|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Even as Caltrain starts work on its nearly $2 billion project to electrify its trains on the Peninsula, Atherton and others continue a legal fight that could take $741 million in funding from the project.
New filings were made on May 25 in a lawsuit by a coalition including Atherton, seeking to overturn a state law that eliminated some restrictions on how the California High Speed Rail Authority spends its bond money. If the lawsuit is successful, Caltrain could lose $741 million in funding from the high-speed rail authority for its electrification project.
The suit seeks to invalidate a law that went into effect Jan. 1 that modifies how the high-speed rail authority can spend money. The suit says the law is unconstitutional because it substantially changes the bond measure without a public vote.
The lawsuit against the state of California, the high-speed rail authority and its board, and several individuals, asks for an injunction to stop any activity, including electrification, funded by high-speed rail bond funds, the repayment of any high-speed rail funds already spent, and the legal costs of the lawsuit.
Many opponents of high-speed rail also oppose the electrification project because they say it paves the way for high-speed rail.
In November, when the Atherton City Council discussed the lawsuit in an open session, Mike Lempres, who is now Atherton’s mayor and is an attorney, said he thinks the new law is a “pretty clear violation” of the terms of the ballot measure voters approved in November 2008, authorizing issuing $9.95 billion in bonds for high-speed rail.
A report from Atherton City Attorney Bill Conners says the 2008 bond measure restricted spending to only “usable segments” of rail that could accommodate high-speed trains when completed. The new law redefines “usable segments,” making it easier to spend the bond proceeds.
Atherton has been involved in a series of lawsuits against high-speed rail that by November had cost the town more than $145,000.
Atherton’s participation in this lawsuit is fairly minor, capped at $5,000. Other participants are John Tos, who owns land being taken by eminent domain by the high-speed rail authority; Quentin Kopp, a former state senator and chairman of the high-speed rail authority, and author of the legislation creating the authority; Kings County, the Community Coalition on High Speed Rail, the Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, the California Rail Foundation and several individuals.
The lawsuit says that if the high-speed rail authority spends money on projects, including the Caltrain electrification project, Atherton and its citizens would be harmed, “including causing the unnecessary destruction of mature trees bordering on the Caltrain right-of-way in Atherton.”
__
‘Near-miss’ sends firefighters searching for crashed paraglider at SLAC campusJanuary 17, 2026 12:48 pm
Rich NIMBYs are just trying to stall progress and drive up the price to taxpayers.
Can somebody please comment on what the hope is, or the desired outcome is, from those filing suit? So far as I can tell, everything presented in the current designs appears to be a welcome change compared to the status quo.
Atherton files suits at the drop of a hat.
And if my memory serves (and alas, it doesn’t ‘serve’ these days…) they sure do lose a lot of them. Any one have an idea on their actual track record?
The various plaintiffs have somewhat differing motivations for wanting to kill Caltrain electrification by blocking the HSR Authority from helping pay for about a third of it. However, as the old saying goes, for purposes of this lawsuit: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
There are those who are primarily motivated by not wanting HSR passing anywhere near them or their home cities/counties due to various feared real or imagined “impacts” (e,g. Central Valley farmer John Tos, Atherton, Kings County, Peninsula-based Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail). Some of these plaintiffs (or their members) are also ideologically opposed to HSR, with reasons like Obama was for it, being afraid that it will actually be popular and work as well as it does most everywhere else in the over 20 countries of the word that have it despite incessant insistence that it can’t work here.
Then there are those who have an ax to grind with the HSRA and seek revenge/retribution because their strongly-held opinions on how or where it should be designed, managed, built, and/or paid for have been ignored and their egos have been hurt (e.g. enabling legislation author and former HSRA board member ex-Senator Quentin Kopp and the generally pro-rail transit advocacy groups TRANSDEF and California Rail Foundation).
Last week a suicide by train at the Watkins crossing and all the Atherton Town Council can do is say who cares. Keep things like they are, the hell with everyone else. Forget about the noise, the danger, the deaths, don’t even think about separating the grade crossings. Instead spend how many millions on a new Town Taj Mahal. Instead hope against hope to reopen the station for the less than 10 daily customers that took the train in the days before the closure. After all isn’t 94027 entitled to stop the world? And yet the noise, the pollution, the deaths know no zip code boundaries. Its worse than a disgrace. Grade separation needs to be done now and shouldn’t be blocked by a a few rich people who bought along the tracks because it was cheaper and want the rest of us to suffer the consequences rather than lose a sliver of their acre(fairly compensated) and scraggly trees along the right of way. What a wonderful thing it will be when the train zips through town with a whisper and we don’t experience the yearly death toll extracted by the smoke belching, bell clanging monster that crosses our town hundreds of times a day.
The Atherton Town Council is simply attracted to things that it does not/cannot control like Caltrain electrification, airplane noise and the Fire District.
