A coalition of Valley groups wants to put the brakes on a proposal to relocate Merced’s planned downtown high-speed rail station.
This week, the nonprofit organization California Rural Legal Assistance sent a letter to the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority, on behalf of Community Alliance for Sustainable Economies and a variety of Valley groups.
The letter demands the authority to stop pursuing a proposal to build the station near Highway 99 and East Mission Avenue – a rural plot of land roughly four miles southeast of the downtown core.
Back in June, the California High-Speed Rail Authority approved a business plan that included the proposed southeast station on the train’s initial operating segment, in order to shave roughly $1 billion from the project and build it faster.
Before a shovel can hit the dirt on the southeast station, however,the California State Legislature would have to update state law.
Senate Bill 198 gives special priority for the initial 171-mile segment of the bullet train to be built specifically from downtown Merced to Bakersfield, with a spending cap of $500 million to build anything outside of that area.
According to the coalition letter, a request for qualifications issued by the Authority board for firms to provide design-build services for the Merced-to-Madera train segment was “characterized as running from south of Mission Avenue” to Madera.
“The HSRA simply has no legal authority to start implementing the project in a way that deviates from the one the Legislature and the public have funded for the last decade,” the letter states.
“From approving a Business Plan to issuing a Request for Statement of Qualifications for station design services, the HSRA continues to ignore the law. We demand that HSRA immediately cease all efforts to reroute the station or move forward with any actions that advance a project that deviates from state law.”
The Merced FOCUS reached out to – and was awaiting a response from – the California High-Speed Rail Authority as of Thursday afternoon about the letter.
Additional signatories included the Jakara Movement, Faith in the Valley, Lideres Campesinas, Communities for a New California, Building Healthy Communities (Kern), Unidos Network and Santa Clara Wage Theft Coalition.
It’s still unclear whether the letter will have any impact on the project’s trajectory.
Merced City Councilmember Shane Smith, who sits on the council’s transportation subcommittee, said in a text message to The FOCUS that the letter amounts to a political statement that cannot be enforced in court.
Smith, who also works as an intellectual property attorney, said it would be a challenge for a private citizen group to establish standing to sue under SB 198.
The groups would have to show an “injury in fact” – but a Merced station has been neither built nor officially moved.
“And because someone prefers a different political outcome does not substitute for an ‘injury’ that can be redressed in court,” Smith said.
The idea of moving the station outside of downtown Merced hasn’t yet been universally accepted in the community or among local leaders.
Just last month, Merced’s city council transportation subcommittee and Merced County Supervisor Josh Pedrozo sent a letter to the authority, asking for a meeting of regional and state stakeholders to develop a mitigation plan for the proposed southeast station.
“Our participation in discussions about the Mission Avenue location should not be interpreted as support for the relocation or as a waiver of the state’s existing commitments to Merced,” the letter stated.
“We are prepared to evaluate a different station location, but relocation and mitigation must be negotiated, funded, and approved together.”
Some aspects of that plan would include:
1. Completion of the Campus Parkway and Merced Loop transportation system necessary to connect the proposed station with downtown Merced, UC Merced, Atwater and Castle Commerce Center.
2. Widening Highway 99 through Merced and Atwater from four to six lanes.
3. Mitigation for the loss of the planned downtown intermodal station and the resulting effects on downtown investment, redevelopment and economic activity.
4. Public safety, water, sewer, transportation, planning, economic development and other infrastructure needs identified by the city and county.
Merced town halls
Amid the talk of moving the downtown station, there have also been local town halls devoted to the topic.
On Wednesday, a moderate-sized audience gathered at UC Merced to hear city council members Smith and DuPont give an update on the plan.
The two city council members also spent the evening fielding a wide variety of questions from the audience.
DuPont, who is the council’s most vocal critic of the Authority, said he believes the station should probably remain in downtown – unless the Authority can show it will invest in the city.
“And they haven’t been able to show me. Actually they have shown me the complete opposite, which is to do things without our discussion or conversation,” DuPont said.
“I’ve said over and over again (that) if this is a partnership, then we need a partner, not someone dictating the terms to us. That’s not a partnership, that’s a dictatorship.”
While Smith said it’s unlikely all seven council members would agree where the station should go, there is some common ground.
That common ground includes not letting the state take away the taxing authority or land use control from the city.
“There are seven votes for trying to engage with the authority and negotiate a compromise,” Smith said.
The latest developments come as the Office of Inspector General warned the high-speed rail authority could run out of cash by December 2027, CalMatters reported.
California voters approved building the high-speed rail in 2008 – back when the initial projection was $33 billion to establish a 520-mile route from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Most estimates conservatively now put that cost at upwards of $126 billion.
The Authority’s business plan estimates building the bullet train’s initial operating segment from Bakersfield to Merced at a price tag of $35.7 billion, with completion of the segment scheduled for 2032.