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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2023-06-20 Rail Summary MinutesRAIL COMMITTEE SUMMARY MINUTES Page 1 of 20 Special Meeting June 20, 2023 The Rail Committee of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Community Meeting Room and by virtual teleconference at 2:02 P.M. Present In Person: Burt (Chair), Lauing, Veenker Present Remotely: Absent: Public Comment 1. Nadav Efrat, rising senior at Gunn High School, presented a project called the NFPark NFT Initiative to benefit the National Park Foundation. He asked for the Committee’s endorsement to support his project and encourage others in the community to get involved. Verbal Update on Interagency Activities A. Caltrain – Chief Transportation Official Phil Kamhi spoke about the San Francisquito Creek Bridge Project. He described the findings in a report about the remaining life calculations which concluded that the bridge was still functional. If bridge strengthening or replacement were chosen instead of live load reduction, the American Railway Engineering Maintenance-Of-Way Association (REMA) manual would require more frequent inspections of the unretrofitted bridge and the report recommended increasing the inspections to twice a year and funding acoustical monitoring, which Caltrain did plan to perform. Caltrain would also be reducing the load impact by limiting the bridge to only one freight train at a time. He next reported on the Caltrain Quarter Study. The City of Palo Alto hosted an in-person LPMG meeting on May 25, 2023, focused on the quarter-wide circulation and mobility to foster an understanding of the relationship between crossing treatments and community circulation to discuss trade-offs and considerations of applying crossing treatments and to identify opportunities and challenges created by the program delivery approaches, quarter-wide assumptions for crossing treatments and inform programmatic cost range. Participants got to look at map and play around with the pieces on the map and share priorities and discuss the quarter-wide vision. He reported the Quiet Zone Study for Palo Alto Avenue and Alma Street Crossing was approved by City Council on June 19. The consultant will finalize the report and Staff will proceed to procure the services SUMMARY MINUTES Page 2 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 of a consultant for design and permitting of that proposed improvement. The San Francisquito Creek Bridge emergency repairs was also approved by City Council to develop an MOU to work with Caltrain on the scope of work associated within the City’s right-of-way and Menlo Park outfall in the pedestrian bicycle bridge. He reported the City had received a Federal Rail Administration (FRA) grant for the grade separation. The grant program is called Rail Crossing Elimination Program (RCEP). They selected the rail crossings of Meadow, Charleston and Churchill to support their planning efforts in the development of preliminary engineering and environmental documentation including financial and management plans for the project. The grant will provide $6M matched toward this phase with the remaining funds of $14M coming from the Grade Separation Measure B funding. Those funds are allocated by VTA. Staff will next be negotiating with VTA, Caltrain and the FRA in order to develop the next steps in the process. They will return to the Rail Committee with more information to set a critical path to the process. Chair Pat Burt added an explanation of the LPMG. Their next meeting would be a virtual meeting on June 22 at 5:30 focusing on giving a full update of the outcomes of the in-person meeting they had the past month. The City Council has an ad-hoc committee that had their first meeting with Stanford University to discuss collaborating on the future of the University Avenue Intermodal Center in which the City of Palo Alto, VTA, Transit Authority, Caltrain, Stanford University and SamTrans all have a strong interest in. He commented on the $6M grant received from the Federal Rail Authority stating there is a tendency in federal funding that once this kind of significant seed money is committed, there is a better chance of having follow-up money when additional funds for construction are sought. Council Member Ed Lauing asked if there were any restrictions on uses of the grant. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi answered the grant was limited to the preliminary engineering and environmental phase and to the three locations for the specific scope that had been outlined. He stated they were still in negotiations with them. The initial due date was the 23rd but had been extended another week. They had entered a service agreement with Caltrain who wanted to be the lead implementing agency for this phase. There were changes that needed to be made to the scope they believed the FRA would be amenable to as well as the timeline. The grant would require additional recording requirements and work for Staff. They would need support to get it done and to have a preferred alternative selected to complete the project and meet the grant requirements of the scope. Because the grant is federal, they have to do a competitive process and meet all federal requirements in selecting a vendor and the process would be quite restrictive. City Manager Ed Shikada added that some of the terms Chief Transportation Official Kamhi used bore more explanation as he described the preliminary engineering and environmental phases. He asked him to distinguish that from the activities that were being done that day. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 3 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated some of the activities that they were considering doing that day would fit within the environmental and preliminary engineering phase. Clarifying what activities could be contained within those things were part of what they would be doing in their negotiation. Council Member Lauing commented when he read the bridge safety packet, the information looked bad but in the end the bridge was deemed good. He asked if that meant the bridge would live a lot longer with those changes. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated with the ongoing acoustical monitoring and limiting of the load, the bridge was in better shape than initially expected. Council Member Vicki Veenker asked if there was a sense of the timing by when they have to select a preferred alternative to meet the requirement for the $6M FRA grant. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi answered that was still a part of the negotiation they needed to have with Caltrain and VTA and then with FRA. If the timeline was agreeable, they need a preferred alternative potential with a backup by May of 2024. Chair of Expanded Community Advisory Panel Nadia Naik gave information about where to find additional San Francisquito Creek Bridge and LPMG information. B. VTA - No updates. C. City Staff – No updates. Action Items 1. Discuss and recommend to Council: (1) Re-inclusion of the Viaduct Alternative and/or Elimination of the Trench Alternative, in consideration for Churchill Avenue (viaduct only), Meadow Drive and Charleston Road Grade Crossings; and (2) Whether the Viaduct Alternative and/or Trench Alternative Should Be Included In the Scope Of Caltrain’s Technical Review And The City’s Updated Evaluation Criteria. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted there was no presentation prepared for that day. He stated it was a follow-up on recent discussions Rail Committee had in the past focused on the viaduct and trench alternatives. The viaduct had been previously eliminated from consideration by City Council due to concerns raised by the public including privacy issues, cost, visibility and compatibility with the adjacent neighborhoods. There had been recent requests to reconsider the viaduct particularly to improve bicycle and pedestrian movements heard through their process of refinements to the underpass alternatives, outreach to the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee and other members of the public. Also, the Rail Committee had expressed concerns about further work on the trench alternative due to information about potential four- SUMMARY MINUTES Page 4 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 tracking plans as Caltrain had been working on the Corridor Crossings Strategy (CCS) and the implications to cost. Given that City Council had already executed and agreement with Caltrain, Staff was seeking clarification on which alternatives should be included in their review. If the Rail Committee were to recommend any changes to the alternatives being considered, Council approval would be necessary. In addition, Staff would need to know how and when to initiate additional community outreach on any changes. He noted that the FRA grant did have specific requirements regarding the timeline and scope so any changes to the alternatives being considered could have an impact to that. They wanted to make sure they maintained the eligibility to the funding. He announced there were slides available to review any of the plan or profiles, if necessary. Council Member Lauing added the reason for having that discussion that day was there were three new members of City Council who came on in January. There has been an interested in reconsideration of the viaducts and there has recently been a group pushing for reconsideration of the viaduct alternative. The full Council was asked if they wanted to have it become part of the narrowed set of alternatives. There was an engagement letter with Caltrain. The option was to refer that and the trench alternative to be included in Caltrain’s scope of technical review. Caltrain was then under low cost technical support compared to the large amount spent over the last several years with their consulting firm having a third-party review looking at the cost alternatives that were presented. For each alternative, there were cost range estimates made a couple of years ago. They presumed those costs had risen because they had significant increases in construction costs across the board. He questioned what the differences were in cost structures between the different alternatives. He stated one challenge was very significant VTA dollars from the 2016 Measure B tax the voters supported. At that time, they had $700M for toward the grade separating or addressing, meaning closure or conversion, to pedestrian and bike crossings of the eight at-grade crossings between Sunnyvale and Palo Alto. In the last two years, they were able to successfully negotiate with the partner cities in VTA to assure the allocation of those dollars would be based upon the number of crossings so that Palo Alto gets basically half of those dollars. Since the last estimate, those dollars had grown to a little more than $4M. The growth in the dollars was less than the growth in the cost in that timeframe. He stated that was a very significant downpayment toward the cost they had even with the cheapest alternatives and less significant downpayment if they chose something more expensive. Last fall, the Palo Alto voters approved their Measure K, which provided $9M a year from business tax of which the Council committed to one-third of that going toward transportation issues of which grade separations were a major focus. They had local funding dollars of around $2M a year that could either be used as they came in or could be bonded against to have a local share at some point in time that was banking the future income from that tax. They still anticipated they would have anywhere from a significant to a large funding gap of which regional state and federal dollars typically filled those gaps. In general, those agencies would support what was needed for basic designs but going toward a design that was significantly more costly would make getting those dollars more challenging. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 5 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Action Item 1 Public Comment 1. Tony Carrasco, Palo Alto resident, believed there were several benefits of this alternative over the others and it should be evaluated more carefully. He stated cost would be the gating factor. The congestion costs should be included in the costs incurred during the time of construction. He felt the consultants were reluctant to cost out private versus public cost but all of the costs needed to be added and then decide which were more relevant than others. It was found that four-way intersections move traffic in all 12 movements and alleviate traffic going through the neighborhoods. The cost of traffic going through neighborhoods should be evaluated. There were benefits from the alternatives that should be deducted from costs conceptually. He stated there were also cost risks in the alternatives. In his experience as an architect, the more ambiguous a project is, the more risk there is to cost escalation. They should add those risks as a factor to the costs as alternatives were evaluated. 2. Tom Martin, Palo Alto resident, stated the rail viaduct may be more expensive than the hybrid crossing but would be worth it to keep Palo Alto a desirable place to live. The Churchill Hybrid alternative was illogical and had gotten worse with the latest revision making Churchill nearly unusable as an auto crossing and frustrates drivers. He felt it was a terrible decision. The viaduct offered the benefit of new bike and walking paths and green open space. It would avoid all extra costs created by the latest version of the hybrid plan. During construction, the viaduct would let them continue to use the crossings with minimum interruptions or delays and would avoid the cost of eminent domain and negotiations causing legal delays driving the cost up more. He believed the City needed to rehire a different civil engineering firm to assess the hybrid and viaduct plans and give a new estimate of cost of each plan and related risks. 