The Daily Post enlightened us yesterday with a frontpage piece on the railroad bridge between Menlo Park and Palo Alto that needs to be replaced ASAP. The steel bridge is 120 years old and could crack at any time, said Rob Barnard, Caltrain's deputy chief of rail development. The ugly part of the story is the schedule and impact on operations. Here are some snippets from the piece:
Caltrain will get to work on designing the bridge at the end of 2024. Caltrain will come up with a preferred method for replacing the bridge over San Francisquito Creek by 2025, Barnard said. Steel from the bridge was sent to a lab to be analyzed for strength and composition. The study found that the bridge is not in imminent danger of collapse, and there are no cracks. The bridge must be replaced by 2033, and the project will take nine years in total, Barnard said.
Trains won't be able to cross the bridge during two years of construction, Barnard said. Caltrain may have to run fleets of busses between the Palo Alto station and the Menlo Park station so people can still ride the train, he said. The "bus bridge" would have to move hundreds of people during the peak hours, so the logistics would be very complicated, Barnard said.
Wanna bet? This project and two years of off-the-train-on-the-bus-off-the-bus-on-the-train will kill commuter ridership. It will be a complete mess and everyone will be back in their cars for any trip that crosses the creek. All of the on-going electrification work and supposed faster service will not bolster ridership until 2033 as the absolute best-case scenario--and when does the best-case ever play out on these projects? It turns out they are already holding Caltrains off the bridge when a Union Pacific freighter is coming so there aren't two trains on the bridge at the same time. I see the finances bleeding red and another sales tax and/or bond measure on the horizon.
What a mess. You are right that this will kill ridership. Add a bike to the transfer and it gets even worse.
Posted by: Handle Bard | September 25, 2022 at 02:08 PM
I guess Stanford and other companies will have to run shuttles from Menlo Park and California Ave stations ... or let people work from home. They've been trying to get workers back, but good luck with that with a 2-year Caltrain disruption. Which you know will be longer than 2 years.
Posted by: HMB | September 25, 2022 at 05:29 PM
The Daily Post is reporting that the Army Corps of Engineer required them to get an additional permit from the state historic preservation office which they cannot pull off before the rainy season (possibly) starts, so this project is delayed another year.
Posted by: Joe | October 04, 2023 at 04:11 PM