(The following story by Matthew Artz appeared on The Argus website on March 2.)
UNION CITY, Calif. — The City Council has taken a major step toward construction of a concourse linking the city’s BART station with passenger rail lines serving Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley.
In a unanimous vote, the council Tuesday night certified an environmental impact report for building two rail connections that would reroute passenger trains to tracks adjacent to the BART station.
The report found no way to reduce train horn noise to below significant levels in the Decoto neighborhood, which has several street crossings along the tracks.
The vote enables city and rail officials to start raising money for opening the east end of the BART station to a concourse that would serve BART and a new stop for the Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin Valley trains.
A voter-backed regional transportation measure has earmarked money for the new rail stop, concourse and train connections south of Industrial Parkway in Hayward and nearShinn Street in Fremont, said Union City Planning Manager Joan Malloy. The connections would reroute passenger trains about 1,000 feet west from the Niles subdivision of the Union Pacific Railroad to the Oakland subdivision, adjacent to the BART tracks.
With potentially more commuter rail service on the Oakland spur, Niles would be available for more freight traffic, said William Kasson, the city’s environmental planner for the project.
“Freight traffic is increasing hugely,” said Jim Allison, a senior planner for the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority. “It’s just a matter of what lines they’ll be using.”
Commuter rail service through Union City, he added, is projected to jump from four to 16 round trips a day.
Opponents argued the project failed to shield neighborhoods from added train noise on the rail lines.
“We’re getting hammered on both sides,” said Tim Pitsker of Fremont. “That whistle is horrible.”
Pitsker, who is a Santa Clara County deputy district attorney, also warned of a possible legal challenge to the environmental impact report.
Kasson told the council it could not compel rail companies to reduce train whistles at street crossings. The project, he added, would include measures to reduce wheel noise at the Shinn connection and train vibrations.
Councilwoman Carol Dutra-Vernaci, who lives beside railroad tracks, maintained that train noise would grow worse without the project. She proposed helping residents pay for double-pane windows, which, she said, have helped her deal with train noise.
“Sometimes you don’t even notice it,” she said.