3. Steve Eittreim, Palo Alto resident, stated Caltrain was a huge asset for the community. He felt it made no sense to have the tracks on the same surface that they drive cars, ride bikes and walk and the viaduct was the simplest solution. He believed it would be worth the expense in the long run. He concurred with the need for a new engineering study about the costs and benefits of the viaduct. It would be a six-mile corridor from north to south, 100 feet wide and Palo Alto could use that land in the future for green space, bike paths, pedestrian paths or other uses. 4. Stew Plock presented slides and spoke on behalf of Steve Rosenblum showing different examples of viaducts. He presented a recap of benefits of a rail viaduct. 5. Keri Wagner (Zoom), resident of Edlee Avenue, stated she would be able to see the viaduct from her front yard and that no one in her neighborhood wanted that. She felt the viaduct would divide the City. She urged the Rail Committee not to put the viaduct back into consideration. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 6 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 6. Cedric Pitot de La Beaujardiere (Zoom) advocated for elimination of the trench and readdition of the viaduct option for Churchill and Meadow/Charleston. He outlined disadvantages of the trench and hybrid options and the virtues of a viaduct. He stated there were misconceptions about the viaduct but clarified that it would actually be the quieter option. 7. Rachel Croft (Zoom), resident of Mariposa Avenue, formally requested the Rail Committee rejection reconsideration of the viaduct for the Churchill Crossing. She expressed that she was stunned that the option was being discussed again after being defeated twice with local and active community opposition. She described reasons the viaduct option would be an impairment to the properties in her neighborhood. She stated there were more against the viaduct than in favor of it. 8. Bruce Arthur, Chair of Palo Alto Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, stated that the viaduct was attractive conceptually. He expressed importance of moving one way or another and make it safe for bikes and pedestrians. 9. Laura Granka (Zoom), resident of Churchill Avenue, agreed with Ms. Wagner and Ms. Croft that the viaduct had previously been rejected by the public for good reason. She outlined her reasons for opposing it. She requested the Rail Committee to think about the mix of crossing that exist across Palo Alto and which ones should be fully grade separated, pedestrian and bike grade separated or be a closure. She made suggestions for other options. 10. Adrian Brandt (Zoom), echoed Mr. Carrasco’s and Mr. Beaujardiere’s comments. He believed that viaducts were worth the higher cost. He described benefits of the viaduct option and offered some examples for comparison. He concurred that a different consultant might be needed. He explained some of the misconceptions of the viaduct and asked the Rail Committee to study it. 11. Richard Swent (Zoom), long time member of PABAC, stated he did not believe the underpass could be convenient and acceptable for pedestrians and bicyclists. He agreed that the viaduct design was the best option. He mentioned that the hybrid and underpass designs were poor options including inconvenience at Park Boulevard. 12. Penny Ellson (Zoom) stated that she had not yet taken a position regarding the viaduct and felt it merited further study to include the concerns of noise, privacy and visual impacts. She outlined what she observed as benefits and disadvantages of all of the options. Chair Burt stated that consideration of a city-wide viaduct was not before the Committee at the time. Caltrain would need to identify three to four miles of four-tracks to enable passing tracks if high-speed rail were to come to the peninsula, which would be unlikely. They were looking at SUMMARY MINUTES Page 7 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 a number of technical issues that were of concern. They hoped to have an answer in the early fall. He deemed it was likely that Churchill would not be within the area that would need to have a reserved spot for four tracks and the passing track section would have to be built in a way that would allow the possibility of two more tracks in the future. He believed it would be likely that Charleston and East Meadow would be within the passing track area. He described pros and cons of all alternatives. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted that one of the items pending in additional studies was a peer cost review of the trench alternative. He believed Caltrain could be a potential substitute for the peer review study. Council Member Veenker expressed her concerns about the trench option to include the cost and the water that would have to be dealt with. She was leaning toward eliminating the trench alternative. Council Member Lauing asked what the relationship of the four-track segment was to the trench alternative. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi answered that the trench alternative would likely need to not preclude four-tracking, which would be difficult to do. Chair Burt stated that accommodation of the high-speed rail trains was a condition of the funding that high-speed rail provided for electrification. They could not reject the need for a passing-track section at that time. If Caltrain selected the area from Castro Street to approximately Oregon Expressway as the area needing to accommodate passing tracks in the future, it would rule out the prospect of a trench at Charleston and East Meadow. Council Member Lauing questioned if that was a reason to shut down the trench alternative. He agreed with Council Member Veenker’s comments. Chair Burt commented that the second half of the action item was whether to ask Caltrain to do evaluation of the costing that was done by a comm on the trench for a point of reference, reject the trench or await clarification from Caltrain in a couple of months on the trench. He asked when the Committee’s referral would go to the Council. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi clarified a comment made by Chair Burt that the earliest any referral would go to Council would be August and they hoped to get a Caltrain answer by September. Chair Burt asked if they should make their own decision or a tentative decision pending clarification from Caltrain. Council Member Lauing answered a tentative decision pending clarification from Caltrain would work. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 8 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Nadia Naik added that none of the alternatives that were studied looked at what the design would be if it was four tracks. If it was decided to keep it in and move forward with it, more work would have to be done on the trench alternative to be able to show whether it precludes four tracks. She believed the odds were low that four tracks would fit without that removal. Council Member Veenker stated she was under the impression that the four tracks were incompatible with the trench. Ms. Naik stated design work had to be done to show whether it would be compatible. Council Member Veenker stated her understanding was if they needed to have four tracks at the south crossings, they would recommend to Council that they eliminate the trench alternative. She asked if they have a recommendation if that is not what they hear from Caltrain. Council Member Lauing answered that the cost had not gone up the answer would be the same. Chair Burt added there were uncertainties to deal with when going below grade. One was utilities and unknowns that add cost and the second was on the water table and what they were doing as geotechnical studies. He asked Chief Transportation Official Kamhi for an update on the geotechnical studies. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted they were still following the same schedule as the earlier workplan update. The finalized reports were due in August or September. Caltrain had previously stated that any of their designs were not to preclude the four tracking for those locations and it was questionable whether the trench could accommodate four tracking. Chair Burt commented that the timing on getting the geotechnical study which would affect trenching or any below-grade construction sounded like it aligned with when they should hear back from Caltrain on the four-track location. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted that there was not necessarily a deadline that day to make a decision about the trench. It was just an item to discuss. Chair Burt concurred and added that they were hearing strong skepticism for a variety of reasons. He stated they would have greater clarity by September on both four-track location and its potential incompatibility with a trench and the second geotechnical studies. He stated one of the things on the agenda was whether the viaduct alternatives and/or trench should be included in the scope of Caltrain’s technical review. He explained having AACON was a small fortune but Caltrain would be economical. One option was to ask Caltrain to look at both the compatibility of the trench with four tracks and review the cost. On the other hand, he was not sure Caltrain would have those answers by the time they were ready to make a decision begging the question if they really needed that information from them to make the decision. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 9 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Council Member Veenker wondered if they could wait until they go those answers and at that point they could ask Caltrain to sequence the study such that they could add it in a couple of months. Chair Burt suggested they could refer to Staff to ask Caltrain how long it would take for them to review AACON’s work on the trench and authorize Staff that if they had that information by the September timeframe, they might ask them to go ahead and do that at a modest cost. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi clarified determining compatibility with four tracking was a separate process from Caltrain. Chair Burt stated AACON had only located a two-track trench for every alternative and they could not ask Caltrain to review AACON’s work on whether a four-track trench would be compatible because AACON did not study a four-track trench. He asked Ms. Naik what they know about a four-track trench and how they could refresh themselves on what was not a full study by AACON but some amount of looking at its problems. Ms. Naik answered they had never looked at a four track of any alternatives. When looking at the cost of the trench and the struggle they had with the information AACON was given them and other folks had researched on their own, there were two sticking points. One was the grade which was impacted by the freight speeds and whether it could go steeper was what decided if it could clear the creeks or not. The second problem is if it does not clear the creek, there were two mechanisms of how they could go through the water, either the water will get pumped over the trench or something else. There was questions about what to do for all of that stuff. All of that is valuable if pursuing the trench alternative. She commented that the viaduct was eliminated because it was too expensive but the trench option was more expensive and ambiguous in cost when talking about uncertainty. There was a higher chance of guessing the cost of a hybrid than a trench. Besides the four-track process which was separate than the services agreement they were looking at, they were separately doing the engineering conversation, which would feed into that but may or may not have any implications for them if they went back and said they needed them to not preclude four tracks which would end the trenches opportunity. Chair Burt said there were three buckets of things they were looking at. One was where they would locate the passing tracks, second responding to technical issues and questions they had such as having a trestle bridge reducing the clearances there and different design alternatives and third the vertical grade and curve. Those issues had to be negotiated with UP and were based upon freight speed and freight-related issues. They were not ones Caltrain could decide on their own. They would not have those answers as soon as they had answers that were within fully Caltrain’s decision making but it was important to remind everybody that those factors matter in several different ways. If the grade or design reduce the bridge deck or viaduct deck, it would shrink the length of a trench, a viaduct or an undercrossing or overcrossings. It would affect not only the cost but how many properties were impacted by those alternatives. If talking about the slope for the tracks, they would have to negotiate with UP. The undercrossing details SUMMARY MINUTES Page 10 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 are in Caltrain’s decision-making authority. Caltrain has committed to having those answers by the end of the year. Council Member Veenker suggested having the viaduct conversation because of the order of operations. If the Committee decided to move forward with that and subsequently counseled them, they could ask Caltrain to review those first and leave the trench for last assuming the four-track conversation would come in at some point and then they would know whether they had to renegotiate the services contract for that fourth alternative or whether it was eliminated and the viaduct takes the spot of the trench. Chair Burt asked Chief Transportation Official Kamhi if an alternative would be to say that at that time they did not want Caltrain to evaluate the trench alternative. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi agreed adding that they could not recommend for them to study the viaduct without Council approval. Chair Burt stated the Rail Committee did not have the authority to eliminate a trench but to make recommendations for the Council next time it went back to them. He clarified that they did not need to make a decision on removing the trench at that time and did not recommend asking Caltrain to do any evaluation of the trench. Council Member Veenker concurred and stated the sequencing she had suggested was like what Ms. Naik mentioned and what Chair Burt had articulated. