One tried and true practice for designing projects with a great deal of public interest - and public controversy - is to hold a design competition. Many important public memorials have been designed this way, including the Berlin Holocaust Memorial and the World Trade Center Memorial in lower Manhattan.

There are at least four families in Palo Alto who will be having a less joyous Thanksgiving this year - four families touched by the tragedy of suicide. This year, four teenagers have committed suicide by walking in front of Caltrain locomotives on the at-grade section of the tracks near Gunn High School.

For most people looking at California's high speed rail project, the biggest obstacle to its completion would seem to be financial. Prop 1A has put $9 billion on the table to get the project started. We can expect $3 to $4 billion from the federal HSR stimulus. The cost of the first route, SF to LA and Anaheim, is likely to be around $30 billion, leaving about $17 billion left to secure. Most of that is expected to come from ongoing federal contributions, some from local governments, and some from private investors.

One thing that's become clear since the passage of Prop 1A one year ago is that the project's opponents have learned from their defeat. Instead of launching a frontal assault on the concept of high speed rail, which a clear majority of Californians support, they've decided to focus on generating local opposition along the route in an effort to abuse the CEQA process to undermine the project. It's a Gulliver strategy - tie the giant down with dozens of little but potent attacks across the state and maybe, just maybe, you can kill it outright.

As reported in the SF Business Times on Friday (subscription req'd for whole article) a new pro-HSR group has been formed on the Peninsula. The Alliance for Sustainable Transit and Jobs is comprised of some of the Bay Area's heaviest hitters, including representatives of the largest businesses in the region.

In response to a recent Wired Magazine article that declared "NIMBYs won't be able to stop California HSR," one of the more prominent Peninsula NIMBYs, Russell Peterson, decided to not go gently into that dark night. He wrote an email in reply to the article that was itself posted on the Wired site this week.

Some California high speed rail items to keep you occupied and engaged as we approach the weekend. Apologies for not being able to offer a more in-depth post, but after that wild storm came through this week, the beautiful weather here in Monterey calls me outside.

A new video animation of possible HSR implementations through Palo Alto has been circulating, and a link was posted to it in the comments on yesterday's post. I thought it worth posting, as it looks quite a lot better than anything else we've seen:

Over the weekend Palo Alto hosted an HSR design workshop that included working groups focused on a number of different neighborhoods in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. I wasn't able to attend owing to last-minute work commitments. But judging by the reports, it was an extremely productive event where residents came up with their preferred plans - and even explored ways to pay for them.

California High Speed Rail Authority staff have released their recommendations for funding applications for the Phase 2 of the federal stimulus this fall. They focus on "design/build" in four corridors:

1. San Francisco to San José ($1.28 billion)

2. Merced to Fresno ($466 million)

3. Fresno to Bakersfield ($819 million)

4. Los Angeles to Anaheim ($2 billion)