HS Rail Staff “Mistaken”Over Route Says City Manager
Visalia city manager Steve Salomon says a recommendation of the staff of the California High Speed Rail Authority released earlier this month to run the rail line on the west side of Hanford would be “a mistake for both them and for the region.”
“It would be a mistake to leave behind a million people who will who will be living here by the time it begins to run.” Most of them would live east of Hwy 99,far from any station site near Lemoore.
Salomon says he still hopes the board of the authority will break with the staff engineers and chose the east of Hanford route with a station at 198 and Hwy 43, about 11 miles closer to the big population centers on a round-trip basis.
“I don’t want to be a skeptic but the CHSRA seems to decide just the opposite of what we suggest” says Visalia council member Warren Gubler.
“We said we wanted the route to come down Hwy 99 on the UP line and they picked the BNSF route. Then they veered from the BNSF route and appear to want to go on the other side of Hanford.”
Visalia argues that erecting a station east of Hanford will boost ridership and revenues for the rail line more than enough to overcome any cost difference.
The CHSRA staff has estimated the route west of Hanford would be $800 million less expensive and impact fewer diaries. Still the west route as it comes near to 198 would be in a 45 ft deep trench and there are questions of how the 16 to 22 ft water table would impact the engineering.
The west of Hanford station would be in a trench as opposed to a east of Hanford site – at grade making the station development cost for the east of Hanford option less expensive.
Frustrating to many is the fact that the CHSRA has yet to certify the region will even get a station at all. Without a station Kings County will see only impacts and no benefits says Hanford city manager Darrel Pyle.
”That would be unacceptable.”
In addition, Kings EDC president John Lehn says a west of Hanford alignment would rule out any chance for Kings County to compete for a heavy maintenance facility that could employ 1500 because all their submitted candidate sites are on the east side.
The CHSRA board is set to make a decision on alignment of the 114 mile route through Kings County to near Bakersfield on May 2. Chair of the board Dan Richard told the crowd in Fresno at the last meeting that his board ,not the staff ,will make the final determination.
Last week the authority selected the bid from a joint venture of Tutor Perini/Zachry/Parsons who submitted the “best apparent value” bid of $985 million for the first segment of the rail line from near Merced to Fresno. That bid was below the $1.09 billion proposal by the next-lowest bidder and well below the engineer’s estimate of the cost of the first segment at $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion. This segment is set to break ground this summer.
Visalia Wants To Extend Rail In Industrial Park
The City of Visalia is exploring ways to extend freight rail lines in the city industrial park to include some 640 acres between Goshen and Riggin with no rail access and also 1300 acres north of Riggin. ”This lack of access could potentially serve as a barrier to attracting future business to the industrial park” says a report.
In the past few weeks it has been the Shafter industrial park in Kern County that has snagged a big tenant thanks to their multi-modal shipping options.
The industrial park owned by investor Stewart Resnick has seen a major infrastructure rail upgrade through the city in the past year and announced that 1500 jobs and a new 1.7 million square foot Ross Dress For Less distribution center are coming in part because of shipping options available by both highway and rail.
The state lis looking more favorably on rail shipping offering less pollution than shipping by truck.
If Visalia wants to compete with the rest of the state – distribution and manufacturing sites must have rail access. The county’s TCAG group is working to do the same thing with preservation of the short lines in the county.
City Council Looks At Refinance Option That Could Launch New Civic Center
The Visalia City Council will take up the possible refinance of the city Convention Center that could free up $15 million to use for several city projects. The council will meet May 6 to hear some options says city manager Steve Salomon.
Salomon says refinancing could allow the city to take advantage of lower interest rates but extend the same payment funded by revenues from the convention center. As much as $15 million could be made available without hurting cash flow says a city report and the funds used to upgrade the convention center – say $5 million of that – and keep $10 million to help fund the 911 Communication Center project as well as possibly use some funds for the long awaited Civic Center.
The 911 Center will be built on a 16 acre city-owned parcel at the SE corner of Goshen and Burke. A construction manager has been selected and the project could break ground this year.
The current city council chamber was built for a town of 10,000 in a city that has grown into 125,000 residents. The city has wanted to cluster the new city projects including a police and fire admin building with the others on the city’s east side,old railroad-owned property that will anchor a new part of Downtown Visalia in the near future. Already a new children’s museum is slated to break ground nearby this summer along with the enhancement of Mill Creek with a trail along it.