California's future high-speed rail line from Burbank to Los Angeles would follow an existing 14-mile rail corridor but run through dozens of businesses, a draft environmental study found.
Costs keep climbing for a challenging section of the California high-speed rail route — one that currently lacks a funding source but is crucial for getting trains to Los Angeles.At an Assembly Transportation Committee hearing on Wednesday, Chairman Jim Frazier was clearly frustrated with the performance of the top bullet train executives, saying that their reports are “misleading or downright not true” and that the project should hit the “pause button” to reevaluate its future.
“The capacity of California’s intercity transportation system, including in the cities of Burbank, Glendale, and Los Angeles, is insufficient to meet existing and future travel demand,”says, adding that the project could help ease projected future congestion, air pollution and increased travel times. The Burbank to Los Angeles section is among only several locations where the future train would travel on an existing railroad right of way. The path was once part of the empire of Southern Pacific, the railroad that shaped the Los Angeles region from the late 1800s, but was turned over to local government and is now used by Metrolink and Amtrak, as well as freight railroads.The plan includes a major renovation of Union Station, replacing the stub tracks that force trains to back in and out of the station with 10 new run-through tracks — cutting significant amounts of time off the schedule. The station would have two electrified high-speed tracks served by an 870-foot passenger platform. The trains’ route as they exit the station would be part of the Los Angeles to Anaheim environmental report. The alignment would be an engineering feat, requiring the tracks to leap over the 101 Freeway, take a sharp left turn near Little Tokyo for about 1,000 feet and then take a sharp right along the Los Angeles River. The Burbank station, meanwhile, would be located east of the Hollywood Burbank Airport on 70 acres, parallel to Hollywood Way. A technical appendix of the documents indicate the tracks would travel through a tunnel under an airport runway, avoiding an above-ground protection zone set by the Federal Aviation Administration. The tracks would return to the surface south of the airport. The environmental document’s 74-page summary says the construction will affect five residential buildings. Another chapter of the lengthy impact statement indicates that 19 residents in Burbank and 15 in Los Angeles will be displaced, apparently people who live in the five buildings.The route would also take out 84 commercial, retail and industrial businesses that employ 1,747 people. The draft environmental study outlines impacts that are significantly less problematic than the route from Bakersfield to Palmdale, which the rail authority described in February.
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