Voices of the Industry presented by Steer - #1 How station design at California High-Speed Rail is creating a sustainable future with Meg Cedero

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[Music] hello and welcome to voices of the
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industry a podcast series bringing you leading industry voices who challenge thinking across Transportation
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infrastructure and [Music]
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cities California is the most popular state in the US and boasts the GD P which is projected to soon overtake
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Germany as the fourth largest in the world at the same time the golden state has big goals of achieving carbon
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neutrality by 2045 aiming to capitalize on its abundant renewable resources the
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latest targets for California from the California air resources board offer a drop in air pollution of 71% reduction
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in greenhouse gas emissions of 85% and lowering of fossil fuel consumption by 94% over the next two decades the
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project which is now planned to extend further North to Sacramento and South to San Diego will be completely electrified
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and powered by Renewables and is projected to reduce carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2 million metric
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tons annually HSR will revolutionize travel along the Pacific West of the US and will reshape life for Californians
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whose infrastructure and urban planning has for so long been private vehicle Centric cities and localities along HSR
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like Bakersfield Fresno and Kings County will soon be transformed by unique Rail stations which are green architecturally
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distinct and which will facilitate both a new way of living and multimodal sustainable transport so with me today
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to discuss this exciting development for California is Meg cedaro director of planning and sustainability at the
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California highspeed rail Authority me has worked in urban planning for two decades and has experienced in
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sustainable infrastructure land use and transportation planning throughout the United States and around the world Meg
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welcome how are you thank you I'm well thank you and I heard that you cycled
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into work today yes I did cycle into work today I cycle to work every day that I'm working
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in Sacramento and is that a new cycle lane or is there an established cycle
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Lane Network in Sacramento you know what's wonderful about Sacramento is there is a pretty there's a very good
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network of established cycle Lanes but recently the city has taken efforts to upgrade many of them uh sadly not on my
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route yet but from time to time I get to use the very nice green painted
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separated through Ballard kind of bike lanes that are protected from the travel lanes for automobiles they are excellent
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I think Sacramento has a great focus on multimodal active Transportation excellent also joining us is alist dwson
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who heads up steers operations in North America alist you're based in Sacramento
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and may soon be riding HSR yourself what do you think of the bike Lanes in Sacramento I love them Tim hi mate good
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to see you um I also cycle to work today I do every day when I'm here in Sacramento um I don't have I don't
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either have one of those new cycle Lanes but I do love them and um I like to think that my personal taxpayer dollars
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are going to pay for my cycle Lane um so I feel a great sense of ownership but they're great good to see you both
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excellent stuff so for those of us not based in Sacramento is it always sunny
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in Sacramento it is is always sunny in
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Sacramento between I think March and November and
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then occasionally clouds roll in last winter a lot of clouds rolled in for an
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extensive period of time and we received I think more rain last year than we'd received in the entire decade prior to
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that so but usually you can rely on it being fairly sunny and particularly this
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time of year fairly warm which makes it nice to cycle as early as possible in the morning well I live in the UK so
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that sounds fantastic but we're not here to talk about the weather unfortunately
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mag we are here to talk about the station planning process in California and with California highspeed rail I
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know that the um station planning process is very important for the HSR Authority I wonder if you could tell us
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some more of your key priorities for station planning and how these feed into the sustainability of objectives overall
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oh absolutely so I think first and foremost our key priorities for the stations is that they are beautifully
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designed worldclass stations that are an exciting addition to the cities in which
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we're locating highspeed Rail stations that's kind of an aspiration to make sure that they express the excitement
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and the uniqueness of highspeed rail as a new Transportation tool for California and as a transformative Transportation
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investment for California but but then when we think about the planning around the station we want to make sure that
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they are destinations even if you're not taking the train and in fact also become
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multimodal hubs where Transportation options across all uh all modes are
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seamlessly integrated together in a wonderful public space so we have a
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multimodal access hierarchy that we rely on when we're doing station planning we
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focus very much on how the pedest is accessing the station in a comfortable Conflict Free manner after that we're
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focused on getting other active Transportation modes so cycling as we were talking about earlier making sure
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there's great well configured bike Lanes to the station we have really sensible
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well located safe parking facilities storage facilities for for cyclists and
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then also looking at other active Transportation modes you know be it the kind of one wheeel or a skateboard or
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name name your active Transportation mode of choice I feel like every other week there's some sort of new scooters
