Aerial of Menlo Park was a Hiller/Hayden photo
Editor:The March 27 Almanac contained an aerial view of downtown Menlo Park with the notation that the photo was made in the late 1940s or 1950s.
That image is one of four in my collection. The story passed on to me was that Stanley Hiller of helicopter fame took Elmo Hayden up for a picture-taking ride. Close observance of the Almanac image shows a helicopter strut.
As many of your readers know, Elmo owned the Menlo Camera & Gift Shop on Santa Cruz Avenue. The property was just to the right of the original Menlo Park Presbyterian Church location and, I am told, burned down in 1949. One of the other photos looks right down on that barren lot.
The church was demolished in the spring of 1950. If anyone knows the date of the fire we could better identify the date of the aerial photo.
Bill Russ
Cotton Street, Menlo Park
(Bill Russ is Menlo Park Presbyterian Church historian)
Usual paranoia from Almanac on Alpine trail
Editor:The Almanac responded with its usual paranoia to Stanford’s generous offer to give San Mateo County a huge pot of money for recreational trails.
The only “horribly intrusive project” sought by anyone is the public trail through the heart of the university’s lands demanded by the “greens” (more accurately, the “greedies”). If “most people expected” Stanford to build trails anywhere but its periphery, where the county’s master trail plan put them, they were sadly self-deluded. The Almanac fostered their misapprehension.
The Almanac must have forgotten that Stanford offered to build whatever kind of trail the county preferred along Alpine Road — from a rustic three-foot path on the current alignment to a 12-foot multipurpose all-weather trail or anything in between. Stanford even offered to move the road so as not to intrude on Weekend Acres. What more could we ask?
I am very disappointed to see Supervisor Rich Gordon emulating Liz Kniss’s policy of Stanford-bashing and brazen extortion. If he wants a path crowded with baby strollers, hikers, and cyclists running over each other, he could have had it without accusing Stanford of bad faith. Personally, I would have loved a wider trail with room for all.
Kathleen Much
Hillside Avenue, Menlo Park
Wishing for a better outcome on playing fields
Editor:At this time, I don’t know how the Encinal school field situation will turn out, but I can look on this issue with some amount of sadness and deja vu.
There are certain things that never seem to change in our city and community. One of those things is an ever-increasing need for more quality playing fields, and another is the fact that no one wants these fields in his or her backyard.
I truly hope that some day these two certainties can finally be accommodated. In a time of increasing childhood and adult obesity, it is a shame that residents of all ages have limited recreational opportunities in this affluent community. It is a shame that in this community of compassionate and educated residents that we cannot find the tolerance to allow a bit of incremental noise and hassle and allow sufficient fields to be built or expanded.
Lee Duboc
Former mayor and longtime
parks and recreation commissioner
Time for Menlo Park to phase out herbicides
Editor: In 1998 City Manager Jan Dolan agreed to phase out the use of herbicides on city of Menlo Park property within a year. It didn’t happen.At the time, I joked that the city had been trying to use up all the Round-Up that she purchased in the 1990s at bargain prices. Nobody laughed.
Although we have had a very dry season this year, the annual grasses and forbs have done their best to be green. Until last week, that is. After 95 percent of the growth had occurred and after most of the seeds had been produced, the city has done it again, spraying the roadsides and the center medians with herbicides, which has effectively shortened the all too brief weeks of this delightful seasonal cycle called springtime.
Even worse, the annual growth at the little park at Woodland and Pope next to San Francisquito Creek has been completely wiped out by an application of herbicide, wildflowers and all. There’s a catch basin that flows directly into the creek in the midst of the target area.
How green is this? In light of the current enthusiasm shown by Mayor Kelly Fergusson to put Menlo Park residents through a tutorial on green practices, I would hope that, at the very least, the city could quickly address some of the fundamentals of integrated pest management practices.
This is an easy one. No task force, paid facilitators or butcher block paper on easels are needed. The list of obvious environmental issues that the city could immediately address needs definitive action, not more studies.
Steve Schmidt, former mayor
Central Avenue, Menlo Park
Good story on biking to Laurel school
Editor:The recent article on Manfred Kopisch and his daughter biking to school was very well done. This type of important public issue should be given the great treatment you gave this story.
Mr. Kopisch should be applauded for wanting to bring this story to the public’s attention, and doing a very good job of it.
C. D. Randall
Almendral Avenue, Atherton
When are bicyclists ever going to get it?
Editor:When on the road, car drivers and bikers are under the same rules.
On a recent Wednesday as we were heading to dinner at an Alpine Road restaurant, we came across a gaggle (30-40-50?) of our gaily-garbed cyclists pedaling furiously in and outside the bike lane. When they got to the stop sign at Portola Road, guess what? They flew through the stop sign. I am furious. This has to be stopped.
Ted Bache
Happy Hollow Lane, Menlo Park
Don’t derail Caltrain’s new service
Editor:An ad hoc group of some city council members in the region, the Coalition to Expand Transit Service, is asking Caltrain to revisit its schedule in hopes of boosting service for certain cities.
But the system’s steadily growing ridership suggests things may be just fine as they are.
The decision to add the express Baby Bullet runs in 2004 came at the expense of local service, which meant ending weekday stops in the Atherton and Burlingame Broadway stations — among the least-used on the line — and making fewer stops at other stations.
Even during the debate over service, however, riders have flocked to Caltrain. In January, average weekday ridership rose by 7.3 percent compared with that time a year ago. Year-to-year ridership is up about 31 percent since the pre-Baby Bullet ridership of 2003, Caltrain reported.
“Our goal is to have as many people riding as possible,” said Caltrain spokesman Jonah Weinberg.
The Caltrain board will review station-by-station ridership numbers in April, Mr. Weinberg said, and it will be up to the board to decide whether to have an outside firm review the schedule, as the coalition suggests.
Fine-tuning the schedule might bring improvements, but making drastic changes could be a zero-sum game. Adding a stop in one city may require nixing another city’s stop. Adjustments that add time to the schedule will not appeal to the new commuters attracted by the express runs.
Caltrain works best as a regional service, shuttling more than 30,000 people up and down the line on weekdays. The Peninsula already has extensive bus service for multi-stop transit throughout its cities, so there is no need to replicate that. Many riders using Caltrain are driving to the stations anyway, Weinberg noted. It’s just a matter of which station to drive to. The Atherton station is less than a mile from the Menlo Park station and Burlingame still has one station under the current schedule.
Having fewer train stops is a worthwhile trade-off for the improved regional service commuters enjoy. Any changes that the coalition wants should be balanced against the need to keep the new riders coming back.
Richard L. Silver, executive director
Rail Passenger Association of California
