When meetings for a Willows area traffic study get under way, the consultant hired for the project will likely have her hands full trying to bring together residents who think the study should focus on crime-prevention measures — and others who wish the city hadn’t decided to carry out the study in the first place.
At its Dec. 9 meeting, the Menlo Park City Council decided to proceed with the traffic study, but not without reservations — and lingering questions about whether the impetus for the study emerged from concerns about traffic or crime.
The Willows area borders the low-income city of East Palo Alto, and several Willows residents have expressed concern that the growing crime in the neighborhood may be tied to easy street access to and from the neighboring city. The incidence of property crimes in the Willows has increased by 47 percent from 2007 levels, according to the police department.
The idea for a traffic study emerged during meetings held in the Willows last year over concerns about several shootings in and around the neighborhood, according to Police Chief Bruce Goitia.
The council voted 4-1 on Dec. 9 to approve the specifics of the study — the substance of which it had already signed off on — with minor changes.
While debate among residents over the study has largely revolved around the issue of crime and relations with East Palo Alto, council members said they believed that traffic concerns alone merit a study. They cited recent development projects in East Palo Alto just outside the Menlo Park Willows area and the closure of a U.S.-101 off-ramp as contributors to increased traffic since the last study in the early 1990s.
Several residents had pushed for amelioration of crime to be included as a goal in the study, arguing that crime could be addressed by diverting “cut-through” traffic away from the neighborhood. But Transportation Manager Chip Taylor said the study would focus only on the volume of traffic and the speed of vehicles traveling in the area.
The study will, however, allow for the consideration of street closures, a measure that some residents advocated when the city studied the neighborhood’s traffic in the early 1990s. During that study, the council rejected a plan to barricade streets near the East Palo Alto border.
Councilman John Boyle was the lone dissenter in the Dec. 9 vote, arguing that street closures and other “extreme” traffic-control measures should only be considered if safety concerns emerge — the city’s usual procedure. Mr. Taylor said the city had opted to allow for consideration of street closures at the behest of Willows residents who had pushed for the study.
“We’re talking about a lot of money that will potentially get spent exploring things that will generally be difficult to win long-term approval for,” Mr. Boyle said.
East Palo Alto
The study area will include a swath of East Palo Alto contiguous with the Menlo Park Willows, and those residents will be surveyed about the study and invited to participate in meetings, Mr. Taylor said.
Four Willows residents who were among the group that led the initial push for a traffic study voiced dissatisfaction with the scope of the study in a jointly signed e-mail to the City Council log on the eve of the Dec. 9 vote. “We are concerned that the recommendations that are going before you tonight do not represent what the neighborhood wanted,” they wrote, pushing for the consideration of crime-mitigation efforts.
They also asked for the city to measure cut-through traffic into and out of the Menlo Park Willows alone, without regard to the adjoining sliver of East Palo Alto identified as the “hidden Willows” by some of its residents in e-mails to the council log. That would mean vehicles originating in the East Palo Alto neighborhood and traveling through the Menlo Willows would be regarded as cut-through.
Instead, the study will define cut-through traffic as vehicles traveling through the broader area, including that swath of East Palo Alto.
In an e-mail to the council log, Willows resident Dan Fowler said he had attended several of the early traffic meetings, but that he stopped going when it became clear to him that traffic concerns were being raised by a few people with “a personal agenda to put up a virtual wall between Menlo Park and East Palo Alto.”
Penelope Huang, a Willows resident who also serves on the Transportation Commission, said that critics of the 1990s traffic-mitigation project were using “scare tactics” to dissuade the city from carrying out another study.
The city installed traffic circles and other street furniture as part of the earlier traffic-mitigation project, most of which was later removed when residents who had not been aware of the project protested that the implements were making it difficult for them to negotiate the streets of their own neighborhood.
Council concerns
Several council members asked whether the city can still afford the $120,000, consultant-led study. They said they hope the city is not headed for a repeat of the failed early 1990s project.
Council members agreed that it would be a challenge to get residents who have been feuding since the scuttled traffic-mitigation project 15 years ago on the same page.
“I’m moving toward approving this, but not without a measure of concern about how this is going to work,” said Councilman Rich Cline.
“We need to go in with our eyes wide open, and to be very realistic about the challenges,” Mayor Heyward Robinson said, referring to the divide between Willows residents that emerged during the earlier traffic-mitigation project. “This needs to be handled with a lot of delicacy.”
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