Residents rail against property takings in Palo Alto

With deadline day fast approaching, Palo Alto’s elected leaders struggled on Monday to reach consensus on the city’s most complex and expensive project, the redesign of the rail corridor.

The City Council is scheduled to approve on June 10 its preferred alternatives for separating the railroad tracks from roads at three rail crossings: Churchill Avenue, East Meadow Drive and Charleston Road. Any delay could jeopardize the roughly $27 million in grants that the city has received for design work on the three rail crossings.

But while council members agreed on April 29 that they need to act quickly, they clashed over what exactly they should do. At Churchill Avenue, the council has generally accepted that the best approach is to build an underpass for cars under the tracks, which would remain in their current alignment. Known as a “partial underpass,” the option is almost certain to advance to the engineering phase.

There is far less consensus, however, on what to do at the Meadow and Charleston crossings, which the council sees as a higher priority than Churchill. With no clear frontrunner emerging at the two south Palo Alto crossings, council members debated two options that they acknowledged were deeply flawed, including one that would require acquisitions of more than two dozen properties.

“We know that every one of the alternatives that we’re looking at has pros and cons,” said Council member Pat Burt, who chairs the council’s Rail Committee. “Unfortunately, there’s no perfect alternative, whether it’s on Churchill or Charleston or East Meadow. And unfortunately, we all are accepting that as we go into these tough decisions.”

Even this hedged approach had its detractors. Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims, who serves on the Rail Committee, championed a viaduct in south Palo Alto, an option that the rest of the council rejected because of visual impact and Caltrain’s right-of-way constraints. Council members Greg Tanaka and Lydia Kou both advocated for the trench, an alternative that their colleagues say is infeasible because of steep engineering challenges and a steeper price tag, which city staff believe could be as high as $1.5 billion.

With little enthusiasm, the council tentatively supported two alternatives: a “hybrid” design that combines raising tracks and lowering roads, and an underpass that would send cars under tracks at the two southern crossings.

Among those concerned about the underpass are the residents of Charleston Road whose properties would need to be acquired — in part or in full — to accommodate the underpass and related traffic improvements. With Charleston lowered, eastbound drivers would no longer be able to turn left to go north on Alma. Instead, they would have to cross the tracks, go through a roundabout near Mumford Place and then go back toward the tracks and make a right on Alma.

To accommodate the roundabout east of the tracks, the Charleston underpass option would require 23 partial property acquisitions as well as two full property acquisitions, both on the 200 block of Charleston, according to the city’s engineering plans. West of the tracks, the city would need to acquire portions of seven properties along Charleston and to fully acquire the property at 4195 Park Boulevard, the plans show.

For the Meadow Drive underpass, the city would need to acquire portions of 12 properties and fully acquire two others, at 3553 Alma St. and 4097 Park Boulevard, the plans show.

Several residents protested the plans on Monday. Lu Li, who lives on Charleston, argued that losing a portion of her property would make her home unlivable.

“If you’re building that weird loop thing around Charleston, it’s going to take part of our front yard to the point where the traffic is going right next to our bedroom,” Li said.

While council members reassured concerned residents that any property acquisition would entail negotiations and fair compensation, not everyone took comfort in that. Patrice Banal, who lives on Charleston, urged the council to consider options that would not entail displacements. Residents of Charleston “don’t want to be your collateral damage or a necessary acceptable loss,” she said.

“If you’re negotiating with a gun to your head, it’s a robbery, it is not negotiation — and that’s how we feel on Charleston Road,” said Patrice Banal, a resident of Charleston Road.

If the south Palo Alto underpass is selected, the city and its consultants will continue to refine the alternative with the goal of minimizing property acquisitions. Burt, who serves on the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, suggested that property acquisitions are often inevitable when it comes to transportation improvements.

“We think that we can optimize the designs on the hybrid and the underpass as we move forward on engineering. We don’t know how much,” Burt said. “But major transportation projects almost invariably have property impacts and that’s tough to swallow.”

Kou and Tanaka took a harder line and suggested that any option that requires property acquisitions deserves to be rejected.

“It’s not going to work for me if there’s any property taking,” Kou said.

Tanaka agreed.

“I don’t think people are just going to say, ‘No problem,'” Tanaka said. “I think there’s going to be a big battle and I think that’s going to be very expensive.”

Given the amount of time and the legal costs that the effort would entail, the underpass option should be taken off the table, he suggested.

“Legally and politically, I think it’s untenable,” Tanaka said.

While the council didn’t take any votes on April 29, the majority indicated that they would support analyzing both the hybrid and the underpass at the two southern crossings. They also recognized the urgency of acting now if they don’t want to risk losing its $6 million grant from the Federal Railway Administration and its $21 million grant from California State Transportation Agency.

Mayor Greer Stone favored advancing both options in south Palo Alto, consistent with recommendations from Burt and Vice Mayor Ed Lauing, who also serves on the Rail Committee. Residents whose properties are acquired, Stone said, will be “made whole … or close to.”

“We need to remember that we represent over 66,000 residents and that population is growing and we need to make the best decision that will benefit the whole community and future generations as well,” Stone said. “Although these property takings of a few residents will be difficult for us to be able to stomach, we do have to sometimes make those difficult decisions. Hoping that staff will be able to find ways to avoid that.”