High-Speed Rail Sound-Off

When the San Jose-to-Merced High-Speed Rail project is complete, it will blaze on elevated platforms at over 150 miles per hour, stopping in Gilroy.

Tuesday night, community members gathered at Gilroy High School to attend an open house about the project and hear the project's engineers discuss the review process. The presentation centered on sound mitigation, eliciting a mixed response and some skepticism from audience members.

The rapid speed of the trains will minimize the time they are heard, began engineer Areg Gharabegian.

“A train moving at a top speed of 220 miles per hour will only be heard for four seconds,” said Gharabegian. “By comparison, a 50-car freight train moving at 30 miles per hour can be heard for a minute.”

Furthermore, there will be sounds walls composed of recycled materials, he said. They will have absorptive barriers that eliminate noise. A “grade-separated system”—where transport axes operate at different heights to avoid disrupting the traffic flow—also bars the need for blaring horns.

Addressing an audience concern that animals such as horses will be spooked by the sound, Gharabegian said the team has no methodologies for determining how animals hear frequencies. Yet, in its evaluation, the team will be able to see “if horses are startled, or if birds fly out of their nests,” he said, and will take this into account in creating a safe route.

These sound issues and others, such as vibration and electromagnetic interference, are being studied, with the team measuring the average sound generated in decibels during the night and day. The project is in an environmental review phase, according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority, and a PowerPoint of the presentation will be available online by the end of this week.

Going the Distance

The San Jose to Merced section of the high-speed rail project spans 120 miles, with stops at San Jose’s Diridion Station, Gilroy and Merced. The current study of the train looks at an area starting in San Jose and then running south through Gilroy, east through the Pacheco Pass to Chowchilla, and then connecting with Merced and Fresno.  

The construction will begin in the Central Valley because it’s the “core of the system,” said Gary Kelly, a regional manager for the project.

By 2035, the project is expected to generate 4,700 daily boardings in Gilroy, 7,600 in San Jose, and 5,300 in Merced, according to the rail authority.

Over the course of construction, the project is also projected to yield 112,000 construction-related jobs in the San Jose to Merced region. The final design is expected by 2013, with trains running by 2020.

Some audience members raised concerns that the project would suffer from low-ridership numbers, as other Bay Area public transit has.

Yet, “the high-speed rail is not equivalent to BART or CalTrain,” said Kelly, pointing out both the scope of the project and that it’s attracting private funding.

Local Carmen Patane attended the meeting and said the train—if built on the east side of Gilroy rather than downtown—could run 500 feet away from his home, cutting through his parcel of land. He’s attended all high-speed rail workshops to learn about the project, but remains opposed to it.

“I don’t believe in the ridership numbers,” said Patane, “and like most public projects, I feel that the cost will overrun the budget.”

The California High-Speed Rail Authority will hold another community workshop Wednesday at the Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center at 6 p.m.