I did not see Benjamin Halpren’s apparently on-point comments (with 7 “likes”) until after they were censored, but from the remaining context it appears the censor is concerned with Mr. Halpren characterizing last week’s death of local prominent, respected and very well-liked attorney Kirtee Kapoor as a suicide.
It is true that historically over 90% of pedestrians killed as a result of being the path of oncoming Caltrain trains are conclusively ruled suicides after investigations are complete. In many cases this is quite obvious from the perspective of the train engineer and confirmed by the forward-facing video cameras on all Caltrains and subsequent investigation. Absent a note or other indications (e.g. head on tracks, facing train with arms outstretched) , a small subset of ambiguous cases may be presumed accidental absent evidence to the contrary (e.g. person wearing headphones walking along tracks with back to oncoming train … while this could easily be a suicide, the benefit of doubt doesn’t allow it to be categorized as such).
In Mr. Kapoor’s death at Watkins on Monday, a preliminary presumption of suicide could be forgiven since there are at least two reader comments to this article: https://almanacnews.com/news/2017/06/05/menlo-park-caltrain-fatality-reported-at-encinal-avenue-crossing … either stating that they 1) noticed Mr. Kapoor acting strangely (dressed very professionally, yet pacing near the tracks in an area where he appeared out of place at 10 am on a workday) and 2) a self-identified “neighbor” who said they were in their car when they observed that Mr. Kapoor “ran in front of the train.”
The foregoing coupled with the fact that it’s truly difficult for an unimpaired pedestrian to be unaware of a fast-moving oncoming loud diesel locomotive-hauled train with horn blowing (Watkins is not yet a quiet zone) very bright headlights (2 of them flashing ditch lights) in broad daylight in an otherwise quiet and deserted area when there is a clear line of sight as at the Watkins crossing with lowered crossing gates, clanging bells and flashing red warning lights.
But, yes, it is true that Mr. Kapoor’s tragic and untimely death should technically not definitively and authoritatively be said or assumed to be a suicide until the formal investigation is complete … but with all due respect, the Almanac censor’s zeal in censoring and chiding that not unreasonable working assumption on behalf of commenters seems more than a little excessive to this observer.
Reality Check – Thank you for a very cogent and useful posting.
The Almanac is somewhat constrained in these cases by a very strong directive from the Publisher.
From: Bill Johnson <bjohnson@paweekly.com>
Subject: Re: I respectfully request that you repost this
Date: March 9, 2015 at 3:50:03 PM PDT
To: Peter Carpenter <peterfcarpenter@me.com>
Peter,
You are welcome to post a short statement of appreciation for first responders and train engineers. The quoted interview, however, violates all the guidelines for appropriate comment in the aftermath of a suicide, and you really should know better.
If you persist in protesting the editing of your posts through follow-on new comments, we will block you from further participation on our forums. Either accept that by participating you give us the right to delete or edit your comments or stop participating.
Bill
No matter what the underlying cause, it was death by train, a wholly preventable death. It was unfortunate that you took the opportunity to discuss his life, admirable as it was instead of taking on the taboo subject, that is GRADE SEPARATION. That is the only way to avoid these deaths that seem to happen 15-20 times per year. When will the Atherton Town Council actually start planning for such with the same vigor they use for Airplane noise, which kills no one.
“When will the Atherton Town Council actually start planning for such ”
Never
Regarding @bahcom’s comment about Atherton’s grade separation “taboo” …
What’s even worse is that I have learned from Menlo Park City staff (Nicole Nagaya, Asst. Public Works Director, et al) that their grade separation alternatives for Encinal (as part of the Ravenswood study) are being constrained by an apparent Atherton-driven requirement (request? demand?) that the Caltrain tracks remain “at grade” (the existing ground-level) within Atherton city limits.
As part of the Ravenswood grade separation alternatives, Menlo Park has examined whether to also grade separate the remaining 3 crossings (Oak Grove, Glenwood and Encinal) at the same time. However, due to the currently maximum allowable track grade for UP freight trains of 1%, in order to slope the tracks up to get over Encinal with enough clearance to avoid unacceptable impacts on the driveways of adjacent properties, the track would have to begin sloping upward just after Watkins, which is still inside Atherton City limits for a short distance.
So grade separating Encinal is off the table for the indefinite future in order to avoid what I assume is Atherton’s wrath over a gentle upward slope beginning 50 yards or so inside Atherton city limits after Watkins going toward Encinal.
When voting on the bond to fund HSR the people were given numbers for ridership and cost, shortly after the bond passed the Rail authority revised those numbers lowering expected ridership and increasing the expected costs. The bond should have been voided at that time due to the false information provided. Given the cost and the benefits of HSR it just does not make sense at this time. Happy to see that someone is trying to stop this huge waste of tax payer money.