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Landscaping the highway interchange at Willow Road and U.S. 101, in the works since 2019, was given renewed urgency at an Aug. 29 Menlo Park City Council meeting.
The interchange was was rebuilt in 2019 as a “partial cloverleaf” design to improve merging. In the process, the original landscaping, which included mature trees, was demolished.
The total estimated cost to restore landscaping to the area is $3.5 million, and coming up with the funding took time, according to Council member Drew Combs. The city has secured full funding through the San Mateo County Transportation Authority’s Measure A.
Pam Jones, a Belle Haven resident, expressed disappointment that the project has been so long delayed and frustration with Caltrans for the original demolition and the ensuing lack of landscaping. Menlo Park’s Belle Haven neighborhood is cut off from the rest of the city by Highway 101, and due to a history of racially motivated “red-lining,” has a more diverse population than the rest of the city.
“(When the freeway was built) it was about increasing the racial divide, and now it’s about environmental justice,” Jones said. “This is quite consistent without how our history continues to show up today.”
City staffers said that as soon as a memorandum of understanding with San Mateo County Transportation Authority is signed, design work will take approximately a year. Planting is expected to take about one year, followed by three years of watering the landscaping more often to get the plants established and to the desired levels of greenery.
Combs, a former member of the council subcommittee overseeing the Willow Road exchange with Vice Mayor Cecilia Taylor, said that the delay of the project “rhymes with a disappointing history.” Combs acknowledged that while the city is not the lead agency on the project, everyone involved owns the delay.
Combs brought up the city’s new focus on creating a “quiet zone” along the Caltrain line as a foil for why he saw the delay as disappointing. Proposed quiet zones would require trains not to blow horns when crossing intersections in Menlo Park and have recently moved to the city’s priority list. Combs said that he would be looking to see which got finished first, as only one of those projects impacts the Belle Haven neighborhood.
At the meeting, the council unanimously authorized the city manager to execute the memorandum of understanding for the landscaping project, as part of a motion to approve items on the consent agenda.