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated the order of operations would be to first recommend the alternatives to be considered by Council and then have Caltrain do that. He thought their direction from Council was to no longer consider the viaduct. Chair Burt stated that would be an issue with how much of a lag they want before they have Caltrain do their review of AACON’s previous work. He asked if that would get folded into the referral to the Council of reconsideration of the viaduct in general or if they wanted that issue of Caltrain reviewing the viaduct to inform the Council’s decision. It could be broken up into one recommendation to the Council that goes forward sooner saying they want to have Caltrain review the viaduct work that AACON did and not ask the Council for further decision on viaduct until they have that information. He asked Chief Transportation Official Kamhi if he had any sense of how long Caltrain would take to review AACON’s work. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi answered he thought the kickoff meeting would happen before August with Caltrain. He did not know if they would make a lot of progress on this before then. It might be possible that they did not need to make a decision on that ahead of any of the other information depending on how quickly they want to move. He stated to keep in mind that they did want to select the preferred alternative to meet the grant requirement. Chair Burt stated to move the ball forward even if they were not ready to make a decision on the viaduct, they could ask Council’s concurrence to have Caltrain review the previous work on SUMMARY MINUTES Page 11 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 the viaduct. If that did not make the viaduct one of their preferred alternatives, it did not necessarily remove the trench but was a lower bar than the bigger discussion which would presumably be the next time they had an action item before the Council in rail item issues. Council Member Veenker asked for a rough ballpark of the modest cost for that. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi answered he did not remember the total amount but they had already received Council approval for the Caltrain service agreement for three alternatives. He thought it was $106K for all five alternatives. Council Member Lauing stated for the benefit of the public and new Committee members, he would like to know what changes have been made and if more research was done, what the hypothesis was. Chair Burt stated regarding what had changed was they way the trench still was on the table as a preferred alternative was that Caltrain had been looking at a four-track passing track system of three to four miles somewhere between the south edge of Mountain View and north of Palo Alto. Six months ago, it was discovered they had ruled out the distance between the south edge of Mountain View and Castro, which was about four miles from Castro to Oregon. That is what made that section the likely location. The reason it would not be up to the north edge of Palo Alto is because the right-of-way shrinks to as little as 60 feet at Peers Park. Going back to high- speed rail, it was recognized there was almost no way to fit four tracks in such a narrow right- of-way not to mention there was existing infrastructure at the Oregon Crossing, Caltrain Station, Embarcadero Road and University that all would be very problematic for a four track. They were hopeful they could convince Caltrain to not have Charleston and East Meadow be part of the passing four-track system but that is no longer the case. Council Member Veenker added that there were people who had been concerned about the viaduct and had been protesting it for years and thought it behind them and now have to come back and do it again. On the other hand, there were some that felt that the way taking the viaduct off the table was not with as much opportunity for input as they would have liked and it went away quickly. There were process questions for both groups and she did not have enough history to fully understand that. She would like some explanation of how they got where they were. Chair Bruce explained when the viaduct was eliminated as an alternative, the trench was thought to be viable. They had had an election where that was part of a discussion of an interest in reconsidering the viaduct that was part of the interest of some of the Council candidates who were elected. Last, whether it was eliminated based upon a deep enough evaluation of not only the negative impacts but how those were mitigated in other circumstances, were those as strong of concerns with mitigations as they were when it was eliminated, what the other pros and cons were and if that analysis was deep enough. Ms. Naik agreed with Chair Bruce adding that three more things impacted it. The first was Caltrain had hired a new team who came in and corroborated the complaints of ExCap that SUMMARY MINUTES Page 12 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 maybe they did not get some of the best work from AACOM and some of their stuff including construction method and should be relooked at. That put a question mark on the things they had been highlighting. Another thing was as electrification and high-speed rail has continued, the skyrocketing costs of relocating utilities proved to be significant and that was the difference between the hybrid and the viaduct. She added the climate change in the last couple of years makes people more nervous about ground water and flooding so any alternative that involves digging changes the sentiment and the elected officials have changed. Last, their priorities had changed. Five years ago, there were talks about grade separation and raising billions of dollars to make Palo Alto a beautiful tunnel. If people were asked today to work on a bond campaign to raise money if they would raise it to build a beautiful tunnel or affordable housing. That was a consideration when people look at priorities. When the Council was looking at having one elevated option, the hybrid was cheaper but they did not consider the fact that the viaduct would take two years and a hybrid would take four. She noted there was only a five foot difference between one alternative and the other. When a lot of people think about hybrid, they think it is half up and half down but in reality it is mostly up and there is a difference of five feet. The other difference was that the viaduct alternative allowed them to not have to have electrified shoofly tracks. That moved the tracks closer to Alma and away from the homes that were concerned with privacy with having it elevated. Another thing that has been overlooked was the fact that one of ExCap’s recommendations was that they did not have a robust public process when it came to PABAC, Stanford and the school community. The City had since met with those folks and that is why they were having a viaduct