After more than a decade of debate, Palo Alto City Council members are now speeding toward a June deadline to pick their preferred options for one of the most complex projects in the city’s history: the redesign of the rail corridor.
The city’s menu of options — which once included more than 35 design alternatives — is down to five and staff is hoping to move ahead with engineering and environmental work on its chosen alternatives for two south Palo Alto rail crossings in the summer. But while community feedback, construction complexity and project costs will undoubtedly play a role in the final choice, so will the city’s negotiations with Caltrain, which owns the tracks and which has been reviewing the city’s plans for compliance with its own policies and engineering standards.
The two agencies have made some progress in recent weeks at resolving some of their differences. In January, Caltrain had made more than 200 comments on the city’s proposed alternatives for three rail crossings — where the Caltrain tracks cross Churchill Avenue, Meadow Drive and Charleston Road. The city’s aim at the three intersections is to build crossings that allow cars, pedestrians and bikers to cross the tracks without intersecting them to avoid long wait times and interactions with trains, especially ahead of Caltrain’s coming electrification, which should add more frequent trains to the tracks.
In some cases, Caltrain has flagged proposed features like bike paths and tunnel entrances that encroach into Caltrain’s right of way and would need to be modified to avoid the encroachment. In others, it has required the city to design longer underpasses or wider bridges to meet Caltrain’s standards for vertical clearance and make room for maintenance workers.
This week, Caltrain announced that it is willing to relax some of its standards to accommodate the city’s preferences. Robert Barnard, Caltrain’s chief for rail design and construction, said the agency has agreed to require a vertical clearance of 15 feet and 6 inches for projects with grade separation, consistent with its historical standard but below the standard of 16 feet and 6 inches that it adopted in 2020.
The agency recognized that requiring a greater vertical clearance — the height required for trains or cars to pass safely under roads and bridges — would force the city to build longer structures, with greater impact to local roads.
“We walked through that with our operations folks, we walked through that with our safety folks, we walked through that with our engineering folks and the executive and said, we can live with 15 feet 6 inches as it’s designed,” Barnard said at the March 19 meeting of the council’s Rail Committee. “If you change that profile of the road, you’re going to increase the impact to the neighborhood. We don’t want to do that.”
On other issues, however, Caltrain was less willing to compromise.
The viaduct alternative, which has been embraced by some in the bike community, is particularly problematic from Caltrain’s perspective. The city’s current plans call for building the supporting structures for a viaduct, where train traffic would pass over the existing road, close to Alma Street, just east of the existing tracks. This would ostensibly allow the existing tracks to function like “shoofly,” or temporary tracks during the construction period, obviating the need to suspend Caltrain service or to build new tracks to accommodate trains while the viaduct is getting built.
Caltrain’s recent review, however, concluded that some of these supporting structures would permanently encroach on Alma Street, which means the design would need to be modified to remain viable.
More worryingly for viaduct supporters, Caltrain concluded that if the city were to go that route, the existing tracks — repurposed as electrified shoofly tracks — would remain in place forever to serve Caltrain’s maintenance needs.
“If we did build those shooflies on the Caltrain right-of-way, that’s a heavy investment of public funds and we’d want to retain those for future railroad purpose. … If we were to want to build it that way, we’d want to keep them,” Barnard told the committee.
Caltrain concluded in its recent review that the city’s other possible alternatives are viable, though in some cases would need to be refined. On Churchill Avenue, the city has already selected an underpass as its preferred alternative, with the full closure (and various traffic improvements) of Churchill near the tracks as a backup option.
On Meadow and Charleston, which are being analyzed in tandem, the city’s main remaining options are an underpass for cars and a “hybrid” design that involves raising the tracks and lowering the roads. While a south Palo Alto trench remains in the mix for south Palo Alto, city staff and consultants have effectively suspended their analysis because of high costs and engineering complexities, including the need for the trench to pass through three natural creeks.
The viaduct, by contrast, is officially not in the mix at the moment. But with more people clamoring for the city to explore this option, the Rail Committee asked Caltrain to review viaducts for compliance with its standards.
Caltrain’s conclusion that the viaduct option would require significant redesign creates a setback for proponents of this option. A $6 million grant that the city had received from the Federal Railroad Administration for work on the two southern crossings requires the city to begin engineering and environmental work on the grade separations by July.
