1. Presenter: Manzi Roger Dusabimana
Advisor: Dr. Julian Mills-Beale
Manzi Roger Dusabimana
• B.Sc. Civil Engineering, CBU, May 2014
• NASA Langley Research Center, Virginia
• Carnegie Mellon University, 2015.
This is How I imagine the 405, and LAX in 2040

2. O Up to 800 Mile of Rail Lines
O Construction : 2012-2020
O Trains up to 1000 each
O Speeds up to 220 mph
O Stations up to 24
O Headway: as low as 5 min in
Picks
O Fares: $100 Plus….S.F to L.A.
O Ridership Estimate: environ
100 Million a year
CHSR • Sacramento
CHSR • San Francisco
CHSR • Central Valley
CHSR • Los Angeles
CHSR • Los Angeles
CHSR • Inland Empire
CHSR • Orange County
CHSR • San Diego
What would aliens
conclude when
looking from outer
space at the California
high-speed rail
system?
Any Cheaper Alternatives?
• High Frequency Bus Network
• New/Wider High-ways
• New Airports/expansions
• Hyper-loop
None of them is as Environment Friendly as the CHSR
However…the CHSR is not a 100 % Environmental Friendly.

3. How Will the High Speed Rail Impact the Environment?
The CHSR and Green Gas House
Emissions
The CHSR and The farmlands
The CHSR and Energy Efficiency

4. Engineering Design
- Surveying –Geotechnical – Seismic
- Environmental Studies
- Alignment and Track design
- Structures, Viaducts, Tunnels, Bridge
Design
- Traction Power Design
- Stations, Maintenance facilities
- Utility relocations, trackside Access
Design
- Right of Way Acquisition

5. The California High Speed Rail Threatening the
Irreplaceable Farmland in California
The Central Valley:
• One of the world's most productive agricultural regions
• More than 230 crops are grown there
• The Central Valley produces 8 percent of the nation's agricultural output
• 17 billion USD
• About one-sixth of the irrigated land in the U.S. is in the Central Valley
o Thousands of acres of prime farmland at stake (in the central valley):
o Cut in half by train tracks
o Rendered un-farmable, inaccessible
o Irrigation system to be reconfigured
o Possible urban sprawl
 Hundreds of millions dollars will be lost

6. The CHSR Authority should consider the following
but not limited to, in order to minimize the impact
on the farms:
o Make up for the loss of farmland for the railroad right of way.
 Purchasing agricultural conservation easements on property of similar quality
elsewhere in the region.
 Those easements would permanently preserve the farmland from future development for anything
other than agriculture.
o Offer to buy any leftover parcels acres that are created when the rail line divides an
owner's property.
o Create an "agricultural land mitigation fund" to purchase additional conservation
easements, beyond those already required to make up for farmland directly affected by
the rail line.
o Consider alternative right of way far from the farmlands wherever possible.
How do we save the Farms in the Right of way and build
the high speed rail?

7. The California High Speed Rail System and Energy
Efficiency ( … Possible pollution from energy production)
The CHSR project is undeniably expected to reduce the energy consumption
and the related air pollution in California by diverting the growing travel
demand from auto and air modes.
But…
What is the untold environmental impact of the CHSR system far beyond
where the travel will occur?
o Examples:
 Manufacturing, propelling a train requires electricity the fossil fuels burned to
generate that electricity produce sulfur dioxide emissions that can harm human
health outside the regions where people drive the cars or ride the trains.
 particulate matter emitted from a hot-mix asphalt plant harms people near the
plant, rather than where travel occurs
o Studies have shown longer periods for energy payback than previously stated
by the CHSR authorities, once the pollution outside the tracks is considered:
 8 years for high ridership scenarios
 30 years for mid-level ridership

8. The CHSR Authority should consider the following but not limited
to, in order to increase the energy efficiency of the project:
O Addresses several key factors that must be comprehensively considered to ensure the
system environmentally outperforms existing modes over a long period of time, under
various ridership scenarios.
 Use of more frequent, smaller trains coupled with station placement that incorporates long-
term regional planning and existing transit integration to promote high ridership
 Electricity for trains and infrastructure sshould be generated from clean sources
 For infrastructure construction, the environmental negative impacts of certain materials, like
concrete and steel, should be minimized
o Strategies already embedded in the design:
 Traction power system that will rely on two by twenty-five kilovolt alternating current
 Autotransformer Feed Systems for the main-line operation at each of the substations, located at
30-mile increments along the alignment
 This system will also capture the energy from the braking and deceleration of the train(
braking…)

9. The California High Speed Rail System and Green House Gas (GHG)
(GHG: a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the
thermal infrared range: CO2, CH4, NO, O3)
The CHSR main benefit is its capacity
to reduce the GHG emissions in
California

10. The CHSR Authority has deployed the following strategies in order to
increase the capacity of the CHSR in reducing the GHG emissions:
O All companies are required to recycle all steel and concrete
O Diversion of 75 percent of construction waste from landfills through reuse and
recycling
O Use of new, low-emission construction equipment; and replacement of
inefficient truck engines and irrigation pumps
O The Authority is also working with partners to implement an urban forestry
program to offset greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with
construction
• Cumulatively, by 2030, the high speed rail system will divert between 4.3 million and
8.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent
• That would be as if an entire 500-mile long lane of auto traffic were removed from
California’s freeways.
• By 2050, the system will divert at least 27 million and possibly as much as 44.4 million
metric tons of CO2.
• The documented performance of international high-speed rail systems, such as France
and Spain, has shown that these numbers are reasonable (Matute, 2014)
• The life cycle analysis done in the study by Dr. Arpad Horvath, the greenhouse gas
emissions the payback period for rail is six years for high ridership, 17 years for mid-
level ridership, and never for low ridership.
What are the benefits of the CHSR in reducing the Green House
Gas emissions?

11. References
O Horvath, Arpad. "Fall 2010 ACCESS #37."University of California Transportation Center. N.p., n.d. Web.
11 May 2014. <http://www.uctc.net/access/37/access37_
O Frank, Richard. "Rail Transportation and Energy Efficiency." Stanford Energy Club. N.p., n.d. Web. 11
May 2014. <http://energyclub.stanford.edu/journalitem/rail-transportation-and-energy-efficiency/>.
O Chang, BrendA. "Life cycle greenhouse gas assessment of infrastructure construction for California’s
high-speed rail system." Science Print 16.6 (2011): 429–
434.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920911000484. Web. 8 May 2014.
O Matute, Juan . "http://www.lewis.ucla.edu/publication/cost-effectiveness-reductions-greenhouse-gas-
emissions-california-high-speed-rail-urban-transportation-
projects/."http://www.lewis.ucla.edu/publication/cost-effectiveness-reductions-greenhouse-gas-
emissions-california-high-speed-rail-urban-transportation-projects/ 142 (2014): n. Web. 8 May 2014.
O Kosinski, Andrew, Lee Schipper and Elizabeth Deakin, Analysis of High-Speed Rail’s Potential to Reduce
CO2 Emissions from Transportation in the United States, Working Paper, Global Metropolitan Studies
Program, University of California, Berkeley, November 2010
O Deakin, Elizabeth, M. Shirgaokar, N. Duduta et al. Transit Oriented Development for High Speed Rail
(HSR) in the Central Valley, California: Design Concepts for Stockton and Merced, Report to the
California High Speed Rail Authority. Spring 2009

12. Thank You
For Your Attention!
Any Questions?