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When pressed to make a decision – since allocated consultant funding has dried up and then some – Menlo Park’s City Council finally bit the proverbial bullet of pragmatism and picked a favored option to separate the Caltrain rails from city roads, even while advising staff to research better options.
The council voted 3-1-1, with members Ray Mueller opposed and Catherine Carlton abstaining, to move forward with Option A: a proposal to build a single underpass for vehicles at Ravenswood Avenue, tunneling the road 22 feet below the train tracks and restricting access to Alma Street, estimated to cost up to $200 million. Next, the city will work with consultants to develop plans that now are considered “15 percent” complete for the project.
The decision came with assurances that the council could still change plans, should a better alternative emerge.
More than anything, the council’s action ruled out the second of the two options staff and AECOM consultants had proposed, Option C: raise the Caltrain tracks up to about 12 feet and lower the roads at Ravenswood, Oak Grove, and Glenwood avenues. This proposal came with some serious downsides: a price tag of about $390 million, a berm across much of the city, and an estimated construction duration of nearly five years, during which time traffic could dwindle to a single lane at the affected east-west thoroughfares.
The option was met with staunch opposition from a group of residents in northern Menlo Park, specifically the Felton Gables neighborhood, who rejected any plans to elevate rail lines, saying it would create negative visual and auditory impacts through their neighborhood and the city.
According to staff, the majority of the east-west traffic carried on those roads comes through Ravenswood Avenue, with about 24,000 trips a day. Oak Grove Avenue carries about 11,000 trips per day; Glenwood Avenue, 6,000; and Encinal Avenue, about 5,000.
Felton Gables resident Marcy Abramowitz calculated the cost per vehicle trip per day, breaking down options A and C and arguing that Glenwood Avenue came at a much higher cost per car trip generated and advising against installing a grade separation there.
Developer Steve Pierce of Greenheart Land Co. added that Option C would have major adverse impacts to the Station 1300 development under construction now. Grade separation construction for that option would cut off access to the development’s underground garages on Garwood Way, funneling all traffic through the already log-jammed El Camino Real, and a berm would visually separate the planned retail on Oak Grove Avenue from El Camino Real, making it harder to draw customers, he said.
Better alternatives?
Loath to relinquish dreams of a multi-jurisdictional train trench or tunnel without due diligence, council members also advised staff to follow in the footsteps of Palo Alto and pursue a financial analysis of what it might cost to dig a trench or tunnel to lower or bury the rail line.
Palo Alto’s recent white paper analysis priced a trench or tunnel through that city at between $2.4 and $4 billion, depending on the design – so expensive it was described as “practically unworkable,” politically and financially.
“I think it’s fair to say we haven’t looked at data on it,” said Councilman Ray Mueller. “I’m not prepared to pick an alternative this evening.”
Councilwoman Kirsten Keith said the city may as well work up a financial white paper on the trench and tunnel option.
“I don’t think we’ll ever be able to put this to bed if we don’t,” she said.
Councilman Rich Cline, who has spoken in favor working with other cities to dig a tunnel or trench for the rail line, told attendees, “You will regret not tunneling the tracks. … It’s not beyond our ability. The only thing that keeps us from doing it is a natural inclination to eye roll, like it’s re-creating life all over again. It’s not. It’s just tunneling.”
He continued, “I guess I’ll just be that crazy tunnel guy.”
The council agreed to send one more round of letters to neighbors Atherton and Palo Alto to gauge interest in a multi-jurisdictional trench or tunnel.
Another group of residents, including Housing Commissioner Henry Riggs, former councilwoman Mickie Winkler and residents Adrian Brandt and Verle Aebi, had a different solution in mind. In public comments, they spoke in favor of building a viaduct, or fully elevating the rail tracks above the roads, along Ravenswood, Oak Grove and Glenwood avenues. They argued that there are designs that are not ugly, concrete structures; that viaducts can create safe pedestrian and bike passage beneath them; and that the noise impacts could be mitigated. Compared with Caltrain’s current horn blares, the sound of an actual train traveling overhead – sans horns – might actually be quieter, Riggs said. The option, at the very least, deserves further study, they insisted.
