When Palo Alto entered into an agreement with Stanford University more than a decade ago to allow construction of new hospitals and medical buildings, the university pledged to ensure that its massive project would not result in of traffic congestion on city roads.
The 2011 development agreement created strict measures to ensure that more than a third of trips to and from hospitals would be made by alternative modes – including Caltrain, shuttles, carpools and bicycles – by 2025. According to the Under the terms of the deal, Stanford will have to pay Palo Alto $4 million if it fails to meet that goal.
For a time, the system worked, and Stanford saw its share of workers relying on different modes of transportation gradually increase. It provided Caltrain Go passes to all new and existing workers, improved cycling amenities and expanded its Marguerite Shuttle program to better serve hospitals.
He also proposed a “guaranteed ride home program” for anyone using alternative transportation and renting parking lots in Santa Clara and Campbell for “park and ride” programs, according to a February report by Molly Swenson, senior project manager for the planning, design and construction department of Stanford University Medical Center.
In 2019, about 33.8% of hospital employees relied on other modes of transportation, according to Stanford, surpassing the 33% goal set in the agreement. (In the previous six years, rates ranged between 33.4% and 38.1%.) Stanford was also on track to easily meet the development agreement’s 35.1% threshold by 2025 , having already exceeded this objective several times.
Then came COVID-19 and things started moving in the opposite direction. Public transportation services have declined; horsemen became more cautious about gathering; and traffic jams on the highways have dissipated.
According to Stanford, workers began to rediscover their cars. The percentage of riders relying on alternative transportation fell from 28.8% in 2021 to 19.9% in 2022, according to surveys conducted by Stanford in May of that year. A survey in May this year showed the rate would rebound to 25.6% in 2023.
Request a break
Given this trend – and its unexpected and unprecedented cause – Stanford is now asking the city to pause. Concretely, he wants to modify the agreement so that he is not obliged to reach the objective of 35.1% before 2028, three years later than planned. The municipal council will examine this request on October 23.
The development agreement, which the City Council approved in 2010 after years of debate, established a sequence of increasingly strict transportation goals that hospitals must meet as construction gets closer. This includes a target of 30% for the share of alternative modes by 2018, 33% by 2021 and 35.1% by 2022.
Stanford University Medical Center called for those goals to be revised in June 2022, a month after its latest survey of commuters showed a trend away from alternative modes of transportation. The letter cited the program’s success and noted that hospitals enjoyed a 33% alternative mode sharing rate for seven consecutive years between 2013 and 2019, well ahead of the 2021 target date.
A letter co-signed by David Entwistle, president and CEO of Stanford Health Care, Paul King, president and CEO of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, and Robert Reidy, vice president of land, buildings and real estate at Stanford University, cited the persistence of the pandemic, reduced public transit services and changing commuter habits. While hospitals were “cautiously optimistic” in 2021 that the pandemic would end after COVID-19 receded, the pandemic persisted as new variants emerged.
“Public transit systems continued to operate with reduced levels of service,” Entwistle wrote. “And the period of continued disruption to pre-pandemic routines has persisted – and its effects have worsened, as workers who must do their jobs in person have continued to move away from alternative modes of transportation.”
The proposed amendment would be the first major change in the historic agreement, which allowed Stanford University to rebuild Stanford Hospital and Clinics (as Stanford Health Care was formerly known), expand the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and reconstructed many of Stanford University’s medical school buildings. , renovate Hoover Pavilion and construct several new medical office buildings. Once completed, the project would add approximately 1.3 million square feet of new development to the city.
In proposing to revise the transportation goals, Stanford noted that full development is not expected to occur until “well beyond 2025.” Swenson informed the city in August 2022 that Stanford had not yet begun replacing the 1959 Stone Complex.
With buildings in its complex scheduled to be demolished in the coming years, various sections have been mothballed and are no longer occupied. The mothballed area, she noted, doubled between 2021 and 2022 and that figure is expected to more than triple by 2026, before two of the buildings are entirely vacated and demolished.
Given the large amount of unoccupied space, the full impact of the project, once completed, will not materialize until well after 2025.
“The proposed delay in the alternative modal share goals will therefore not result in a misalignment with the project construction schedule, as contemplated when the development agreement was approved,” Swenson wrote.
Should fines be abolished?
If the Palo Alto City Council agrees to amend the agreement, the city would forgo the $175,000 in annual payments that Stanford would be required to make to the city for each of the two years in which it failed to meet its goals, according to a Palo Alto City Council report. Department of City Planning and Development Services. (Hospitals would only be required to pay the $4 million lump sum if the goal was not met in subsequent years, the report said.)
Municipal staff, for their part, recommend approving the change. The report notes that if the city does not approve the amendment, Stanford can seek relief in court under the development agreement’s “force majeure” clause, which covers circumstances deemed “beyond reasonable control.” Parties. This includes events such as earthquakes, fires, floods, riots and terrorist attacks.
“By filing the request to amend the Development Agreement, there is an opportunity to create clearer mutual and local implementation regarding present and future compliance with (the Force Majeure clause of the Development Agreement) rather than bring this matter before a court for resolution,” the planning staff states report states.
Staff noted that the transportation measures were important because they “required the implementation of a TDM (transportation demand management) program to reduce single-occupancy vehicle travel and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
“This remains true at present,” the report said. “SUMC is implementing one of the most detailed and extensive TDM programs in the city and the proposed development agreement (amendment) does not change that.”
