Divided council advances south Palo Alto underpass

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Facing headwinds of public opposition and division in its own ranks, the City Council agreed to keep exploring the construction of underpasses at the Charleston Road and Meadow Drive rail crossings in south Palo Alto.

The underpass alternative is one of two that the council voted 4-3 to advance for additional engineering at the two crossings. Also moving forward is the “hybrid” design that combines raising tracks and lowering roads. The June 18 vote, which followed bitter disagreements between council members and protests from households along the corridor, authorized staff and consultants to develop 15% of the design for each of the two alternatives.

For the council, the Tuesday vote represented a major milestone in a tortuous and complex effort known as Connecting Palo Alto. For the past decade, city staff, consultants and community volunteers had been winnowing down a list of design options that had initially included more than 35 alternatives to current rail crossings in the city — including tunnels, trenches and viaducts. The June 18 vote officially narrows this list down to three.

At the Churchill Avenue crossing, the council has selected a car underpass as its preferred alternative for grade separation, the redesign of rail crossings so that roads and tracks would not intersect. The council reaffirmed its decision, as well as a plan to build a bike tunnel at Seale Avenue, on June 10.

 At Charleston, the choice is now down to an underpass and a hybrid design.

But the Tuesday discussion also underscored how divisive the Connecting Palo Alto effort has become. Dozens of residents, most of whom live near the tracks, addressed the council on June 10 and on June 18 with complaints about these options while many more had submitted letters of oppositions.

The underpass was by far the less popular of the two. One speaker after another complained about the prospect of losing a portion — or the entirety — of their property to accommodate the underpass alternative, which consultants estimate would require about 30 property acquisitions.

“Grade separation should focus on moving traffic, not families or property lines,” Richard Jackson, who lives on Charleston Road, told the council during the June 18 hearing.

He was one of many residents who blasted the underpass option, which involves a two-lane roundabout east of the tracks, near Mumford Place, that allows drivers to turn around and dip under the tracks if they want to drive west on Charleston.

Supporters of the underpass have touted its main advantage over the other options: its propensity to improve traffic conditions at the city’s busiest rail crossing. Opponents repeatedly used the word “over-engineered” to describe the alternative, which would require dipping the roads under the tracks and creating separated pathways for bikes and pedestrians next to the roads.

“It is an unsafe, disjointed maze for bikes and pedestrians to navigate and it will force students to compete with cars, negating its purpose,” Jackson said.

Tara Sigdel, who also lives in the area, similarly urged the council to drop the underpass, an option that he said would cause property loss and community disruptions. Like many others, he supported the hybrid as a superior option with fewer property impacts.

“The underpass option would displace families and disrupt established neighborhoods,” Sigdel said.

Even those who supported advancing the underpass acknowledged its drawbacks. Council member Pat Burt and Vice Mayor Ed Lauing, who both serve on the council’s Rail Committee, insisted they have no desire to take properties but framed the Tuesday vote as an opportunity to gather more information and refine the option with the goal of reducing property impacts. Burt, who chairs the Rail Committee, called the current plans for the underpass a “worst-case scenario” and suggested that further refinement could minimize the property impacts.

“For me, if those problems can’t be reduced, I’m less supportive of considering the underpass,” Burt said. “But if they can and we don’t have the impacts that we have today, it becomes a more viable option.

But his proposal to advance both the underpass and hybrid options didn’t sit well with some of his colleagues. Council members Lydia Kou, Greg Tanaka and Julie Lythcott-Haims all favored dropping the underpass from further consideration because of property impacts. Council member Vicki Veenker also signaled that she would oppose options that require significant property acquisitions but ultimately broke the deadlock and voted along with Burt, Lauing and Mayor Greer Stone to further evaluate both options.

“It’s a decision to basically get more information to make an informed decision at some future point in time, which is not defined,” Lauing said. “The council has not endorsed or approved any grade separation at this point in time and therefore we have not approved any property takings …”

Kou strongly objected and argued that advancing the underpass for further analysis would further exacerbate the anxieties of residents whose properties might be affected by this option. Many have made great sacrifices to buy their homes, which they hope to one day to pass on to their children, she said. Advancing an option that would take away their properties would be a “travesty,” she said.

“It’s just wasting money to push this forward,” Kou said.

Tanaka concurred with Kou’s view that keeping the underpass in the mix will keep a cloud over the heads of property owners and impact their home values.

“The idea of taking someone’s house really should not even be on the table,” Tanaka said. “The underpass should not be considered. We should not study it more. We should not fund it more.”

The Tuesday vote also spelled the end of the train viaduct option, which was favored by some local bike advocates because it would create a direct, at-grade connection for pedestrian and cyclists. While the council had previously rejected the viaduct, some had hoped to revive it before the next phase of engineering. But even Lythcott-Haims, the council’s sole advocate for a viaduct, acknowledged that the option does not have enough support to advance.

In lieu of the viaduct, Lythcott-Haims and Veenker argued for what they saw as the next best thing: a hybrid option in which train tracks are supported by columns rather than by a wall in certain sections of the corridor. While such a structure would cost more than the traditional hybrid, Veenker suggested that an option with columns should be evaluated in the next phase of engineering work.

Lythcott-Haims acknowledged that any option that the council chooses will face opposition.

“It may be that we are able to put it up on pillars but none of the people who would have to stare at that wall are here tonight telling us how awful that would be,” Lythcott-Haims said. “There is no option that’s going to please everyone.”