By JONATHAN WHITAKER
Merced city leaders and administrative staff have begun working on a public outreach effort to communicate what’s happening with a proposed — and highly controversial — High-Speed Rail Station in Merced, and to somehow drive a united discussion to the state authority in charge of the system.
The stated goals are to express exactly what the community expects in a future HSR station, and to get clear answers on exactly where it’s going to be located, what it’s going to look like, and how it’s going to impact city land use, planning, essential infrastructure and public facilities.
This new effort comes 10 months after Merced first learned that its long-planned Downtown Station is essentially not going to be part of the Initial Operating Segment (IOS) of the California High Speed Rail system, targeted for the early 2030s.
During a 12-minute presentation to the Merced City Council on Monday night, Deputy City Manager Frank Quintero explained the events that have occured over the past year leading up to the current negotiations with the High-Speed Rail Authority. He described how city and county leaders, along with their regional partners, rallied and attended dozens of meetings in Sacramento in a successful effort to keep Merced on the ISO timeline and route that will stretch from here to Bakersfield. However, Quintero said, “It came at a price.”
The Rail Authority came up with a new plan to ditch the Downtown Merced Station — which was billed as “Three Trains, One Station” due to its proposed connections with the ACE Train and Amtrak systems. Due to a loss of federal funding and rising construction costs, the Downtown Station was suddenly not financially viable — at least in the so-called near term. Funding for ACE Train expansion has also faltered. So the Rail Authority proposed to relocate the Merced HSR Station to an unincorporated area near Highway 99 and Mission Avenue, pretty much adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad. They said the move would save a billion dollars in construction costs, and keep Merced on the initial timeline.
City and county leaders, in turn, announced that they wanted “a seat at the table” in negotiations on how the new station location would be developed. The City Council sent an official letter to the Authority saying as much. Things dragged on, and in June, the Rail Authority adopted an HSR Business Plan that included the proposed station in Southeast Merced.
Said Quintero: “That plan identified for the first time, through one of their supporting documents, that the platform itself would go down to one platform, two lines, and basically, the picture that was painted would be something that would be as was characterized to us: like the rail station that was in Denair — just some place where people would stand outside and be served by High-Speed Rail.”
Quintero admitted that the city needs more definition on what is being proposed. There were also questions about talk of data centers and solar facilities along the local route. His presentation concluded with a request to mobilize the city’s HSR subcommittee in a public outreach effort to clear the air on High-Speed Rail in Merced, and engage with the HSR Authority to obtain community briefings on specific details in question.
Reactions from City Council members were mixed, though the body ultimately decided 6-1 to go ahead with the proposed “next steps.” Councilman Fue Xiong made the lone NO vote.
“To me, the issue is with regards to the community,” Xiong said. “It is that High-Speed Rail pretty much abandoned the community at this point, right? I was there at these town halls [two years ago] in which community members came. They were excited to see the [downtown] station. They were excited to provide feedback on how it looked. They wanted community engagement, and it feels like within the past nine months, all that was thrown away. And, again, not just for me, but from our community members, they feel like this entire process has just been a slap in the face. Pointless. Where they went through all this work and felt hurt, and then it just pretty much vanished. And I think that’s something that the High-Speed Rail needs to answer.
They need to let our community members know. And this is where I disagree with us doing all of this. We shouldn’t be the one carrying water for them. We should be standing for what our community members want. What they expect. And this isn’t it.”
