Reimagine Dumbarton - Dumbarton Busway and Trail Project
Imagine getting to Caltrain without a car and without traffic. Imagine a paved trail you could ride the whole way there. Imagine a bus in its own lane, coming often enough that you stop checking the schedule.
That is what SamTrans is proposing on the rail line that runs through District 1 — five miles of it, carrying nothing for decades, turned into a zero‑emission busway with a paved trail beside it. Add your voice to the design so District 1 can get a transit option that works.
Drag the handle to see the same stretch of corridor as it is now and as SamTrans proposes it, or focus it and use the arrow keys.
The corridor today and as proposed. Images from SamTrans’s Reimagine Dumbarton Phase 2 fact sheet.
Have your say
SamTrans is asking which trail design people want and what the stations should be like. Belle Haven has been planned around before. This is the part where we answer first.
It asks which of the nine stations you would use — Belle Haven Community Campus, Chilco St and Willow Rd are three of them. It asks whether the trail should be one shared path or separate lanes for walking and biking. It asks which of fifteen crossings you would actually use to get across the corridor, and lets you name one they missed.
And then, for each spot along the way, it asks what should go there: fitness equipment, a playground, a dog park, picnic tables, open lawn, public art and murals, restrooms — or keeping as many trees as possible instead. Willow Rd is one of those spots. Want something that is not on the list, like a small café? There is an “other” box, and someone reads it.
Take the SamTrans surveyOpen until October 30, 2026. SamTrans also publishes a fact sheet in Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese.
What is actually proposed
SamTrans bought the Dumbarton right‑of‑way between Redwood Junction and Newark Junction in 1994, expecting to put trains back on it. That has not happened. Reimagine Dumbarton is the current plan for the five miles between the Redwood City Transit Center and East Palo Alto: a dedicated lane for zero‑emission buses, and a paved trail running alongside it.
Nine stations are proposed, and three of them are ours: Belle Haven Community Campus, Chilco St and Willow Rd. The others run up the corridor through Bohannon Dr, Marsh Road, Ninth, Fifth and Fair Oaks to Middlefield. From them the bus would reach Redwood City Caltrain, the Ravenswood Shopping Center in East Palo Alto, the East Bay, and on to BART or SFO.
The trail is about twenty feet wide, and its design is still open. One shared path for walking, rolling and biking, or separate lanes for each. That is a real choice with real consequences for anyone pushing a stroller beside a commuter on a bike, and it is decided by which way the answers fall.
Why this one matters here
District 1’s oldest problem is being cut off. A freeway on one side, an expressway on the other, and a bay beyond that. The NAACP called Highway 101 the Concrete Curtain, and the record of how that happened is not ancient history.
A dedicated busway and a continuous trail are the opposite of a barrier. They are a way out and a way in that does not require a car — which matters in a neighborhood where plenty of households do not have one, and where getting to a grocery store, a clinic or a job can mean a long trip on a bus that comes when it comes.
Where it stands
This is a feasibility study, running through spring 2027. Environmental clearance, preliminary engineering and final design come after it, and construction does not begin before 2031 — and only if the money is found.
That timeline is a reason to pay attention now, not later. The decisions being made this autumn are the ones that set what gets built at the end of it. By the time there is something to look at, the arguing is over.
My own goal here is simple: get it actually built, and get it done ahead of schedule. District 1 has watched an approved project sit. Willow Village was entitled for 1,730 homes, and the community benefits attached to it were written to arrive when construction started — so when construction did not start, the neighborhood got none of them. Approval is not delivery, and a plan on a shelf helps nobody here.
SamTrans’s project team takes questions directly at dumbarton@samtrans.com.
Reimagine Dumbarton is a SamTrans project. Everything above is drawn from their published materials, described here in my own words. SamTrans has not endorsed any candidate, and nothing on this page should be read as suggesting otherwise.