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Photograph by Jeff Kearns
Sunnyvale's stop on the Caltrain line could be demolished and replaced with a new $8.8 million facility, including a 400-space parking garage.
New train station headed to town
By Sam Scott
On November 9, after hours of public comment, the Sunnyvale City Council voted to radically redevelop the city's Caltrain station by constructing a new ticket building and a three-story, 400-space parking structure. The garage will be located on the east side of the current parking lot.
The $8.8 million project now awaits the approval of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors in December. The bulk of the bill--$5.5 million--will be paid with County funds raised by Measures A & B. The city will pay $400,000, and Caltrain and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission will supply the difference, says David Boesch, the Director of Community Development.
The present station will remain open during construction. It will be razed when the new station is ready and its land made available for commercial use, Boesch says.
Vice-Mayor Pat Vorreiter says that the garage will fill a need for more parking and that train ridership should expand as a result of the additional parking. The available parking will rise from 350 spaces to 570 spaces--a 63 percent increase.
"There really is not sufficient parking right now. This will encourage people to use the train. People don't like to drive around and around," Vorreiter says.
Bike lockers will also become more available. One hundred lockers will be available when construction is complete, Vorreiter says. Sixty five are at the existing station.
Mayor Valerio says he sees the station also benefiting downtown shoppers who don't use the train.
"As an ancillary benefit in non-peak hours, the structure will provide additional parking to shoppers who want to patronize downtown."
Councilmember Julia Miller, the lone dissenter, is not satisfied with the plans.
"It was not user-friendly," she says. Miller says she finds the building monolithic and uninviting.
Valerio says he thinks aesthetics should not be a major concern.
"It is a parking structure. We want it to be attractive, but we're not building the Moma museum in San Francisco or the Louvre in Paris."
Miller also objects to exclusion of buses from the station. Riders transferring to buses have to cross the street, walking two blocks to the bus stop.
"You think there would be a drop- off in the station."
Though alone in her point of view among council members, Miller had a number of like-minded allies in the audience. A parade of citizens opposing the building prolonged the meeting to near midnight with their concerns.
Jon Blackner, a Sunnyvale resident who commutes by train to San Francisco, objects to Measures A and B money being used for the project.
"They're using transit money that voters were under the impression would be devoted to increasing transit services not building garages."
Blackner says he would prefer to see the money used to fund faster, more frequent trains.
Margaret Okuzumi, who sent out a flier to alert opponents of the change, says she believes the circulation of the traffic increases the danger for pedestrians and bikers. She says the layout of the parking structure will result in cars exiting from the garage in the route of riders and walkers.
Councilmember Jack Walker says he dismisses such worries. "There are millions of similar parking structures around the country and we don't see problems. To say it's somehow dangerous is some what specious,"
Okuzumi says she will attempt to persuade the County to withhold funding.
Assuming the County does grant the funding, construction should begin in March or April and be completed by late spring in 2001, Boesch says
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
