Town of Atherton v. California High-Speed Rail Authority(7/24/14, C070877)
The appellate court upheld the California High-Speed Rail Authority's Program EIR for the Central Valley to Bay Area portion of the route, concluding that (1) the Authority properly limited its environmental analysis to a program level when it deferred site-specific analysis of the vertical profile options for alignment, (2) the Town's experts could not show the Authority's revenue and ridership model was inadequate or unsupported, and (3) the Authority's Program EIR considered an adequate range of alternatives despite rejecting an alternative proposed by one expert consulting company.
Before reaching the CEQA issues in the case, the court rejected the Authority's argument that federal law, specifically the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act (ICCTA), preempted the California Environmental Quality Act litigation. The Authority contended that a federal board, the Surface Transportation Board, had recently assumed...
