CITY COUNCIL STAFF REPORT

City Council Staff Report: A Comparative Analysis between City of San Jose and City of San Francisco

City Council Staff Report: A Comparative Analysis between City of San Jose and City of San Francisco

Introduction

The City of San Francisco and City of San Jose continues to take a leadership role in representing their community's interests and positions on various rail related matters concerning High speed Rail (HSR) and their local rail service provided by Caltrain. There have been many developments since their last update to the City Council in December of last year.

The City has sent several letters to the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), their federal congressional leadership, and state elected officials (DeBow & Syer, 2009).

In the near term, the central focus of the CHSRA is the construction of the initial HSR segment to be built in California's Central Valley. CHSRA staff has indicated their resources are being allocated to the Central Valley to ensure they meet mandated FRA and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) expenditure requirements. The practical impact of this is that the publication of the San Francisco to San Jose segment project level environmental impact report (EIR)/environmental impact statement (EIS) has been pushed back from December 2010 to the fall of 2012. There may be an opportunity for the City of San Francisco, in cooperation with other Peninsula cities, to assemble a broader coalition of cities to advocate cooperatively for HSR options that are acceptable to the Peninsula (Fagan, 2003).

Legislative Activities

?Council supported the 2011 legislative initiatives and staff is working with Capitol Advocates Inc. to execute the plan. The three bills co-sponsored by Atherton, Menlo Park, and San Francisco include AB 952, AB 953, and AB 1164. On Monday, April 25 language that would have prevented the expenditure of Proposition 1A funds on HSR until a new ridership study is completed was removed from AB 953 in committee. Californians Advocating Responsible Rail Design (CARRD) was represented in the audience at this meeting. Attached are the bill summaries and status.

?Rail Committee Chair Klein visited with federal legislative officials in March 2011 while in Washington DC. Key takeaways from this trip were that federal legislators and their staff members were well aware of the discrepancies in cost projections for the project (CHSRA's $43B figure vs. CARRD's $66B figure) there may be no new funding provided for HSR, and there may be attempts to reclaim federal funding allocations already committed but not yet spent on HSR.

City Council Rail Committee

On April 13th the City Council Rail Committee hosted Santa Clara County Supervisor and Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (PCJPB) member Liz Kniss at their Committee meeting for a discussion of issues facing Caltrain (CSU Facts, 2008). At the meeting she provided a presentation (attached) to the Rail Committee on the history of Caltrain while Caltrain technical staff provided a presentation on electrification ...