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Thursday, April 16, 2009
posterGIANT
I began doing freelance projects for posterGIANT this April. posterGIANT is a guerilla and digital marketing firm in Seattle. I wrote the copy for the website:
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Monday, April 6, 2009
Cardinal Chaos
This was a really fun video piece to do. It's about the aftermath of a men's basketball game. Check it out:
It was based on an article I wrote a few weeks before. Here's an excerpt:
What do you remember from Saturday’s men’s basketball game?
Everyone remembers who won. Many remember the score. Some remember which player fouled out. But few remember the Pepsi cup beneath their seat or the popcorn spilled on the floor. By the end of the season, these forgotten items have turned into approximately 14,000 pounds of trash, just under the weight of two average elephants.
“The stadium is an incredible mess,” Kevin Danna said. Danna has been a student manager for the men’s basketball team for the past four years. “There are bottles everywhere, papers, and the popcorn—I couldn’t have imagined it before. It’s everywhere. I guess people really, really like popcorn.”
On a full night, Maples Pavilion holds just under 7,300 people. By the end of the night, these fans have left behind approximately 70 bags of trash and 25 bags of recycling.
With the trash bags weighing approximately 10 pounds, a men’s basketball season produces about the same amount of trash as the average person over eight and a half years.
A cleaning crew of 16 spends up to six hours cleaning it all up. They spend two hours just picking up the trash. They find mostly food, ticket stubs, bottles, programs and souvenirs.
Have they ever found anything interesting?
“Actually, we found drugs one time,” Joel Perez said. Perez is the manager of the cleaning staff. “It was a bag with marijuana in it. It was in one of the trashcans. We had to call the police in.”
The student section is a neat freak’s worst nightmare.
After Sunday’s game against Washington, there were 34 copies of “The Dirt”—the student fan club’s fliers—seven bottles, 13 napkins, one half-eaten box of fries, 21 red-and-white pom poms and one corner of lined paper with a 650 number scribbled on it. Add the dirt from roughly 300 jumping students, and the result wasn't very pretty.
But it’s nothing a few staff members and a leaf blower can’t handle.
The 6th Man Committee, the group in charge of mobilizing student basketball fans, hands out copies of “The Dirt” to students before the game. The tasteful sheet has the visiting team’s roster and, of course, “The Ugly Dude of the Game.” Some deserving players even warrant a page of embarrassing Facebook pictures on the back.
The committee prints 300 copies of “The Dirt” for conference games and 150 for non-conference games. That’s 3,900 sheets each season. Add the stat sheets from each of the eight scheduled time-outs, and there’s just under 12,000 sheets of paper floating around the stadium.
“Really? That seems like a lot of paper,” Tony Kovscek said. Kovscek is a professor in the Energy Resources Engineering Department at Stanford. “That’s about a tree and a half, 50 feet tall and eight inches in diameter.”
Laundry is a whole other story.
Danna said the team goes through approximately 60 hand towels, 20 shower towels, 15 jerseys, 30 warm-up outfits (shooting shirts, sweatpants and sweatshirts) and piles of socks each game. The visiting team doubles the towel count.
“The amount of laundry is pretty incredible,” Danna said. “It took awhile to get used to it all. I remember the first couple of times, you just kind of pick it up by your fingernails…” he said, pretending to grab the corner of some dirty laundry. Danna said now he just digs in without thinking twice.
He said it takes six loads in the stadium’s two industrial washers to clean it all. The washers use just under 25,000 gallons of water each season, enough to fill the average swimming pool.
According to Kovscek, this is roughly the equivalent of the average household’s yearly indoor water usage.
“This sounds pretty environmentally friendly to me,” Kovscek said. “These industrial washers are actually quite efficient.”
And there are some perks to laundry duty.
“One time I found Jordan Hill’s headband from when we played Arizona this year,” Danna said. Hill is the leading scorer and rebounder for the Wildcats. “It’s currently sitting in the backseat of my car. This game was January 24. It’s probably pretty disgusting, but I do plan on washing it one day and sporting it.”
The student managers are also in charge of cleaning up the locker rooms. According to Danna, they find about 60 water and Gatorade bottles in the home locker room and 50 in the visiting team’s room. That’s more than 2,000 plastic bottles each season, about 13 times the yearly average of an individual.
