BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
City officials say that the replacement of Palo Alto’s Newell Road Bridge is being delayed by a year from its previously announced date, meaning that residents will live through another winter with the risk of their homes flooding.
By delaying construction until 2024, the Pope-Chaucer Bridge won’t be replaced until 2025 at the earliest.
The two bridges, which limit how much water the San Francisquito Creek can hold in a storm, caused hundreds of homes to flood in 1998, and a new government agency formed to remove the ill-advised structures, among other flood control projects.
But the bridge replacements have taken more than 25 years to move through a tangled web of government agencies, regulations, funding disagreements and lawsuits.
Public Works Director Brad Eggleston said at a forum with residents on Jan. 17 that the Newell Road Bridge will be replaced in 2024 — not 2023 as the city has said before.
The city needs another $6 million from Caltrans because construction costs have gone up from $9 million in 2019 to $15 million now, city spokeswoman Meghan Horrigan-Taylor said.
The city also needs to get more regulatory agencies to approve permits, which is expected by September.
Then, contractors can bid on the project, Horrigan-Taylor said.
Work can only happen when it’s dry, so construction would begin in May 2024 at the earliest and last about a year and a half.
History keeps repeating. See you again in another 25 years.
Funny how construction costs keep rising so PA keeps stalling. Thank heavens we can still afford to spend tens of millions of dollars on a fiber to the home network to compete with AT&T and Comcast.