Councilman Shane Smith responded: “It’s our job to advocate for our community. We have to, quote unquote, carry the water, because they’re not going to negotiate for our position. We’ve got asks, and we’ve got needs, and the station has to look like what we want it to look like in a certain respect. There’s going to be some gives, right? But they can try to convince us of their position, but if we don’t respond and push our position, we’re not gonna end up going anywhere. So, we need to very quickly, in my view, communicate with our community, listen to what they have to say. Give them all the facts that we have. And if they still want us to fight for downtown, well, that’s where we’re gonna be. … There’s all these narratives that are not very helpful to us making what is really a discrete and narrow decision — whether or not we support a station relocation, and what we’re getting out of it. So, you know, I think that we have been, quote unquote, partnering for a little bit too long. We need to drive this forward. We need to jump in there and talk to the community, and in parallel, open up a negotiation through staff, and the subcommittee, so that we can come back and tell you, in open session, this is what the deal looks like. Do we like it, yes or no? And if we want there to be state appropriations in the budget, for the things we need, we’ve now waited nine months. This has to happen in 30 to 45 days. We need support from our local, higher, superior officials. It’s gonna take time. We gotta get going. So, I mean, I think we need to stop playing nice, and we need to get in there, and do the work we should have been doing the last six months.
“We can also have town halls and things like that. That’s important, but we need to go directly to the people. And to me, that means online, that means press conference, that means relentlessly speaking with groups. ‘Cause we got a big lift now. We’re gonna do this by the end of summer. But I’m not going to rely upon the authority or anybody else to do that except us. It’s our job.”
Councilman Darin DuPont came up with a few of his own demands for the High-Speed Rail Authority.
“We’ve seen a pattern by the High-Speed Rail Authority of continuing to put information out that was never discussed with our subcommittee, and a business plan and a technical report. We talked about it in 2008, 2009, maybe 2010 — Merced has an important role in the Initial Operating Segment. But time and time again, the High-Speed Rail Authority has made decisions behind closed doors, without our representatives, without discussing the issues that impact Mercedians, and they’re going to continue to do the same thing. You see it in the State Assembly that just passed the bill that provides the ability for the Inspector General, if there’s an audit or report that is not beneficial to the project, the Inspector General can keep that report confidential from the public? This is the Authority that we’re dealing with. Secrecy and non transparency.
“Merced cannot be pushed aside for the benefit of the High-Speed Rail Authority. Our community deserves a real voice at the table. Not a courtesy meeting after decisions had already been made. We have to have that standard. The station location cannot be another backroom deal by Sacramento.
“We have real issues, and real concerns in Southeast Merced that need to be discussed and put forward by this council, by our ad hoc committee to High-Speed Rail, ensuring that we are telling High-Speed Rail what we want. And High-Speed Rail needs to be on the other side of the table, willing to be what they’ve called a partner. For far too long, the High-Speed Rail Authority has thought communities like Merced, and others in the Central Valley, would just go along with what they had to say … with what Sacramento had to say.
“They need to restore the trust and the public trust. And I have some expectations in the next 30 to 45 days. CEO Ian Choudri needs to come to the Aug. 3 meeting, and discuss the project with a full Council. We’re no longer playing these games, of this meeting, or that meeting. And before that [Aug. 3] meeting, the High-Speed Rail Authority needs to hold a public town hall within the city limits. And after that meeting, they need to hold another public town hall. Our public and our residents of Merced deserve at least that.
“And my last request: the ad hoc committee comes to the City Council and presents on what they believe are the needs of our community and infrastructure needs to make a Southeast Merced station viable. And start that negotiation process with the High-Speed Rail, because I’m tired of having these meetings over and over, and saying a different outcome is going to happen. That’s just called crazy. So again, I’m gonna say: I don’t trust the High-Speed Rail Authority. But we need to start requesting that they do something within our community and not just stand on the sidelines.”
Councilman DuPont also had an interesting take on “making the right decision for the long-term benefit of Merced” with regard to “southeast station vs. downtown station.”
“One question that has been running in my mind over and over and over again is: There’s still a plan to go to Sacramento. What does that mean?
“If they go to Sacramento, on the UP line, they still have to go downtown. Are they gonna answer that question of: Is that in their plan to really go to Sacramento? 30, 40, 50 years down the line, you’d have to still tear up downtown. And at that point, we then have downtown even more robust than what it is now.
“This is not a decision that should be made in a vacuum of what is in 2026. This is a decision that should be made with a broad scope of what is the betterment for Merced for the future, not just today.”