ithout Malcolm Dudley, the Peninsula might be a very different place.
The affable stockbroker, who steps down this week after 24 years on the Atherton City Council, has been a key player in regional transportation. More than any other single person, he may be responsible for the fact that San Mateo County now owns the Caltrain corridor from San Francisco to Gilroy, and consequently that trains are still running up and down the Peninsula.
With his departure from the Atherton council, he also must step off the boards of regional bodies, including the county's Transportation Authority, on which he served due to his council position.
"Without Malcolm, we would not have the 1/2-cent sales tax for transportation," said Rich Gordon, president of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and chairman of the Transportation Authority established by the 1988 sales tax vote. "He was the critical component in putting it together and selling it."
That sales tax, which will raise more than $1 billion for transportation projects in the county over its 20-year life, enabled SamTrans to buy the Caltrain right-of-way in 1991 for $49.2 million. This purchase saved the train from possibly being closed down, and enabled the improving rail service the Peninsula enjoys today.
Supervisor Gordon also gives Mr. Dudley credit for numerous other transportation projects, including the Bayfront Expressway and improvements to the Marsh Road interchange.
Since the early 1970s, when the state wanted to ram traffic from the new Dumbarton highway bridge straight onto Willow Road in Menlo Park, Mr. Dudley has also been a champion of better transportation in the Dumbarton corridor. He was a leader in the successful fight to distribute traffic from the new bridge along three separate routes. For the last 15 years, he's been a passionate proponent of plans to put trains back on the old Dumbarton railroad bridge to alleviate the soaring east-west traffic congestion that accompanies the Silicon Valley job boom.
"We have an opportunity here to provide relief in one of the fastest-growing traffic corridors in the Bay Area," he says. "The bridge now carries more than 75,000 cars a day. Two years ago, it was 60,000."
When Mr. Dudley attends his last council meeting Wednesday, December 13, attention will focus more on his contributions to Atherton since 1976 -- almost a third of the life of the town, which was incorporated September 12, 1923.
"There is no one who has worked longer or harder for the people of Atherton than Malcolm," says former Councilwoman Nan Chapman, who shared 20 of those years on the council. "He was our resident guru on regional and transportation issues. I don't know how they will replace him."
Over those years, Mr. Dudley also helped the town in areas of finance, environment and culture. After Proposition 13 passed in 1978, he helped the town respond by establishing a parcel tax -- just eliminated this year -- to maintain the service levels that residents wanted. He pushed for a study of water resources and subsidence in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey. He initiated a reforestation program in response to the loss of trees due to Dutch elm disease, and supported the town's Heritage Tree ordinance.
Mr. Dudley has also worked to improve Holbrook-Palmer Park, and to establish the Historic Preservation Committee, and the Atherton Arts Committee.
Mr. Dudley says he has enjoyed his years with the town and plans to remain active and available. In particular, he will continue promoting plans to build the Rita Corbett Evans Art Center in Holbrook-Palmer Park.
"We accepted her gift," he says. "We have a moral responsibility to build that facility."
Music, boats and public service
Though he comes across as cheerful and relaxed, Malcolm Dudley must be a man of tremendous energy and efficiency. Besides his public service, he works as a stockbroker and financial planner for Prudential Securities, he plays saxophone several times a month with the 17-member Unicorns jazz band, and he and his wife Cosette often cruise on their 70-foot boat "Lisa Marie."
The Unicorns sometimes play on the restored Liberty ship, "Jeremiah O'Brien," during Fleet Week in San Francisco Bay.
"Music is really in the family," says Mr. Dudley, reflecting on his parents, who met playing with a jazz band; his grandson, who has just graduated from the boys chorus, Ragazzi; and his own musical career since childhood.
Raised in Santa Cruz, Mr. Dudley paid his way through the University of California at Davis playing saxophone with his dance band. At college he also met and married Cosette. They have two children and two grandchildren.
A stint in the Navy from 1956 to 1958 on the USS Florikan, a submarine rescue ship, gave Lt. Dudley a taste for boats, which has lasted ever since. As navigation, operations and communications officer, he navigated to Japan and back the old-fashioned way, by celestial navigation using a sextant. "That was wonderful duty. It was a small ship with 100 men and six officers," he says. "There was a lot of responsibility and I learned a lot."