Among those who aren’t thrilled about Caltrain’s position on the viaduct is Stephen Rosenblum, a viaduct proponent who recently joined forces with a half dozen other viaduct proponents to form a group called Reconnect Palo Alto, which is advocating for improving east-west connections throughout the city.
Rosenblum said in an interview that a key goal of grade separation should be to make it easy for everyone — drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians — to seamlessly cross the tracks.
The viaduct, he said, literally offers the easiest path. Bicyclists and pedestrians simply bike and walk under the overhead tracks without having to deal with bridges, tunnels or any of the other detours that accompany the other options. Rosenblum acknowledged that the viaduct has the highest visual impact for those who live near it but suggested that the city needs to do “what is best for the greatest number.” Having an easy connection between the east and west ends of the city is more important than aesthetics, he said.
“Now, they are assumed to have equal weight. But to us, connectivity is the highest priority,” Rosenblum said in an interview.
Rosenblum said he found Caltrain’s insistence that the shoofly tracks remain in place forever “offensive” and complained that the agency isn’t really interested in cooperating with the city.
“I don’t see any evidence of cooperation here,” Rosenblum said at the meeting, after the Caltrain presentation. “All I see are a bunch of demands that are difficult to meet and completely neglect a lot of the work that’s been done.”
Cedric de la Beaujardiere, who also supports the viaduct, said he hopes that the option will remain viable even despite Caltrain’s recent conclusions about encroachment on Alma. He urged the agency to look at other engineering solutions to reduce the encroachment and lamented its position about the need to keep the tracks in place even after a viaduct is constructed.
“I understand the desire to keep infrastructure,” de la Beaujardiere said. “But it’s also unfortunate that that sort of blocks where we might do some plantings to buffer the homes from the viaduct to help hide the structure.”
Others were taken aback by Caltrain’s position that the city would have to pay Caltrain to use its property for bike lanes or other amenities related to grade separation. Penny Ellson, a bike advocate and Caltrain rider, said she was surprised by the agency’s position around easements and payments.
“I hope Caltrain will take some time to think about what ‘partnership’ means,” Ellson said.
The latest round of reviews leaves the city council with what members acknowledge to be a menu of flawed options for its two southern crossings. The underpass option in south Palo Alto would require property acquisitions to make way for the new infrastructure, according to staff and consultants. The city would acquire the needed properties through negotiations, if possible, or eminent domain, if necessary. The council has been trying to avoid the prospect of seizing properties throughout the design process, which makes the underpass somewhat problematic.
The hybrid option is also, by most accounts, far from ideal. Council member Pat Burt, who chairs the Rail Committee and serves on the Caltrain board of directors, pointed to the visual impacts of the grade separation in San Carlos, where trains on elevated berms pass over roads.
“The hybrid doesn’t feel like a hybrid,” Burt said. “It feels like a fully elevated berm and now that berm will be 15 feet of earth and a wall just a few feet from the back fences of all those homes.”
Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims, the council’s most enthusiastic supporter of the viaduct, also questioned Caltrain on its need to retain the tracks even after a viaduct is constructed just east of the tracks and they are no longer needed for train service.
“So how does that remotely solve one of our most urgent issues, which is that we no longer have human pedestrians, cars and bikes cross at the level of the tracks?” Lythcott-Haims asked.
Bernard said that even if the tracks remain, they would be mostly used by Caltrain for maintenance reasons and would not have regular train service like they do today.
The city council is scheduled to consider the latest information about the city’s grade separation alternatives in April and to make a final decision on which options should advance to the engineering phase on June 10, according to Chief Transportation Official Philip Kamhi.
“That would make a significant milestone in advancing our project into the next phase,” Kamhi said.
Rail Committee members acknowledged, however, that any options will leave some residents unhappy.
“Change is inevitable and important, and I want to make sure we’re making the change that the future will thank us for instead of curse us for, to the extent that’s possible,” Lythcott-Haims said. Burt agreed.
“What we want to do is make the best choices possible and get the fewest curses, not eliminate them,” Burt said. “Because every one of them will have tradeoffs and pros and cons.
“We are not going to come up with a perfect solution that’s going to make everybody happy. But hopefully we can make most of the people happy most of the time.”
I’m totally opposed to the viaduct for many reasons practical, financial, and privacy, aside from it being an unsightly 26’ tall east-west divide.
