Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-09-17 Rail Committee Summary MinutesRAIL COMMITTEE SUMMARY MINUTES Page 1 of 5 Regular Meeting September 17, 2024 The Rail Committee of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Community Meeting Room and by virtual teleconference at 2:30 P.M. Present In-Person: Burt, Lythcott-Haims Present Virtually: None. Absent: Lauing Call to Order Chair Burt called the meeting to order and asked the clerk to call roll. Public Comments No public comments. Verbal Updates on Interagency Activities A. Caltrain Navdeep Dhaliwal, Government and Community Affairs Officer, announced the upcoming electric train launch party on September 21 in Palo Alto and September 22 in San Mateo. She gave an update on Caltrain’s discussion with City Council the day before about the City Partnership Toolkit and Board Station Access Policy Plan. Caltrain hoped to have a forum to discuss this with the Rail Committee. Council Member Lythcott-Haims asked what Ms. Dhaliwal saw that may not inherently align with the City’s interests and priorities and where Caltrain would be doing the most work to try to bring Palo Alto aboard. She wanted to know how typical the overlapping set of land rights structure was, what it is like for Caltrain and what could be done differently to make things smoother. Ms. Dhaliwal thought the use of parking lot would require more discussion between the City and Caltrain. She thought there was a lot of opportunity to engage in parking and site activation that requires more partnership with VTA, Stanford and the City. She explained that Palo Alto has a unique dynamic because so many parties are involved. They have been fortunate to be partnering with Jason Kim at VTA and others through SUMMARY MINUTES Page 2 of 5 Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/17/2024 the Palo Alto Mobility Hub Planning and working closely to talk about the near, medium and long-term milestones that can be reached to bring change to the station. Chair Burt discussed VTA’s agreement to set up a board ad hoc committee on the future of the intermodal station in order to pull together all the entities in the partnership in order to reconcile different interests. He talked about the value of the Station Access Policy and the goals that are fulfilled by transit use. He hoped to bring the consultants for the Bike and Ped Master Plan in to have a discussion on the Access Policy and where they are on the development of the Bike and Ped Plan to make sure they align in goals. B. VTA Jason Kim, Senior Transit Planner, gave an update on the Palo Alto Mobility Hub Master Plan. He discussed a joint study being developed between VTA, the City of Palo Alto, Stanford, SamTrans and Caltrain to look at a near and long-term vision for the Palo Alto Transit Center area. A million dollars in VTA Measure A funding for this project has been identified. The plan is to work with the group to put together a scope that will get sent out for an RFP and then bring a consultant on board to help with the full study process as well as outreach to Palo Alto residents for the site plans. Chair Burt added that the next step would be to align what is going on at the staff level with what will be the role of the Committee and how they move forward. Council Member Lythcott-Haims expressed the importance of the public seeing the partnerships involved in running the multimodal center. C. City Staff Philip Kamhi, Chief Transportation Official, noted staff continued to work with Caltrain and VTA on the cooperative agreement. He stated that the Caltrain Electrification Event would be the following Saturday from 2:00 to 6:00 PM at the Palo Alto Station. He remarked they were still working through with Caltrain on the scope of the cooperative agreement. Chair Burt questioned if there were any updates about the conceptual designs. Ripon Bhatia, Senior Engineer, explained that was part of the cooperative agreement that would be the initial phase of work which would entail reviewing all the existing conceptual plans to understand the right-of-way and other issues and concerns that were listed by the Council and Rail Committee to be reviewed before selection of the concept plan and come back to the Real Committee and the council. They could not spend the FRA and VTA money until this agreement was approved. The hope was that it would go to TOPS Committee at Caltrain in November and come back to the City Council and the Caltrain board in the first week in early December. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 3 of 5 Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/17/2024 Verbal Updates Public Comment 1. Stephen R spoke about the need for cooperation and compromise from Caltrain on the grade crossings. Information Reports 1. Update on the Near-term Projects in the Vicinity of Churchill Avenue Crossing NO ACTION Mr. Kamhi provided a slide presentation providing updates on several near-term projects in the vicinity of Churchill Avenue Crossing including the purpose and current projects. Shahla Yazdy, Project Engineer, joined the presentation discussing the Churchill Ave Enhanced Bikeway Project details. Chair Burt queried if there would be flashing pedestrian crossing triggers at the Castilleja Crossing and expressed concern that bike crossing was not being addressed and recommended looking into that further. He added that the Seale Bike and Ped Underpass would greatly increase the bike traffic at that location further compounding the issue. Ms. Yazdy confirmed they do exist but will be updated. She added they are limited with right- of-way at this location. They looked at adding bike crossings and boxes but those are reserved