Bill Silverfarb/Daily Journal Approximately 500 people attended a town hall meeting organized by U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, on high-speed rail plans on the Peninsula.

U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo expressed surprise last night to learn a deal was in place to run high-speed rail trains along the Caltrain corridor before voters approved the funding for it with the passage of Proposition 1A in November.

“I did not know there was a pre-approved plan before the election in November,” Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, said during a town hall meeting on high-speed rail in Menlo Park. “I do not think most people who voted for it realized it either.”

The decision to use the Caltrain corridor was made in 2005 by the California High Speed Rail Authority during the program level environmental review process, said Mehdi Morshed, executive director of the rail authority.

The plan to run the super-fast trains up the Peninsula suffered a setback yesterday, however, as Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenney sided with the cities of Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto and three environmental groups to restudy running the trains through the Altamont Pass rather than the Pacheco Pass near Gilroy.

“The authority’s negligence in preparing the EIR showed disregard for the public’s right to complete and accurate information about the project, as well as for the authority’s own duty to obtain complete and accurate information about project environmental effects before making decisions,” said Stuart Flashman, the lawyer representing the environmental groups, Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

Judge Kenney ruled the project description was too vague so that the public could not determine exactly where the tracks would run. The analysis of land use was inadequate and the public could not determine how much private property would need to be taken or how many residents and businesses would be displaced, according to Kenney.

Former judge Quentin Kopp, who sits on the High Speed Rail Authority board, said the ruling would not be too big of a setback, though.

“The court finds legally insufficient one small portion of the environmental analysis of the 490-mile project’s first phase from San Francisco to Anaheim. Namely the San Jose to Gilroy part. That infirmity can be speedily cured by a reanalysis of the environmental factors affecting that 36-mile segment,” Kopp said.

Kopp attended Eshoo’s town hall meeting last night at Menlo Park’s City Hall with about 500 other people. An extra 200 chairs were set up outside of City Hall to accommodate overflow.

Eshoo’s town hall meeting panel included Mike Scanlon, general manager of Caltrain, Bob Doty, director of the Peninsula Rail Program and Dominic Spaethling, an engineer with the High Speed Rail Authority.

Eshoo read comment cards from some of the 500 attendees and charged the panel to answer the questions directly.

Most questions involved issues of diminishing property values, noise, disruption and whether the trains could run underground.

It is possible to completely tunnel the train on the Peninsula, both from an engineering and cost perspective, Morshed said.

“More land would need to be taken to build a tunnel,” Morshed said. “Construction will have to take place while Caltrain is operating, though.”

But the Peninsula Rail Program’s Doty said it is too simple to say “let’s just build a tunnel.”

There are water tables and other factors to consider, Doty said.

But Eshoo said the panel sounded like it already had a bias toward certain rail schemes and needed to be more open to public input.

“If you have a bias toward a plan it is useless to have these types of town hall meetings,” Eshoo said.

The trains will run cleaner, quieter and create thousands of jobs, Scanlon said.

The service will also not need to be subsidized after construction is complete, Morshed said.

“The bond measure does not allow a subsidy,” he said.

The crowd, mostly those forced to sit outside of City Hall, booed and hissed the panel throughout the night.

Since grade separations will be required to operate the fast trains, there will be less suicides on the tracks, Scanlon said.

Caltrain will also be transformed when high-speed rail comes through. Electrification of the Caltrain line, a longtime goal for the agency, is largely dependent on high-speed rail funding.

“Caltrain will look like a rapid transit system,” Doty said. Traffic congestion and air quality will also improve, Scanlon said. There will also be no more train horns on the Peninsula, Morshed said.

“It’s the renaissance of rail,” Scanlon said. “This is more for future generations than it is for us.”

Proposition 1A was overwhelmingly supported by voters in the Bay Area in November. It is a $9.95 billion bond that provides seed money for a high-speed rail link from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

The overall project’s cost is estimated to be about $38 billion, with about a third of the funding coming from the federal government.

Some 600,000 construction jobs will be created with the rail project and another 450,000 permanent jobs are expected to be created when the project is completed, Morshed said.

Eshoo represents the 14th Congressional District, which covers parts of San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties.

Bill Silverfarb can be reached by e-mail: silverfarb@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 106.