La Mirada Admin to meet with cities on High Speed Rail concerns

LA MIRADA- At Tuesday's city council meeting it was disclosed that city staff will be attending a 'League of California Cities' meeting this week where they will meet with other city staffers on concerns throughout the region and state about the voter approved 'High Speed Rail' project.

The three day annual state convention will be held Wednesday Sept 15 through Friday Sept 17 at the San Diego Convention.

A hot topic at city halls across the region and state is a perception that officials from the 'California High Speed Rail Authority' board are avoiding or have disregard for the concerns of local cities.

At La Mirada City Hall those concerns are many, with city staffers frustrated by a lack of details coming from the state authority ranging from the impact on land use, economic impacts to local business, noise, engineering and design and what kind of efforts would be made to mitigate those impacts.

City Manager Tom Robinson has sent two letter to the CHSRA board requesting more details, and has not received the information requested.

The city has requested that CHSRA move the proposed route to the I-5 corridor and incorporated into the Santa Ana Freeway widening project.

City Staff would also like to see a La Mirada passenger station be located in any routing along the I-5 corridor.

The current routing along Stage Road calls for adding two more tracks to the four already in place in a right of way that lacks space for more tracks.

Acquisition of more right-of-way would be necessary with a Stage Road route with an impact to either economically important businesses on the south side of the tracks or on the north affecting residents and Stage Road itself.

Any routing along Stage Road comes with concerns of more noise, vibration, and aesthetic issues that will have a great impact on residents and businesses, and even greater of an affect to residents if the right-of-way were to be acquired to the north of the tracks.

The city already faces the potential loss of revenue from the loss of business that will be displaced by the freeway expansion and there is a hesitance to take another hit from the loss of any more business near the proposed routing.

It is unclear the impact on the Alondra undercrossing and the Valley View Ave/Stage Road project is completely designed and funded at four tracks and is currently in the right-of-way acquisition phase in the project with construction to come in early 2011.

The CHSRA was created after voters approved a ballot measure in November 2008 funding at $9.95 Billion a portion of the proposed line. An additional $2.25 Billion was added to the project by the federal government using stimulus dollars.