Worries over possibility of home taking

Officials want to separate both Scott Street in San Bruno and South Linden Street in South San Francisco from the Caltrain tracks to improve safety and traffic congestion caused by gate down time. Wednesday’s meeting specifically focused on Scott Street, which is surrounded by many homes. 

While the traffic congestion caused by gate down time today is largely manageable, officials say it’ll significantly worsen in the future, as more and more trains will be traveling along the corridor starting in 2022 when Caltrain’s electrification project is expected to be complete.

“You may be waiting one cycle now, but in the future you will be waiting many cycles because of the backup of queues,” said Millette Litzinger, senior project manager for engineering firm Aecom, adding queues will spill over to San Mateo Avenue and down to Interstate 380 by 2045 if no improvements are made.

The two intersections in San Bruno and South San Francisco have been studied together because of their close proximity to one another. Each of the three project alternatives includes a grade separation at South Linden Street, but it has not yet been determined if a grade separation will occur at Scott Street. 

Scott Street would remain an at-grade crossing in what is being referred to as Option A with no property impacts, but residents would have to put up with burdensome delays due to increasing gate down time.

In Option B, Scott Street would be closed to vehicles and either an overcrossing or undercrossing for pedestrians and cyclists would be constructed at the railroad tracks. That option may also include a connection between Scott Street and Huntington Avenue and no residential properties will be affected. 

But the final alternative, the exceedingly controversial Option C, will bring significant impacts to properties. For this option, the railroad crossing at Scott Street is grade separated for vehicles as well as cyclists and pedestrians. 

There are four variations of Option C: the road could be constructed above or below the tracks, which would remain at grade, and there are also two hybrid variations in which the track is partially raised and the road partially lowered and vice versa.

Each of the four variations under Option C will create a difference in elevation between the road and adjacent properties, affecting between 40 and 70 driveways depending on the variation, Litzinger said.

“Some of the impacts are minor and some are very significant, it just depends how close you are to the railroad tracks,” she said. “The properties closest to the tracks will be most impacted.”

Option C was strongly opposed by those in the audience.

“The people who have properties and businesses, where are they going to relocate? They can’t do it. You’ll destroy their lives with this project and you’ll do that for pedestrians?” resident Dennis King asked rhetorically. “What you’re going to do is an eyesore, it’s going to lower property values, it’s just not going to be good. There are a lot of residential areas there.”

Many in the room were not convinced that traffic will worsen significantly around Scott Street in the future. They also didn’t buy the argument that the project is necessary for improved safety, claiming that the Caltrain corridor in San Bruno has only seen two fatalities in the past several decades. 

A vote was conducted during the meeting and 14 people selected Option A, 10 voted for Option B and just one wanted Option C. 

The San Bruno City Council will select one of the three options during a meeting tentatively set for Oct. 8. 

Officials are not yet announcing a cost estimate for the project, which remains unfunded, but grade separations often cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 102