(the Bayfront Expressway). Willow Road Station would feature one side platform south of the tracks. Redwood City (2nd Ave) A new station could be constructed just east of the Redwood Junction, again presuming ridership projections warrant another station. History 1910–1982: Dumbarton Cut-off The Central California Railway Company, a subsidiary of Southern Pacific, completed the Dumbarton Cut-off in 1910, reducing the rail route distance between Oakland and San Francisco by . Prior to the completion of the Cut-off, transcontinental freight destined for San Francisco was unloaded in Oakland and ferried across the Bay, or trains detoured through San Jose and Santa Clara, using the Peninsula Corridor to San Francisco. The Dumbarton Rail Bridge, a swing through-truss span, was the first structure built across San Francisco Bay. The Dumbarton Cut-off includes a second, smaller swing through-truss to the east of the Dumbarton Rail Bridge. Some portions of the timber trestles had been replaced with concrete structures in the 1960s and 1970s. However, San Francisco gradually became a less important hub for rail transportation, and the Port of Oakland was better-suited to handle containerized shipping. The last freight train used the Dumbarton Cut-off in 1982. 1988–2001: Initial studies The San Mateo County Transit Authority (SMCTA) was created following the passage of 1988's Measure A, a half-cent sales tax increase in San Mateo County which set aside for the purchase of the "Dumbarton S.P. Spur from Redwood City to Fremont." A 1991 study sponsored by SMCTA, the Dumbarton Commuter Service Feasibility Study (Parsons Brinckerhoff) recommended a rail option along the former Dumbarton Cut-off as a long-term strategy. Pursuing this strategy, SamTrans purchased the entire right-of-way for in early 1994, with the help of a loan from Caltrans. More studies followed in 1996 (Dumbarton Rail Corridor Rehabilitation, Morrison Knudsen), 1997 (Dumbarton Corridor Study, Parsons Brinckerhoff), and 1998 (Dumbarton Corridor Transit Concept Plan), which concluded that trans-Bay rail was viable as a long-term strategy and expanded bus service could serve as a short-term strategy. A suspected arson fire destroyed part of the western timber trestle approach to the Dumbarton Rail Bridge in January 1998, although the 1996 Dumbarton Rail Corridor Rehabilitation report (confirmed in a later 1999 study) had already concluded the timber trestles would need to be replaced. In 1998, the estimated cost for reactivating Dumbarton passenger rail service was . That 1999 study (the Dumbarton Rail Corridor Study, Parsons Transportation Group) put the Dumbarton