The California High-Speed Rail Authority plans to downsize its massive Central Valley stations, including the downtown Fresno station, in an attempt to narrow the project’s focus on only building infrastructure essential for Central Valley service.

Margaret Cederoth, the project’s director of planning and sustainability, told the authority’s Board of Directors on Thursday that staff have spent the last six months “taking a very close look at all the requirements for the system.”

They found that previous track alignment configurations — including the number of tracks within a station — yielded a “station size that was a little bit oversized for what we needed for the first several decades of operation.”

In places like Merced, Cederoth said, the downsizing could include the removal of a track from the design because it would be “superfluous for decades.”

“One of the unique design challenges for the Central Valley stations is that they need to be rightsized for opening day, but have the ability to be easily expanded in the future as the system and ridership grows over time,” she said.

In a statement to The Fresno Bee, the rail authority said it is “finding efficiencies in all station designs” that will allow construction of stations that match ridership demand. This is “an expected part of the design process,” the agency said.

The project, which initially envisioned a system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco via bullet trains by 2020, now plans to launch service from Merced to Bakersfield sometime between 2030 and 2033.

The pivot in planning comes as the authority’s board directors raised concerns that the Trump administration could withdraw federal support for the project. Officials said Thursday that, with private investment, the project could be completed in about 20 years.

The plans to downsize stations also follows last year’s release of renderings by the authority a year ago showing massive stations in Fresno and other cities in the project’s Central Valley initial operating segment.

The Merced station, planned to be the Valley’s largest, was expected to reach 215,000 square feet. In Fresno, the station was expected to reach 165,000 square feet.

That station is central to Mayor Jerry Dyer’s hopes for the revitalization of Fresno’s downtown area, where he envisions a residential and commercial boom tied to the presence of the high-speed rail.

“I want it to be a place where people are in awe when they get off the train,” Dyer recently said during a bullet train panel hosted by Fresnoland. “That’s why we’re in total opposition about any reduction in size to the high-speed rail station. We need it to be exactly what it should be.”

In response to Dyer during the panel, High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri said he agreed that any changes should not disrupt the way people experience the stations.

The rail authority says it’s “still in the process of revising design,” so it’s not yet known how much square footage each station could lose.

new phase

The downsizing of the Central Valley stations will be part of a $14 million phase approved Thursday by the authority’s Board of Directors that will finalize the design of the Fresno station.

Cederoth told the board this phase involves finalizing the specifications and standard drawings of elements shared across the four stations. This includes features like elevators, escalators, stairways, canopies and platforms, among other items, she said.

“We tried to take a very careful look at all of the infrastructure we needed just for opening day, and that allowed the station to be reduced in size,” Cederoth said.

She said the final design can “co-locate or co-mingle” staff facilities that don’t need to be duplicated at each station.

Engineering staff has also looked at reducing the distance between tracks in order to make stations more narrow.

The authority said it plans to move forward with the removal of a track in Merced because that station will not require expanded capacity until the project’s Phase 2 segment from Merced to Sacramento is complete.

“In the meantime, that expanded capacity would require consistent maintenance and carry an associated cost,” the authority said. “It makes business sense to re-sequence elements of the project that are not necessary for the initial early operating service yet carry significant maintenance requirements.”

Cederoth said the final station designs are taking a “modular” approach, which anticipates how stations “can be easily expanded and further integrated into their surroundings, while not interrupting the passenger service in the future.”

The downsized designs still include “all the components we need for safe, comfortable, code-compliant rail,” she said.