for signal improvements but bicyclists could use the same buttons that the pedestrians would. She agreed to look into the bike crossing issue. Ruchika Aggarwal, Transportation Engineer, joined the presentation discussing slides with details about the Churchill Avenue/Alma Street Crossing Safety improvements. Chair Burt queried if there is additional queuing for the Paly bikers going eastbound that line up there when school gets out and suggested putting that on the agenda for grade crossing discussions. He wanted to know what the benefits of signal optimizations would be. Ms. Aggarwal answered they do not have additional bike box but they do have the green bike lane through the intersection until the first signal and then continuation through the intersection. Mr. Bhatia described safety elements that the signal improvements included such as clarity for vehicular traffic to stop before the tracks, pedestrian push buttons, bike lane striping and other things that coordinate through the traffic signals and signal timing modifications. Mr. Kamhi noted the main purpose of this project was safety. Mr. Bhatia presented slides discussing the Quiet Zone Project details on Palo Alto Avenue and Churchill Avenue, Meadow Drive and Charleston Road. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 4 of 5 Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/17/2024 Council Member Lythcott-Haims read an email she had received from a member of the public expressing concern about whether Caltrain will have to continue to blow its horns even with quad gates. Chair Burt indicated the location referenced in the email was different from where there would be quad gates so it sounded like the question was if there was a need to still blow horns at stations and not at grade crossings. He questioned whether the station horn issue would also be a candidate for wayside horns. He asked if Caltrain was considering looking at a corridor- wide approach from CPUC. Mike Meader, Chief Safety Officer, explained that typically the train horn would not be blown in an approved quiet zone but the engineer has the option if he sees an unsafe situation. They are required to blow the horns coming into stations and if there is a grade crossing next to a station a horn might be heard. He indicated they could explore the wayside horns. He confirmed Caltrain was looking at a corridor-wide approach from CPUC. He indicated he would talk about some of the more problematic crossings and they would present this strategy and address it with the CPUC across the alignment. Mr. Bhatia added there would be economy of scale. Item 1 Public Comment: 1. John M. was excited about the prospect of quiet zones and encouraged moving it up the agenda as quickly as possible. 2. Melinda M. was perplexed that they were at ground zero on the quiet zones for Palo Alto and an increase of the projected costs. She wondered how much of the cost was for consultant fees. She described the noise as a health issue. She wanted to know how Atherton dealt with this issue in the past. 3. Steve R. hoped that rail sentry would provide a suicide prevention solution on the grade crossings. Chair Burt indicated that Atherton was a multi-year project that led the way on the corridor. They are now addressing how to move forward with the right design and features in as short of a timeframe as possible. He noted that the consultant made a misstatement regarding the cost at the last meeting and the numbers were consistent with what they have discussed and what other cities have had combined with the escalating costs on civil engineering jobs. He was interested in accelerating the timeline. Mr. Kamhi noted a better refined cost estimate would be coming soon. Mr. Meader gave a slide presentation discussing corridor-wide grade crossing improvements including vehicle track incursions, grade crossing safety enhancements, pavement markings, markers, delineators, signage, lighting, pursuing technology, rail sentry technology and intrusion, fencing and a map of fencing. SUMMARY MINUTES Page 5 of 5 Rail Committee Meeting Summary Minutes: 09/17/2024 Chair Burt spoke about the costs and circumstances impacting the improvement of the safety and security of the corridor. He stated that in the last couple of months, Caltrain’s CEO has committed to a comprehensive corridor-wide program of adopting best practices throughout the corridor on safety and security that would be a less costly solution. Future Meetings and Agendas Mr. Kamhi discussed upcoming items including the Cooperative Agreement that was hoped to be in November, the Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan update and a quiet zone update all planned for November. Nothing is currently slated for October unless the Cooperative Agreement comes in quickly because they would have to do the legal review. City Manager Shikada suggested keeping Cooperative Agreement as a point of review in the meantime. Chair Burt added that as an intersection of this Committee, they now had the multimodal working group led by VTA. He expected they would probably have all or most of those meeting in Palo Alto. He would be meeting with the VTA staff in the coming week to think about what the first meeting would be and thought maybe instead of a City Rail meeting they would have an inaugural meeting of that. He wanted to ensure they were involved with defining what the station access and circulation problems are. He added they will want to make sure Stanford it invited. Council Member Lythcott-Haims added it would be preferable to get with the bike and ped consultants before they have gone too far down the road. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 4:33 P.M.