“I think it’s about time to get a water cooler,” Kovscek said.
According to many of the facilities’ staff, men’s basketball causes the second largest mess at sporting events on campus, after football.
“Football stadiums have finally gotten some attention because of the sheer amount of waste they produce,” Julie Muir said. Muir is a manger at the Stanford Recycling Center. She said basketball stadiums are often slower to get up-to-speed with environmental advancements. They are too big to be easily managed like a café or an office, but just small enough to get overshadowed by football venues.
“I will give Maples a lot of credit for trying to move forward,” Muir said. “Events are really a totally different environment because you have a new guest every time and they’re not thinking about recycling. It’s all about the game and the entertainment.”
Erin Gaines, a sustainability coordinator for Stanford Dining, said the biggest improvement the stadium could make would be using all compostable products. This would allow fans to throw everything in one bin. “But when you sell Pepsi products, you have to use the Pepsi cup,” she said. “So we’re always going to run into problems until we can pressure companies to make compostable products.”
Skip Braatz, the Assistant Athletic Director at Maples, said that the university recently received a grant from the State of California to increase the number of recycling bins in all sporting venues, including Maples. “We always recycle everything we possibly can,” he added.
However, the cleaning crew has not been recycling any of the trash left behind at the men’s basketball games this season.
“Three months ago, we stopped recycling,” Perez said. “Because the stadium said they didn’t have enough money to pay us and we took two more hours.” Braatz did not wish to comment on the cleaning crew. Perez has since said that the staff was asked to resume recycling.
Gaines said that Stanford Dining will eventually transform Maples into a zero waste facility. Stanford Dining is currently working on making Axe and Palm zero waste and Tressider will be next. Gaines predicted that the group will not work on any athletic facilities until at least next year.
“The biggest part is probably going to be training the fans,” she said. “You’re up against this culture of ‘Go, Go, Go!’ You’re focused on the game and then getting out of there fast.”
Danna agrees. “If I were in the stands, I wouldn’t care if I just sat a water bottle down and didn’t think twice about it. It’s not the fans’ jobs to clean it up.”
Well that might change, but for now, we’ll leave the fans to their cheering, the cleaning staff to their sorting, and Danna to his piles of dirty socks.
Read more.
It was based on an article I wrote a few weeks before. Here's an excerpt:
What do you remember from Saturday’s men’s basketball game?
Everyone remembers who won. Many remember the score. Some remember which player fouled out. But few remember the Pepsi cup beneath their seat or the popcorn spilled on the floor. By the end of the season, these forgotten items have turned into approximately 14,000 pounds of trash, just under the weight of two average elephants.
“The stadium is an incredible mess,” Kevin Danna said. Danna has been a student manager for the men’s basketball team for the past four years. “There are bottles everywhere, papers, and the popcorn—I couldn’t have imagined it before. It’s everywhere. I guess people really, really like popcorn.”
On a full night, Maples Pavilion holds just under 7,300 people. By the end of the night, these fans have left behind approximately 70 bags of trash and 25 bags of recycling.
With the trash bags weighing approximately 10 pounds, a men’s basketball season produces about the same amount of trash as the average person over eight and a half years.
A cleaning crew of 16 spends up to six hours cleaning it all up. They spend two hours just picking up the trash. They find mostly food, ticket stubs, bottles, programs and souvenirs.
Have they ever found anything interesting?
“Actually, we found drugs one time,” Joel Perez said. Perez is the manager of the cleaning staff. “It was a bag with marijuana in it. It was in one of the trashcans. We had to call the police in.”
The student section is a neat freak’s worst nightmare.
After Sunday’s game against Washington, there were 34 copies of “The Dirt”—the student fan club’s fliers—seven bottles, 13 napkins, one half-eaten box of fries, 21 red-and-white pom poms and one corner of lined paper with a 650 number scribbled on it. Add the dirt from roughly 300 jumping students, and the result wasn't very pretty.
But it’s nothing a few staff members and a leaf blower can’t handle.
