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One hundred and seventy-three. That’s the number of distinct projects that transportation consultants from W-Trans and Menlo Park city staff have so far determined the city could implement to improve safety, increase mobility options, and decrease traffic congestion within the city’s transportation system.
That project list comes from a working paper released in August by staff and W-Trans consultants and is expected to form the basis of Menlo Park’s transportation master plan, intended to be a comprehensive plan identifying the city’s transportation problems, possible solutions and funding mechanisms to improve the city’s transportation network. The plan is on a timeline to be completed by the summer or fall of 2019.
It would be Menlo Park’s first citywide, big-picture plan to improve its transportation network. The creation of the plan was launched in the immediate aftermath of the city’s completion of its general plan update in late 2016, called “ConnectMenlo,” which zoned for major increases in the permissible development on the city’s eastern side.
At the time that plan was approved, many were optimistic that the transportation master plan would address unresolved questions about how to deal with the gridlock already beleaguering Menlo Park, let alone the traffic impacts of major growth in the city between U.S. 101 and the Bay. On the other hand, several critics – including planning commissioners Henry Riggs and Katherine Strehl, and Councilman Ray Mueller, who voted against approving the general plan update – wanted a clearer plan for how the city would get needed transportation infrastructure built alongside the new zoning.
After the first 15 months of the project, it’s becoming evident the transportation master plan won’t be a panacea for the city’s traffic woes.
Mark Spencer, principal at W-Trans, told members of the city’s Transportation Master Plan Oversight and Outreach Committee, an 11-member advisory group, at a Sept. 25 meeting, “We’re finding there are a lot of legacy issues – things built into the system that are hard for us to deal with.”
So far, the process has required the city to be realistic about what traffic it can feasibly mitigate, and to prioritize reducing the negative impacts of the city’s gridlock on residents – much of which starts and ends in cities other than Menlo Park. As its guiding principles, the plan aims to improve public safety, give residents more options to get around town via transportation modes other than solo driving, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the city.
As a result, the projects proposed in the working paper vary dramatically in scale and scope, but the bulk involve steps to make the city more accessible for bicyclists and pedestrians. The list of projects draws from a variety of sources, according to Spencer: Some have been proposed as environmental mitigations for new developments and may already have clear funding sources; others come from studies done by Caltrans, San Mateo County, or the Metropolitan Transportation Commission; and other proposed projects are based on recommendations from the public, the oversight and outreach committee assembled to work on the transportation master plan, city staff or consultants.
Safety problems
A key reason to focus on bicycle and pedestrian safety is that it’s a clear weakness in the city, compared to other cities. It’s also a policy priority: Menlo Park has declared a commitment to being a “Vision Zero” city, a nationwide initiative aimed at reducing the number of traffic-related fatalities and severe injuries. Specifically, Menlo Park’s goal is to eliminate traffic fatalities and reduce the number of non-fatal collisions by 50 percent by 2040.
The working paper by W-Trans describes in some detail where Menlo Park’s traffic safety shortcomings lie. According to 2015 data from the state’s Office of Traffic Safety, compared to 92 other California cities of comparable size, Menlo Park ranked second worst for its high number of speed-related and bicycle-related collisions. It was third worst for the number of accidents involving cyclists younger than 15, with eight such collisions reported that year.
In spite of the city’s cyclist safety rankings, Menlo Park ranks third in the Bay Area for the percent of commute trips taken by residents on bicycles, after Palo Alto and Berkeley.
According to W-Trans, between July 2012 and July 2017, there were 2,280 collisions reported within city limits (including state highways like Bayfront Expressway and El Camino Real). Of those, 179 involved bicycles, resulting in nine injuries and one fatality; and 75 involved pedestrians, resulting in eight injuries and five fatalities.
Of the collisions involving cyclists reported during that five-year study period, about a third happened on three streets: Willow Road, El Camino Real and Ravenswood Avenue.
Of the collisions involving pedestrians reported in the study period, over half occurred on three streets: El Camino Real, Santa Cruz Avenue and Willow Road.