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scooters there's a new mode that's happening which is which is great I think that speaks to the to the interest
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we all have as human beings in movement and activity and you know enjoying getting places on our own two feet but
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we also respect that Transit is a critical mode serving a wide range of communities and so Transit sort of the
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next in the hierarchy of access to the stations and then of course um you know we deny the fact that for the past 80
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years the United States has been planned around uh the automobile and we are on
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the cusp of evolving that planning work to focus more on us as individual human
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users and not just on Cars and Cars Mobility so we do need to plan for you
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know really sensible well-located parking facilities but that is kind of
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lower in terms of making sure that access to the station is simple and intu
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and safe and comfortable all modes are respected equally but you know we don't want to be sacrificing access to the
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station by pedestrians and cyclists uh we don't want to sacrifice that access by interrupting it with um automobile
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flows so we Tred to sensibly organize the station planning overall so that
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automobiles can go in One Direction certainly ADA compliance uh parking for
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Americans with Disabilities is is located much more closely to the station entrance but the bulk of people who are
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going to come and drive and park we're trying to have that located a little bit further away and make sure it's not
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disrupting the flow of pedestrians and cyclists and transit to the station facility fascinating Meg I mean utterly
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commendable that the authority yourself for doing all this planning really quite early in the system's life you know when
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you when you go down into the Central Valley you know I know a lot of people don't but there is an enormous amount of
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construction going on down in the Central Valley for the for the ride of way where the train will will get will
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be in the future but we're quite a long way off um actually building the stations actually getting trains on the
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tracks actually getting people riding the trains but as a planner in the business for 20 years you know this is
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what you do and and I was wondering it how easy is it when you're
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talking to the station communities when you're engaging with the station communities in terms of painting that
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picture which is quite a way off are people organizations coalescing around
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the idea of a new High-Speed Rail station and the opportunities it may bring to their
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communities they are which we're really grateful to see because to your point
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the Central Valley itself hasn't necessarily been organized around active Transportation or very compact land use
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although interestingly historically the Central Valley communities formed around
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Railroad and a railroad line so you do actually have a great kind of downtown
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core and network around the station that you can build on but what I found most gratifying is you know to your point
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we're seven years out from having customer service on the first rail line
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our goal is to get customers on trains in kind of early 2030 that kind of 2030
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33 range and that is not a lot of time so anyone who works in the infrastructure space respects that that
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is not a lot of time and then I've also found when you are working with communities who are focused on um active
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Transportation the cycling advocacy uh pedestrian advocacy groups they are in
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it for the long haul right they recognize that their voices are important to bring to the table early
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and often and I think what I've noticed is a recognition that the more people
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who are walking and cycling around the streets adjacent to the stations and into the station the greater that is
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feeding Economic Development and the vitality and the community Vitality of
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these areas so I think there's a great Confluence of several Trends where people want to keep building Community
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around their stations they also want active Transportation options they don't want to have to drive to every single
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destination they recognize that getting more activity around the station means attracting more range of land uses
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around the station which means you know maybe I have to drive to my job but then
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if I live in an area that has has you know medical facilities a shop um
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entertainment facilities um a nice coffee shop it means and a school it means maybe you
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can walk your child to school do some calls at the coffee shop and then you know commute to your job the three days
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a week you're you're commuting to your job but I think it's it's interesting watching this trend play out in the
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Central Valley and I would say that there is a real strong commitment uh in every single Central Valley Community
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around pedestrian safety traffic safety and really using the tools of Transportation
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facility design in the service of safety and community building and economic
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development so that's actually incredibly gratifying to see because that does work really strongly with the
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station design and station area planning we certainly see that in um in some of the other work that we're doing with
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with stations you know when you've got a mature system like the UK has which has been going for years you know people can
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see that and and there's a realization that the value of station investment which is what we do quite a bit of work
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with with with others and and actually Mobility hubs now on this side of the on this side of the pond that you know a
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train is is quite interesting it sort of unlock this idea of a train traditionally coming to a community but
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then if you see it from the other perspective which is the community coming to the train or the community using the train you talked a bit about
