Dear Menlo Park City Council,

This evening you are discussing the Menlo Park City Council position on the
Dumbarton Rail Project. I have been a Menlo Park resident for 18 years and
share these strongly held thoughts for your consideration:

1. As a taxpayer and venture capitalist, I am appalled that this project is
still being considered given the terrible financial return. As I
understand, there is a current cost estimate of $595 million which includes
minimal money for impact mitigation. Given the track record of cost
increase for these types of projects and given the necessary cost of
mitigation, the cost will likely increase to $1 billion or more by
completion. At $1 billion and a ridership of 3,000 riders per day, a ticket
would need to cost $133 to pay back in 10 years just to cover the capital
costs. In addition, the operating loss each year is "substantial" according
the CalTrain executives. There must be a better solution that involves more
innovative, modern technology with less environmental impact. Light rail,
BART extension or even paving the Dumbarton rail bed and running hydrogen
busses between the stations comes to mind. These solutions have many
advantages. It appears that CalTrain is wedded to old, expensive, noisy,
polluting transport (even considering refurbished trains to save money)
rather than using taxpayer money in an effective manner. Not all mass
transit is equally good and CalTrain has chosen to focus blindly on the
worst of all alternatives.
   
2. Homes that are near the tracks must have sound and vibration mitigation
that will allow the communities to continue. We must be able to sleep. We
must be able to have a barbeque in the backyard. We can't have cracks in
the home foundations because of vibrations from trains over this clay soil.
If everyone decides to leave the neighborhood, the sense of community will
be lost and much of our investment in these $1 million homes will be wiped
away. We need a very detailed, home-by-home study of the sound and vibration
impacts along with solutions for mitigation.
 
3. Regular freight routes over the Dumbarton Bridge would increase the
environmental impact. To assure that there are never freight trains, build
a light rail or hydrogen bus road than cannot ever be used by the freight
companies. If freight is a possibility, then assure that mitigation fully
accounts for all environmental impacts of freight rather than just
continually talking about only 6 trains in the morning and 6 trains in the
evening.
   
4. According to CalTrain at a recent meeting, ground and noise level
requirements that were stated in the draft environment report could be
essentially ignored by releasing a final environmental impact report after
the hearings that arbitrarily set a new level of environmental requirements
to deal with the realities of budget or schedule. Wow! This does not make
me feel very good about the process. I hope our input is not ignored. Is
there a place where we can see all the input from the Phase 1 study?
 
5. Safety is a major concern whenever there is open track at ground level.
One-way trains across the Dumbarton Rail Bridge seem so short sighted.
Before this current rail proposal has been in place 5 years, I suspect that
the eastbound morning traffic will be far larger than the westbound morning
traffic. Note how morning traffic toward San Jose is now larger than
morning traffic toward San Francisco. It would be much better to do the
rail improvements in the East Bay as suggested, but have a different
technology across the bay that will allow for 2-way traffic.
 

Thanks for your attention.

Regards,

Alan Marty
Received on Tue May 22 11:12:27 2007