The 6th Man Committee, the group in charge of mobilizing student basketball fans, hands out copies of “The Dirt” to students before the game. The tasteful sheet has the visiting team’s roster and, of course, “The Ugly Dude of the Game.” Some deserving players even warrant a page of embarrassing Facebook pictures on the back.
The committee prints 300 copies of “The Dirt” for conference games and 150 for non-conference games. That’s 3,900 sheets each season. Add the stat sheets from each of the eight scheduled time-outs, and there’s just under 12,000 sheets of paper floating around the stadium.
“Really? That seems like a lot of paper,” Tony Kovscek said. Kovscek is a professor in the Energy Resources Engineering Department at Stanford. “That’s about a tree and a half, 50 feet tall and eight inches in diameter.”
Laundry is a whole other story.
Danna said the team goes through approximately 60 hand towels, 20 shower towels, 15 jerseys, 30 warm-up outfits (shooting shirts, sweatpants and sweatshirts) and piles of socks each game. The visiting team doubles the towel count.
“The amount of laundry is pretty incredible,” Danna said. “It took awhile to get used to it all. I remember the first couple of times, you just kind of pick it up by your fingernails…” he said, pretending to grab the corner of some dirty laundry. Danna said now he just digs in without thinking twice.
He said it takes six loads in the stadium’s two industrial washers to clean it all. The washers use just under 25,000 gallons of water each season, enough to fill the average swimming pool.
According to Kovscek, this is roughly the equivalent of the average household’s yearly indoor water usage.
“This sounds pretty environmentally friendly to me,” Kovscek said. “These industrial washers are actually quite efficient.”
And there are some perks to laundry duty.
“One time I found Jordan Hill’s headband from when we played Arizona this year,” Danna said. Hill is the leading scorer and rebounder for the Wildcats. “It’s currently sitting in the backseat of my car. This game was January 24. It’s probably pretty disgusting, but I do plan on washing it one day and sporting it.”
The student managers are also in charge of cleaning up the locker rooms. According to Danna, they find about 60 water and Gatorade bottles in the home locker room and 50 in the visiting team’s room. That’s more than 2,000 plastic bottles each season, about 13 times the yearly average of an individual.
“I think it’s about time to get a water cooler,” Kovscek said.
According to many of the facilities’ staff, men’s basketball causes the second largest mess at sporting events on campus, after football.
“Football stadiums have finally gotten some attention because of the sheer amount of waste they produce,” Julie Muir said. Muir is a manger at the Stanford Recycling Center. She said basketball stadiums are often slower to get up-to-speed with environmental advancements. They are too big to be easily managed like a café or an office, but just small enough to get overshadowed by football venues.
“I will give Maples a lot of credit for trying to move forward,” Muir said. “Events are really a totally different environment because you have a new guest every time and they’re not thinking about recycling. It’s all about the game and the entertainment.”
Erin Gaines, a sustainability coordinator for Stanford Dining, said the biggest improvement the stadium could make would be using all compostable products. This would allow fans to throw everything in one bin. “But when you sell Pepsi products, you have to use the Pepsi cup,” she said. “So we’re always going to run into problems until we can pressure companies to make compostable products.”
Skip Braatz, the Assistant Athletic Director at Maples, said that the university recently received a grant from the State of California to increase the number of recycling bins in all sporting venues, including Maples. “We always recycle everything we possibly can,” he added.
However, the cleaning crew has not been recycling any of the trash left behind at the men’s basketball games this season.
“Three months ago, we stopped recycling,” Perez said. “Because the stadium said they didn’t have enough money to pay us and we took two more hours.” Braatz did not wish to comment on the cleaning crew. Perez has since said that the staff was asked to resume recycling.
Gaines said that Stanford Dining will eventually transform Maples into a zero waste facility. Stanford Dining is currently working on making Axe and Palm zero waste and Tressider will be next. Gaines predicted that the group will not work on any athletic facilities until at least next year.
“The biggest part is probably going to be training the fans,” she said. “You’re up against this culture of ‘Go, Go, Go!’ You’re focused on the game and then getting out of there fast.”
Danna agrees. “If I were in the stands, I wouldn’t care if I just sat a water bottle down and didn’t think twice about it. It’s not the fans’ jobs to clean it up.”
