Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
The Forde Files No 141
A section of the Bakersfield to Palmdale California High-Speed Rail (HSR) proposed route that passes trhough Tehachapi. The red sections are underground, green are surface and blue are elevated. The Tehachapi Pass is the most technically challenging section of the 800-mile electric rail line.
HSR engineer Rick Simon (right) answers questions as local residents study maps of the rail route.
Michelle Boehm, Southern California Regional Director, California High-Speed Rail Authority, speaking at the Feb. 1 HSR meeting in Tehachapi to update the community on the progress of the project.
Project Manager Juan Carlos Velasquez. Bottom, more than 50 people attended the Feb. 1 meeting.
Donna Moran checks an interactive map to see where the proposed alignment runs.
Elevated structure
Elevated structure
At full build-out, the California High-Speed Rail (HSR) will have stations in eight of the 10 largest cities in the state, including Bakersfield and Palmdale.
While Tehachapi does not meet the criteria for "big," the proposed track alignment through the Tehachapi Valley leaves open the possibility that one day a station could be built to serve the Tehachapi community.
"We plan for the future. We made sure the alignment is long and straight," Project Manager Juan Carlos Velasquez told a crowd of more than 50 people who attended the Feb. 1, 2016 HSR progress report at the Tehachapi Area Association of Realtors meeting room. "It enables a station to be built if future policymakers choose to do that. We need two miles of flat land for an area that could accommodate a station."
"We made sure that a station would not be precluded [in Tehachapi]," HSR Southern California Regional Director Michelle Boehm said.
The proposed Bakersfield to Palmdale alignment over the summit runs north of the new hospital, nips the corner of Antelope Acres, passes over Hwy 58 and crosses Tehachapi-Willow Springs Road just south of Highline. The Tehachapi alignment will impact several industrial buildings, but most of the route passes through open properties. The HSR Authority has been working with city officials to find the most acceptable route.
Engineers are studying alternative routes for the rail line as it passes through Cal Portland cement properties, as the Authority seeks to avoid impacting wind farms and the quarry operations that involve blasting.
The Bakersfield to Palmdale segment of the rail line will be 81.7 or 81.6 miles long (depending on the alignment), with approximately 56 miles of it to be built on the surface, a little more than 16 miles to be elevated and about nine miles to be built underground.
The Bakersfield to Palmdale section of the HSR is "super unique," Boehm said. "It connects the Central Valley with Southern California."
Boehm said that with the rail line to be built at elevation over roads, "the community can still move around."
The main segment of the High-Speed Rail line (Phase 1, San Francisco to Los Angeles) is projected to begin passenger operations by 2029. Buildout for the rail line extensions (Sacramento to San Francisco and Los Angeles to San Diego) are projected to operate by 2040.
"We are in the middle of the life of the project," Boehm said. Construction is progressing in the Central Valley, where the terrain is flat. Boehm said 120 miles of the HSR are under construction there. She attributed a reduction in unemployment in Fresno County to the HSR construction contracts. Twenty-five percent of the California cap and trade taxes will go to build the HSR, she said.