To complain about CalTrain retaining temporary tracks if viaduct is built is to somehow not understand who holds the power – CalTrain can and will do what it wants.
How the tracks relate to the highway is different in each city. As you go up the El Camino north the rails are on a raised berm in the business section of the city with ample parking at the base. The tracks in Palo Alto are next to residences and commercial. No one rule applies here to the total picture of Caltrain. I noted the creation of an underpass up in San Bruno which they accomplished fairly quickly. They supported the tracks while they created the underpass which was suitable for cars and small trucks but not major big trucks or busses. Since there are a lot of car rental locations there for the airport this was a good solution. The underpass would work well for East Meadow, Charleston, and Churchill. That would keep those large busses on Oregon, San Antonio, Embarcadero, and University. Since underpasses limit the size of the vehicles this would have to be planned out well. A lot of busses for teams are at the Churchill section for SU and PAHS.
“The council has been trying to avoid the prospect of seizing properties throughout the design process, which makes the underpass somewhat problematic.” This in my opinion is what is driving the stall in choosing a design. Private property hails as supreme in this city. I think it’s six SFHomes on the chopping block and it under protected R1zoned canopy. Private property is comes first, deeply imbedded, going way back to the taking of Ohlone land and Le Land Stanford’s 8000.
The city has no appetite for the law suites heading its way, like a freight train that won’t stop, should a property seizure come to pass. Residents (or not) owners of these private properties will not settle on giving up their properties bi-rite, at a county assessed value — less than half of what the market will bare. The ultra capitalist machine is rearing its ugly head — private property v public good. Forward decades. The public good v private ownership will stop progress — regardless of climate change and all the talk from the Dais about electric heat pumps and EV charging meters, tree canopy’s, and bio-swales.
So glad that the viaduct proposal is apparently dead!
Caltrain has given our community plenty of notice that electric trains were coming. The electric trains are safer (they slow down in a shorter distance), faster (they speed up in a shorter distance), quieter, and of course more environmentally friendly. These are benefits that I think the majority of Palo Altans can get behind.
But unlike all the other communities on the rail corridor, Palo Alto has chosen to hope that this day wouldn’t come. Meanwhile Caltrain is moving forward… they got federal funding, they put up the electric wires, they’ve purchased and tested new trains. Meanwhile, Palo Alto has squandered the available time for feedback and negotiating w/ Caltrain. We can hardly blame Caltrain for the dilemma we’re in today.
Instead of playing victim and delegating the decision to bickering community factions, the city council needs to embrace this opportunity to rally the community behind a vision for the future. We didn’t elect them to throw the tough decisions back into our laps to figure out.
It’s so sad that a hardly still relevant train service is able to derail (no pun intended) an entire community. Every option proposed will hurt the city in one way or another. And for what?
Hopefully work starts soon, this won’t get cheaper or easier with more delays.
The city should reconsider the viaduct option. It will be the cheapest and least disruptive option, with minimal visual and traffic impacts and no eminent domain needed.
The new electric trains are much quieter reducing the noise impact of the elevated trains, plus without grade crossings the train isn’t required to blow its horn. The viaduct also allows a bike bath or other park use below.
I know once the road reductions, detours and closures start to lower Alma and the crossings, every Palo Altan will have wished the multi year construction went with a viaduct instead, that would leave all the streets as is…
@Brain – you’re right. I don’t know why the myth keeps resurfacing about “…Caltrain’s coming electrification, which should add more frequent trains to the tracks. ”
Caltrain’s new electrified schedule will have the same max number of peak trains/hour as today, and the number of trains per hour will not be increased for the foreseeable future. Caltain is losing money big-time ($2 million/month last I read), and over the next decade will have to come up with another $500 million from somewhere to pay existing obligations.
With no high-speed rail trains running here, and no prospect for any money to increase the existing train frequency, Caltrain has already received approval from the Feds not to have to repay electrification funding that was premised on increasing train frequency.
In fact, because of the improved acceleration of the electric trainsets, my understanding is that crossings will be blocked for *less* time now as the trains pass through at higher speeds.
Surely we can spend hundreds of millions of City dollars on something that helps the community (like a new Cubberley center) instead of taking residents’ houses away from them to humor Caltrain.
