Posted by look ahead, a resident of the Menlo Park: Central Menlo Park neighborhood, on Feb 6, 2008 at 10:13 pm

In my mind, Katie Ferrick's letter only begins to scratch the surface of what's wrong with this project. How a project like this can continue to be supported is beyond my comprehension. Yet, $300 million have apparently been collected as part of the revenue of bridge tolls and dedicated to this project. If not for the fact that the project now is estimated to cost $600 million, it would be under construction today. Knowing how these estimates work, the project will most likely cost $1 billion.

Yet this project only provides a one-way track and thus is meant only for commuters who live in the east bay to commute over to our side. It thus has almost no use to west bay residents, but certainly is a darling of west bay developers, who want to put up more office buildings.

The project assumes the use of the old rail foundations, yet to this day, these have not been inspected to make sure they can support a new span. The Menlo Park chamber has been a leading advocate for this project regardless of the cost in quality of life to those residents who live near by.

Mayor Cohen was right to object to this project. There just has to be a better transit solution than this.

look ahead