The Caltrain electrification saga took another turn per this Daily Journal piece

Caltrain is a step closer to becoming electrified after releasing a draft of its environmental impact report Friday that indicates it could need to acquire up to 1.5 acres outside of its right-of-way for substations and 18 acres for an electrical buffer zone along 51 miles of its tracks.

The public will have until April 29 to submit written comments and attend meetings before the draft EIR is voted on by the Joint Powers Board in the fall, according to Caltrain officials.

Deeper in the story comes the bad news including:

There are 19,000 trees in the Caltrain right-of-way and it may need to remove or prune up to 5,800 of them, according to the draft.  “When we get to trees, it’s going to be a hard discussion to have with folks,” Lee said.

especially the 239 trees in B'game, and

it’s going to pave the way for high-speed rail to operate on this corridor once they have completed their EIR process. 

That is totally dependent on High-cost rail getting another dime of dough from anywhere which is suspect.  Better to start looking for independent electro-funding now.  I hope the two new palm trees are not on the list of 239.

You have to love the tongue-in-cheek headline in the Daily Post on Monday:  "Caltrain crisis:  too many riders".  That's correct, the struggling rail line has too many riders and some have to stand at certain times of day.  The article reports that

Ridership has risen to 47,060 boardings on weekdays in 2013, up from 42,354 in 2012 and 37,779 in 2011, according to Caltrain statistics.

That's almost 25% growth in two years for the constantly-broke railroad.  So you ask "what is the crisis?"

"We (meaning Palo Alto) plan our transportation demand management around Caltrain and yet it's so limited…they're capped at six trains per hour in peak hours," Palo Alto city councilman Pat Burt said, referring to an agreement Caltrain made with the High-Speed Rail Authority.  That agreement says that Caltrain will limit its trains so that high-speed rail can use the same tracks for its trains.

Nice, huh.  The trains people want are unavailable because of the ones they don't want……

Refocusing away from the increasingly entertaining City Council race and back to high-cost rail for a moment, the SacBee's Dan Walters has another good round-up of the Governor's reaction to the adverse ruling we wrote about back in August.  Walters notes

Sacramento Judge Michael Kenny agreed with San Joaquin
Valley opponents of the project that a series of financial and procedural
requirements to commit funds from the bond issue had not been met, thus
imperiling plans to start construction on an initial segment in that region.

The winning lawyers want Kenny to block any further work on
the initial line and “go back to square one” to comply with the bond
requirements, but such a delay could violate a looming federal government
deadline for using its funds.

In response, state lawyers creatively argue that
construction can begin with $3.24 billion in federal grants without using state
money, under a waiver granted by federal authorities eager to score a
high-speed success.

Please do click through and read the full article about Lockyer's reluctance to release funds and the threat to CEQA from a couple of federal bureaucrats who have "approved" a project that is entirely within one state.  We know that "blending" with Caltrain violates Prop 1A, but the Guv doesn't seem to care. This fight ain't over.