September 8, 2010 – Daily Brief

Yeah, none a them fag bibles. Damn straight. Awesometown…

Marsha should have stomped her tap shoe to get attention.

Santa Clarita residents wanting to get to downtown L.A. via CA Hi Speed rail would have to either drive to Palmdale or the proposed station in the San Fernando Valley – or take public transportation and it could add up to 45 minutes. Instead of taking 25 minutes it would possibly take over an hour to get to Union Station. I take Metrolink now when I have meetings in L.A. and it takes me about 50 minutes from the Newhall Metrolink Station. If people have to drive to Palmdale or the San Fernando Valley, it totally defeats the proposed purpose of taking traffic off of our freeways.

I attended the meeting last night and McLean was a complete buffoon. She talked down to the presenters and embarrassed herself repeatedly. She is obviously upset that someone is taking away her mag-lev train, her sole source of relevance for the past half decade. The worst part was her brainless questioning and accusations about improper application of technology and engineering. Why does a window washer’s wife think she knows how to design mass high speed rail systems and commercial developments? To reveal such ignorance with such disdain is a total embarrassment and Weste was no better. The Signal’s headline that the “City Is Upset” over the issue was misleading. These two women don’t represent the city and many recent votes prove that. Besides, why complain now? This rail system and the station locations were known to us over a year ago. How shameful for council members to behave this way. McLean should put both tap shoes in our mouth and stop embarrassing herself and our city.

This is a disturbing trend of arrests made in the Canyon Oaks Condos, I am glad the SCV Sheriffs are catching them. http://www.the-signal.com/section/36/article/32642/ http://www.the-signal.com/section/36/article/32714/ http://www.the-signal.com/section/36/article/32773/ http://www.the-signal.com/section/36/article/33274/

I dont view the HSR as a commute option between Santa Clarita and Downtown Los Angeles. I never did. You have to view it more as a travel option between regions. I would definitely drive to Burbank or Palmdale to get to San Francisco. You have to think of it like Burbank Airport. While its not in Santa Clarita, its still relatively close and provides good alternatives to LAX if traveling within the State. WHile I’m not an expert on High Speed Rail, I’ve read alot about it. I believe pricing would be more close to airline prices. I thought I read somewhere that a price point from Palmdale to Union Station would be something in the $20 range. I dont think its a viable commute option and is not meant to be a commute option. Its more of a longer distance/regional system.

For me, I actually dont want a CA HSR station in our city. If anyone has read the requirements of a proposed station on the CA HSR page, a station would need to provide 6,000 parking spots (roughly the number at the Valencia Town Center), and a mile of straight track (takes a mile for the train to stop). It would literally be the size of an airport. When people in our city complain about a 3-story building in our town, this is going to be huge. I dont think people understand the scale. For me, I think Santa Clarita is getting all the benefits without the burden. A station in Burbank and/or Palmdale is about 20 miles away and would open up short trip times to points north to San Francisco and south to San Diego. Most of the route will be underground and to the east of the City; other areas in the LA Area will be above ground Plus, if there was a station in our City, it would be a huge traffic generator and create traffic issues on our roads.

LindaS Excellent point. The footprint of the HSR stations is huge. The impact to some local SCV neighborhoods would be devastating. But one additional problem is the impact of an HSR system on existing local roads. At the last meeting I attended, the HSR team indicated that there would be no HSR “at-grade crossings”. All crossings of “above ground” HSR rail would require tunneling under the HSR track. Couple that with the reality that all dissected roads would not be provided a way across the track equals greater driving distance for those individuals impacted. There are lots of questions to be answered. If you want another opportunity to talk directly with the HSR team they will be presenting Wednesday, September 15, 7 to 9PM at the Canyon Country Advisory Committee. The meeting will be held at the Mint Canyon Moose Family Center, 18000 Sierra Highway, in Canyon Country. Remember, at this meeting the audience will get to ask the questions.

