|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After years of setbacks and frustrations, Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park residents who live in flood-prone areas near the San Francisquito Creek received a jolt of good news this month, with Caltrans recently approving the long-awaited replacement of the Newell Road bridge.
The state Department of Transportation granted the city of Palo Alto a permit known as E-76, allowing the city to proceed with reconstruction of the narrow bridge that was constructed in 1911. Caltrans had deemed the 22-foot-wide bridge “structurally obsolete” more than a decade ago and included the replacement on its list of funded projects in 2011.
Aside from transportation improvements, the replacement of the Newell Road bridge is also a critical component of a regional plan to improve flood control. Most of the effort is being managed by the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority, which is overseen by elected officials from Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and the water districts in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The Newell Road project is the exception in that it is spearheaded by the city of Palo Alto.
Despite the general acknowledgement that boosting flood protection is an urgent priority, the Newell Road project has been beset by complications and setbacks over the past decade. It took years for the city to choose the appropriate design for the new bridge, with many residents arguing that widening the span would only make traffic conditions more dangerous and some advocating for removing it altogether.
After presenting five options, choosing the preferred design and performing environmental analysis, Palo Alto paused the project in 2016 because of insufficient staff capacity and because it wanted the creek authority to first complete a separate project further downstream, near the vulnerable areas around U.S. Highway 101 and East Palo Alto. The creek authority completed that project – which includes widened channels and new levees – in 2019.
Now, both the city and the creek authority are eager to kick off the replacement of the Newell Road bridge, which connects Palo Alto to East Palo Alto. The project is expected to not only bolster flood protection in its immediate area but also to allow the creek authority to proceed with other improvements further upstream, including in the area of the Pope-Chaucer bridge. The agency’s strategy has been to work from downstream to upstream areas to avoid a situation where expanded water flow capacity upstream overwhelms the particularly flood-prone areas closer to the U.S. Highway 101.
With the Caltrans permit secured on April 14, Palo Alto officials released an invitation for bids the next day, according to the city’s Public Works Director Brad Eggleston. Barring further complications, the invitation envisions a construction schedule of about one-and-a-half years, according to Eggleston. The goal is to get a construction contract to the City Council for approval before its summer break.
“Assuming bidding is successful, and Council approves the contract before its break, the end date would be expected to be in January or February 2027, depending on when the Notice to Proceed can be issued, and of course subject to potential time extensions that may accompany change orders,” Eggleston said.
City leaders and creek authority officials lauded the progress on the Newell Road project, which comes at a time when the agency’s other plans remain in limbo. East Palo Alto City Council member Ruben Abrica, who represents his city on the creek authority board, said that he would like to have a public celebration for the long-awaited project.
“It’s up to Palo Alto, but on the East Palo Alto side, we’re ready for a party,” Abrica said at the April 24 meeting of the creek authority board.
Palo Alto City Manager Ed Shikada also highlighted the positive news on the bridge at a community briefing last week, noting that the project is now out to bid. Margaret Bruce, executive director of the creek authority, similarly welcomed the latest development.
“A big cheer to Palo Alto and congratulations,” Bruce said. “That’s a long and hard-fought win.”
Meanwhile, the creek authority is moving ahead with its own more expensive and ambitious plan to bolster flood protection in what’s known as “Reach 2,” the area between Newell Road Bridge and the Pope-Chaucer Bridge. That effort faced a stinging setback in early 2023, shortly a heavy New Year’s Eve storm caused flooding in some areas near the creek and forced the creek authority to overhaul its hydrological assumptions.
The Reach 2 effort included, among other things, widening of creek channels and replacement of the Pope-Chaucer bridge between Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Residents in surrounding neighborhoods have been clamoring for the project for decades, with many remembering the devastating flood of 1998 that overwhelmed the Pope-Chaucer bridge in the Crescent Park neighborhood.
The creek authority is now in the process of refining new design options for Reach 2. Bruce said at a public hearing last week that the agency’s consultant, WRA, has recently released a draft of alternatives. The creek authority has shared these proposals with its partner agencies for review and comments.
Bruce plans to present the alternatives to the creek authority board in late May, with the goal of picking a preferred option in June.
“We are making great progress,” Bruce said.
Palo Alto Council member Pat Burt, a former member of the creek authority board, suggested last week that the city schedule a special meeting before the creek authority’s June meeting to solicit public feedback and weigh in on the new alternatives.
“It’s a pretty momentous decision and would be pretty important for the council to wade in as well as members of the public, even though I know the JPA will have its own public meetings,” Burt said at the April 21 meeting.
We’re ready for a party.
ruben abrica, east palo alto city council member
Burt and his colleagues will also have to have a difficult discussion about funding the Newell Road bridge replacement, a $16-million project that is a necessary prerequisite to the Reach 2 work. While the project was expected to be paid for by the state through the bridge improvement program, the various delays to the work prompted Caltrans to move funding from the current year to 2026. Eggleston said that the funding is programmed as “advance construction” in the current fiscal year. This means that the city is authorized to proceed with work “at its own risk, but with the strong expectation that the expenses will be reimbursed by the Highway Bridge Program.”
The Newell Road bridge project is expected to increase the span’s capacity for accommodating water flow from the current level of 6,600 cubic feet per second to 7,500 cfs. Even though it would be widened from 22 to 44 feet, the bridge would retain its two-lane alignment. It would now include five-foot sidewalks to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians as well as “sharrow” markings. Portions of Newell Road and Woodland Avenue near the bridge would be raised by four feet to improve visibility for drivers.
Shikada noted that the Newell Road bridge replacement will be a “multi-year project,” particularly since work in the channel is prohibited during the rainy season, which goes from mid-October to June.
“I wouldn’t expect the work to really be completed this year but there’s some work that needs to be done outside the rainy season so that once we get through that rainy season we can complete the next phase,” Shikada said.
I have notes:
– 1998-2026 = 38 years. Half a lifetimeÂ
– Increase capacity from 6600cfs to 7500cfs = 14% improvement in capacity. WTH? Why bother spending $10m (or more) for this?
– They’ve made it a full two lanes. Not really necessary for traffic flow in that location. In fact it will induce detour traffic around University IMO. But it is probably safer since they don’t seem to be changing the ramp angles much so visibility is still poor. So separate lanes per direction would somewhat safer in theory.
Of course, there is plenty of traffic science that making roads harder to drive INCREASES safety because people are more careful.
– While they are adding sidewalk/bike’walks’Â they each get 5 feet. Each car lane gets 17feet? Even if that’s not counting curbs, walls etc, it’s still probably 14-15 feet for EACH car lane that is unlikely to be simultaneously occupied due to the corner configuration at bridge end. Car brain
– And they are suggesting that sharrows are fine. Yeah, always the cop out.
– No, wait, bikes and pedestrians are to SHARE the sidewalks.Â
– Never mind that is not best practice in this manner and illegal in parts of PA.Â
– Never mind that the approach from the PA side appears to have no cyclist transition from the bike lane to the sidewalk. They expect usage of driveway cutouts not near the bridge. Would it really be that hard to put a ramp in?Â
– Never mind there are smarter arrangements. Say make the car lanes 10-12 feet each which is more than adequate for a neighborhood street. Then take the extra width to make a proper 8-10 foot wide human lane that could be subdivided with paint to recommend cyclists inboard and pedestrians outboard. Oh and a soft/ramped curb too so there isn’t a crash hazard on the edge.