California approves final high-speed rail link connecting S.F. to Los Angeles

By Ricardo Cano,ReporterJune 27, 2024 (SFChronicle.com)

This rendering shows the type of electrified high-speed rail train California plans to run in the San Joaquin Valley. The state’s High-Speed Rail Authority voted Thursday to approve the final piece of track pathway that would connect Los Angeles to the Bay Area.TNS

California’s bullet train project reached a major milestone: The entire 463-mile route from San Francisco to Los Angeles is now environmentally cleared for construction.

The High-Speed Rail Authority’s board signed off Thursday on a preferred route and environmental clearance for the 38-mile segment that would carry bullet trains from Palmdale to Burbank. It was the project’s last segment between San Francisco and Los Angeles that had yet to be cleared.

The high-speed rail segments linking the Central Valley to Silicon Valley and San Francisco gained environmental clearance in 2022, and construction has been underway in the Central Valley, the project’s initial operating segment, for almost a decade.

“Today’s approval is more than a historic milestone — it closes the gap between Los Angeles and San Francisco,” Tom Richards, chair of the rail authority’s board, said in a statement.

Authority officials say they expect to gain approval of a 33-mile segment from Los Angeles to Anaheim by next year. That approval would clear environmental hurdles for the project’s entire “Phase 1” route that was sold to the state’s voters in 2008.

Bullet train service on the Central Valley segment — 171 miles from Bakersfield to Merced — is expected to start between 2030 and 2033, featuring four huge stations.

The rail project faces significant financial and logistical questions as it seeks to finish construction and expand beyond the Central Valley.

The project is $7 billion short of completing the Central Valley segment and needs $100 billion to finish the route from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Authority officials have not yet decided where they will build out the project next, but they will encounter challenges both north and south.

Connecting Merced to San Jose will require tunneling 15 miles of tracks through Pacheco Pass in the Diablo Range. The Palmdale-to-Burbank segment will necessitate boring 30 miles of tunnels that will run along State Route 14 and underneath the community of Acton,  Angeles National Forest and the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument.

The authority’s Board of Directors spent much of Thursday’s vote debating whether the mountainous segment and its tunnels would be able to withstand a major earthquake. Authority officials said they planned to present more details on the segment’s tunneling work early next year.

“We are at a very preliminary stage of design only for environmental purposes,” authority CEO Brian Kelly told the Board of Directors Thursday. “The next steps on this are to bring that design work forward, further geotechnical work, understand exactly what the challenges are in construction and make sure we’re doing the remedies correctly.”

Reach Ricardo Cano: ricardo.cano@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @ByRicardoCano

June 27, 2024

Ricardo Cano

REPORTER

Ricardo Cano covers transportation for The San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining The Chronicle in 2021, he covered K-12 education at CalMatters based in Sacramento and at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix as the newspaper’s education reporter. He received his bachelor’s degree in journalism at Fresno State.

Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/california-high-speed-rail-19542125.php?utm_content=cta&sid=53b8a5219dbcd4db6500018b&ss=P&st_rid=null&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_morningfix

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