Staff said that the construction process, while it might not require changing road elevations, would likely be similarly extensive because it would require a “shoofly” – setting up a temporary set of parallel Caltrain tracks – while it’s being built. And stacking 30-foot electrification poles atop a roughly 22-foot elevated rail line would yield very tall structures very quickly, they said.
Unresolved questions
Even as several council members voted for the Ravenswood Avenue-only underpass, they acknowledged its drawbacks.
Mayor Peter Ohtaki summarized his decision in favor of the Ravenswood option: “I don’t want to be the council that could have gotten something.”
“I have concerns about (option A) that are not resolved,” said Councilwoman Cat Carlton. “I am deeply concerned A is going to create traffic problems.” Traffic is like water, she said, and if the only way to easily traverse the city from east to west and vice versa becomes Ravenswood Avenue, the street will only draw more traffic.
Keith added, “If we only do A, we will not have addressed all the safety issues.” “If you don’t (install grade separations) you will have collisions.”
Mueller pitched another idea that the council agreed to inquire about. Would Caltrain be open to allowing a bike and pedestrian route along its right-of-way as part of grade separation plans? Doing so could provide a safer north-south bike route to connect to neighboring cities than the installation of bike lanes on El Camino Real through the city now being discussed, he said.
The council agreed to dedicate about $85,000 more in funding for consultants to follow through with the additional research. (About $31,000 of that has already been spent on researching the viaduct and trench or tunnel alternatives, staff said.)
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story inaccurately reported the council vote and misspelled Marcy Abramowitz’s name.
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“Staff said that the construction process (for fully elevated grade separations), while it might not require changing road elevations, would likely be similarly EXTENSIVE because it would require a “shoofly” – setting up a temporary set of parallel Caltrain tracks – while it’s being built. And stacking 30-foot electrification poles atop a roughly 22-foot elevated rail line would yield very tall structures very quickly, they said.”
First, the construction period for the proposed fully elevated garden separation solution might take as long Alternative A – about 3.5 years – but vehicle traffic would be interrupted less frequently by street closings and lane limitations because no streets would not be lowered. The train bridges are installed over streets in a couple of days and usually at night on weekends. Contrast this with Alternative A where Ravenswood – the busiest east-west corridor – will be lowered 22 feet.
Secondly, the 30-foot electrification poles are thin, neutral in color and spaced 180 feet apart. They would sit atop a fully elevated structure that is 22 feet high only between grade separations. Total height would be much lower on the northern and southern grades as the tracks return to ground level. The poles will rarely, if ever, be viewable near residential neighborhoods due to spacing and tree screens.
Putting it in a trench is the best way to go. They could charge a toll for crossing the bridges over the top and use that to pay for construction. 46,000 crossings a day at a $3 each would be $50 million a year.
The railroad thru downtown Reno was trenched in 2005. It was 2.25 miles long, 33ft deep, 54ft wide, and had 11 street crossings. Total cost was $282 million. Surely, a shorter trench in Menlo Park with only 4 crossings could be built at a somewhat similar cost.
The Alameda Corridor trenching project in LA is 20 miles long, 33ft deep, 50ft wide. Cost in 2000 was $2.4 billion. About $120 million per mile. Reno trenching was $125 million per mile. Carlsbad, CA is considering trenching 2.6 miles at $335 million ($128 million per mile). Menlo Park trench would be maybe 1.5 miles and should only cost around $200 million.
How could grade separating just one at grade crossing possibly cost 200 million dollars? Are you serious?
This has to be one of the most egregiously over budget or over engineered grade separation projects ever.
How did they manage to build 3 grade separations AND a new station in San Bruno for just 160 million dollars 4 years ago?
How is this project so different from the various significantly cheaper grade separation projects that have been done on this line in the past?
