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Long-awaited plans to close Castro Street at the downtown Caltrain tracks and fully divert vehicle traffic at the rail crossing are moving forward, after the Mountain View City Council voted Tuesday evening to approve the new design for the major transit stop.
The project, which will reconfigure the roadway and dead-end Castro Street at West Evelyn Avenue, marks a milestone in the city’s decade-long effort to improve traffic safety and eliminate the at-grade vehicle crossing at the tracks. But it also marks a steep compromise in the design, significantly curtailing what was originally envisioned for the transit center due to a lack of funding – at least for the time being.
The design, which was expected to sail through on the consent calendar, passed on a 6-1 vote with council member John McAlister opposed.
Southbound traffic has been blocked at the tracks since 2020, when three blocks of Castro Street were closed to vehicle traffic. Temporary signage and bollards were set up to prevent cars from traveling onto Castro Street from Central Expressway and Moffett Boulevard, which remain in place today. Under the new design, cars will also not be able to travel across the tracks in the northbound direction, and would instead be diverted onto West Evelyn Avenue towards Shoreline Boulevard as an alternate route. Bicyclists and pedestrians will continue to be able to cross the train tracks.
The redesign will also allow West Evelyn Avenue to run uninterrupted across Castro Street and includes bike lanes on both sides of Evelyn spanning from Wild Cherry Lane to Hope Street – resulting in a loss of 12 parking spaces.
Other project features include improved sidewalks linking the transit center to downtown, and a separated bike lane on southbound Moffett Boulevard for bicyclists heading towards Castro Street.
Stopping vehicles from crossing at the Caltrain tracks had been a priority long before the pandemic, with the City Council voting in 2016 to pursue a street closure at the tracks. The original plan was grade separation, with bicyclists and pedestrians crossing under the train tracks. A count from September 2025 tallied 1,785 bicyclists and pedestrians using the crossing over a 24-hour period, with heavy bike and foot traffic in both directions in the morning and evening commute hours.
The more ambitious strategy, included in the city’s 2017 Transit Center Master Plan, called for bike and pedestrian undercrossings to link Castro Street and the Caltrain station to Moffett Boulevard to the north, with a Y-shaped design to connect both sides of Moffett’s sidewalks. The master plan also incorporated a parking garage, a vehicle ramp from Central Expressway and larger train platforms.
The problem is that the grade separation part of the master plan would cost a fortune, and there is currently no source of funding big enough to cover the huge price tag. In 2023, the revised cost estimate for the Castro grade separation project came in at $271 million, nearly double the previous estimate of $136 million. The undercrossing structures and other high-cost features, in particular, boosted the costs and were “grossly underestimated” by Caltrain’s design team, according to this week’s city staff report.
In response, the City Council opted to focus transportation funding on the Rengstorff Grade Separation Project, and instead make smaller changes at Castro, leading to the design approved at the Tuesday, Feb. 10, meeting.
Though partially funded through the Valley Transportation Authority using Measure B funds, the city will be paying an estimated $6.2 million for construction of the more limited project.
Although the slimmed-down version that the council approved this week was originally called the “Castro and Evelyn Interim Improvements Project,” it’s unclear how temporary the changes will be. At the city’s Council Transportation Committee meeting in December, council members and public speakers alike raised concerns that, given the lack of funding, the project could very well become a long-term change for a critical city intersection.Â
To that end, city staff on Tuesday rebranded the project as “Castro and Evelyn Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvements,” noting that it better reflects the standalone nature of the project, independent of future grade separation.
“Given the uncertainty surrounding the funding availability and construction timeline for the grade separation project, the term ‘interim’ may create confusion regarding the intended longevity and purpose of the improvements,” city staff said in the report.
The project was approved by a wide margin at the Tuesday meeting, but not without a line of questioning from council member McAlister, who asked about traffic data, the loss of parking and the overall goals of constructing bike lanes along Evelyn.
