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Politics & Government

Burlingame Joins New High Speed Rail Group

Members say the San Mateo County Rail Corridor Partnership formed to lobby Rail Authority while distancing itself from preexisting group's lawsuit.

Cities in San Mateo County interested in joining an alliance to lobby the High Speed Rail Authority now have a new option.

Recently, four Peninsula cities – San Mateo, Redwood City, Millbrae and Burlingame– formed the San Mateo County Rail Corridor Partnership in an effort to consolidate and unify communications with state and federal authorities regarding high speed rail on the Peninsula. South San Francisco has expressed interest in the group and will consider joining at a meeting this Wednesday.

The new group may soon get more recruits as well: San Mateo Public Works Director Larry Patterson said Brisbane, Belmont and Foster City attended the group's meeting on March 9 and have showed interest in joining.

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This is not the first time local cities have banded together to address the Rail Authority as a group: The Peninsula Cities Consortium (PCC), composed of Menlo Park, Atherton, Palo Alto, Burlingame, Belmont and Brisbane, formed in 2009 with a similar mission.

Late last year, however, some of those cities  against the agency, claiming the Rail Authority did not fully review the potential environmental impact of running high speed trains along the Caltrain corridor through the Peninsula. This lawsuit made some city officials, including those in San Mateo and Redwood City reticent to join the group.

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Burlingame is currently the only city represented in both the Peninsula Cities Consortium and San Mateo County Rail Corridor Partnership. Mayor Terry Nagel said the new group formed in part because of a discussion Peninsula city government members had with U.S. Reps. Jackie Speier and Anna Eshoo.

Last fall, Eshoo and Speier reportedly told representatives of the cities in the newly formed group that they should "get their act together" if they hope to receive federal funding for the rail project.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood had told Speier and Eshoo that "he heard cities on the Peninsula were bickering, and he was not going to give any money until we figured out what we wanted to do," Nagel said.

She said she believed it would be wise for any Peninsula city that has a vested interest in high speed rail to join the new group and work towards developing a set of rail strategies all the involved cities can agree upon together.

"If you want input to the Rail Authority, in my mind, you had better be at this table," she said.

The group's initial mission statement said member cities "accepted" the Rail Authority's proposal to bring high speed trains through the Peninsula along the Caltrain corridor. Since then, however, the group has retracted that statement, and is still open to alternate routes – but it's the prerogative of the member cities to address what is currently proposed by the High Speed Rail Authority, Patterson said.

Should the rail line be constructed as currently proposed, it will be necessary for the neighboring cities to work together on how it will be aligned, he said. For example, San Mateo will be effected by how Burlingame and Belmont wish the rail to be constructed, and vice versa. So it's in the best interest of all cities to get together early in an effort to resolve any possible differences, Patterson said.

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