Here’s a PDF from the San Mateo County Department of Transportation detailing various grade separation projects since 1996. All of them managed to do far more with far less money. Even taking into account inflation, we are being taken for a ride.
http://www.smcta.com/Assets/_Public+Affairs/Government+Affairs/pdf/Measure+A+Grade+Separation+Fact+Sheet.pdf
1. Would a “partial” raising-lowering that extended to Encinal instead of stopping at Glenwood reduce the adverse effects enough that it should be considered by staff as one of the alternatives.
2. Someone should dig out the 1960 era plans of then City Engineer Ed Smith to show how messed up a Ravenswood only crossing would leave the surrounding area.
Jim Madison
Gov Moonbeam sez he can build 70 miles of tunnels to move water for a mere $17B.The distance from Hwy 85 to Woodside Rd is ~ 11 miles or about 16% of of 70. Why don’t we think big and put the whole blasted, noise making, city dividing thing out of sight. Sixteen % of $17B is about $2.7B. The new Gotthard tunnel in the Alps through EXTREMELY difficult geological conditions is ~35miles and cost ~11B Euros or about $13B. Scaling again 11/35 times $13B would work about to about $4B. If we’re not going to have the equivalent of a new Berlin wall dividing our communities we need to have more than 1 grade separation per community. Let’s think this through and invite some tunnel experts from Europe to give it a thought. How much would be spent on multiple grade separations from Hwy 85- Woodside Rd? Stop the silly electrification project and cost wise we’d be a long way to covering the costs and save a lot of trees and eliminate a newly concocted eyesore.
There is a better way!!!
@stan When comparing the cost of tunneling Caltrain to a water tunnel or the Gotthard base tunnel you need to add on the cost of moving every Caltrain station underground.
In the Gottard tunnel’s solid granite, a station platform could be excavated from inside the tunnel using explosives and mining equipment.
In the poor geological conditions of the Peninsula, underground stations would be excavated from above, the tunnel would be at least 60 feet deep, a station would be closed for several years while a 700 foot long hole was dug from the surface, a temporary shoofly track would be needed to route the train around the hole, in some places the station platform would be below the water table. Construction would take about 3 years per station, or 30 years to do 10 stations.
You should add at least $300 million per station to the raw tunneling costs.
@Mark L >>>>> “Putting it in a trench is the best way to go. They could charge a toll for crossing the bridges over the top and use that to pay for construction. 46,000 crossings a day at a $3 each would be $50 million a year”
If the trench costs $2 billion as per Palo Alto, and the city takes out a 30 year loan at 5%, the repayment would be $128 million per year, or $350,000 per day, or $7.62 per crossing.
A toll would be expensive to collect and almost everyone would drive around, so number of vehicles crossing would drop way below 46,000.
Re comparing tunnel costs
The Gotthard Tunnel is actually 2 parallel tunnels along with multiple access points and emergency “Stations”. Total tunneling length is about 150 KM or 100 miles.Instead of thinking why you can’t think why you can. An underground station is no more than a parallel tunnel connecting to a wide spot in the main tunnel.You don’t need big surface trenches and shooflys you just need occasional access holes.
Think YES rather than NO!
The tunnel or tench option isn’t viable for multiple reasons; the water table is the biggest problem. How to build it without disrupting Caltrain service for years is another. Building a tunnel means building temporary RR track go around the construction site, and building tunnel walls strong enough to keep out water. The logistics involved are so daunting that no contracter would want to touch this project. It would be insanely expensive, way more difficult then Berkeley’s decision to pay to tunnel their short Bart section. A tunnel or tench will not ever happen.
Menlo Park never misses a chance to make the wrong decision on rail issues. But no need to worry, we’ll still be here in 10 years with nothing changed.
“The tunnel or tench option isn’t viable for multiple reasons; the water table is the biggest problem. ”
Bored tunnels go under water all the time. There is one in the South Bay that was drilled from EPA to Fremont. There is the Chunnel.
