The Great Olive Drive Fence Fight
In just 2 hours yesterday morning, the Davis landscape was altered following a 5 month struggle. The Olive Drive fence that the City of Davis so vehemently rejected in November 2010 has begun to take shape as Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) workers began building parts of the fence between 8am and 10am on Monday 25th April.
The fence, they claim, is a necessary safety precaution to prevent further accidents on the precarious stretch of railroad that many use as a crossing, (four people have died since 1998). A UC Davis study witnessed 387 incidents of pedestrians and cyclists illegally crossing the tracks over three days in 1998.
The now partially built fence, an emerging 3800 ft steel eyesore stretching between Richards Boulevard and L Street, was immediately rejected by the Davis community not for lack of interest in the safety of those crossing the tracks but for reasons of a different nature. The proposed fence was not believed to be an adequate solution to the problem, but rather seemed to create further problems.
Councilmembers Joe Krovoza & Rochelle Swanson speak with constituents at the December 2010 rally.
Such a fence they argued, would marginalise Olive Drive residents, significantly restricting their access to Downtown. It would force all traffic down to the Richards Boulevard intersection, largely regarded as one of the most dangerous intersections in town, whilst also increasing travelling time. In addition the construction would also result in a number of trees being cut down to facilitate the steel monstrosity. Anti-fence feeling was so strong among some that a protest was held in December 2010.
The issue was revisited in January 2011 when Davis City Council appeared willing to compromise with the Union Pacific Railroad proposal, suggesting the creation of a ‘safe crossing point’ for those traveling between Olive Drive and Downtown. Such calls for the creation of a crossing instead of a fence were not new and had been raised by Davis locals repeatedly over the years. This year an application was submitted to California Public Utilities Commission by the City for the construction of an ‘at-grade’ crossing.
However the City’s compromise was not particularly well received. In February 2011 Union Pacific Railroad announced they would be ‘exploring options to fund the safety fence exclusively with private dollars’ and specifically stated ‘we have no timetable set for the construction to occur.’
Just last week the Mayor met with Union Pacific to discuss the fence dilemma and requested the City received 48 hours notice before any construction began. This notice did not come as workers arrived unannounced on site in the early hours of yesterday morning. In a statement released by the City following this initial construction they maintain they remain ‘adamantly opposed’ to the fence proposal and are ‘extremely disappointed’ by the building work that has occurred.
The great fence fight between Davis and UPRR may appear to be lost, but with such a strong anti-fence sentiment among the Davis community is it possible they will block the completion of the build? With such blatant disregard to the City’s request for prior notice and of the proposed ‘at-grade’ crossing compromise, perhaps this fight is only just getting started.
Editor’s Note: At their February 15, 2022 meeting, the City Council authorized City Attorney Harriet Steiner to “to pursue legal action if UP moves unilaterally to build the fence”. Read our liveblog of that meeting (scroll down to 9:23pm) for further details. Also, we have unconfirmed reports that the City has revoked UP’s access to their property via the City-owned train station property.
The number of deaths adjacent to the proposed fence in twenty years is two, with one of those a person lying between the tracks, his access direction not known. The other 13 deaths in the last twenty years between the Causeway and Putah Creek South would not have been prevented had the proposed fence been in place.
If it is true that the City has revoked access to Union Pacific to access the railroad from the station property (and I highly doubt that), I wonder if that would include the Union Pacific police force, who would then be trespassing by being on City property. Humorous, but probably not real.
Fionnula –
You show a lot of promise as a writer, and I’ve enjoyed your previous pieces in the Voice. Please don’t take the portion of my notes below that touch on your articles structural challenges too hard, or at all personally, as they are meant only in the spirit of taking your work as a reporter seriously, and holding it up to journalistic standards. If the City Council’s actions on this matter were as coherent as your article, we’d all be much the better for it.
Your article is a nice update on the present actions, but lacks sufficient background to make the issue truly comprehensible. It also seems to lack links to the actual studies done on the matter, and fails to illuminate either the liability issue for the railway if the fence were not installed, nor if the City could realistically halt the fencing by any legal strategem. But please keep writing, on any topic which moves you — it will continue to be a treat to read pieces featuring your command of the vernacular.
As far as the actions of the railway go, they are only to be expected. Several other California communities have recently had similar safety fencing installed as an upgrade by the Union Pacific without controversy. And though the fencing isn’t Baroque ironwork to the standards of say Buckingham Palace, neither is it an opaque, razorwire-topped Berlin Wall. And the fence will be a damn site more beautiful than some mother’s child sliced into bleeding gore by unfeeling steel wheels on some foggy morn. But some on the City Council adopted an adversarial attitude to the UP in lieu of taking the time to really vette the issue fully; acting precipitately did untold damage to the possibility of what might have been a collaborative process to address manifold concerns of the various parties to this matter. As the man sang, “you plant ice / you’re gonna harvest wind”.
It is important to point out that the City recently gifted a private developer with $5 million dollars in redevelopment funds to help him tear down a popular restaurant and a perfectly fine hotel and replace them with a conference center exacerbating traffic at the Richards offramp and undercrossing. That $5 million dollars might well have solved the safe crossing issue, so when it comes to the purported concern for Olive Drive residents, we may paraphrase an old adage thus: “money talks … and safety walks”.
It is still not too late for the City to re-think its use of redevelopment funds, and create a safe overcrossing of the tracks for Olive Drive residents. There is City-owned land with right-of-way access behind the Design House on Olive Drive, and City-owned land where the old Boy Scout cabin exists on the other side. If the City Council has a majority of very bright, well-intentioned folks on it — which I believe, despite some human mistakes, is indeed the case — then it’s time for them to accept the knockdown, get back up off the mat, and do something better than charge wildly ahead on the path traveled so far.
That last comment pretty much ended my will to live.
Gee, we had the opportunity to engineer a proper undercrossing at Richards years ago but we elected to stop growth in Davis by keeping existing tunnel. Now come the consequences of simple-minded actions. Go figure.
This comment
“And the fence will be a damn site more beautiful than some mother’s child sliced into bleeding gore by unfeeling steel wheels on some foggy morn”
Is basically obscene. Perhaps we could make it more so by describing the weeping mothers wrinkled brow? Or perhaps her blood-stained clothes, as she holds part of her only child in her arms? Way to frame your argument.
Also, as far as widening the Richards Underpass: there already is a walkway there. I realize how simple-minded people must be that don’t agree with you, but the people voted, and you lost. Time to move on.