conversation because they were interested in keeping things flat for bikes and peds. She felt the Committee and City Council might benefit from inviting back the consultant who did the noise study. Chair Burt followed up by saying when the viaduct was eliminated but they had the trench in as the remaining alternative, they had talked about how some things had changed in terms of whether that was viable in the trench. If the trench was not viable, the viaduct or hybrid were the next options. The hybrid was a wall berm. He stated that it was misconceived that the hybrid would only go up a little bit. Rather than an elevated track that is open, an earthen berm hybrid was an elevated track that was a wall. He had interest as to whether there was a way to do a viaduct construction method on a hybrid going partly down and still be open. The difference between the hybrid and the viaduct was not great in terms of the height of the tracks. The looked at the cost difference which was primarily a construction method where they were putting the trains on pillars versus a cheaper earthen wall. Ms. Naik added that everything she said related to the viaduct was focused on South Palo Alto. There was already a preferred alternative for Churchill. During ExCap’s proceedings, because there were so many South Palo Alto alternatives, they got a lot of feedback that it seemed like they were overly focused on Churchill but that was because it was the one they felt they could make a choice on. The majority of the ExCap had picked a closure. The Council picked the partial underpass. She did not think reopening the viaduct conversation for Churchill was beneficial because it was never in contention. A hybrid was never considered for Churchill because both Churchill and Alma would have to be lowered. All of the driveways facing Churchill would be impacted. On the east side, all of the driveways of the homes facing Alma SUMMARY MINUTES Page 13 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 would be impacted. Along Meadow and Charleston along Alma, none of the houses face Alma so lowering of Alma does not impact those homes in the same way. On the east side, the Circles neighborhood would not have as many driveways impacted. Chair Burt stated explained how he believed the wider corridor at Charleston/East Meadow provided the ability to move a viaduct up against Alma as opposed to up against the homes would be a more doable option and eliminate the impact on Alma during construction. He asked if that was still the case at Churchill. Council Member Veenker questioned if all of the options would reduce the noise relative to the current situation. Ms. Naik answered the majority of the current noise was the constant bells and whistles that happen every time a train preemption goes on and the gates have to come down. Any grade crossing would take those away. She explained that the noise of the trains would also change as a result of electrifying the trains. Council Member Veenker asked if the noise that would be from the electrified trains at grade would also be buffered. Ms. Naik stated the only alternative where the train would remain where it was at grade was the underpass and they looked at adding a soundwall for that. The exception was the freight trains because that would not change but there were only three of them a day opposed to the 90 trains they had pre-COVID. She gave an explanation of the complicated noise study and suggested that the Rail Committee invite the noise expert to have all of their questions answered. Senior Engineer Ripon Bhatia added viaduct construction on Churchill Avenue would leave Alma Street to one lane for the duration of the construction for two years. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi clarified that the changes included the Caltrain agreement and the plan for Caltrain to take the lead. Ms. Naik explained the changes with Measure K. Chair Burt clarified the state and federal funding that was potentially available had increased significantly. He added that the notion of thinking in terms of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in local funding did not seem realistic to him and there would be an issue of whether the Community would support the preferred alternatives they would have to settle on but that was different from whether they would be willing to have very large self-funding for a preferred alternative. Council Member Lauing asked if this would be compared to the underpass and if those costs needed to be updated. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 14 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Chair Burt answered that was one of the things Caltrain would look at and some of the technical issues they were asking Caltrain to evaluate would effect costs as well as impact. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi referenced the noise study final report. There would be a 10 decibel reduction in noise for any of the alternatives pursued. Wheel and noise would have a reduction under the trench, the viaduct and the hybrid. The EMU would have a reduction on the trench, the viaduct and the hybrid but with the freight, there would possibly be some increased noise level beyond the first row for the diesel trains. Ms. Naik pointed out that the main noise was actually the freight train whistle, which would be eliminated with a crossing. Chair Burt questioned if the horn noise varied a greater distance whereas the direct rumbling freight noise was more concentrated to the most immediate neighbors. Ms. Naik stated that was a question for the sound expert. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi said that the report stated the viaduct and hybrid may create some increased noise level beyond first row for diesel freight events. Chair Burt asked if that was because there would be some deflection through a partial sound wall that would affect the first row. He stated there were ways to mitigate the noise for the most adjacent homes but it could have an impact beyond that. Ms. Naik answered that the viaduct would also move 25 feet away and would not be the same at row two versus the viaduct. She stated the measurement of second row was not studied and an addendum needed to be added. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi mentioned that the viaduct would provide less vibration to the neighboring homes than all the other alternatives. Chair Burt clarified that the viaduct would be a decrease in vibration, a potential decrease in the most adjacent homes even with the freight and potential increase beyond the second or third tier. Ms. Naik added that the noise study also looked at construction noise. The viaduct and hybrid both had moderate construction noise impacts but the trench and underpass had severe noise impacts. The length of construction time for a trench would be six years, hybrid four years, viaduct two years and an underpass three-and-a-half to four years. She added it had not been considered what would happen if a jacked box was used. Chair Burt noted a jacked box was one thing Caltrain was looking at, which was another thing that had changed. Caltrain was receptive to the jack box. VTA had done them before. AACOM did not know where a jack box would work for them. He stated a jack box would significantly shorten the time. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 15 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Ms. Naik added they did not know what it would impact in terms of cost. Chair Burt stated part of what they would get from Caltrain was how applicable the alternative construction methods were. Council Member Veenker questioned whether there were feasible more attractive alternatives to the looks they had seen in the packet. Chair Burt answered there was a range of designs and suggested they look at some of the alternatives at their August meeting. Council Member Veenker questioned the privacy issue from the perspective of what the people inside the train could see. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted that adding additional features would add additional costs and the right-of-way under any potential raised structure would be still Caltrain’s so they would need their permission to utilize that to build a bike path. He stated there were different options they could address for privacy. Council Member Veenker asked how high off the ground the viaduct would be when it hits the berm. Ms. Naik answered that the entire exercise was determining the general ways to move a train and what it might look like and none of the details were set in stone. Some of the details could not be known until the decisions were made. Council Member Veenker stated she wanted to understand how much of the space under the viaduct would be greenspace. Ms. Naik answered in the case of the Churchill viaduct, it would start after Embarcadero and come down before getting to Cal Ave so there was almost no space to make use of. On the Meadow/Charleston viaduct, at some point it would not be open underneath and it could probably be usable space but the access would be limited by how it could be walked up to. Council Member Veenker asked if the greenspace would be significant enough to add it as evaluation criteria. Ms. Naik added that another thing that would influence the usable space underneath would be the width of the right-of-way. She stated that in terms of privacy and noise, Palo Alto was one of the only cities that looked at grade separations and studied the noise. All the other cities use that noise study. The privacy situation was something the Corridor Crossing Strategy folks should consider. She also stated they had to take into consideration what the train passengers would see going through Palo Alto if they blurred the windows. Chair Burt stated the view from the windows could be tweaked for privacy issues. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 16 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Ms. Naik also added that the speed of the train would affect what the passengers could see in the yards. She felt that was an issue for Caltrain to focus on. Council Member Lauing stated they would need to be what the experience would be from both sides in order to evaluate it. He felt privacy would be highly weighted in their recommendation. He felt getting details on three ideas would be helpful. Chair Burt stated if they were to reinclude the viaduct and eliminate the trench they would not need to see the alternatives on mitigating the various issues. He stated they might narrow it down some and have choices even though there was not a final design when the preferred alternative was selected. Council Member Lauing stated they have to be determined on deciding what things would be weighted. He did not believe the greenspace alternative could be weighted highly. Ms. Naik suggested a moving Council meeting at the San Carlos Grade Separation would be useful in making decisions. Chair Burt recapped the bullets discussed to make a decision on recommending reconsideration of the viaduct and if so whether to recommend for Charleston/East Meadow rather than Churchill. Council Member Lauing suggested getting more data before deciding to reinclude the viaduct alternative. Chair Burt stated there was a dilemma on the timing of when they would get the data. They would have to make recommendations based on the series of factors they had discussed. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated the four-tracking information would be available before they finished with the analysis of the work they had done. Chair Burt questioned if they wanted to recommend to Council to have Caltrain evaluate the viaduct alternative and not bother with the trench alternative and if that would go to the Council on consent asking for more technical information as quickly as possible. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated that could be done. If from that data it was determined the viaduct would not work and they wanted to consider the trench, then the contract would need to be amended. Council Member Veenker asked if they could go ahead and submit the viaduct alternative for further study to get it going and be opportunistic in August and September. Chair Burt stated the most streamlined way to do that would be making it a simple call to put on consent they want the Council to endorse another $20K for Caltrain to evaluate the viaduct alternative. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 17 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Chief Transportation Official Kamhi asked if the recommendation would be to amend the contract with Caltrain to add the viaduct in addition to the trench or study the viaduct instead of the trench and put the trench on hold. City Manager Shikada stated he did not believe they needed to be that specific in terms of direction from the Committee to Staff. Chair Burt asked if this Committee could request that Staff have Caltrain prioritize the work. City Manager Shikada answered it would be consistent with the prior delegation from the Council to communicate the priority to Caltrain and would not require consent. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted the agreement with Caltrain on what went to Council specified the three alternatives to be considered so he was concerned that they would need their approval to do otherwise. Ms. Naik asked if they had the discretion to tell Caltrain to start with the hybrid and underpass and let them know if they were getting close to trench and they would have had the meeting with Council and then they could go back and make their decision. Chair Burt asked if they had the ability to say it was not selecting viaduct as preferred alternative but concurrent with the guidance of the Rail Committee, use the authority to add Caltrain looking at the viaduct. City Manager Shikada stated typically once a contract goes to Council, any changes needed Council approval. Chair Burt stated they were back to needing to get to the first meeting in August on consent to recommend that. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated that he got a message from Legal that they probably could not do that. City Manager Shikada stated he did not have the authority to make an amendment to an existing contract. Chair Burt asked whether getting the amendment to the contract on consent the first meeting in August was the most expeditious way and everybody was good with that. City Manager Shikada answered he would only generalize it to the point of direction for staff to proceed that way. He doubted there would be an actual amended contract for Council to approve which they would typically do on an item. He asked if they had enough to work with and stated the deadlines for getting an item on the first meeting in August was no further than two weeks away. Chair Burt said that he assumed a month and a half was enough time. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 18 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted there was flexibility to potentially do a consent item without needing to amend the contract. Chair Burt suggested they pursue a way to have Caltrain review the viaduct and defer review of the trench. Part of the review would be Caltrain looking at a AACOM’s cost estimate. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated they did not anticipate a change in cost unless it was determined the trench would also be evaluated. Council Member Veenker commented it was important to make it clear they were not asking to reinclude this but trying to address the concerns that had been raised about the quality of a report that was part of the basis upon which the prior decision to remove the viaduct was based to help determine what their recommendation would be with respect to the viaduct option and asked that be included in the Staff report to Council. MOTION: Chair Burt moved, seconded by Council Member Lauing to recommend to Council that staff pursue having Caltrain evaluate the Viaduct Alternative and defer the Trench Alternative specific to Meadow Drive and Charleston Road Grade Crossings. MOTION PASSED: 3-0 Chair Burt stated there was also the question of whether they would make recommendations to Council on eliminating the trench and including the viaduct. He stated doing this recommendation would be an agendized item to the Council. He asked if there was tentative planning on when a substantive Council meeting on grade separations would occur. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated he would look at the workplan and see what the schedule was but he thought they were planning for December. Chair Burt stated they would have another Rail Committee meeting in August before such a recommendation needed to be made. They had talked about at the next Rail Committee meeting looking at viaduct design alternatives. He asked if action should be deferred on bullet number one. He stated they could not count on having Caltrain feedback before making that recommendation. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted they did not have a consultant for a task order for something similar to this so having something for August might not be feasible. Chair Burt stated they did not need a consultant or staff work. Nadia Naik asked if they wanted to think about having a noise person come back to the subset of this Committee or to the full Council if and when they have a conversation about the viaduct coming back. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 19 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 Council Member Lauing stated they could add that as an agenda item to this meeting. Ms. Naik stated there was a question about whether that was needed or whether it would be put to full Council because by that time they would have their geotechnical studies and maybe an answer from Caltrain on four tracks. She stated they should have the noise guy just come to the big City Council meeting in order to save money. Council Member Lauing stated if the noise person came there and they were comfortable with it, they could just give a Committee report. Ms. Naik agreed but stated that did not mean that the rest of the Council would ask the same questions and there would be a larger audience with the City Council meeting. Chair Burt commented they were flushing things out in a thoughtful manner. He asked how they would go about budgeting it if they wanted to have a noise consultant. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi stated they would have to look into the contract. Chair Burt requested they finding out what it would take to get additional noise insights as a follow-up for August. Chief Transportation Official Kamhi noted that one of Staff’s questions was how and when to do additional community outreach on this and that would follow on a recommendation from Rail Committee to the Council. He stated it was possible Rail Committee might decide they wanted some sort of additional community engagement prior to making a decision. Chair Burt stated they wanted to go back and recognize part of the hook on the federal dollars was continuing to push the ball forward on getting to a preferred alternative. They needed to ensure there were not multiple month gaps between each of the subdecision points. They needed to move forward in a way that would let them qualify for funding in upcoming years. The pros and cons of the impact of the COVID disruption on use of transit and traffic congestion was that the time horizon in which they had the congestion crisis of them adding more trains and more cars was pushed out more than a few years. Before they did not have enough time. The question now was whether they had enough time or extra time. They were less pressured in terms of needing to get this finished before they had a gridlock crisis in their community and more pressured in terms of needing to take advantage of what may be a one-time funding option. Council Member Veenker stated that she believed they may know what happens with the VMware acquisition by Augustish and what happens to the campus and what impact that has on traffic and for how long. Chair Burt argued that in the research park they have ebbs and flows and this would be a period of an ebb but ultimately they should assume that the research park would return to full occupancy even if there was a disruption from one major employer leaving and taking a while SUMMARY MINUTES Page 20 of 20 Sp. Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 6/20/2023 for another to go there. It might influence a little bit on the margins but he did not think that was the fundamental issue. Ms. Naik commented in terms of the schedule going forward, from a community perspective it might be helpful for the August meeting to have a timeline laying out all the data inputs that are coming. She recommended doing a community update and holding a meeting at Mitchell Park and outlined the topics for that meeting. Chair Burt recommended having an initial discussion of when and what scope they might have a community meeting on at the August meeting. Future Meetings and Agendas Next meeting: Wednesday, August 23rd Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 5:03 P.M.