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Palo Alto is preparing to debate this week a question that could transform the south end of the city, involve dozens of property acquisitions and entail spending hundreds of millions of dollars: What is the best way to redesign the rail crossings at Meadow Drive and Charleston Road?
The June 18 decision will be the most consequential to date in the city’s nearly decade-long quest to pick preferred alternatives for grade separation, the redesign of rail crossings so that tracks and roads would no longer intersect. Last week, the council reaffirmed its earlier direction to build an underpass for cars at the Churchill Avenue crossing and a tunnel for bikes and pedestrians a few blocks south of Churchill, at Seale Avenue.
This week, it will turn its attention to the two south Palo Alto crossings, where council members have struggled to pick a preferred option. The busy crossings, which are being studied in tandem, are the city’s top priority for the rail redesign.
The council’s Rail Committee recommended in April that the city advance two options for further analysis at Meadow and Charleston: a car underpass and a “hybrid” design that combines rising tracks and lowering roads. Both, however, face significant opposition from area residents who are concerned that the project would saddle their neighborhoods with unsightly structures and, in some cases, infringe on their properties.
Jordan Fester, who lives in the area, is one of many residents who have expressed an opposition to the underpass, which he called “an expensive, divisive, unsafe and over engineered option that does not warrant the time or monetary investment for further studies and should be rejected by the council this week.”
“The council repeatedly said they did not want to use forced (negotiated) property
acquisitions for grade separation,” Fester wrote to the council. “Please stand on your words.”
The sales price of properties near the tracks cannot compensate residents for “all of the economic, social, and emotional losses we will face,” Fester wrote.
Some residents in the area have broader concerns about the process. John Melnychuk, who lives between the Meadow and Charleston crossing, is among those who believe that the entire process has gone off the tracks.
Rather than have Caltrain work with the cities along the corridor to pursue a unified vision, each city is pushing ahead with its own grade separation efforts. In Palo Alto, the two options that the council now deems to be most viable would both erect concrete structures along the corridor and potentially require property acquisitions, Melynchuk said in an interview.
“The vision should be that we get the best engineering option for a century and have the objective to raise the money for that rather than be involved in eminent domain seizures for different properties and erect a concrete wall to divide the city in half,” Melnychuk said.
He is hardly alone. Dozens of residents spoke at the June 10 public hearing about the prospect of property acquisitions around all three crossings in question. Given the high level of engagement, the council agreed to defer its decision on the two southern crossings until June 18, the council’s final meeting before its summer recess.
The council will have a chance at this time accept or modify the Rail Committee’s recommendation. It will also have a chance to discuss two additional options that are lurking in the periphery of the discussion.
One is the trench, an alternative that would entail fewer property acquisitions and visual impacts than the other two options. While it’s still on the city’s official list of possible alternatives, the Rail Committee recommended discarding it from future consideration because of steep engineering challenges and a steeper price tag, which could hover around $1 billion.
Building a trench would, among other things, require the construction of a pump station and two lifting stations to pump water from Barron and Adobe creeks, which flow under the tracks.
A trench would also conflict with Caltrain’s directive that any grade separation alternative not preclude future expansion of the corridor to four tracks to accommodate high-speed rail. Once built, a trench cannot be easily expanded. Given this limitation, the Rail Committee has recommended dropping the option from the council’s menu of possible alternatives, a suggestion that the full council will consider on Tuesday night.
A train viaduct, meanwhile, is no longer on the council’s official list of options. If remains, however, the most popular off-menu item among bike advocates, many of whom argue that it would provide a simple, direct route across the tracks for cyclists and pedestrians without the need to build tunnels or pump out creeks.
The viaduct option has lost some of its luster in recent months after Caltrain reviewed the city’s plans concluded that the structures that would be required to support the viaduct would infringe on Alma Street, potentially reducing the street to one lane in each direction.
The viaduct would also require the construction of temporary “shoofly” tracks so that trains can keep running while the viaduct is being built. But much to the annoyance of viaduct supporters, Caltrain indicated in March that it would want to retain these temporary tracks for maintenance needs into the distant future, thus dashing hopes for a parkway or a bikeway.
Adrian Brandt, a supporter of the viaduct option, criticized Caltrain for imposing rules that have made the alternative less viable.
“There is no reason why Caltrain and the city can’t design a viaduct that has … has all the key advantages of a viaduct by staying within the existing right-of-way with no homes or city properties taken, preserving all level ground bike and pedestrian and vehicle movements across the rail line and making them easier and creating a new level ground rea and some connectivity across and along the tracks that has not existed before,” Brandt said at the April 16 meeting, shortly before the Rail Committee voted to remove the viaduct from further consideration.
Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims also believes a viaduct could be a viable alternative for south Palo Alto. She was the lone dissenter in the Rail Committee’s 2-1 vote to advance the hybrid and the underpass — but not the viaduct — at the two south Palo Alto crossings.
While two committee members who rejected the viaduct — Pat Burt and Ed Lauing –both argued that the viaduct option isn’t as viable as it once was, Lythcott-Haims said she’s not ready to abandon it.
“If it was attractive, if it was beautiful as well as functional, I’m not sure people would be concerned about looking up and seeing a train,” Lythcott-Haims said during the discussion.
While the city’s process for picking its grade separation alternatives has been dragging on for years, the council is now facing a sense of greater urgency thanks to deadlines relating to state and federal grants. The analysis of the Meadow and Charleston alternatives will be funded in part by the $6 million grant from the Federal Railroad Administration and the city has to pick an option this summer or risk losing the money.
In an unusual move, City staff and the Rail Committee are hoping to advance two alternatives for further evaluation: a hybrid and an underpass. A report from the Office of Transportation states that the design work “will provide greater detail and will take the opportunity to refine the plans to minimize property impacts and optimize improvements while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.”
“These updated plans at the 15% design level will provide additional information for the City to allow the selection of the preferred alternative at the Meadow Drive and Charleston Road crossings,” the report states.
Once the city gets the two options to the 15% design level, it would then pick one alternative to advance to the 35% design phase before it begins the environmental analysis that is required before construction could begin. City staff and council members have acknowledged throughout the contentious debate that every option will have its flaws and detractors.
“One of the challenges with this project as a whole is everyone has a different reason for why it’s visually aesthetic or visually detrimental to them,” Chief Transportation Official Philip Kamhi said at the April 16 meeting of the Rail Committee, just before the group voted to advance the two south Palo Alto alternatives. “That’s one challenge in general.”