In the category of vehicle-on-vehicle collisions, there were 1,333 collisions reported in that same time period involving two or more vehicles on local streets – not including U.S. 101 or I-280. Of those, 44 percent were determined to be due to speeding, and 24 percent were due to unsafe lane changes. Fifty-one percent of the collisions were classified as rear-end crashes.
“There’s got to be some route we give people where they stand a chance of getting where they want to go safely as a family,” said Jennifer Wolosin, an oversight and outreach committee member and founder of Parents for Safe Routes, a group that works on helping kids get to school safely via modes other than driving. The city is in the process of developing a safe routes to school program for the 20 or so public and private schools in Menlo Park and Atherton.
What about drivers?
During the oversight and outreach committee’s Sept. 25 discussion, a number of remarks swirled around a key question: Will these projects reduce road congestion?
One of the key takeaways is that drivers should tame their expectations for what Menlo Park can realistically achieve. In Menlo Park, traffic congestion is worst along four roads: Sand Hill Road, El Camino Real, Willow Road and Bayfront Expressway. None of those roads is entirely under the city’s control. They’re owned by Caltrans and San Mateo County.
Most of the projects that would address the major bottlenecks aren’t under the city’s control. Plus, Spencer said, big infrastructure projects that widen and enlarge the road to fit more cars eventually draw more cars to fill up the added space – a phenomenon known as “induced demand.”
“We’re not using the word ‘fix’ anywhere here,” Spencer said. “What we’re doing is to try to manage the situation, provide options, and make it as safe and efficient as possible, given the growth we’re going to have.”
The projects
Some of the proposed projects are:
North
● Bayfront Expressway: A couple of options are being considered. One would be to use the existing road shoulders for bus lanes during peak times. Another, bolder option would be to turn Bayfront Expressway into a freeway with carpool lanes and grade separations at Marsh Road, Chilco Street, and Willow Road or University Avenue. Consultants are evaluating these options and expect to have further recommendations ready later in 2018, according to a staff report.
● Willow Road: Three main options for Willow Road between U.S. 101 and Bayfront Expressway are under consideration: 1) Provide bus lanes, either by taking out the bike lanes and leaving the median or removing it, while building a separate, parallel bike route; 2) Permit buses to use the right-turn lane on Willow Road at O’Brien Drive to continue straight on Willow Road toward Bayfront Expressway, and install signals that give buses priority; and 3) Remove the median on Willow Road and create separated bike lanes on each side of Willow Road.
● Support efforts to reactivate the Dumbarton rail line, with a bike and pedestrian path from Marsh Road to University Avenue.
● Install bike lanes on Marsh Road, Jefferson Drive and O’Brien Drive.
● Upgrade crosswalks and signals for pedestrians crossing Willow Road at O’Brien Drive.
● Install roundabouts or traffic signals on Chrysler Drive at Jefferson Drive and Independence Drive.
● At Bayfront Expressway and Willow Road, install bike signals across the north leg of Bayfront Expressway, crosswalks and cross-bike markings; reconstruct the eastbound Willow Road right-turn lane; and modify the traffic signal.
Central
● Remove the existing median on Willow Road between Middlefield Road and Durham Street and install a reversible bus lane.
● Remove parking on Coleman Avenue to create a right-turn lane from Coleman Avenue at the Willow Road intersection.
● Add a southbound left-turn lane on Laurel Street at Ravenswood Avenue.
● Remove on-street parking along El Camino Real and add buffered bike lanes (already identified as a preferred alternative by the City Council). Removing the median could keep the cyclists from having to share a lane with right-turn lanes at some intersections, according to a staff report.
● Install bike lanes on Middle Avenue between Olive Street and El Camino Real, and remove parking on at least one side of the street.
South
● Install bike lanes on Avy Avenue between Santa Cruz Avenue and Monte Rosa Drive.
● Install sidewalks on one side of Harkins Avenue and on the north side of Sharon Road to connect to La Entrada Middle School.
● Provide clear walkways for pedestrians on Sharon Park Drive and on the west side of Oak Avenue and restrict on-street parking during school hours.
