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Faced with few good options to redesign the two crossings in the south of Palo Alto, the city council agreed on Monday to eliminate what it considered the worst of the lot: a viaduct that would raise the rail tracks above Charleston Road and Meadow Drive.
The council’s decision to remove the overpass from review follows extensive debate on the pros and cons of the four alternatives that were still on the table for the grade separation – redesigning level crossings so that roads and tracks no longer cross. With the viaduct now phased out, the board has three options remaining for Charleston and Meadow:
The elimination of the viaduct leaves council with three options: dig a trench for trains between Loma Verde Avenue and the San Antonio Caltrain station; the construction of an underground passage for drivers and cyclists under the railway tracks; and advancing a “hybrid” design that combines lane elevation and road lowering.
In debating their options for the two southern crossings, the council agreed that each is flawed in its own way. The trench, while the most popular alternative, is also the most expensive and, from an engineering perspective, the most complex. Its price is estimated at 800 and 900 million dollars and its construction would take six years. To construct the trench, the city would need to divert Barron and Adobe creeks through siphons and lifting stations and pump groundwater along the length of the alignment, which would run south of the avenue. Loma Verde north of the San Antonio Caltrain station. .
The hybrid, which is said to create earthen berms from trains, is also relatively unpopular. Mayor Tom DuBois was one of many council members who offered to eliminate the hybrid with the overpass, although his colleagues generally agreed to keep it on the list, citing the uncertainties surrounding all other options.
In a 6: 1 vote, the council agreed to remove the viaduct and ask city staff to further refine the underpass alternative, with the aim of addressing its traffic deficiencies and moving forward a geotechnical survey for the trench option, a step that city staff noted usually occurs later in the design process.
Board member Alison Cormack, the only dissenter, suggested it was premature to eliminate the overpass, an option she said appears to meet many of the goals the board had adopted for its multi-year planning process. on the flyovers.
For the board, Monday’s action represents a rare step forward in the multi-year process of winnowing its grade separation options. In recent years, council still failed to meet approved timelines for selecting preferred alternatives for the city’s four crossings: Palo Alto Avenue, Churchill Avenue, Meadow and Charleston. The Expanded Community Advisory Committee, a group of citizens the council appointed to help with the selection process, had recommended closing Churchill to cars. Palo Alto Avenue, meanwhile, will be explored as part of a larger downtown plan.
The two southern crossings, meanwhile, puzzled both the panel of citizens and the council. The committee was unable to come to a consensus on alternatives to supporting Charleston and Meadow, with none of them garnering more than three votes. The only thing they agreed on was that they would need more information before approving an option. The XCAP report noted that each alternative has negative points and that there was “no enthusiasm for one in particular”.
“While the neighborhood’s opposition to the above-ground solutions – the hybrid and the viaduct – was loud and almost unanimous, it was also recognized that the trench, tunnel and underpass present serious challenges,” said the group final report.
Keith Reckdahl, who served on the committee and lives in Charleston Meadows, urged the council on Monday to remove the two elevated alternatives – the overpass and the hybrid – from the review. His neighborhood, he said, “almost uniformly opposes high alternatives because they would radically change the quality of life in the neighborhood.” Other residents have expressed similar sentiments in recent public hearings and in letters to council.
“Large concrete overpasses and overpasses are ugly and not compatible with a residential area in a green community,” wrote Deborah Ju, who lives on Whitclem Drive near the Charleston Road crossing. “Palo Alto would be embarrassed and ashamed of such a structure and future generations will wonder how in the world a city full of smart engineers allowed this to happen.”
In addition to removing the viaduct from review, the council agreed that the city should move forward with cycling projects, including an underpass near Loma Verde Avenue that would allow cyclists to cross the tracks for the long time. of construction. The city’s effort to redesign the runways, which began about a decade ago and has been spotty, aims both to improve safety along the runways and to address long delays in the runway. Traffic that is expected to occur on and around Alma Street once Caltrain completes its efforts to electrify its rail service and add more trains to its fleet.
Deputy Mayor Pat Burt and council member Eric Filseth both said they would support the advancement of bike upgrades ahead of the larger level separation project.
“With half of our kids cycling to school every day, we need to put in place a bike and pedestrian plan early on, before proceeding and potentially shutting down major elements of the current cycling and pedestrian infrastructure for a while. several years during construction. on, ”Filseth said.
Burt and DuBois have also suggested that they are unlikely to support the hybrid, which Burt described as “a whole earth separating the two halves of Palo Alto in this area.”
“And it’s not a small wall,” Burt said.
DuBois has proposed eliminating both the overpass and the hybrid, options which he says go “pretty high in the sky” and have fairly low public support.
“I’m pretty confident that I don’t think these options will be supported by the community,” said DuBois.
Others were more reluctant to ditch the hybrid, which is the cheapest option on the table, with an estimated cost ranging from $ 190 million to $ 230 million (the underpass would cost between $ 340 million and $ 420 million). Cormack and Filseth both suggested that given its relatively low costs – and the many unanswered questions about other options – phasing out the hybrid would be premature.
Board member Lydia Kou, for her part, supported the more in-depth evaluation of the decided option and obtaining a second opinion on the potential cost of this alternative. The board adopted his suggestion by a 6: 1 vote, with Cormack dissenting.
“At the moment, there is a need to find ways to make sure the options work,” Kou said. “If a trench is the way to work and cost is the only thing there is, and there are cost questions presented to us, we should get a second opinion on it.”
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