One of the greatest impacts the HSR will have one the peninsula will be determined by the 'grade' design for the rail. 'Grade' refers to the height of the ground on which the train tracks are located. The four alternatives include:

At-Grade, means that local traffic must be routed above or below the HSR. The reason is that HSR requires that no crossing occurs in order to maintain the train speed. Below are some videos of how an at-grade solution may look.

Please see: Station Selection: Palo Alto versus Redwood City

The design of the High-Speed Rail track grading will have a significant impact on the communities between San Jose and San Francisco. An above-grade design may result in a 20 foot wall, 75 feet wide which transects our cities. At-grade, meaning level with the street, requires an unbroken fence, with no at-grade crossings, which means local traffic must go over or under. A standard trench design creates a 75 foot wide moat.

• CalTrain wishes to combine the electrification of its trains with the installation of HSR.
• Gradient changes along 280 is to great (too hilly).
• Highway 101 can be much more costly and as construction must be concurrent with handling traffic. CalTrain can accommodate service interruptions better.
• After a lengthy and extensive public process and extensive engineering analysis, the corridor decision has already been made.
• Delay could cost federal dollars.
• The CalTrain corridor is a cleaner right-of-way.

• California voters in the bond measure 1A, November 2008, passed the measure expecting a L.A. to S.F. HSR line.
• Repeats history with the blocking of BART by the peninsula cities resulting is traffic, time, congestion and pollution.
• CalTrains offered the right-of-way.
• After a lengthy and open public process, the decision on the routing of the HSR train has been made.
• Focusing on blocking HSR saps the energy from influencing grade decisions and sponsoring more cost effective alternatives that meets the needs of the communities.

Why do we need High-Speed Rail?

Why Canada should get aboard the high-speed rail movement

[Simple list of benefits of HSR]
http://www.greenlivingonline.com/article/bullet-trains

Source: California High Speed Rail Blog ( http://cahsr.blogspot.com )

Transportation Need

High-Speed Rail: The controversy on the Peninsula over high-speed rail continues. Palo Alto has already demanded that trains run in a tunnel, and now Burlingame is following suit, though of course without offering suggestions as to how it plans to foot the ... That said, the AB 289 exemption is also not exactly ad hoc, because railroad grade separations are already exempt from CEQA; this bill explicitly extends that existing policy to construction undertaken by the CHSRA. ...

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