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users and non-users you know there's going to be people using these station facilities both to connect to highspeed
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rail but probably to connect to other modes if we get it right which we will you're going to get people using that
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facility for highspeed Rail and non- highspeed rail use because it should be integrated into the urban Fabric in a
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way that responds to that local community yes precisely precisely and you we expect to have the station
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contain areas like plazas and other places that people would come to even if you're not taking highspeed rail or even
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taking Transit but you're coming there because is this is the place you can gather in your community or this is a
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place you can take your kids to play in the community these Investments are both about making a really good like well
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organized highly functional High-Speed Rail station but they're also places within these cities that are incredibly
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important I think that you're both kind of talking about links between placemaking and active travel and
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economic activity Meg I wonder if you could tease those links out a little bit more for me I would be happy to tease
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those links out one of the things we've focused on in highspeed rail is how we
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can organize the construction of the station sites so that there's portions
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of them that we can get done as early as possible and we refer to it as early
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site activation because that is incredibly clear to communicate to people early well before and in advance
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of customer service site talking about a physical place and activation as a name and implies means getting people to come
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to a place um we could also use the term placemaking but I have found that
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sometimes that phrase um falls on deaf ears depending on who the audience is
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but early site activation you can you can see yourself in any of those three phrases and in Fresno in particular and
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starting you know soon in Bakersfield and soon in mered will be identifying places but long ago in long ago one or
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two years ago in Fresno recognized we had an asset in the station site on the
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station complex and that asset was a historic rail station the historic rail
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Depot and it had been transformed into office use in the 80s um it has you know
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not necessarily been wellmaintained by other owners over time we bought it about five years ago we've had people in
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it for a while but now we are poised to do seismic and access un Make It
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universally accessible and also do seismic retrofits to it so that it can be used for a variety of uses in advance
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of High-Speed Rail service in front of it is a place that used to be um a park
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it used to be the Chamber of Commerce that was removed in the 50s the Greyhound bus station went in then we
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bought the Greyhound bus station it's now gone we have a blank slate of two acres in front of a historic Depot that
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place is part of a a link within the City of Fresno kind of linking the downtown to
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the Chinatown community and where we received a grant from the federal government the rebuilding America's
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infrastructure with sustainability and Equity Grant the raise Grant we just received $20 million to invest in this
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place get that done well in advance of highspeed rail service who we're aiming for construction to start in 2025 and
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that will create a plaza it will create a place where we can program with a
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variety of activities it will be available for electric vehicle charging and it will also serve as the sort of
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for court or the vestibule for the historic Depot so that instead of the historic Depot kind of hidden behind a a
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cinder black wall it's now reopened to the community and use that maybe as a
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place to have tours or you know build a Tower an observation tower for the
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testing and commissioning of the trains and the completion of the station people love watching construction and they love
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watching trains so we are uh leaning into that Natural Instinct people have
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and creating these places where people can gather on our site and start
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observing um construction but then also make it a place that is interconnected with the surrounding Community I mean
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that that's fascinating there's there's a bunch of projects out there aren't there where actually they've realized that people are just fascinated with
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construction and so giving people the opportunity to watch is is is quite important because you you get some good
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kind of community engagement when you do that to thinking to sort of lessons from elsewhere in the world and I'm there
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there are so many and and there's a there's a station in Italy where the the railroad had cut off two communities
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they built rebuilt the station connected the two communities with a massive walkway and then you you're getting more
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permeability over the over the once sort of dividing asset so there's plenty of examples like that can you think of any
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other examples that perhaps may be applied to to other stations in in the
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in the highspeed rail system do you know I think the station serving as a bridge and I'm glad you touched on on that I
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think um there's many examples where you look at a rail line and you realize it
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has done it's there's a reason there's the cliche uh the wrong side of the tracks because it's a piece of
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infrastructure that historically has divided communities and we have recognized how important it is for the
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station itself and the station complex to serve as a bridge across the railroad tracks for communities so you know in
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places like Fresno we are putting in a pedestrian overcrossing bridge that's
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available to the public so that you are reconnecting downtown and the Chinatown
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Community there in Fresno but by the same token um there's other opportunities in Merced and Bakersfield
