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For more than 20 years, Mountain View has been planning to make major intersection improvements at Rengstorff Avenue and Central Expressway, a key railway crossing where vehicles often come to a standstill waiting for trains to pass.
The long-anticipated project hit a big roadblock last year when the estimated cost shot up, leaving the city with a $159 million shortfall.
City staff have now devised a plan to rein in the budget, including shortening the construction period and implementing design modifications. The City Council will vote on changes at its Tuesday meeting. If approved, Mountain View would save $58 million, lowering the total project cost from $453 million to $395 million. That would still leave the city with a $99 million shortfall.
While Mountain View is on the hook to secure funding for the project, Caltrain is the lead agency in charge of designing and constructing the grade separation. In January 2024, Caltrain informed the city that the cost had jumped from $262 million to $325 million. Ten months later, Caltrain came back with a revised estimate of $453 million, according to the council report.
“The earlier estimate provided by Caltrain severely underestimated the construction costs, including the construction duration of the project, and did not include necessary contingencies needed to cover unknowns at each major stage of the project,” the report said.
Prior to the most recent cost increase, the city thought it was facing a $31 million shortfall. With the revised estimate, the gap increased to $159 million – a situation that the city has sought to remedy by identifying alternatives to reduce costs without substantially altering the project scope.
Similar to the original plans, the Rengstorff and Central Expressway intersection will be lowered for vehicles while the train tracks will stay at their existing elevation, creating an underpass. With the changes, Crisanto Avenue will become a cul-de-sac and Leland Avenue will connect to Rengstorff further south.
The report retains plans for a pedestrian and bicycle bridge, which will run across Rengstorff, parallel to the train tracks, connecting Crisanto and Leland.
To save money, city staff are recommending reducing the construction timeline from 36 months to 30 months. This could save $38 million. Other cost reductions include modifying the construction staging area, using alternative materials for the roadway pavement and making some design modifications, like replacing a planned retaining wall adjacent to Central Expressway with sloped embankments.
The city is counting on securing $296 million for the grade separation project, with the bulk coming from Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s Measure B sales tax, which funds transportation projects.
To close the $99 million shortfall, the city plans to pursue federal, state and regional grants. It also is monitoring the possibility of a regional transportation measure and is considering the idea of putting a local tax measure on the ballot next year, according to the council report.
The report also emphasized that the current $395 million estimate is based on the assumption that full construction would start in 2027. For each year the project is delayed, construction costs could increase between $9 million and $14 million.
Was the castro st grade separation project as expensive?
This is a miserable intersection that needs to be fixed. Its the only intersection in the United States of all my travels where you can wait for over 15 minutes to move. People in cars go ballistic at Crisanto after the 3rd train in a row (trains resets lighting – skipping green light rotation to Crisanto). it also impacts people crossing by foot as well, they get annoyed and cut right into traffic when the light turns green for cars to go. My Tesla has shutdown multiple times here because it thinks I’m parked from not moving (Tesla’s times out at 15 minutes), this has only happened at this intersection. Off course the intersection is no right on red.
Why not close the intersection to vehicle traffic at Rengstorff and add a pedestrian / bike tunnel underpass to keep the neighborhoods connected? There are already vehicle crossings at Shoreline and San Antonio not far away.
At some point, it just doesn’t make sense to spend hundreds of millions of dollars preserving one vehicle crossing in the city. Will the city derive value that in any way approaches the investment?
Redirecting traffic to adjacent crossings will be far more economical, efficiently achieve the goal of grade separation along the rail corridor, and the remaining money could be better spent on other improvements.
Much as was done for Castro, I suggest that the city temporarily close the intersection at Rengstorff and evaluate the impact on traffic patterns.
As someone who habitually avoids driving down Rengstoff anyhow, I’m fairly confident the city could get along just fine without this (already inconvenient) crossing.
San Antonio is already crowded during commute hours and has a number of new housing projects going up that will make things worse. Shoreline is okay now but the Moffett Blvd Precise plan will increase density there.
It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but whatever we build is probably going to remain in place for the next 40+ years and needs to account for future growth.
I live near the intersection and go through frequently. Yes, it’s slow during rush hour but not so bad at other times. People can choose other routes, or be a little patient with it. It’s certainly not worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars to change it. My opinion is – even though it’s not the best, leave it the way it is.