I got the Nixle alert on this incident on Friday as reported in the DJ
A Caltrain commuter train struck a vehicle in Burlingame Friday morning, disrupting train service in the area. The vehicle was hit at a crossing gate at Broadway in Burlingame at 8:49 a.m., Caltrain officials said.
You may have thought it was the first week of Summer, but it is really the first week of New Tax Season. The two other posts in the last week are also about new taxes (Development and B'game sales tax) so here comes number three, hot on the heels of Caltrain getting $647 million from the Feds for electrification and high-cost rail. They are hot on the heels of the new gas tax. Per the Daily Journal
State legislation introduced Wednesday would allow Caltrain to seek voter approval for a new sales tax to help cover capital and operating costs.
Senate Bill 797, introduced by state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, along with several other Bay Area senators and Assembly members, would authorize the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board, which runs Caltrain, to place a one-eighth-cent sales tax on the ballot in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
The text of the bill can be found at http://sd13.senate.ca.gov/sites/sd13.senate.ca.gov/files/sb797_caltrain_0.pdf
I wonder if our City Council knew that Jerry Hill would be seeking another tax and whether it could land on this November's ballot. You can bet the boards of supervisors for San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties and transportation authorities in the three counties won't push back. If it does end up on the November ballot, you can bet there will be some tax fatigue even among Californians who haven't seemed to care until the gas tax hit.
What causes the typical tree-hugger to look the other way? I don't know. As a self-designated tree-hugger, I just can't do it (look the other way). So in addition to decrying Gov. Brown hypocrisy here, I will also decry this
Of course this isn't new news nor is it "fake". We wrote about it here three years ago. If anyone else tried to cut down 85 trees in town there would be hell to pay. Look at the Hoover School incident. The shame of it all is that Tier 4 diesel could be implemented faster, cheaper and not kill any trees. But Jerry needs a legacy even if it is massive deficits to the California taxpayers for generations to support a high-speed boondoggle.
Another Voice contributor has weighed in to alert us to the fact that Broadway was a bit of a mess Friday morning as the Caltrain crossing gates came down for some reason for 10 to 20 minutes with no train(s) passing by. Traffic was backed up to El Camino eventually and there were lots of people bailing out to the side streets. It does raise the question of how Caltrain and BPD can operate together very rapidly. Here is a shot of the back up.
As the powers that be look at closing more and more Caltrain right of way crossings (e.g. Bayswater), the remaining ones become even more critical to smooth operation!
DiFi was the latest California pol to berate the Feds and Trump for holding up funding for Caltrain electrification. She tries to perpetuate the myth that it is a separate project from High-cost Rail. But leaving that aside, this letter to the Wall Street Journal takes her on using her own customary class warfare logic:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) writes that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s decision to defer a $647 million federal grant for Caltrain electrification was “foolhardy” and that the modernization plan “deserves a fair review based solely on the merits of the project” (Letters, March 15).
But Sen. Feinstein fails to question why federal taxpayers should be funding a San Francisco-to-Silicon Valley rail line that serves some of the wealthiest commuters in America.
According to Caltrain’s most recent customer demographic survey, the average Caltrain rider’s household income in 2013 was $117,000, with nearly two-thirds of rider households having incomes above $75,000. Eighty percent of riders had at least a college degree. Caltrain’s rider incomes and levels of educational attainment were more than double those of the average American’s, and this disparity almost certainly increased in the four years since the 2013 survey.
If, as Sen. Feinstein claims, the project is “desperately needed,” why is California so desperate to avoid funding it on its own? To do so, the one-time cost per California resident would be a mere $16. Sen. Feinstein and other California politicians’ refusal to take responsibility for local infrastructure that serves some of America’s wealthiest residents suggests it shouldn’t be a federal priority.
Marc Scribner
Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington
Now that is really rich! We have $100 billion for HSR, but cannot come up with even $647 million of our own for such an important project. And if we do ever get HSR on the Peninsula, it will limit Caltrain expansion! You have to love the facts and figures approach to public policy making.
It continues to amaze me that cities are allowing–perhaps even encouraging–building so close to the Caltrain tracks. With all of the complaints about train horns and the possibility that high-cost rail could bring many, many more trains at much higher speeds, you just have to wonder what they are thinking. I hope this project in Belmont is putting in some amazing windows and sound insulation in the walls.
Wedged between El Camino and the Caltrain ROW. What could go wrong?
According to the Daily Journal today, it appears this project is back in a different form. One wonders at what point the cumulative density of new development downtown is itself a reason to stop a project?
An initial building proposal aims to transform a former auto repair shop and surrounding properties into a sweeping residential development offering 140 luxury apartments near downtown Burlingame.