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as as well well as the other stations along the entire alignment to continue to use the station as a piece of
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infrastructure that connects communities across both sides of the track and I think that you know that investment that
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ritting together of the urban fabric across this rail line just continues to
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reinforce these places as areas of investment and you know a lot of local
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land use planning has focused on these places as areas and investment this is the place where you could build taller
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you can build more complex um buildings by right or uh by default because the
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city has recognized they want to be concentrating development around uh the
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stations so that in turn helps with you
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know long-term sustainability for the State of California so I mean placemaking might sound like oh it's
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nice to do for the community but really at at its heart it is nice to do for the community it does have a really strong
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Equity motivation behind it making sure we're investing in historically underinvestigated
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underinvested communities but also there's a longer term or a broader picture sustainability motivation behind
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it because the more we're focusing on these existing downtown cores with existing infrastructure the less
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pressure there is on kind of further flung areas and the reduction of
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pressure on natural and working lands so that you actually are allowing those to
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remain as functional Farms or functional uh rivers lakes streams forests and
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providing us with ecosystem Services yeah that's that's really interesting and alist I just wonder with economic
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activity placemaking active travel how does that figure for steer over here we
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talked a little bit about the social value of stations and station investment in the UK which is all about um taking a
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kind of Legacy estate what Legacy estate developing estate and and and and kind of bringing it up to up to scratch with
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with local or with with current thinking over here that translates I think probably best into the mobility Hub work
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that we've been doing with Orange County that we're soon to be starting with seog up here who are the Sacramento area
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Council of governments at that I find really interesting we've got a couple of
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experts who who are dealing with that and I am definitely no expert on this but I think what's fascinating about
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that is that the idea is you've got stations and non-st stations are naturally natural Mobility hubs but but
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a Mobility Hub will bring together traditional forms of Transport but also shared services and other ideas that
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come into that Hub to create options choices for people to travel in
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different ways and the idea being is if you create network of Mobility hubs then
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you increase the amount of non-auto travel that is going around with chain
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trips and things like that and and hopefully the idea being is that that then benefits fixed rot guideways more
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ridership for Transit more ridership then going into highspeed rail in the future um so we're doing a lot of work
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on that there's a lot of Industry activity going on on that in the moment which is just in incredibly interesting
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and Meg you must be seeing that as well from your involvement in the in the planning discourse around the state and
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your kind of bigger role as one of the one of the one of the organizations with some of the most money there well I I
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love that you touch on Mobility hubs and the idea of bringing all many different
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modes together in an organized way and I would say that I've I've seen communities across the state of
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California at all different skills and sizes focus on that idea and focus on
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that concept and recognizing that we have precious resources in terms of
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public sector investment in places so using those in an organized way in a
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Mobility Hub or in sort of a streetscape landscape Improvement alongside that you
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know they recognize that that is a great Catalyst for economic development and
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private sector investment as well and I wanted to get on to that because that's actually I think that's probably one of
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the most interesting things for for me certainly is is the private sector investment you've got the mechanisms of
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State local governance um Community interest groups coming together and
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you've got your $20 million raised grant for Fresno which is which is fantastic to to to to know about um and a and a
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bunch of Industry professionals who are really working to improve these public spaces to relink communities so all of
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that is working where you see the most successful stations is where you're
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getting private investment as well now that doesn't necessarily mean private investment in the station but it's the
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the idea of sort of California highspeed rail as a as a catalist you're making this quite big investment dollars the
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station building the urban realm creating a catalyst for other investment to come in from the public
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side around that are you seeing the developer Community activate we are
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seeing that at a variety of scales I think you're very familiar with this
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phenomenon called the global pandemic that significantly disrupted a number of
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core areas and that significantly disrupted all of our lives but in
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particular it's disrupted your sort of classic um real estate markets and how
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people were choosing to make investments it disrupted the transportation sector and how people are using different modes
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of Transit I think we're now U moving past that we're starting to rec coals
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but even in even with that disruption you still see that to your point when