When the formation of the HSR Commission was announced roughly 10 years ago, I was immediately suspicious because a woman Democrat lawyer I knew, who was well connected and a politically correct racem was trying to get hired on the ground floor to do their legal work, because it would produce a ton of revenue. This was a woman who couldn’t lawyer he way out of a speeding ticket, so I had my doubts about her ability to do good work for the HSRA. However, I had no doubt that she was smart enough to see big dollar signs ahead. Out of curiosity, this week I read the “Scoping Meeting Reports” on two segments of the train route, Bakersfield to Palmdale and Palmdale to Downtown L.A. Given the cost of condemning the land for this train track and bridges, let alone the cost of building the track, I concluded that the politicians who put HSR together were either totally nuts, profoundly corrupt, or running a consultant/lawyer scam to spend a lot of money planning the train route even if it would be dropped as too costly. Here are some of the gems I read when in the Scoping Meeting Reports about the “final” route of the train which the HSRA has already decided (Bakersfield to Tehachapi to west of Mohave to Lancaster through SCV to Burbank, Glendale and then Downtown LA): Bakersfield High School, with its beautiful old auditorium, would be torn down because the train would go right through it In traveling up the pass between Arvin and Tehachapi, the train would have to gain roughly 2000′ in elevation, in the canyons now surrounding Route 58. Gigantic long suspension bridges would have to be built from mountain to mountain. (Think Switzerland.) The railroad which owns the famous and treacherous Tehachapi Loop tunnel says it is physically impossible for a 200+ mph train to use their tunnel, and even if it could they are absolutely refusing to allow their right of way and tunnel to be used anyway, because of safety concerns for freight trains which are the users of that track and tunnel. The train would displace and disrupt a major wind energy farm between Tehachapi and Mojave. (So much for being a “green” train.) The railroad which owns the right of way for the train line between Mojave and Downtown L.A. absolutely refuses to “share its tracks” with the 200 mph HRA train because of the incompatibility of freight trains and high speed trains (After the Chatsworth crash, the railroad supplemented its comment saying think Chatsworth crash times 3 in terms of magnitude of disaster). The railroad says the right of way which it owns, and which it says cannot be condemned without the Federal government’s approval, is only 100′ wide, and it has already given up a substantial portion of that width for parallel Metrolink tracks from Lancaster south. The railroad says it is not going to allow the HSR into its right of way for safety reasons, including the curving nature of the train right of way through Soledad Canyon. Metrolink also says the HSR can’t run on its track or right of way because it would be unsafe in terms of Metrolink’s slower trains. So the public has to pay for a whole separate train right of way all the way from Mojave to Downtown. At the Shambala Big Cat preserve, in Soledad Canyon, the existing train track runs on a little cliff west of where the big cat habitats are, with the cat habitats going right up to the cliff. If the HSR is built, a substantial portion of Shambala’s preserve would be taken for the HSR track right of way, forcing the public to pay to buy land for and build a new Shambala complex somewhere else. This is called “severance damages” which the state/public is required to pay when a facility is rendered unusable because a very substantial part is to be condemned. The Federal government has told HSRA that it will not agree to the placing of any part of the HSR track on Federally owned land, which primarily impacts the route between Palmdale and SCV. As the HSR train approaches Santa Clarita, it will most likely be in the river bed, which raises all sorts of engineering issues relating to liquifaction in the event of an earthquake, plus endangered/protected species issues with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, EPA and Fish & Game, plus Army Corps of Engineers permit requirements insuring, among other things that the train track embankments will not impede the flow of the river when it is in flood stage. Apparently as the HSR runs from Sylmar/San Fernando to the riverbed south of Burbank, the HSRA planned to run the tracks at grade level, cutting off many east-west streets in the San Fernando Valley and building only a few grade separated crossings. At the scoping meetings, someone asked HSRA how they were going to keep pedestrians off the track, since so many people already die in that stretch of Metrolink’s track. There was no answer at this time. Burbank is freaking out over what will happen to my most unfavorite intersection, where Buena Vista crosses the existing Metrolink next to San Fernando Road. That crossing is at grade level, and the NTSB has already declared it highly unsafe and needing a grade separation for the Metrolink train alone. Burbank is insistent that Buena Vista and San Fernando Road are among their most important intersections, that it can’t be shut, and that HSRA will have to build an elaborate grade separation which will take both the HSR and Metrolink over or under Buena Vista, without complicating the use of that intersection with San Fernando Road. Glendale is equally upset about the HSR disrupting the traffic patterns in their cities, and demanding grade separated crossings. At that point, I stopped reading because I realized that all of these monumentally expensive logistical hurdles are simply insanity, given the State of California’s financial status. There are at least 10 other ridiculously complicated problems along the train’s route from Bakersfield to Downtown LA, which I haven’t detailed, but I recommend reading HRA’s Scoping Meeting Reports on their websites. I have been through HSR’s website in detail, and there is simply no detailed break down in terms of the COSTS of buying land for track right of way, and no intelligent discussion of the COST of overcoming major engineering hurdles which have to be addressed, let alone the need to create grade separated track at major intersections. It is clear from the reports written by HSR’s consultants so far, that they are absolutely clueless about the terrain, buildings, roads and facilities their chosen route will impact, let alone the cost of fixing problems which have to be addressed. If there is anyone sane in the Legislature in Sacramento, it is clearly time to kill the HSR right now. On a cost, benefit basis, it isn’t going to be worth it for California’s taxpayers….unless the train goes straight from Glendale to the Grapevine. Of course, the HSR website and the related environmental impact scoping reports do not even consider the less expensive approach of eliminating the huge loop in the train’s route needed to create the Palmdale station. I will be long dead and California will be permanently mired in a Chapter 9 bankruptcy before this train gets built. In the meantime, politically savvy schemers like my friend will have milked the state for billions because of their political rather than cost effective decision making on the route of this high speed train.

“Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. ” I guess they don’t really want us to see Conrad’s work, do they?