BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Caltrain is preparing to dump large boulders or sacks that weigh a ton each into the San Francisquito Creek during a storm to stabilize a bridge between Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller made sure he was hearing the plan correctly at yesterday’s (Thursday’s) Caltrain board meeting.
“When that San Francisquito Creek is really roaring, you’ll be dropping really heavy boulders down onto the side to try to stabilize it?” he asked.
“Director Mueller, I don’t know if we have much other choice,” said Rob Barnard, Caltrain’s deputy chief of design and construction.
An engineer would decide whether the bridge is in imminent danger of collapsing before the plan is carried out, Barnard said.
Officials are expecting El Nino to bring heavy rains this winter.
During storms last year, soil on the northern bank of the creek was washed away, leaving a nearly vertical slope holding up the bridge.
The Alma Street pedestrian and bicycle bridge 50 feet downstream faces the same risk of collapse.
Caltrain declared an emergency in March, hired a contractor and budgeted $6.5 million for construction.
Crews were ready to put in soil, fabric, boulders and plants to make the slope gentler and more secure, while enhancing the natural habitat for fish.
But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers required Caltrain to get approval from a state historic preservation officer, which wasn’t possible before the October deadline.
Construction equipment is only allowed in the creek only in the dry season from June 15 to Oct. 15.
The bridge itself, built in 1902, is considered historic. It’s also right next to El Palo Alto, a 1,000-year-old redwood tree that is a symbol of the city of Palo Alto and Stanford.
The difference between the original plan and an emergency repair is that the original plan involves construction within the creek.
In an emergency, “you’re essentially backing up and dropping the rocks down,” Barnard said.
Barnard said boulders would be staged nearby but not necessarily at the bridge. Caltrain could also use “super sacks,” which are large plastic bags that can be filled to weigh a ton each.
Redwood City Mayor Jeff Gee said the last-minute permitting delay was “unacceptable.”
“It puts our ridership at risk,” he said.
Caltrain should do the emergency plan and “ask for forgiveness later,” he said.
“We’re not going to wait for a meeting when people are available to say, ‘What do we do?’”
Menlo Park Resident Adina Levin said board members and residents could’ve pushed Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and Congressman Kevin Mullin to make a call and get the permits through — even if that meant camping out in their office, she said.
Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard said she hadn’t reached out to Eshoo or Mullin regarding the permit.
Someone truly dropped the ball here. What does it take to get an appointment with a “state historic preservation officer”? Why could this still not be done, this fall?
Stupid is as Stupid does
I don’t know about the “historic” aspect of the bridge but in Philadelphia PA Governor
Shapiro together with the Pennsylvania DOT and various Unions had a similar but much larger bridge built in three (3) days.
If your plan requires magical giant boulders (sourced from where?) to be dropped in the middle of a flooding creek under your bridge then you have no plan. If the bridge becomes unstable then Caltrain service will be suspended for a long, long time at the county line.
I do like the creativity though, it’s a fun game to invent magical ways of solving our problems. Ooh let me try, I will tunnel under the creek with a giant drill!
It’s hard to believe they’re being serious.How do they remove the rocks? Or do they become features of the creek?
dropping in boulders each weighing one ton will cause the creek to back up in a severe storm. Homeowners in Allied Arts should be worried about this potential side effect.
This is an opportunity to give this old bridge a rest, and to replace it with a new bridge that would take Alma St straight across the creek into Menlo Park. This would allow us the completely close the Palo Alto Ave rail crossing, systematically eliminate horn noise, and give both Palo Alto and Menlo Park residents east of the tracks, direct access to each other’s communities.
Both concerns of the El Palo Alto tree, and traffic flows into adjoining neighborhoods, could be addressed.
Its time to think big!
If you want to eliminate train-horn noise, establish a quiet zone. Done.
That bridge will collapse due to old age before they can get it together to extend Alma st. into Menlo Park. Projects involving the City of Palo Alto always wind up taking 20 times longer than they actually should.
The bridge is on its last legs. This is a stopgap emergency measure until this ancient structure can be replaced with a new one. It’s Caltrain’s bridge and their trains that could fall into the creek if the bridge gives way, so what the local politicos think counts for very little.
Yeah, Caltrain could kill two birds with one stone, by just dropping in an at-grade level combo auto/train bridge, perhaps with a pedestrian walkway. They gain a new rail bridge, and loose one less at-grade rail crossing to deal with.
PS: Love the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. 🙂
Hey, Martin, they ARE thinking big. Big boulders. Big SNAFUs. We pay BIG taxes and can’t even get the most basic public safety needs met. Potholes on El Camino? Too bad. Not this year. Big floods? Too bad. Not this year. At the same time, the Santa Clara County Supes voted to spend $450,000 of our VTA taxes “to study the possibility” of a separated bike lane on Foothill Expressway.
We’re becoming a third-world stone-age country. Dave Price got it right with his cartoon today.