Well that might change, but for now, we’ll leave the fans to their cheering, the cleaning staff to their sorting, and Danna to his piles of dirty socks.
Read more.
High-Speed Rail Video Project
For my final project for my public issues reporting class, I covered the High-Speed Rail Project in Palo Alto. Basically, after approving Proposition 1A to build a HSR from San Francisco to LA, Palo Alto residents are now torn as they face the prospect of the train actually zipping through their town. I wrote a 2,000-word article and made the video piece below:
Here's an excerpt from the article:
After supporting a measure to build a statewide high-speed rail system last November, Palo Alto residents are now protesting the current plan to bring the tracks through the city.
“When I voted for Proposition 1A, I had no idea that the trains would be coming down the Peninsula and down my backyard,” Palo Alto resident Tracy Douglas said. “I probably would have thought a lot harder about it if I had known.”
Santa Clara County passed the measure by a majority of 60 percent, 7 percent higher than the rest of California. The proposition designated $9.95 billion to construct a statewide high-speed rail system and to improve existing transportation structures.
“I hear every day that everyone around the U.S. is looking to us as the example, as the leader, in high-speed rail,” Dominic Spaethling said. Spaethling is the California High Speed Rail Authority Regional Manager for the Bay Area segment.
The Obama Administration has made building high-speed rail a national priority. The president included $8 billion for it in his stimulus plan in February. Spaethling said he expects the federal government to contribute about $16 billion total.
“We’ve proved that we’re committed to high-speed rail by contributing $10 billion of our own and I think the government will want to at least match it,” he said.
He also said this project would help improve the state’s economic situation. “The authority is forecasting that this will create 450,000 jobs and a significant portion of those would be in the Bay Area,” he said. “This project will be a great way to get things kick-started again in California.”
Yoriko Kishimoto, a city council member, said the federal money has put pressure on Palo Alto. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to have this stimulus money come, but some people feel like in order to take advantage of this funding, we need to move along quickly,” she said. “Other people think it’s a little too quickly.”
Residents have been divided since the state rail agency released an environmental report in January. The report showed the trains coming through the peninsula elevated above the existing Caltrain corridor.
“When I voted for this monstrosity, I had no idea I was voting for an overhead train and I had no idea I was voting to allow my neighbor's private property to be seized,” Dennis Mitrzyk said in a city council meeting. He has lived by the Caltrain tracks for 29 years.
Residents have started online forums, organized protests and marches, distributed fliers and held meetings. “I think this will be the next great war in Palo Alto,” former mayor Mike Cobb said.
Some residents are still enthusiastic about the rail. Andrew Bogan lives three blocks from the tracks. He has lived in two cities with high-speed rail. “I certainly still want high-speed rail in whatever workable form is decided on,” he said. “My biggest concern is that this project gets delayed at the expense of the entire state by a small group of not-in-my-backyard obstructionists.”
The community’s main priority is to see the rail put underground. “The original environmental report shows this thing sitting up in the air, dividing the city, and this to me is an unacceptable solution,” John Barton said. Barton is a city council member.
The rail authority did not include a tunneling option in the original environmental report. After receiving public input from scoping meetings in February, the agency added it.
Councilmember Barton said he has been working on a proposal to develop the land that would be freed up by putting the rail underground. He hopes this could offset the cost of tunneling.
Many residents and city officials are also concerned with the rail authority’s process. “The first thing that has to be done is that this thing needs to be stopped in terms of this fast track that it’s on, with all the decisions already made before we can get the community involved,” said former mayor Mike Cobb.
Tim Cobb, the head engineer for the Bay Area segment, said this is a misconception. “This is truly the beginning of the process,” he said. “I think that we haven’t gotten the word out there enough that just because the scoping period is ending doesn’t mean the process is closed down and there will be no more input.”
The rail authority began holding informational meetings in February. It was originally going to close the public comment period on March 6th. However, in response to public demand, it extended the period until April 6.
Councilmember Kishimoto said she wants to make it a priority to get the community more involved in the process. “People felt blind-sighted,” she said. “The California Rail Authority really should have done a better outreach before now. This needs to change.”
Spaethling said timing has made outreach a challenge. “The bond passing in November and the mandate from the state to get this train system done as quickly as possible led us to move this along quickly without the luxury of having more meetings,” he said.