● Reconfigure the intersection of Sand Hill Road and southbound Oak Avenue by adding left-turn boxes. Doing so would provide better access to the bicycle and pedestrian trail on the south side of Sand Hill Road, but would require a ban on right turns on red lights for westbound Sand Hill Road and southbound Oak Avenue.
Citywide
● Promote cycling by launching a bike repair workshop program, a bike-friendly business program and a bike-share program, and by creating a citywide bicycle map.
● Establish a transportation management association.
● Unbundle residential parking fees from apartment rent costs, so people who want parking must pay extra (as a deterrent to car ownership).
● Develop a “transportation data hub.”
● Create variable pricing on the Dumbarton Bridge.
● Streamline the process by which residents can get traffic calming measures added to their streets.
● Develop a system to give buses and transit vehicles priority at traffic signals over single-occupancy vehicles.
“It is a combination of all these things that is going to … keep life livable within Menlo Park,” Spencer said. “To say congestion is going to go away is a misnomer.”
Next steps
Following the oversight and outreach committee’s discussions on the working paper, a community workshop and online open house will be held in the fall and winter.
Over the coming months, Spencer said, each project will be ranked using a scoring system developed based on a number of factors: what it costs; how easy it is to implement; how close it is to “sensitive populations,” namely day cares, schools, senior centers, or minority, low-income households; whether it will improve safety; whether it will reduce greenhouse gases; whether it will relieve traffic congestion; whether it promotes ‘mobility choice’ and health; and whether it allows proper stormwater drainage.
That list will constitute the draft master plan, which is expected to be released to the public in the spring. From there, the plan will undergo another round of public review with the oversight and outreach committee and Complete Streets Commission before it is reviewed (and potentially adopted) by the City Council, steps that are tentatively scheduled for the summer. After that, consultants will calculate the expected costs of the projects and divide up those costs into a new transportation impact fee, likely to be presented in terms of dollars-per-new-trip that developers would have to pay based on the number of new trips their building is expected to generate, Spencer said. The city’s current transportation impact fee for new offices, restaurants and retail spaces is $4.87 per square foot and $3,301 per single family home. Developments in the city’s downtown area are subject to additional impact fees.
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Travel times for commutes and shopping trips are consistent on a bike even on worst traffic day. Fully agree that Menlo Park needs to make improvements so more people will be willing to use a bike and leave the car at home.
What about synchronized lights on ECR? It’s just plain brutal trying to get across town with the lights fighting you every step of the way. That, or removing some of the lights at non-critical intersections (mainly in the south part of ECR).
The Fire District looks forward to evaluating the final report and its recommendations since we were not included in this process. I would hope the group, City and W-Trans reviews our primary emergency response route information prior to finalizing their recommendations, we would be happy to meet with the group so we can discuss which proposals we can support, those we may not support and others they may have not considered.
For example:
We do not support any type of bicycle lane on El Camino Real, a primary emergency response route and the primary route of travel to Stanford Hospital and Trauma Center Needed for Ambulances carrying the sick and injured. This is also a major artery for goods and services used by larger vehicles to support this community. Bicycle travel on this route creates an incompatible use and is dangerous. Rather, we fully support bicycle lanes on Alma and Laurel Streets.
We do not support bicycle lanes on Ravenswood Avenue, especially between Laurel and the Railroad Tracks which is extremely unsafe. Rather, we fully support bicycle lanes on Oak Grove Avenue.
We would support a bicycle lane on Linfield to Santa Margarita and other streets instead of Willow Road. We have offered to work with the City to pay for half of a HAWK Traffic Signal in front of Fire Station 1 and the Fire Board has committed to front the entire amount if the City takes the lead on the engineering and project management, similar to what we did with the Town of Atherton at Altschul and El Camino.
In Summary:
The Fire District is entrusted with the protection of life and property for the community. We are primarily a consequence management organization that daily has direct contact with the patients and victims behind many of these numbers. Our network of Stations, first response units, medical and rescue equipment and our dedicated and highly competent first response personnel live in the very real world where seconds and minutes have a major significance associated with life changing outcomes.
We look forward to assisting with any pro-active strategies that improve our ability to provide important essential emergency services to the entire community.
Harold Schapelhouman, Fire Chief
Menlo Park Fire Protection District