SACRAMENTO — The California High-Speed Rail Authority has awarded its first contract for design of stations on the initial segment of the rail operation in the state’s Central Valley.
The Fresno Bee reports the board has awarded a $35.3 million, 30-month contract for preliminary site planning and design for stations in Fresno, Merced, Hanford, and Bakersfield to a joint venture of two London-based companies, architects Foster + Partners and engineers Arup. They will choose sites, acquire properties, and develop preliminary station designs.
The contract includes an option for the same team to develop final plans and support construction of the stations; cost of that portion of the project is estimated at $36 million. Those figures do not include actual construction costs.
“The first four Central Valley high-speed rail stations are one step closer to reality,” Authority Chairman Tom Richards said in a press release. “High-speed rail stations will transform cities, spur economic development and create community hubs within the heart of our state.”
Reminds me of an old Loony Tunes cartoon where salesman Daffy Duck having blown up his recalcitrant customer’s house leaving the customer standing there with nothing but a door knob in hand exclaims “Hey Bud, know I know what you need! You need a house to go on the other end of that door knob.”
Honestly, for a RAIL oriented web site, this has some of the most anti-passenger train, anti-high speed rail commenters I have seen anywhere. A few comments:
1. Please end all of this contempt for the Central Valley. The stops shown serve about 3 million people. It was politically impossible for CHSRA to ignore that many people while advancing a statewide project. There is no problem with a high speed train stopping at all of those stations. Eurostar has stops that far apart and it does not impede high speed operations.
2. Remember that the NYT article everyone loves to cite is by a long time crank of a journalist who has hated this project from the beginning. All of the arguments noted are OLD tropes against this project simply dredged up again for an attack.
3. Spare me the halos around SNCF and their “bid” to build this line. They proposed following I-5, the easiest route which ignored the 3+million people in the Central Valley. Politically untenable in CA when you are spending statewide money. SNCF loves to drag that out to make them look good and get their digs in to look good. And spare me the digs about politics having some “evil” effect on this project. Any project this big will always involve politics…like that never affects highway projects or airport projects or water projects, or whatever.
4. Please spare me the contempt poured our about needing to acquire ROW for the stations. The size, shape, configuration of these stations have been an ongoing give and take negotiation between the CHSRA and the various cities for the last few years (BTW the proposed station for Bakersfield was changed completely from the CHSRA proposal by the insistence of the City of Bakersfield, who like Fresno, wanted to make the station a centerpiece of downtown redevelopment). Because of that it would have been almost impossible to realistically make any land acquisitions until now. Having been an architect for 40 years it takes a huge amount of work to develop even “preliminary” plans for projects of this scale. It involves a huge amount of work, interaction, give and take with the various cities to achieve even “preliminary” plans which may very like be 40% complete drawings.
Is this new depot for Fresno part of Biden’s grandiose infrastructure dream? Whether Governor Newsom goes around the lobbyists with a tin cup, or, Biden further depends upon Communist China to make the investment, people need to learn why this HSR project continues to falter and fail.
Contrary to how the CAHSR proposal was sold to the taxpayers, the promoters today cannot escape how it has become nothing more than an overpriced interurban weaving between cities of the Central Valley and route into LA. The only winner has been the French, with their national railway, SNCF, refusing to be pushed off the track; instead just canceling their participation.
Mr.. Sell was referring to a guy named Lindey but I don’t know where that comment was. He couldn’t have been referring to the Landey comment as I saw no mention of hate. I hope California will install 1.7 million dollar toilets like San Francisco is doing and only going to take them three years to complete it.
Whoever created the conceptual illustration has consumed way too much of some locally grown weed. No way any of the expected development and traffic will occur until CaHSR reaches both the bay area and the LA basin. Until then one of the Amtrak bus shelters will suffice.
And I say this as someone who wants CaHSR to succeed.
You’re right. The rendering shows a rather impressive station for a train that will run from Merced to Bakersfield.
At a time when concrete is increasingly hard to find (a material which requires gigantically enormous amounts of fossil fuel to make, to transport, and to install), how much concrete has already been dumped into this project? A project which is billed as an alternative to fossil fuel uses more fossil fuel in one workday than I will in a lifetime.
Yes, it would seem this process for the Fresno station ‘design’ work (contract) is rather bass-ackward, which is probably fitting for this boondoggle California “High-Speed Rail” project. Property / ROW acquisition is supposed to have been completed prior to station-site final-design.
The comments of the HSR Authority Chairmen Tom Richards in the article seem to be along the lines of pondering “one hand clapping” or more ‘hot-air’ (gas) from clueless, delusional California bureaucrats.
And with all due respect to Mr. Sell above, I don’t think Mr. Landey’s comments made any reference to “hate” merely that he couldn’t stand the Biden Administration’s cancellation of the Trump Administration actions to recoup federal funds dumped into this black-hole of an infrastructure (boondoggle) project under (ostensibly) false pretenses.
I concur with Mr. Landey’s sentiment above and may the chips fall where they will …..
I thought they already had issued the station engineering and design contracts before they had started construction on the right-of-way? This way they could soon be starting to build the stations now. The BART extensions built both at the same time.
John Blaubach stated it better than I did (my post at top). Stations go hand in hand with the railroad. Given the price of central-city real estate, the time for station r/w has come and gone years ago.
I should clarify my remarks in my post at the top of this page. Yes, CalHSR needs a preliminary station plan (the subject of the article) to buy property for the stations. My point is (and John’s point is), when does that happen? Stations are part of a railroad, not an afterthought. R/W for the stations should have been purchased (or otherwise arranged, such as an easement or an option to purchase) at the time r/w was obtained for the tracks and bridges.
Mr. Lindey..I hate no one. A goal you for which you should strive.
They should call this High Speed Local Rail with all those stops. Its only about 165 miles from Bakersfield to Merced. I suspect all these stops have to be made to satisfy the politicians.
Ponder the sound of one hand clapping. Ponder the melody of the State of Califonia {passing gas}. Thirty months for PRELIMINARY design of stations that were supposed to be in operation by now. Oh and BTW, acquire property? In my career as a civil engineer, property acquisition was required to happen first, not last.
Oh, yeah, right. One of the numerous (countless) reasons I can’t stand Biden is that he cancelled Trump’s policy to recover federal moneys dumped into this fiasco under false pretenses.
I’m all for more passenger train service. More routes, more frequency. Which has nothing to do with CalHSR. CalHSR is all about spending billions on trains that might never run.