The city council members are feigning surprise if they claim they were unaware of this. They have had a chance to actively participate in the high speed rail discussions for more than a year, but they have done little to protect the city.

Palo Alto has a reputation for complaining about problems, but the city protects its citizens better than Mountain View.

"But according to the report, in order to run them in a relatively straight line, tracks would have to run over sensitive wildlife habitat — either wetlands east of Highway 101 or near Crystal Springs Reservoir along Highway 280. Wetlands would also be prone to "liquifaction" in an earthquake, the report says."

What a crock. They are determined to run this monstrosity straight down our throats through the most populated areas.

"Mayor Ronit Bryant said she recently learned that the Rail Authority is expecting $5 billion to $6 billion from California cities."

Hah. This thing is going to cost $100s Billions and take decades to build. They're going to want a lot more than that. Oh, well. I guess the City Council can just raise parking fees at Shoreline Park to $1 million per visit.

We have got to say NO to high speed rail!!! Silicon Valley is the economic engine of Northern California, which is at least half the economy of the state, which is the 5th largest economy in the WORLD. How can we even CONSIDER taking away half the lanes on one of our major North-South thoroughfares (Central Expwy) for a bunch of tourists going to Disneyland??? This is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Not to meantion CHARGING cities on the peninsula, which are already GENERATING major amounts of cash for state coffers to build this useless thing. Put a STOP to it. Show up at meetings, write your city council member/ congressperson. Say NO.

Why can't it stop at San Jose? We already have Caltrain between Gilroy and San Fran. Or we could extend BART on down to meet it. Not everyone who would use a high speed train to/from LA would be going to/from the City.

As for the engineering options, would you want to be in a train underground here when a big earthquake hits? (Might I draw attention to the word "liquifaction" above?)

I'd rather see a train elevated on an attractively-designed viaduct.

re: "Why can't it stop at San Jose?"

It's dictated in the text of Proposition 1A that the route has to run, at minimum, from the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco to Anaheim, routing through Union Station in Los Angeles. The high-speed rail authority cannot legally change that route.

"Mayor Ronit Bryant said she recently learned that the Rail Authority is expecting $5 billion to $6 billion from California cities."

Mayor Bryant RECENTLY learned this?? I'm sorry, but that is just amazing! Shoot, I've posted on that in this forum more than once, and I'm told that it has been brought up repeatedly in the public meetings.

If Mayor Bryant is that unengaged in this discussion, we need to have someone represent our city that actually cares about the risks this project carries for Mountain View

The original proposal was to take HSR along the 580 corridor instead of 152, bypassing the S&P line and the penninsula. I suspect that the Penninsula Cities will do for HSR what they did for BART, force it to go elsewhere.