>>> “There is the Chunnel”
The Channel Tunnel was bored through a strata of impermeable chalk that just happened to pass under the sea, which is much easier than boring through wet sand.
Tunneling is always possible for a price, millions of gallons of cement can be injected into the ground to solidify it before tunneling starts. In San Jose attempts were made to solidify ground by injecting liquid cement, but a fast flowing underground river flushed it away, so even that didn’t work for that location.
The EPA to Fremont tunnel was bored in exactly the same kind of geology that exists under the CalTrain right of way.
That tunnel is a 14-foot diameter bored tunnel through clay, sand and bedrock from EPA to Newark.It is as deep as 103 feet below the bay floor. a 9-foot-high steel water pipe was then placed through the middle of the bored tube.
BART goes under the bay!
Trains in Europe go through mountains. The ability to tunnel exists. Elon Musk is trying to create his own way with the Boring Company. What is lacking is political will.
The real challenge is that the financial benefits of freeing up at-grade space go to Caltrain and any developers with which Caltrain might contract whereas the cost must be born by communities and Caltrain. Why not pull the parties together so all benefit? Interest rates are incredibly low. I think many in our community would be willing to “invest” somehow in a long-term solution like trenching or tunneling. Same in Atherton and PA.
I think strong consideration should be given to a grade separation at Oak Grove. This is a main thoroughfare for school children (note the bike lanes). But even more of a safety consideration is the two perpendicular streets to Oak Grove (Merrill and Alma) that run adjacent and parallel to the train tacks. Take a look on how traffic backs up on the railroad tracks whenever a car wants to turn right or left and is stopped by pedestrians crossing those streets. This is especially true when the passengers disembark from the train. There is little time to have a car clear the tracks. This is a fatality waiting to happen. Both Merrill and Alma have many homes and business along the street, thus, they probably cannot be closed to traffic. This one grade separation at Ravenswood proposal needs to go back into the think tank.
>>> Bart goes under the bay!
No, Bart tube is a cut and cover trench dredged into the mud: http://s79f01z693v3ecoes3yyjsg1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/f.Bart-1970.0211.jpg
If you bore deep enough, >100 feet, you can find hard rock, but excavating and operating many rail stations deep underground will be expensive.
USGS says Menlo Park soil is composed of “Weathered, unconsolidated to moderately consolidated gravel, sand, silt, inter-fingering with stream terrace deposits”, so not great for tunneling through.
Elon Musk wishes he could bore tunnels for 10x less, but so far there is no evidence that he has any better ideas than the worlds experienced tunneling engineers, however he would be happy to burn through taxpayer money trying.
I’m surprised that there are solutions that leave adjacent crossings at grade without closing them. Given the concerns about long construction associated with split separation, ignoring other crossings seems worse.
Trench/Tunnel proponents, Get real! The city council has decided to analyze the cost and potential financing options as Palo Alto recently did. And it will show that it is NOT affordable from the perspective off the State and San Mateo County. And Menlo Park has NO real leverage.
1. State and county funding pays for almost all of the costs of grade separations.
2. Only Ravenswood is viewed by the state as a high priority location for grade separation funding.
3. Caltrain HATES the idea of a trench or tunnel because of the cost and it has no experience building them.
4. The cost of three elevated grade separations was about $150M – much less than the billions estimated for Palo Alto.
5. Why would the State and County spend a lot more just to make Menlo Park residents happy?
If you think a parcel tax is a burden, wait to you see the cost property owners would need to bear every year for a tunnel and trench. Palo Alto has thoroughly evaluated revenue options and determined they are insufficient.
Perhaps we are smarter. But there is no evidence to support that assumption.
This is good news. Palo Alto should do the same. Separate Charleston, and install quad-gates on all others.
Let’s make Palo Alto and Menlo Park, one large quite zone!!
“Bored tunnels go under water all the time. There is one in the South Bay that was drilled from EPA to Fremont. There is the Chunnel.”
