The Menlo Park City Council on Tuesday night decided to join Palo Alto and Atherton in filing a lawsuit to stop bullet trains from rumbling up and down the Peninsula.

The council voted 4-0 to sue the California High-Speed Rail Authority in a bid to halt its proposed $43 billion San Francisco-to-Los Angeles project. Council Member Andrew Cohen abstained because he lives near the proposed tracks.

“It’s the impact, the size of the tracks, the whole design,” Mayor Richard Cline said after the decision was made during a closed session before the council’s regular meeting.

Menlo Park, Palo Alto and Atherton will be joined by four nonprofits in the lawsuit. Other cities and organizations are considering litigation as well.

On Monday, the Palo Alto and Atherton city councils agreed in closed sessions to challenge the environmental assessment of the high-speed rail project, which they contend doesn’t meet requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act.

“While we regret having to resort to this action, Palo Alto was left with few options,” Mayor Pat Burt said in a statement. “We are hopeful that our decision will lead to correcting flaws in the Program EIR and ensure that the Project EIR provides a quality analysis of the true impacts of high-speed rail to the Peninsula communities it will pass through.”

Attorney Stuart Flashman, who will represent the cities and nonprofits, said the suit will be filed in Sacramento Superior Court by Oct. 4 to meet a 30-day deadline from the environmental report’s certification.

“What we’re hoping to accomplish is to have them go back and do it right,” Flashman said.

It will be the second lawsuit against the state’s rail project to include Atherton and Menlo Park.

In August 2008, those cities and four environmental groups sued over the rail authority’s decision to bring the trains through the Pacheco Pass to San Jose and the Caltrain line. Palo Alto later filed a brief in support of the lawsuit.

The suit claimed that the environmental assessment was flawed and pointed out that the rail authority would need an additional right-of-way for the bullet trains if Union Pacific denies use of its corridor.

A judge’s ruling prompted the rail authority to revise part of its report, but Flashman said the new lawsuit will assert that the revised document is still inadequate.

Burt and the Palo Alto City Council contend the rail authority failed to adequately address his city’s responses to the report, as well as those of many other individuals, organizations and communities. Palo Alto and other Peninsula cities have also argued that ridership numbers provided by the rail authority to justify the project’s expense were deliberately inflated.

“I know all of the cities involved here have really been trying to work with the high-speed rail authority and they’re filing these lawsuits in disappointment,” Flashman said. “They’re filing them in frustration and almost desperation because the high-speed rail authority is not listening.”

Among the plaintiffs in the initial suit were the Planning and Conservation League, the California Rail Foundation, and Transportation Solutions Defense & Education Fund. Those nonprofits and a fourth — the Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail — will be involved in the new legal challenge, according to Flashman.

“Obviously, we’d prefer that cities remain engaged as the project progresses,” said California High-Speed Rail Authority spokeswoman Rachel Wall. “It’s disappointing at the early stage they seek to disrupt the project.

“We’re determined to work with cities to address their concerns and engage them. And it’s our goal to have constructive dialogue,” Wall added.

E-mail Jesse Dungan at jdungan@dailynewsgroup.com.