@Resident 1-Adobe Meadows: you are misinformed about San Bruno’s grade separation. The tracks and a new station were elevated on a retaining wall enclosed earthen berm, with full-height bridges over 2 streets (San Bruno & San Mateo avenues) that provide full-height clearance for all highway-legal vehicles (i.e. tall trucks & buses).
IVI Midtown
The viaduct “would have minimal visual impacts”? Well, if you live in Midtown, I guess that would be the case. There would be MAJOR visual impacts for those of us who live nearby.
About negotiations with Caltrain, John Burt said:
“We are not going to come up with a perfect solution that’s going to make everybody happy. But hopefully we can make most of the people happy most of the time.” Good luck with that! When I was Palo Alto’s Director of Planning and Community Environment in the 1970s and early 80s, I kept handy a cartoon showing a pollster explaining to some important business people that “This survey indicates you can please 17% of the people 100% of the time, 34% of the people 51% of the time, and 100% of the people 12% of the time.” At the bottom I added on a Post-it note reading, “except in Palo Alto, where you can never please all of the people at any time.”
I do want to thank Gennady for your continuing coverage of this important topic.
The public rejected the viaduct at the public community meetings that were held during the community rail committee meetings. What was the purpose of all that outreach and public engagement if it’s back on the table? It would be an eyesore across Palo Alto, spread noise far beyond the current sound footprint and if a track remains on the ground (Caltrain would presumably fence it in) it divides the city. Julie has participated in the years of planning and is setting the process back by clinging to an old rejected idea.
The public rejected the viaduct at the public community meetings that were held during the community rail committee meetings. What was the purpose of all that outreach and public engagement if it’s back on the table? It would be an eyesore across Palo Alto, spread noise far beyond the current sound footprint and if a track remains on the ground (Caltrain would presumably fence it in) it divides the city. Julie has not participated in the years of planning and is setting the process back by clinging to an old rejected idea.
All these folks advocating for the underpass, sitting far away in Midtown and Old Palo Alto and what have you – WE are the folks who would be directly affected by property seizures / eminent domain. Know that the city has been lying from the beginning about the process – not ONCE has ANYBODY from ANY committee “reached out” to us. Lies about flyers on the door knobs of affected homes have been propagated. Know that these are what they are – lies. NOBODY has received ANY door know hanger or flyer in our neighborhood. There was no direct outreach from the city, NOR from the XCAP – sure, we were allowed “public comments”. Which then got misquoted by the Daily News, in some instances. For a minute, try to put yourself in our shoes – how would feel about the “realization of the electric dream” if your property was up for removal? I think it’s great to make bicyclist and pedestrians and “everyone happy most of the time” – but at what costs. So, please consider that from your “not in our backyard!” point of view.
The Viaduct was eliminated primarily due to objections by people living closest to the tracks, understandably concerned about a tall structure behind their backyards. The Viaduct was brought back to the table because it avoids many of the problems with the other solutions that remained or were later proposed.
The Viaduct replaced the Trench because the Trench was much more costly, cut right through some creeks, and would have required the removal of many homeowners’ trees (to protect the ground anchors of the Trench’s retaining walls).
The Hybrid option raises the rail a bit less and lowers the roads. But the rail is only 5′ lower in the Hybrid than in the Viaduct, and it’s raised on a wall so it doesn’t have the viaduct’s benefit of being mostly open underneath it. Also, in Caltrain’s feedback on the hybrid they say they’d want the raised portion to accommodate 4 tracks so basically all the trees screening the tracks from Alma would then be a retaining wall instead, close by the edge of Alma. I forget if there are properties impacted by the Hybrid option.
The underpass option definitely has multiple cases of properties impacted, people losing large chunks of their yards and even homes. It also is circuitous for cars and bikes to get across the tracks.
In contrast, the Viaduct does not cause anyone to lose any part of their property. Crossing the tracks is simple and level for cars, bikes and pedestrians, no long tunnels nor detours. No impacts to any creeks, no issues of flooding tracks nor roads. While the viaduct would be elevated about 20′, it would also be shifted about 25′ further away from the homes on park. The Viaduct is proposed with soundwalls so the trains would actually be quieter for the people close to the tracks, compared to trains at grade without soundwalls. The Viaduct also has the least vibrations of any of the options currently on the table.
So there are a lot of benefits to the Viaduct compared to the other options.