Fore Property Company, a national development firm, submitted plans in late January to construct a four-story building over two floors of underground parking spread across 1.2 acres at the intersection of Bayswater Avenue and Myrtle Road.
The project, only blocks from the Burlingame Caltrain station, conforms with the city’s downtown building regulations and stands to offer benefits traditionally associated with transit-oriented development, said the developer.
“The effect of having high-density housing near a transit line is important to control significant impacts on infrastructure,” said Mark Pilarczyk, Fore Property Company’s vice president of Northern California.
That last sentence is a real winner (the bolding of the text is mine). Translation: If we ignore most of the infrastructure the city and school district have to provide like; police, fire, water, parking, classrooms, athletic facility time, etc, etc then high-density housing is good. Not! Just because one can walk to the Caltrain station doesn't mean it makes sense.
Anyone who has been paying attention is not surprised one bit by this news (from today's Mercury News):
In a major blow to a 15-year-long effort to modernize Caltrain, federal transit officials on Friday said they are withholding $647 million the agency was counting on this month to start work on a project to electrify the train line between San Francisco and San Jose.
The decision by the Federal Transit Administration comes just weeks after California’s Republicans in Congress asked the Trump administration to block the funds in an effort to halt one of California’s most controversial public works projects: high-speed rail.
What is surprising and very, very disappointing is this reaction
The decision to defer funds drew a sharp rebuke from Congresswoman Anna Eshoo.
“I never imagined that the electrification of a train would be subjected to such brutal, partisan politics,” said Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, in a statement. “This is not a Democratic project nor is it a Republican project. It is about the modernization of an outdated commuter system that is the spine of the transportation system of the Peninsula and the Silicon Valley region.”
Talk about a head fake that tries to hide the linkage to high-cost rail by making it into a partisan event. Not so, Ms. Eshoo. Feel free to click the High-speed Rail link here for a hundred-plus reasons why pouring good money after bad HSR money should not happen. In the meantime, those observers who are really in the know are asking why Caltrain isn't considering Tier 4 Clean Diesel technology. From one of those local observers, we learn
Key Tier 4 advantages include:
Sounds like something that ought to be considered instead of relying on high-cost rail to bail you out.
My little wish for a 1 am curfew on flights out of SFO posted here, drew some off-topic comments about the Caltrain and Union Pacific freight train horns blasting through B'game. Here is a bit of background on how Sacramento cut a deal a long time ago to reduce their noise:
After years of silence, freight trains have begun sounding their horns through central Sacramento in recent weeks, often in the middle of the night, waking residents and upsetting officials who point out that Sacramento is a federally approved “no horn” zone.
City Councilman Steve Hansen said he has been getting constituent complaints and is discussing the issue with Union Pacific, but he acknowledged local officials “don’t have much leverage.” Freight railroads follow federal rules, including specific safety rules, and are not regulated by cities.
Sacramento city leaders worked out a deal with UP and the federal government years ago to have the city designated as a train-horn “quiet zone.” But UP officials said engineers are allowed to sound horns when needed, and are often required to under certain circumstances for safety purposes, even in quiet zones.
UP spokesman Justin Jacobs said the railroad has been doing track upgrade work around Sacramento lately. Engineers must sound horns when passing through areas where people are working on or near the tracks under federal rail-safety regulations.
So get psyched B'game. When electrification, high-speed rail, passing tracks and grade separations start, the Union Pacific trains will just lay on the horn from Brisbane to San Jose because it will all be one big construction zone.
You can catch yourself up on the saga of Caltrain electrification regarding our trees here, the ballooning costs here and the B'way grade separation here. In an effort to keep electrification moving, Kevin Mullin has a bill in front of the Gov. According to the Daily Journal
Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, announced his colleagues passed Assembly Bill 1889, which seeks to clarify a 2012 law allocating funds from the voter-approved Proposition 1A bonds toward “bookend” projects — improvements at either end of the state’s controversial bullet train route from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Mullin’s bill claims to clarify the Legislature’s intent and allow high-speed rail funds be spent on Caltrain now, instead of it waiting until the bullet train is ready to roll.
Caltrain and high-speed rail became intertwined when the two opted for a “blended system,” meaning the two agreed to share the tracks running along the Peninsula. Caltrain electrification has been chugging along, having passed an environmental review and now in the process of a final design.
The "blending" is likely to create an operational nightmare as well as further jeopardize funding plans since it is part of the reason for various lawsuits against the original Proposition due to the reduced speed (thus not meeting the original spec). The best case scenario is Caltrain gets electrified and the high-cost boondoggle sinks into the bog when we get a new governor.
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