Kishimoto created an ad-hoc group of Peninsula city officials to share information on the project and work together with the rail authority. She asked Rod Diridon, a member of the rail authority’s board of directors, during a city council meeting if the authority would be willing to negotiate with the group. Diridon said the coalition would be given no priority over any other opinion.
Another common complaint from residents has been that the proposition language was unclear. Many said they did not know where the tracks would be built.
“What we’ve heard is that people didn’t know it would be coming down the Caltrain corridor,” Spaethling said. “But if we basically regurgitated everything that went into the statewide documents into the proposition, it would become even more unreadable.”
Spaethling said Palo Alto is in a unique situation because there is the possibility of building a high-speed rail station in the city. The rail authority is also considering Redwood City for the station.
Palo Alto resident Bogan would like to see the city build the station. “To have a station in our town brings us all the benefits of high-speed rail,” he said. “If we have tracks, but no station, then we’ll end up with all of the concerns that go along with high-speed rail—the noise, the cost, the blight—but none of the benefits. We won’t be able to ride on it.”
City Deputy Manager Steve Emslie said that most city officials disagree. “If I had to take a reading of the pulse on that, I think the sentiment would be that we would not want a station,” he said. “It would add a lot of disruption to the downtown environment and attract more traffic.”
One of the largest concerns people have is the aesthetics of an above ground high-speed rail. “It would create a serious visual blight,” Emslie said. “It can serve to further divide the city with a stronger physical barrier,” he added.
Residents are also worried about safety. “We are concerned about the accidents, Asha Karmarkar said. “My own son, when he was twelve years old, witnessed his friend get hit by a train and was killed in front of him. We went through nightmares.”
Spaethling said that this fear is unfounded. “This will be a quantum improvement in safety on the corridor, basically eliminating the opportunity for someone to accidentally be hit by a train,” Spaethling said.
According to Tim Cobb, the rail authority requires that the high-speed rail and the Caltrain rail be at different levels. It also requires that pedestrian and vehicle passes be built above or below both tracks.
He said this will make collisions impossible. In the current situation, cars and people have open access to the Caltrain tracks at crossings.
Tim Cobb also said that the new rail will be completely fenced in unlike Caltrain. He added that law enforcement officials will also monitor the rail with security cameras. Cobb also said that the rail authority does not currently know if the fences will affect nearby bike paths.
Many residents close to the tracks fear they will lose their homes. According to the environmental report, two additional tracks need to be built to accommodate the new trains.
“My house could be taken, or part of it could be taken and I have no information,” Cecilia Lancaster said. Lancaster helped organize the protest before the March 2nd city council meeting.
“It’s not just the houses along the tracks either,” former mayor Mike Cobb said. “I can guarantee you that those next houses over will go down in value.”
Spaethling said that commercial properties within a half-mile of high-speed rail increase in value, according to studies. Tim Cobb said that his engineering group will study eminent domain and residential property value for the next report.
The community is also concerned with noise. Spaethling said that there will be four to six high-speed trains passing through Palo Alto each hour in addition to the Caltrain trains.
However, he added that the new grade-separated rail system will eliminate the need for train whistles. He also said the new trains are lighter and will create less wind noise.
Some people would like to see the high-speed rail line stop in San Jose. “To me, it’s about wasting money,” Lancaster said. “Okay, let’s build high-speed rail, but why in the peninsula when we already have a train that services San Jose and San Francisco?”
Former mayor Mike Cobb agrees. “Think about the cost in impact and dollars when you could just transfer over to Caltrain” he said. “What do you save? 20 minutes? 30 minutes? Is that worth all this?” Cobb said he wants Palo Alto to join Menlo Park and Atherton in taking legal action to stop the rail.
Councilmember Barton said that the situation is not that simple. He said that the proposition legislation requires that the train make it from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a specific amount of time, roughly two and a half hours.
In the March 2nd city council meeting, members voted to create a subcommittee dedicated to the high-speed rail project. The council also decided to create a memorandum of understanding between the Peninsula cities to better negotiate with the rail authority. Kishimoto said that the council will most likely take a formal stance on some of the major issues at the next meeting on March 30.
