Opinion: Dixon's Pedestrian Underpass Too Expensive

Recently the City of Dixon received government guarantees of nearly $5 million to pay for most of the cost of building a pedestrian and bicycle underpass under the railroad tracks near the train station (currently occupied only by the ).

In reality, the reason for building such an underpass is to have the Capital Corridor commuter train stop in Dixon. This would be only one of the very expensive projects Dixon would need to build to have the train stop at the current train station.

I believe that the number of passengers Dixon would contribute to the train would be minimal, and that justifying such a stop, only eight or 10 miles from the stop in Davis, would be difficult. Yet, there are those who still seem to think that we are still in the Golden Age of railroads, and that a stop would bring

I’m reminded of the old electric Oakland, Antioch and Eastern Railroad which was built from the Bay Area to Sacramento and beyond as primarily a passenger line. In 1913 a spur was built from that line north to Dixon, and passenger service was inaugurated with great fanfare. At first, many Dixonites rode the train, mainly to try it out, but the passenger load quickly dwindled to almost nothing and the spur was discontinued three years later.

Also, the main-line railroad through Dixon offered passenger service here for a number of years, but with the coming of automobiles and busses, those passengers gradually disappeared as well. Dixon’s old train station was torn down for lack of business in 1969.

Not that I’m against commuting by rail. When I lived in the Bay Area, I traveled to work via Caltrain for a number of years.

Zeroing in on the proposed pedestrian underpass, I have heard figures offered on the number of pedestrians and bicyclists (and skateboarders) who currently cross the tracks at that proposed location.

City estimates were as high as 700 and 500 crossings per day. That seemed way too high to me, so I actually set up a lawn chair at that location on a school day in April, 2011 and counted crossings (both ways) between 6:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. – which includes one of the peak periods of kids going to school.

I took the figures for those three hours and applied them toward the rest of the day (recreating the same peak period during the afternoon when schools let out). During slack periods, I estimated 10 crossings per hour, even up until 10:30 p.m.

My generous estimate came to 222 crossings – one-half to one-third of the city’s estimates (how did they arrive at their figures?).

The other interesting aspect of my research was that I could also observe and count pedestrian and bicyclist railroad track crossings on ‘A’ Street and on First Street.

During my actual count from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., the number of crossings at the proposed undercrossing site was 59, while the number of people crossing at the other two nearby sites was also exactly 59. So even if a pedestrian undercrossing was built, it would only protect half the people currently crossing tracks in the downtown area.

The total cost of building an underpass to help meet the demands of Union Pacific for a train stop would be approximately $6 million. In addition, Union Pacific’s needs would also require the construction of a vehicle underpass under the tracks along ‘A’ Street for more than $20 million. This is just entirely unreasonable, but the city continues to move ahead seemingly out of blind inertia.

Part of the thinking is that the $5 million given to Dixon for the underpass is “free money” coming from somewhere else.

That’s bad thinking.

All such money comes from the taxpayers – you and me. I can remember the city of San Mateo, where I used to live, building a fancy suspension bridge across a small tidal stream in a park for $500,000 when a perfectly fine metal bridge could’ve been had for $125,000. Again, it was “free” money, so why economize?

If it’s just pedestrian safety we’re concerned about, then I propose that we build pedestrian crossing arms at the railroad crossing near the train station, just as Caltrain uses at its passenger stations in the Bay Area. They work fine.

And if nothing can stop the city government’s push for a train station, a more logical place for it (not requiring expensive underpasses) would be to the northeast, on the east side of First Street.

But the best of all scenarios would be frequent bus service between Dixon and Davis’s train station.