Yes it’s technically possible but it’s extraordinarily expensive. There’s a great blog post about the enormous challenges of tunneling Caltrain. This post goes into incredible detail about why tunneling is not a viable solution:
http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/04/joy-of-tunnels.html
All of us would love to have Caltrain subway. But it can’t possibly happen because the costs are insane.
Caltrain is currently building grade separations in San Mateo.
Three grade separation plus an elevated station for only $180 million : http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/Projects/Caltrain_Capital_Program/25th_Avenue_Grade_Separation.html
Why can something similar not be done in Menlo Park for a similar cost?
Presentation: http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/_Public+Affairs/Capital_Program/25t/25th+Ave+GS+presentation+City+Council+2.20.18.pdf
>>>> “The real challenge is that the financial benefits of freeing up at-grade space go to Caltrain and any developers with which Caltrain might contract whereas the cost must be born by communities and Caltrain.”
No, the real challenge is that the financial benefits of freeing up at-grade space does not come close to covering the cost of creating and maintaining the tunnel. If it did Caltrain would have done this already on its own initiative.
Menlo Park can build and own an 80 story high tower block right next to the station. This will create as much revenue generating space as there would be above a tunnel without the cost of a digging a tunnel.
Weak dodge
The financial analysis of trench or tunnel needs to take into account the longterm revenue from use of at grade land and air space. Also consider the value to, say Stanford, of potential additional housing close to campus, the willingness of community members to invest in such a longterm plan. There is potential to raise funds across three communities, issue bonds, etc. aA focus solely on upfront costs is the wrong way to evaluate alternatives.
Let’s start calling the “viaduct” approach what it really is. The “viaduct” is an elevated freeway for trains.
Nobody would even think of putting an elevated freeway for cars through the middle of Atherton, Menlo Park, or Palo Alto but we are supposed to believe an elevated freeway for trains will be a beautiful addition to the community?
I guess after years of propaganda telling us we are supposed to hate cars, hate suburbia, and hate ourselves we are expected to feel like we deserve to have our neighborhoods blighted.
Ahem: If the short fully elevated rail structure (viaduct) proposed only for the train station area is unattractive even I will oppose it So what are you worried about? Also, as I am sure you know, this open structure for will provide pedestrians and bicyclists many paths to cross between Santa Cruz, Merrill and Alma. This would improve east-west connectivity, a primary objective of our city Specific Plan.
Finally, I suspect you really are not a resident of another community. But since you post anonymously we can never know. So, I and others can simply guess.
Dana,
For the rails to be fully elevated at Ravenswood Station the rails will have to be partially elevated through most of Menlo Park and probably into Atherton since archaic steel wheeled rail-cars can only climb a 2% grade.
The station may be an architectural wonder (not) but the long partially elevated ramps will surely be some sort of standard government issue concrete freeway type structure.
I just have to wonder why this type of blight is so warmly welcomed by many who would roundly condemn the same type structure if it was proposed for cars.
Ahem: (1) the elevated tracks will return to grade entirely within Menlo Park. (2) The graduated rail structures can be and combinations of berms, embankments or viaducts Menlo Park decides. (3) when the study is completed everyone can debate the merits of the design options, and there will likely be several. Why criticize something you and our community have not seen? Fear? Bias? Misinformation? This is exactly how dozens of Felton Gables residents behaved at two recent council meetings. They made outrageous claims and stridently opposed getting the facts? Why?
I will gladly share an obnoxious email I received from one of them. Simply send me a message – dana@rebuildhope.org.
A combination of berms, embankments, and viaducts is exactly how elevated freeways are constructed.
You want to talk about everything except the question I have raised.
Why do you you support the construction of a freeway for trains through the middle of Menlo Park, when you would be opposed to the construction of a freeway for cars through the middle of Menlo Park?
Ahem:
I don’t know about Dana, but I wouldn’t object to an elevated freeway where the
caltrain tracks are. It would take a great deal of pressure off El Camino. Build it.