Scores of rural Gilroy residents have received a letter from the
California High-Speed Rail Authority requesting permission to enter
property for surveying work between April and July.
Scores of rural Gilroy residents have received a letter from the California High-Speed Rail Authority requesting permission to enter property for surveying work between April and July. However, high-speed rail authorities said an analysis of the potential routes for the bullet train won’t be available until May.
Local residents who are critical of the planning process for the high-speed rail said the letters have further increased confusion about what is actually going on. High-speed rail officials said that confusion may stem from residents mistaking analysis of a route for support of a route.
“We’ve got so much conflicting information now,” said Yvonne Sheets-Saucedo, a rural Gilroy resident who regularly attends local and regional meetings regarding the high-speed rail project.
The 790-mile California High-Speed Rail system, expected to be fully operational by 2020, is slated to have routes from San Diego to Sacramento and the Bay Area, transporting passengers at speeds up to 220 mph. In some plans, the California High-Speed Rail Commission is slated to place a train station in Gilroy with possible routes that would either parallel U.S. 101 east of Gilroy or follow the Union Pacific tracks through downtown Gilroy.
The letters the authority sent out request access to properties so engineers can look for endangered animals and water sources, among other things, said California High-Speed Rail Commission Deputy Director Jeff Barker.
High Speed Rail officials said 142 Gilroyans received such letters in February.
Sheets-Saucedo and other locals have said several rural Gilroy residents have been among those to receive letters.
High-speed rail officials on Thursday said at least a couple of batches of letters were sent in February.
Sheets-Saucedo expressed concern not only about the letters but also about the fact that the San Jose-to-Merced portion of the project, which includes Gilroy, will not be discussed during a commission meeting Thursday while other portions of the project will be discussed. She also wondered why the release date of an analysis of the project’s various routes, which some officials previously said would happen in April, is now being pushed back until at least May.
“This is very alarming, very concerning, very inappropriate, and we need some answers,” Sheets-Saucedo said.
Proposed alignments for the high-speed rail system are in the process of being tweaked to accommodate pubic input gathered from community forums the rail commission hosted back in January, Barker said.
“As a result of those meetings, the (proposed) alignments changed pretty significantly,” he said.
A team is working on maps of possible new alignments, and those likely will be released before the route analysis is complete, he said.
The route analysis is not necessarily a “decision-making point” but is an evolving process, Barker said. Project officials may think that more than one route is viable when the analysis is complete, he said.
As for next week’s commission meeting, Barker said some portions of the project, such as the San Francisco-to-San Jose and Fresno-to-Merced portions, are expected to receive stimulus funding and are under tighter time restrictions than other portions.
“Basically, what we’re doing is we have a lot of different moving parts, and they’re all basically moving at the same time,” Barker said.
Just because certain properties are being surveyed does not mean those properties are going to be included in the route, said Rod Diridon, a Santa Clara County resident and former county supervisor who sits on the high-speed rail commission board.
And at the end of the day, it will be board members like Diridon who will make the ultimate decisions on the high-speed train route.
“Those (proposed routes) aren’t etched in stone,” Barker said. “Only the board has decision-making power.”
