BURLINGAME The Americans with Disabilities Act was nearly 100 years away when the Burlingame Avenue train station opened in 1894. Once Caltrain completes a $20.5 million renovation next year, the historic station will be fully accessible to the physically challenged, while Caltrain will be closer to eliminating a handful of "hold out" stations that slow down the system. The project, which breaks ground today, is the first of three near-term plans for the station. The City Council is spearheading an effort to build a centennial plaza next to the station, and the Burlingame Historical Society is raising money to place a museum inside the building itself. The Mission Revival-style station is one of several between San Francisco and Gilroy that board passengers for north- and southbound trains on the same side of the tracks, forcing Caltrain to employ what it calls the "hold out" rule. Because the Burlingame station does not have a platform on the east side of the tracks,passengers waiting for a northbound train must walk across the southbound tracks to board. As a result, two trains cannot occupy or pass through the station at once. "You have to plan for one of them to go slower to allow another one to go through, so it's a bottleneck in the system," Caltrain spokesman Jonah Weinberg said..
Caltrain plans to revamp its other "hold out" stations, including those in Santa Clara and South San Francisco, during the next several years, increasing the system's efficiency, Weinberg said. The project also is designed to improve safety for motorists and pedestrians. Fencing will be installed between the tracks, while the portion of South Lane that crosses the tracks just south of the station will be closed. In addition to constructing a new platform, Caltrain will landscape the site with palm trees and other foliage. Burlingame officials and residents had extensive input in the landscape design, a collaboration that City Councilman Russ Cohen called "healthy and productive."
The city has allocated $50,000 for a landscape architect to come up with designs for the centennial plaza. Mayor Terry Nagel said she does not, however, expect the plaza to be completed in time for the city's 100th-anniversary celebration in June, because construction will not begin until the Caltrain project is finished in May 2008. The city intends to pay for the plaza, which will be situated to the west of the station, with about $250,000 in private donations. "I think it's going to be fantastic," said Jeannie Gilmore, a board member of Citizens for a Better Burlingame. Gilmore said she is particularly excited about the safety of the new station and making the plaza "a place of enormous community interest," where concerts and other cultural events can take place.
The historical society has begun a $1 million fundraising drive to pay for a new museum inside the station, which is no longer used as a ticket office. Cohen, president of the society, hopes to open the museum on a limited basis by the end of the year. While Caltrain works to make its trains run faster, a group of 11 current and former city council members throughout San Mateo County, including the mayor of Burlingame, are lobbying the agency to rejigger its schedule. One goal of the Coalition to Expand Transit Service is to restore local service to some stations, including the Broadway station in Burlingame, that Caltrain has cut out of its weekday schedules. Nagel said the coalition wants Caltrain to increase the number of local stops, improve the connections between the Peninsula's various transit systems and expedite safety improvements
For those who are awitchin' and a()itchin' about "rushing" through a Plaza, hope this article puts your minds to rest because we certainly don't want to "rush" anything in Burlingame.
- Written by Fiona
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