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Menlo Park city officials have been looking to make a hazardous stretch of Willow Road safer for pedestrians and cyclists for over five years, but are running up against budget constraints.
The Menlo Park City Council directed city staff at its Tuesday, July 14, meeting to keep working toward all planned safety upgrades, including elevated bike lanes and improved crosswalks, for Willow Road between Bayfront Expressway and O’Keefe Street.
“Anything attached to Willow Road when it comes to pedestrian and bike safety needs to be given, I believe, the highest investment we can as a city,” Councilmember Cecilia Taylor, who represents parts of the area, said at the meeting.
The council suggested pulling $1.7 million from the Bayfront Mitigation Fund to meet grant matching obligations and to keep the project from stalling, and encouraged city staff to continue pursuing other state and local grants.
Residents have been pushing for the Willow Road upgrades since 2018, after members of the nonprofit Belle Haven Action, which is run by Taylor, highlighted multiple dangerous interactions between cyclists and cars near the U.S. 101 overpass. Willow Road was found to be one of the city’s “high collision corridors” in the Vision Zero Action Plan, with dozens of collisions and multiple fatalities near the intersection of Ivy Drive in the Belle Haven neighborhood. Parts of the road border East Palo Alto and Meta’s now-paused mega development Willow Village.
Right now, the team is working on getting state approval, according to a presentation by senior transportation engineer Kristiann Choy. After that, the San Mateo County Transportation Authority will take over the project design, which Choy said would take about 15 to 18 months.
The full design includes elevated bike lanes from Hamilton Avenue to Durham Road traveling west and from Chester Street to Ivy Drive traveling east, and otherwise protected bike lanes where there isn’t space to add elevation. The city plans to install a pedestrian refuge island on Ivy Drive, and new crosswalks at the intersections with O’Brien Drive and Bay Road. There are also multiple proposed adjustments to the U.S. 101 interchange that city officials hope will make the segment a safer and smoother traveling experience for vehicles, buses, cyclists and pedestrians.
All of these improvements are projected to cost $16.3 million, and Choy noted multiple holes in funding. Councilmembers pulled $1.7 million from the Bayfront Mitigation Fund, a special assessment area, to cover the required matching finances for a grant from the San Mateo County Transportation Authority. This should cover the project’s finances through the design phase, but there’s still a $7.3 million hole in construction funding.
Choy presented options to reduce the project’s scope and cut the costs, but all council members pushed the city to continue pursuing grants in the hopes of funding all improvements. The city applied to the state’s Active Transportation Program grant for the full construction amount in June and is expecting a response by the end of the year. If construction is fully funded, Choy said it’s expected to take about a year, putting the end date in 2028.
Multiple residents spoke at the meeting in support of all the improvements, highlighting the importance of pedestrian improvements to meet the needs of all ages. Athena Ierokomos, who sits on the city’s Complete Streets Commission, said she often sees children biking to school along this corridor, using the sidewalks or going opposite traffic to stay safe.
“That is very much a very high stress corridor, even for someone who is very passionate about being a bike commuter,” Ierokomos said. “I stopped biking in the rain because of the perceived conflict with cars, so I would really like to encourage consideration of putting up these protected bike lanes at the minimum, but also encouraging the construction of the pedestrian facilities.”
Councilmembers were only asked to give direction on Tuesday, so no vote was taken, but the project will be coming back for a vote to reallocate funds before the city’s midyear budget review, which is typically in February.
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Meta makes just shy of $7 million USD every single hour (profit, NOT revenue). This is in their backyard. Why aren’t we asking them for just a few minutes of profits to make their own backyard safer?