Council members, I am asking you to reconsider your recent instruction to city staff to spend yet more money on planning for a tunnel under the railroad tracks at Middle Avenue. The new estimate for this project is a shocking $60 million. Yes, the city can try to find/extort more grant money for this project, but it will never be sufficient. The taxpayers will inevitably have to make up the funding gap of millions of dollars.
Why? This is a VANITY PROJECT that has been floated for over a decade. The city has survived just fine without this passageway and we don’t need it now, not at the cost of valuable resources needed for real projects and maintenance in this city.
This is your rationale:
Mayor Betsy Nash said she sees the project as vital, given major new developments projects on the horizon. She singled out Parkline (https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.almanacnews.com%2fnewsletter%2fnews-alert-new-parkline-development-design-has-250-more-residential-units%2f&c=E,1,NlZYGnMxlgrZiRQ--Qv8J_3KS3L5KFVMGy2W49wyMYlIhF4j1IZyDCE8V2Z1hLSs_jdzVcRkzBpjVrqgp8zcPTF9U9csNp2AkmKeexAiTX2c&typo=1) , an approved mixed-use project at SRI International’s headquarters across from Burgess Park.
I live one block from Middle Avenue and bicycle extensively to Palo Alto and to the east side of town. I do not see ANY critical need for a $60 million bicycle tunnel. The crossings at Ravenswood Avenue and Palo Alto Avenue suit just fine. It’s a short bike ride on either side of the tracks, on level ground. On the east side of the tracks Alma Street is hardly busy at all. Anyone can bike or walk it with ease. Why waste $60 million to create a tunnel? This is a worse boondoggle than the Homer Avenue tunnel in Palo Alto, scarcely used enough in my experience to justify its exorbitant cost a decade ago to the City of Palo Alto.
Stop this project now and let sunk costs be sunk. Don’t sink more good money into a bad and foolish nice-but-hardly-critical bicycling trophy.
Mical Atz Brenzel
Garland Drive, Menlo Park
Sent from my iPhone