Tim Cobb said that the next environmental report will take about a year. The rail authority predicts that construction will begin in 2012 and that the project will be completed in 2020. Cobb said that it is possible that the Bay Area segment will be completed sooner.
Read more.
Here's an excerpt from the article:
After supporting a measure to build a statewide high-speed rail system last November, Palo Alto residents are now protesting the current plan to bring the tracks through the city.
“When I voted for Proposition 1A, I had no idea that the trains would be coming down the Peninsula and down my backyard,” Palo Alto resident Tracy Douglas said. “I probably would have thought a lot harder about it if I had known.”
Santa Clara County passed the measure by a majority of 60 percent, 7 percent higher than the rest of California. The proposition designated $9.95 billion to construct a statewide high-speed rail system and to improve existing transportation structures.
“I hear every day that everyone around the U.S. is looking to us as the example, as the leader, in high-speed rail,” Dominic Spaethling said. Spaethling is the California High Speed Rail Authority Regional Manager for the Bay Area segment.
The Obama Administration has made building high-speed rail a national priority. The president included $8 billion for it in his stimulus plan in February. Spaethling said he expects the federal government to contribute about $16 billion total.
“We’ve proved that we’re committed to high-speed rail by contributing $10 billion of our own and I think the government will want to at least match it,” he said.
He also said this project would help improve the state’s economic situation. “The authority is forecasting that this will create 450,000 jobs and a significant portion of those would be in the Bay Area,” he said. “This project will be a great way to get things kick-started again in California.”
Yoriko Kishimoto, a city council member, said the federal money has put pressure on Palo Alto. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to have this stimulus money come, but some people feel like in order to take advantage of this funding, we need to move along quickly,” she said. “Other people think it’s a little too quickly.”
Residents have been divided since the state rail agency released an environmental report in January. The report showed the trains coming through the peninsula elevated above the existing Caltrain corridor.
“When I voted for this monstrosity, I had no idea I was voting for an overhead train and I had no idea I was voting to allow my neighbor's private property to be seized,” Dennis Mitrzyk said in a city council meeting. He has lived by the Caltrain tracks for 29 years.
Residents have started online forums, organized protests and marches, distributed fliers and held meetings. “I think this will be the next great war in Palo Alto,” former mayor Mike Cobb said.
Some residents are still enthusiastic about the rail. Andrew Bogan lives three blocks from the tracks. He has lived in two cities with high-speed rail. “I certainly still want high-speed rail in whatever workable form is decided on,” he said. “My biggest concern is that this project gets delayed at the expense of the entire state by a small group of not-in-my-backyard obstructionists.”
The community’s main priority is to see the rail put underground. “The original environmental report shows this thing sitting up in the air, dividing the city, and this to me is an unacceptable solution,” John Barton said. Barton is a city council member.
The rail authority did not include a tunneling option in the original environmental report. After receiving public input from scoping meetings in February, the agency added it.
Councilmember Barton said he has been working on a proposal to develop the land that would be freed up by putting the rail underground. He hopes this could offset the cost of tunneling.
Many residents and city officials are also concerned with the rail authority’s process. “The first thing that has to be done is that this thing needs to be stopped in terms of this fast track that it’s on, with all the decisions already made before we can get the community involved,” said former mayor Mike Cobb.
Tim Cobb, the head engineer for the Bay Area segment, said this is a misconception. “This is truly the beginning of the process,” he said. “I think that we haven’t gotten the word out there enough that just because the scoping period is ending doesn’t mean the process is closed down and there will be no more input.”
The rail authority began holding informational meetings in February. It was originally going to close the public comment period on March 6th. However, in response to public demand, it extended the period until April 6.
Councilmember Kishimoto said she wants to make it a priority to get the community more involved in the process. “People felt blind-sighted,” she said. “The California Rail Authority really should have done a better outreach before now. This needs to change.”
Spaethling said timing has made outreach a challenge. “The bond passing in November and the mandate from the state to get this train system done as quickly as possible led us to move this along quickly without the luxury of having more meetings,” he said.
Kishimoto created an ad-hoc group of Peninsula city officials to share information on the project and work together with the rail authority. She asked Rod Diridon, a member of the rail authority’s board of directors, during a city council meeting if the authority would be willing to negotiate with the group. Diridon said the coalition would be given no priority over any other opinion.