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the public sector is investing in a place and more people are coming to a place the private sector puts up their
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antenna and says oh with my scarce dollars where do I want to put them oh I want to put them in the place where
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there's a brand new multi hundreds of millions of dollars public sector investment of High Street rail bringing
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many New Riders much more foot traffic which is incredibly attractive to to
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retail to commercial so we are seeing that you know it slowed I guess my point
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about the pandemic is it it slowed everything but you still are seeing um a
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lot of interest in these places I think they want proof that we are going to get
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there and I think the station design work as the private sector starts to see these Design Concepts and really
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understands the physical limit of the station I think you'll start to see uh even more investment and even more
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interest in the station areas specifically because people recognize oh this is the place I want to be if I'm
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doing a new investment this is where I want it to go speaking of station design
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I know that it's important for you that those stations be reflective of local character and I wonder if you could give
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us a really nice example of that and also tell us a bit about the stakeholder engagement process
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in terms of fitting the station designs into the local context we have kind of a
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dual mission to fulfill one is to create stations that are iconic and you know
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really legible in the urban landscape that ah that is the place where I go get
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on highspeed rail so we've focused that around a canopy that is consistent
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across all four of the new stations that are going to be designed in the Central Valley and from a very practical
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standpoint from a constructibility standpoint it's fantastic for the high Streed rail system as an operator to
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have a canopy that is consistent it has the same bolts across all four stations the lamps are the same across all four
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stations you know that just helps us from an operational standpoint um it also helps the public
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from a legibility standpoint right all of these stations are designed to be consistent so when you come to use the
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station you know all of the facilities are in the same place ticket vending will be in one
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place how you get to the platforms will be consistent um the look and feel will be consistent in the station or just
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adjacent to the tracks but they are in very different locations across the
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Central Valley and those are communities with a particular um sense of their community
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and identity as expressed in their local architecture vocabulary and one of the
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efforts will'll be moving to really at beginning next year will be a series of conversations with the local community
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you know surrounding in adjacent neighborhoods as well as very importantly the jurisdictions to understand what we
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change about the site layout and the site Furniture so that it is expressing
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the context of the local community and so it's what we hope to achieve is this
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Clarity and kind of distinctness of identity on station site that I'm clearly in Bakersfield I'm clearly in
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Merced I'm clearly in Fresno there are things that evoke the local context be
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it um certainly uh Landscaping you know even in the Central Valley there's still some subtleties around the microclimates
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in each of these locations so native adaptive planting will be slightly different slightly different color palet
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in each location the site Furniture so things like benches and uh Benes and
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lights and uh trash bins should be more or less consistent but may have a
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different color or a different feel to really evoke the space and then you know as you move toward the station facility
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itself that is far more consistent yeah because you've got you know at its heart
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a train station does a thing you know sells sells tickets and it gets people onto the train and it does that safely
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and and that is you know there are some things that the station must do operationally but that's actually
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relatively straightforward I think it's this integration into the urban fabric which is much more complex and and much
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more sort of co-creative with the community so there's I know you've done some sort of there's some early work
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that's been done on that and this is the the recent um work with ar and fosters is is taking advancing that to something
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that's much more serious right yes exactly and and I think the reason we have a raise Grant in Fresno is that we
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did a lot lot of coordination and collaborative design work with the surrounding communities to understand
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what did they want to see on a plaza what makes a plaza of interest to them and first and foremost they said shade
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shade shade shade and if possible some sort of water feature which you know water evaporative
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cooling can be really nice in terms of uh making a public space more inviting
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um but in addition to shade shade shade there could be an Impulse just to have space for a farmers market but what we
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heard was actually we need a space where we can come with our families and we'd
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like a space to play we'd like there to be a place that is inviting to families and kids we don't just want um a beer
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garden for example so I think that the community involvement process and as
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much as we can actually do some co-creation of those uh plazas and public spaces with the community the the
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more it will fit into the more it is a beloved part of the community and used by the community which then you know has
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an attractive effect relative to Economic Development because people want to bring retail to where there are
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people already coming and something that I'm interested in in terms of reflecting local character and building beautiful
