A portion of the city's planned bike path along the west side of the CalTrain tracks will not be built with the rest of the project this summer because it would have to be rebuilt during two years when the Palo Alto Medical Foundation moves to its new campus on Urban Lane.
The path, which will include construction of a concrete bridge over Embarcadero Road, will eventually extend from Churchill Avenue to the southern end of the CalTrain parking lot at the University Avenue station. Lighting will be installed along the entire length of the path and fencing will separate it from the tracks.
But due to the Medical Foundation's $100 million project, the path will temporarily end at Encina Avenue (just north of Town & Country shopping center), and users will need to divert to Encina and El Camino Real, or take Embarcadero to the Bryant Street Bike Boulevard. This condition may exist for about two years, until the clinic constructs the portion from Encina to the CalTrain parking lot, said City Traffic Engineer Ashok Aggarwal.
The bike path project, which has been in the planning stages for four years, is complex because it involves the interests of several entities, including the CalTrain Joint Powers Board, Stanford University, the Palo Alto Unified School District and several telephone companies, including MCI and Sprint.
When the city began to design the path in 1993, there was no way to foresee the Medical Foundation's relocation from downtown to the Urban Lane site. But given the City Council's approval of the project Jan. 22 and the clinic's estimated move-in date of late 1998, it did not make sense to the city's staff to construct this portion of the path in the CalTrain right-of-way only to have it removed shortly thereafter.
The deleted portion of the path will save an estimated $86,000 in construction costs, but due to some added construction costs the total savings is about $37,000.
The total project cost is $717,000, with nearly $600,000 allotted for construction and the rest, $121,000, having already been spent on design work. Funding for the project is largely coming from outside sources, including $240,000 from state transportation funds, $320,000 in federal funds, $37,000 in mitigation fees from the Holiday Inn, and $118,000 from the city's street improvement fund.
Aggarwal said they expect to start construction in July or August, and complete the path in May or June of 1997.
"I think it will be a big help for bicyclists. Currently there aren't any continuous type of bike routes running north to south on the west side of the tracks."
--Peter Gauvin
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