High-speed rail may have just received another $900 million in federal funding, but Palo Alto isn’t interested. At last night’s city council meeting, councilmembers voted unanimously to tell the High Speed Rail Authority that they do not want a station in their city. They don’t want one in any of the adjacent cities either, but they were hesitant to speak out for their neighbors.
The problem, they say, comes down to traffic, costs, and parking. Building a station in Palo Alto would serve over 15,000 people daily, substantially increasing traffic in the city. Commuters would need parking spaces, and apart from a 67,000 square foot station, the city would have to construct an adjacent parking facility with room for at least 1,000 cars, in addition to needing space for 2,000 more cars within a 3-mile radius. These latter parking costs, they warn, would be the responsibility of the city. Other people expressed concern about how high-speed rail would affect Caltrain and San Jose’s Mineta Airport, which is already suffering from low traffic.
With Palo Alto potentially out of the running, two other cities, Mountain View and Redwood City, are the leading contenders for the proposed mid-Peninsula station.
Read More at The Mercury News.
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