Another common complaint from residents has been that the proposition language was unclear. Many said they did not know where the tracks would be built.
“What we’ve heard is that people didn’t know it would be coming down the Caltrain corridor,” Spaethling said. “But if we basically regurgitated everything that went into the statewide documents into the proposition, it would become even more unreadable.”
Spaethling said Palo Alto is in a unique situation because there is the possibility of building a high-speed rail station in the city. The rail authority is also considering Redwood City for the station.
Palo Alto resident Bogan would like to see the city build the station. “To have a station in our town brings us all the benefits of high-speed rail,” he said. “If we have tracks, but no station, then we’ll end up with all of the concerns that go along with high-speed rail—the noise, the cost, the blight—but none of the benefits. We won’t be able to ride on it.”
City Deputy Manager Steve Emslie said that most city officials disagree. “If I had to take a reading of the pulse on that, I think the sentiment would be that we would not want a station,” he said. “It would add a lot of disruption to the downtown environment and attract more traffic.”
One of the largest concerns people have is the aesthetics of an above ground high-speed rail. “It would create a serious visual blight,” Emslie said. “It can serve to further divide the city with a stronger physical barrier,” he added.
Residents are also worried about safety. “We are concerned about the accidents, Asha Karmarkar said. “My own son, when he was twelve years old, witnessed his friend get hit by a train and was killed in front of him. We went through nightmares.”
Spaethling said that this fear is unfounded. “This will be a quantum improvement in safety on the corridor, basically eliminating the opportunity for someone to accidentally be hit by a train,” Spaethling said.
According to Tim Cobb, the rail authority requires that the high-speed rail and the Caltrain rail be at different levels. It also requires that pedestrian and vehicle passes be built above or below both tracks.
He said this will make collisions impossible. In the current situation, cars and people have open access to the Caltrain tracks at crossings.
Tim Cobb also said that the new rail will be completely fenced in unlike Caltrain. He added that law enforcement officials will also monitor the rail with security cameras. Cobb also said that the rail authority does not currently know if the fences will affect nearby bike paths.
Many residents close to the tracks fear they will lose their homes. According to the environmental report, two additional tracks need to be built to accommodate the new trains.
“My house could be taken, or part of it could be taken and I have no information,” Cecilia Lancaster said. Lancaster helped organize the protest before the March 2nd city council meeting.
“It’s not just the houses along the tracks either,” former mayor Mike Cobb said. “I can guarantee you that those next houses over will go down in value.”
Spaethling said that commercial properties within a half-mile of high-speed rail increase in value, according to studies. Tim Cobb said that his engineering group will study eminent domain and residential property value for the next report.
The community is also concerned with noise. Spaethling said that there will be four to six high-speed trains passing through Palo Alto each hour in addition to the Caltrain trains.
However, he added that the new grade-separated rail system will eliminate the need for train whistles. He also said the new trains are lighter and will create less wind noise.
Some people would like to see the high-speed rail line stop in San Jose. “To me, it’s about wasting money,” Lancaster said. “Okay, let’s build high-speed rail, but why in the peninsula when we already have a train that services San Jose and San Francisco?”
Former mayor Mike Cobb agrees. “Think about the cost in impact and dollars when you could just transfer over to Caltrain” he said. “What do you save? 20 minutes? 30 minutes? Is that worth all this?” Cobb said he wants Palo Alto to join Menlo Park and Atherton in taking legal action to stop the rail.
Councilmember Barton said that the situation is not that simple. He said that the proposition legislation requires that the train make it from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a specific amount of time, roughly two and a half hours.
In the March 2nd city council meeting, members voted to create a subcommittee dedicated to the high-speed rail project. The council also decided to create a memorandum of understanding between the Peninsula cities to better negotiate with the rail authority. Kishimoto said that the council will most likely take a formal stance on some of the major issues at the next meeting on March 30.
Tim Cobb said that the next environmental report will take about a year. The rail authority predicts that construction will begin in 2012 and that the project will be completed in 2020. Cobb said that it is possible that the Bay Area segment will be completed sooner.
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