Even though the city’s share of the project would be $6.2 million, much lower than the larger grade separation project, McAlister said he was still uncomfortable committing that kind of funding when cheaper options may be available.
“I hope … we start looking at the data more, looking at if there’s a way to accomplish the same thing with a little less money,” he said. “I still believe in safety, but sometimes a second set of fresh eyes are important.”
Council members did not quibble with the design choices that received pushback and criticism at the city’s Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee last year. Under the current plans, bicyclists and pedestrians will be funneled through one spot to cross the Caltrain tracks, which will be aligned with the east side of Moffett Boulevard. That’s a decrease from the two existing crossing locations. Committee members and members of the public also flagged that there would be no upgrades to bike lanes heading northbound on Moffett coming out of downtown, which city staff said would be considered separately as part of the development of the Moffett Boulevard Precise Plan.
The plan is to wrap up the design in the fall, with construction slated to begin in spring 2027.
I understand that building a pedestrian/bike undercrossing was going to be prohibitively expensive. But the revised plan has no grade separation for pedestrians and bicyclists. I wonder why they didn’t consider a pedestrian/bike BRIDGE over the tracks and Central Expressway. I would think such a bridge would be far less expensive than tunneling under the roadway. Hopefully something like this can be done in the future.
Where is there room on the north side of Central Expressway to ascend and descend? The bridges on Stevens Creek Trail have very large footprints.
A bridge has to go much higher to clear the train and its high voltage catenary lines as compared to a tunnel. Tunnels like this are usually built using “cut and cover” where a lane at a time is closed, a trench dug, then tunnel structure built with road over it. Rinse and repeat. But it is a long crossing and that method doesn’t work under Caltrain.
the next time they discuss the tunnel again, it will become 540 million with target completion by 2200
Instead of temporary, City should describe the project as incremental. Physically closing cars access to the crossing, allowing traffic (both cars and cyclists) to flow along Evelyn, building plazas of sorts on both sides of the tracks, improving bike/pedestrian access to Caltrain …. are all incremental steps necessary before building the tunnel (whenever funding materializes).
I wonder if they studied the possibility of having large elevators on either side of the CalTrain tracks connected by a short bridge or a high-tech elevator that would traverse a parabolic path over and above the tracks. In the meantime, I guess the at-grade crossing for cyclists and pedestrians will have to do.
Why is this happening? What problem are they trying to solve? How does this improve anything?
Why are they eliminating one of the pedestrian paths across the tracks?
It’s sad that there is only one voice of reason on council.
They’re not doing anything other than tearing out a section of median on Castro and connecting Evelyn across it. No infrastructure is moving, just repainting some lines. How is this $6.2 million?
And all of this can be done independently. A tunnel can be built later, though it makes no sense to do so. Closing the crossing to cars and connecting Evelyn is a no-brainer that should have been completed ages ago. Pedestrians and bikes are adequately served by the signal and Central will be massively improved by not having the trains interrupt the signal.
If this is supposed to benefit pedestrians and bicyclists, why are they eliminating one of the pedestrian paths across the tracks?
Anyone?
Does the journalist know?
As explained in the city staff report, Caltrain insisted on there only being one bike/pedestrian crossing. They opposed creating two crossings (ine for each side of the to-be-closed-to-cars Castro Street crossing) due to the extra construction & ongoing maintenance costs and doubled chances of crossing malfunctions impacting train service.
My alternate suggestion was to maybe consider a single centered extra wide crossing. Depending on how wide it could be made (with long gate arms on both sides of the tracks and on both sides of the crossing that meet in the middle when lowered), then there could be little or no jog for bikes & peds to cross the tracks regardless of what side of the street they were on.
Taking a bus from one side of the train tracks at Moffett Blvd to the other side gets yet another longterm detour to Shoreline Blvd. RIP VTA 21 & 51? RIP NASA Caltrain shuttle? What about us local public transit takers?