more off of fares generated by a TTC than on the peanuts that it makes from the current location of the Caltrain terminus. The Federal funding for the Central Subway has been “in place” for years now – it simply needed certain studies to be finished before it was officially awarded.
10 billion wouldn’t bankrupt the state. 40 billion wouldn’t bankrupt the state. Even 100 billion wouldn’t bankrupt the state. Our level of debt today is lower in percentage terms (percentage of state GDP) than it has been for MOST of the past century.
“10 billion wouldn’t bankrupt the state. 40 billion wouldn’t bankrupt the state. Even 100 billion wouldn’t bankrupt the state. Our level of debt today is lower in percentage terms (percentage of state GDP) than it has been for MOST of the past century.”
this is a interesting point and really speaks to the criticism often heard that there is no money. Its not money at all it’s political whether speaking with regard to the State of the Feds (trying hard not to turn this into a anti-war diatribe)