Later, from 1958 to 1961, Lt. Dudley was stationed in London, including during the Lebanon crisis. There he also attended the London School of Economics, and got in some traveling. "It was a wonderful time in our life," he says. "Then I was ready to get out."
Seeking a town near a university, the Dudleys settled in Atherton in 1962. Their first house on Maple Avenue cost $25,000. Mr. Dudley continued in the Naval Reserve until he retired as captain. He also went to work, first for Dean Witter, and then for Walston, another financial firm, which has morphed through a series of names to Prudential Securities. "I still have the same phone and the same desk," he says.
Dumbarton I
A concern for public transportation and the Dumbarton bridges -- highway and railroad -- threads Mr. Dudley's public life.
He was drawn in when Caltrans proposed replacing the rickety old highway bridge with a modern span that would dump traffic onto Willow Road in Menlo Park. "I felt the solution should involve more than just a big highway bridge," he says. "It would have been devastating to Menlo Park."
When opposition proved futile, a lawsuit by Citizens Against the Dumbarton Bridge and Malcolm Dudley forced Caltrans to adopt the compromise plan proposed by former Menlo Park Councilman Bob Stephens.
"We thought we had a much better plan," says Mr. Dudley. "We wanted to solve the problem without creating a major new problem."
As a result, the new Dumbarton highway bridge distributes traffic via three approaches: Willow Road; University Avenue in East Palo Alto; and Bayfront Expressway to Marsh Road. A southern connection to Embarcadero Road was vetoed by Palo Alto.
After the Atherton council refused to pay for the lawsuit, Mr. Dudley decided to run in 1976. "We needed someone on the council to follow through. That's why I ran," he says. "Then I became interested in broad regional issues."
Since 1976, Mr. Dudley has served on a number of regional bodies: The Local Agency Formation Commission for 22 years; the Association of Bay Area Governments; and the San Mateo County Emergency Services Council, as well as the Transportation Authority since 1989.
Sales tax
By the mid-1980s, there was widespread recognition that the county would have to raise more money locally to pay for transportation improvements.
Under the leadership of Supervisors Tom Nolan and Tom Huening, a seven-member committee of county officials crafted a transportation plan for a proposed half-cent sales tax. The tax was approved by a 6-1 vote of the committee.
Malcolm Dudley voted no. The plan gave 85 percent of the money to highways, and only $20 million for the train, he says. That would not be enough to buy the right-of-way when Southern Pacific decided to get out of commuter rail.
"I was afraid we'd lose Caltrain," he says.
Mr. Dudley teamed up with Frank Pagliaro of Burlingame and convinced 11 city councils to defeat the plan. Then they set up a new 23-member committee involving all 20 cities, two supervisors and a representative from SamTrans to craft another plan.
"We gave Caltrain the highest priority, and Caltrain got half of all the funds," Mr. Dudley says.
That plan was passed by county voters as Measure A in 1988. In 1991, the Transportation Authority, which disburses Measure A funds, paid its $39 million local share of the purchase price for the right-of-way -- plus another $42.9 million for San Francisco and Santa Clara counties -- and helped save the Peninsula's only railroad.
Dumbarton rail
"My interest in a rail line across the Bay was an outgrowth of our original concern about the design and impacts of a new highway bridge," says Mr. Dudley.
He floated the idea of restoring passenger trains to the old railroad bridge in time to include it in the transportation plan that went with the sales tax. He's been pushing it ever since.
Mr. Dudley becomes passionate as he describes the advantages of linking Caltrain in the West Bay with rail lines in the East Bay, connecting Oakland, San Jose and cities in the Central Valley. "It's the interconnectedness between transit systems that makes transit work," he says. "What gets people out of cars is convenience."
The Transportation Authority has allocated $60 million toward the $130 million price tag on rebuilding the bridge, buying locomotives and railway cars, and starting the service. "When you compare the cost of putting that into service with other transportation projects, it's an incredible value," Mr. Dudley argues.
He hopes that inclusion of Dumbarton rail in transportation taxes passed in Alameda and Santa Clara counties will move the project forward. "Now the funding is there, I'm optimistic it will move ahead," he says.
"If we don't take advantage of every opportunity to relieve the gridlock," he says, "things will come to a standstill, and the economic vitality of the area will be killed."
