SLO city to build new fencing along Railroad Safety Trail 

San Luis Obispo Public Works Director Matt Horn used a photo instead of words to make his point to the SLO City Council on Sept. 6.

The image projected onto the City Hall screen showed a tattered section of chain link fence that separates the city's popular Railroad Safety Trail from its namesake, the Union Pacific Railroad, as a freight train passes by.

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• Photo Courtesy Of SLO City
• INSECURE On Sept. 6, the SLO City Council approved funding for new fencing to separate the Union Pacific Railroad from the city's Railroad Safety Trail.

With some parts mangled or leveled to the ground and others completely missing, the photo captured just one of the breaches in fencing along the mile stretch of multi-modal pathway that connects the Jennifer Street bridge to Orcutt Road, which cyclists and pedestrians are known to slip through to cross the tracks.

"I think the picture says it all," Horn told City Council members. "That's what we're trying to address."

Citing safety and legal concerns, city officials asked the council on Sept. 6 to approve $500,500 in spending to complete a fence replacement project. While the council did unanimously vote to greenlight the spending, it did so with some grumbling and discussion.

"It's a lot of money to pay for a fence when we could build something [else for bikes and pedestrians]," said Councilmember Michelle Shoresman, echoing sentiments she said she heard from constituents.

One constituent, Helene Finger, argued that the city should not pay for a new railroad fence until it had plans in place for a safe and legal bike and pedestrian crossing over the tracks.

"The city should not be spending close to a half a million dollars on dividing the community," Finger wrote in a letter to the city, calling the lack of a safe track crossing on that side of town "a major hurdle" to a "fully connected" transportation network in the city.

But city staff countered that maintaining existing bike paths should also hold a high priority. On top of the safety issues inherent in allowing illegal track crossings to take place, SLO officials said that the city has binding agreements with Union Pacific dating back to the 1990s to maintain a barrier between the trail and the tracks.

"It does obligate us to maintain and construct a wall," SLO City Manager Derek Johnson said. "That agreement is very clear. That's what we agreed to."

Johnson added that the city has not had the funds in past years to tackle the fencing project. But SLO voters' approval of a sales tax increase in 2018 changed that.

"The short answer is Measure G [the tax increase] has afforded us the ability to catch up on a lot of deferred maintenance," Johnson said. "As we think about future partnerships with Union Pacific, we know we need to be in position to have honored the commitments we already made."

The new fencing along the pathway will look "very similar to what's installed on the Bob Jones Trail," Horn said, which is a "three-strand wood fence with some metal kind of chain link."

"We anticipate that it will take two to three months for the bidding process and probably about six months to install the fencing," Horn added.

For locals wondering when or if the city will pursue a new, legal railroad crossing, that's a long way off. It's not among the city's many top priority bike projects—but that could change.

"Make your voice heard during the financial planning process," Shoresman advised residents.

Councilmember Andy Pease said that she's still hopeful the city can work with Union Pacific on a potential at-grade bike and pedestrian crossing—a type of facility the railroad company isn't usually amenable to. That crossing would be significantly less expensive than an overpass.

"I and some other municipalities have talked about how unreasonable [Union Pacific's policy] is, in a time where light rail is going back and forth through cities with very robust, secure, at-grade pedestrian and bike crossings," Pease said. "You can do a really good [at-grade] system that I think would be safe." Δ