High Speed Rail Environmental Report Delayed till Late 2011

California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Roelof van Ark told the Board of Directors today that the draft environmental impact report (EIR) will not be ready until the end of 2011, almost a year later than previously anticipated.

Because federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) went to construction of the Central Valley segment, the San Francisco-San Jose segment and the Los Angeles-Anaheim segment are not bound by the federal timeline for producing an EIR.

“This is an opportunity for us to further work with communities who have asked for more time to analyze this issue,” High-Speed Rail spokesperson Rachel Wall said.

For example, the Authority considered an alternative route near Cordilleras Creek, but a trench option—preferred by the City Council in response to community input—would disrupt the Creek. Conflicts like these could be further analyzed, Wall said.

“This is not surprising,” Mayor Jeff Ira said. “They’ve been underfunded from day one and they’re trying to buy more time.”

The estimated price tag for the high-speed rail is approximately $42 billion, with funding slowly coming in from federal grants and other state bond monies.

Van Ark said in a statement that “This will allow all stakeholders to participate in the further investigation and development of the alignments, and some of the technical complexities of the operations and alignments can be further analyzed."

Construction of this segment plus the Los Angeles to Anaheim segment will require phased implementation due to the urban landscape and higher density living in these two areas, Wall added.

“It’s just more difficult to build high-speed rail in an urban area and now we have more time to analyze this,” she said.