Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
The Redwood City Council met on October 26, 2026, to discuss several major items including a presentation on the Reimagined Dumbarton project by SamTrans, an ordinance establishing objective design standards, and a study session on a community benefits framework for the proposed Stanford Medicine Cancer Center. The council also received public comments on a range of topics, approved the consent calendar, and heard updates on committee work.
Detailed instructions for public comment will be provided on the screen when the time for public comment begins. And lastly, I'd like to remind everybody that comments should remain within the city's subject matter jurisdiction and relate to matters that are appropriately before the city council. We welcome public participation and recognize that members of the our community may have strongly held views and strong emotions about issues before us. However, we ask that all speakers conduct themselves respectfully. My name is Millie Tollison. I'm the director of planning at SAMTrans, and I am also serving as the project manager of the reimagined Dumbarton project. I am going to be co-presenting tonight with my colleague Anna Vasadev from our government and community affairs team. Are we rolling? Okay. Oh, perfect. Thank you. Oops. A little too fast. Okay, so this evening, very excited to be with you to give you an overview of a project we're calling Reimagined Dumbarton. I'll give you a brief project overview. We'll also tell you a little bit about the community engagement that we've done so far in the project and that we're currently doing right now. And we'll be able to share some of our initial initial proposed project designs, and we'll wrap up with next steps. So what is reimagined Dumbarton? Reimagined Dumbarton is a vision to transform the former freight line, freight rail line known as the Dumbarton Rail Corridor, into a five-mile long dedicated busway, bus rapid transit style busway, and walking and bicycling trail between Redwood City and East Palo Alto. So our study area map is on the left. The thick blue line is the is the Dumbarton Corridor. So that shows you the right of way as well as the area that would be converted into that dedicated busway and walking and bicycling trail. And then we'll talk a little bit more in a few slides, but we also have some concepts and potential alignments for how the bus service would ultimately connect all the way into Redwood City Transit Center and Caltrain Station. And some folks may know that the Dumbarton Rail Corridor also includes a rail bridge that is unusable today, but a rail bridge over the bay over into the East Bay. But this project is a more near-term project that's focused just on uh the right of way here on the peninsula. So why reimagine Dumbarton? Uh the Dumbarton Corridor today is uh very underutilized. It hasn't seen any meaningful rail service um in uh multiple decades. Um and it really um one thing that we hear a lot from the communities uh near the corridor is that it mostly just acts as a barrier today. So disconnecting communities from each other and from destinations that they may want to go to. So our goals with this project are to reconnect communities, creating new walking and bicycling connections and improving access to all types of places. Um this project really um uh presents an incredible opportunity to provide faster and more reliable transit service by offering um our buses that dedicated right-of-way, the type of dedicated right-of-way that people love uh trains for. Our buses could benefit from having that uh typodedicated service. Um, and this service is envisioned to be operated with zero mission buses as Sam Trans transitions our entire fleet into zero mission buses. Um this project would incorporate active transportation and community placemaking, um, as well as be able to respond to the changing changing travel needs that we have seen in the last few years since the pandemic. Um, and also allow us to bring improvements soon. So this is a near-term project that we hope to get. Um we'll talk a little bit about a potential timeline later, but hoping this is something we could really get going and get on the ground in the next 10 years. Um while I we also one thing that we do like to say, because it is important is that this project would also preserve the potential for a rail project in the future, but again, this is a more near-term project that allows us to get this corridor activated, benefiting the community in the near term. Um so I I just wanted to share a few examples of where else these types of projects have been done. I think it's really helpful to hear about some examples. Um these types of busway projects are very successful all around the world and in multiple examples in our own country. So some examples here include down in LA. There's a service called the G Line, which is an incredibly productive bus uh BRT service. Um it also uses part of a former railroad corridor. It's a bit longer than our uh project at 18 miles long, um, but it's an incredibly productive uh and well-used project. Um there in the middle, there's an example out of Minneapolis. And I would say this example is maybe a little bit more similar to our context, where there would be that dedicated dedicated bus lanes and also that walking and bicycling trail, a paved trail next to it. That's a two and a about two and a half mile long service, a little shorter.