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Dear Mayor Howard and Council, <br />Thank you for the opportunity to substantiate and elaborate on the comments I made during the <br />January 13th Council meeting and close off with a couple of alternatives not currently being considered <br />by staff and consultants. <br />1) The expectation that grade separations will somehow eliminate train horn noise in downtown <br />Redwood City is incorrect: every train going through a station must sound its horn to warn <br />passengers on the platforms, regardless of whether the train will stop at the station or whether <br />there are any passengers on the platforms at the time of the pass. <br />2) It is impossible to operate a train at 110 MPH on a track immediately adjacent to a platform, <br />hence the design proposed by the consultants will eliminate one of the benefits of grade <br />separations which is to allow trains to operate at speeds in excess of 125 MPH. <br />3) The High Speed Rail Authority has long contemplated a mid -Peninsula stop which would <br />require a minimum of 4 tracks and two 1,400 -foot -long outboard platforms which cannot <br />possibly be accommodated in downtown Redwood City. <br />4) While a Dumbarton Rail connection in downtown RWC may work for southbound passengers <br />headed for the East Bay and vice versa, it is unreasonable to expect northbound passengers <br />headed for Facebook or the East Bay to travel all the way north to downtown RWC and <br />somehow make a transfer to a southbound train headed for the East Bay. <br />Alternatives not being considered <br />Please consider asking staff why trains that do not stop in downtown Redwood City should be passing <br />through downtown at all, let alone on an elevated structure(!) <br />As an example, the Caltrain Business Plan contemplates operating up to 478 trains/day at maximum <br />buildout. Assuming a stopping pattern where 25% of these trains would stop in Downtown Redwood <br />City, it is unclear why the other 360 trains should also be passing through downtown. <br />One alternative could be to tunnel two passing tracks between Whipple and Highway 84 (1.5 miles). In <br />this alternative, the number of daily trains passing through downtown RWC at maximum buildout would <br />be similar to pre-COVID service levels (92 trains/day) and the business case for grade separations would <br />be greatly diminished because the remaining trains would be travelling at much slower speeds as they <br />approach and depart Downtown RWC. <br />A phased approach <br />While the above alternative contemplates 120 stopping trains/day at maximum buildout, a future <br />operator may elect to increase the number of downtown RWC stops to 160 trains/day or more at a later <br />date. This increase in train traffic would reintroduce the need for grade separations but the construction <br />