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stations is there can often be a tension between communities and big infrastructure projects um is that
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something that you are consciously trying to avoid or something where you're trying to bring local community
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along that is a fantastic question Tim I do recognize what you're saying that a
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large a program of Mega projects it can be incredibly hard for your average
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citizen to understand how they enter into the process how they get engaged in the process and so what we rely on is a
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fantastically dedicated team of public information officers who do a lot of
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great engagement with local universities local school groups um local community
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organizations and just helping them understand the project at large and the
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process that team does a fantastic job of going to Farmers Market and going to
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um school events going to a number of different facilities or a number of different events in Fresno I want to
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call it the the clothing swap or it it was this um event that we thought wait
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why are we going to this and the answer was because that's where all the students are going to do to find vintage clothing or to you know barter and they
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they found that that was a great place to making sure people had good information about the delivery of the
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system and how they could participate in its delivery and then to your point as we're delivering station design we are
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also cognizant of those opportunities to break this massive project down into
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something discreet and meaningful and allow the community help enable the
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community to participate in co-creating some space or understand where they can
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actually uh have an influence and put their fingerprints on the space because otherwise you're right it can just seem
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really big and to 's point like when you go now in the Central Valley you go past these massive arches and massive
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kilometer long viaducts and everyone you know you look at those and as a as a human being you're like H that's that's
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really large I don't really understand how I would influence that but when it comes to the station it's both quite
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significant and sizable I mean 1400 foot long platforms are a quarter of a mile
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that's it's a very large station but it's the rest of the station facility
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gets feathered into and integrated into the urban context and we look for opportunities to make sure the
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communities can be involved in that it's also about the there there's the the process of engagement right there's the
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process of bringing people along with you and and getting people involved those who want to be involved but then
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there's a permissibility isn't there of of people who are really unhappy about having highspeed rail in their backyard
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and some of the work that we've done with you over the years has been about um economic impact analysis because your
33:17
brilliant communicating uh Communications people use some of the analysis that that we produce about jobm
33:24
employment labor income I think I'm just looking at it here we got sort of three
33:31
34530 job years of employment in the Central Valley from the investment that California highspeed rail is making
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today Labor income two billion economic output $6 and a half billion dollar and
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that's all from econom That's from the dollars that are invested today and
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trying to communicate that out so as you maintain you might not get the engagement but you might get the permissibility in in The Wider Community
33:57
Beyond those who in love with highspeed Rail and really want to see it come to the Central Valley and that's as
34:02
important a message as as the one about engaging in the in the in in the specific station locations okay great so
34:09
mag it obviously seems like California highspeed rail is going to reshape the state in some ways I wonder if you could
34:17
paint me a picture of in 15 to 20 years what you imagine the surrounding areas
34:22
will look like and what you want them to look like as a result that is a a great
34:29
exercise Tim so let's say let's give it 20 years because that's a great development cycle
34:35
so we are actively designing stations now so you're the development Community
34:40
you're Al Dawson developer at large and you are focused on where you're going to make investments in in places and you
34:49
know historically you may have been thinking oh I've got this Green Field development I can put housing out there oh wait I could take those funds and put
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them into a a building adjacent to the high speed rail system so right now as
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we you know lay out the station areas and layout the station locations we're sending these signals to the developer
35:10
Market as to where to focus development so in 20 years the vision is to have you
35:17
know stations that have been in operation for about 10 years around them and adjacent to them are great new
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developments that reflect the priorities the scale and the vision of the local communities you know in Bakersfield they
35:31
want to take the lid off of their downtown and have a station site that doesn't just have a high-speed rail
35:38
station but also has much taller buildings as a new node of development
35:43
in Bakersfield which means less pressure on the working lands adjacent to and the
35:49
natural lands adjacent to and in the area of Bakersfield in Fresno I have a
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we have a vision and I think the city would love to see Economic Development hotels entertainment facilities um maybe
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new medical facilities new educational um universities or Laboratories in the
36:11
area surrounding the station and you see a you see thousands of people walking in
36:17
the station area accessing the station and then walking to other new jobs and
36:23
new housing in that station area any final thoughts aliser I think it's a
36:31
fabulous Vision I think I think with the with the volume of investment getting into it that's the appropriate sort of
36:36
level of ambition to be having for that kind of investment it's absolutely essential that we that we get there and
36:42
we bring the communities along both the the the local communities but also the developer community and hopefully we'll
36:47
see the response in that but the planning you're going through would indicate from certainly the work we've
36:53
done elsewhere the planning you're going through I know you said it's not much time but the signals you're sending now
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the Investments that you will make should trigger that response in that
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private sector to build appropriately around the around the station area to
37:10
then make the whole thing a success I think it's fabulous work
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