This month, the City of Palo Alto is hosting additional community meetings to discuss Caltrain grade separation options.  Come to these workshops, and invite friends if you or they haven’t yet gone to a “Connecting Palo Alto” workshop in recent months, or if you attended but didn’t get to ask your questions and share your thoughts at the breakout discussions.
The “Trench and Tunnel session on Thursday, November 30 will be the first one to provide new information. New reports about about mechanisms to pay for potentially more costly trench or tunnel designs, and new information about the feasibility of trench and tunnel designs, are currently scheduled to be published and available by the City Council Rail Committee meeting, the morning of November 29, the day before the “Trench and Tunnel” session.
A new report covering hydrology, and what it would take to keep a below-ground design dry, is expected out after the beginning of the year.
The November series includes separate sessions on options to separate the Caltrain tracks from streets at Churchill Avenue, Charleston Road and Meadow Drive, Palo Alto Avenue, plus a session devoted to a tunnel and trench discussion. If you are interested in more than one topic, feel free to go to more than one.
The schedule of sessions is:
Charleston Road and Meadow Drive
Tuesday, November 14, 6 to 8 p.m.
Mitchell Park Community Center, El Palo Alto Room
3700 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto
Churchill Avenue
Thursday, November 16, 6 to 8 p.m.
PAUSD District Office, Aspen Room
25 Churchill Ave, Palo Alto
Palo Alto Avenue
Tuesday, November 28, 6 to 8 p.m.
City Hall, Community Room Ground Floor
250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Trench and Tunnel Discussion
Thursday, November 30, 6 to 8 p.m.
City Hall, City Council Chambers, Ground Floor
250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Let’s say a trench is selected and Palo Alto pays for it. If that trench needs continuous pumping, does Palo Alto also pay for the continuous incremental maintenance cost to pay for pumping?
I’m not totally sure. I do now that when Burlingame was deciding on their preferred alternative for grade-separating Broadway, they found out that it would be extremely expensive to keep dry, and that was one of several key factors that led them to choose a “split” design instead of a trench.