GILROY
– A Union Pacific Railroad spokesman said his company might
allow a parallel bullet-train track in its rail corridor.
GILROY – A Union Pacific Railroad spokesman said his company might allow a parallel bullet-train track in its rail corridor.
There has been no dialogue yet between UP and the California High-Speed Rail Authority, but the national rail company wants to talk, Bromley said.
“We do hope to get together with them some time in the near future,” spokesman John Bromley said Monday from UP’s headquarters in Omaha.
The state agency is not ready for this meeting, however.
“We are not in a position where we would be ready to enter into negotiations with any freight railroads this early in the environmental process,” Rail Authority Deputy Director Dan Leavitt said Wednesday.
The state-funded, electrically powered bullet train would get riders from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two-and-a-half hours – or from Gilroy to L.A. in an hour and 45 minutes – reaching speeds of 220 mph in rural areas and 125 in urban areas. Later phases would extend service to Sacramento and San Diego.
UP “would probably not be willing to let them run on our tracks along with freight trains,” Bromley said, but that isn’t part of the Rail Authority’s plan anyway.
“We would not be sharing tracks with the freight trains,” Leavitt said. Instead, the Rail Authority would build its own tracks in UP’s Gilroy-to-San Jose corridor.
“North of San Jose, our only assumption is that we would be sharing with express trains for Caltrain,” Leavitt added. Caltrain owns the tracks between San Jose and San Francisco.
One option for the bullet train route between San Francisco and Los Angeles would cross the Diablo Range at Pacheco Pass and join the UP corridor in or near Gilroy, perhaps with a stop in Gilroy or Morgan Hill.
Alternative routes would cross the Diablo Range further north, bypassing the UP corridor and South Valley cities to go straight from the Central Valley to San Jose. Many people, especially environmentalists, oppose these routes as they would cut through wild lands: either Henry Coe State Park or to the north of it.
At present, regular-speed diesel freight trains and Caltrain and Amtrak passenger trains run between Gilroy and San Jose.
UP would benefit from the bullet train because its corridor must be entirely “grade-separated,” meaning there would be no road crossings.
This would mean some aerial tracks, some tunnels, and some raised or lowered roads.
While UP officials are willing to consider sharing the corridor with a new bullet train track, Bromley said there would be issues to work out regarding freight trains accessing their industrial customers. Leavitt agreed.
“It would have to be designed in such a way that they are not cut off from their spur lines,” Leavitt said.
