is there anything that the NIMBYS of MP will not complain about?

MPer, this isn't really a NIMBY issue as much as a safety one. There are going to be a lot of kids on bikes and on foot using that back entrance to school and cutting through the pedestrian-only section of Oak Ct and if there are lines of cars dropping kids off in the same place, accidents will happen. It's better to funnel the cars through one entrance and encourage bikes to use the other.

It seems that safety, especially the students' safety, should be the priority. With that in mind I am surprised that a legal agreement will be signed which limits future access on Oak Court.

Sure safety is an issue, but the folks on OAK court are using that to restrict access to a PUBLIC street and they want a legal agreement to boot.

I am fine with it if we ACTUALLY cared about this in MP. We have multiple streets that are dangerous to pedestrians, including children because we don't have adequate sidewalks and in many cases, no sidewalks.

No, they just don't want any extra traffic on "their" street. Actually the street belongs to me too!

It sounds crazy that the city would even entertain such an agreement. What about the safety along other designated school routes such as Gilbert, Menalto O'Connor etc.? These streets will have more kids and will bear the brunt of the car traffic. Keeping the Oak Court option open seems not just prudent, but imperative.

Oh those poor people. Seriously, traffic on any street near any school in Menlo park is busy and dangerous at 3:00. Try to go down ringwood at 3:00 pm. With all the kids walking home from m-a and kids being picked up at Laurel it much worse then any little street next to laurel. Poor people on oak ct. Pull the blinders off and realize that traffic in Menlo park is gridlock everywhere and the Oak ct residents have nothing to complain about. Living on Ringwood or Coleman during the mid afternoon hours on weekdays is much worse then Oak Ct traffic will ever be. Quit your crying

Don't kid people that this is a purely safety issue. It is 99% NIMBY. The folks on Oak Ct. have had the benefit of a huge open space next door (the school) without any of the social consequences for decades. Whining about HOW MANY busses are to be 'allowed' on 'their' street is downright selfish. This is MPCSD and a school of less than 300 kids. Figure all took the bus (not a bad ecological outcome vs how many actually get driven) at probably at least 30 per bus and you have 10 bus runs in the morning and another 10 in the afternoon. Bah. Who cares. Suck it up. Those folks living on O'Connor and Elliott will have all of those busses AND hundreds of cars each way each day. And the so-called safety measures for pedestrians and bikes are not in place and weak even by plan.

Children will be attending this school from a fairly large geographical area. How is it NIMBYism to want to minimize the chances of their getting involved in an accident?

Some of you are way too quick on the NIMBY trigger -- until someone comes along and suggests changes to your street. So you are also NIMBYs, and hypocritical ones at that.

Speaking as a Palo Alto parent - I'm jealous of the fact that you have school buses!

@Parent

"Children will be attending this school from a fairly large geographical area. How is it NIMBYism to want to minimize the chances of their getting involved in an accident?
Some of you are way too quick on the NIMBY trigger -- until someone comes along and suggests changes to your street. So you are also NIMBYs, and hypocritical ones at that."

It's NIMBY because these are people complaining about traffic on THEIR street. No discussion about the traffic on other streets. They are using 'safety' as a cover. a) We are talking about buses driven by people we trust to transport our children. You don't think they would be able to safely navigate down a street used by children and other non car traffic? b) We are only talking about at most a handful of buses every day. c) If the buses don't exit on Oak court, they will turn around in a small parking lot (full of people dropping off kids and the same bike riding/walking kids) and exit on Elliot and O'Connor. O'Connor has nice, safe bike lanes and sidewalks all along. Oh wait, no it does NOT!

So the safety 'improvement' is zero. But the nice, quiet artificial cul de sac next door to a 70 year old school site is still there.

Still think not NIMBY?

This direct quote from the article says is all "They don't want too many buses clogging up the road." Looks like a duck walk like a duck.

I really hope that the city tells them NO and spends no more money on this. Honestly the residents of Oak Court should be ashamed of themselves.

A binding agreement to limit how many SCHOOL BUSES can access the SCHOOL on a public road. I'm sorry this is just plain NIMBYism at its finest.

A binding agreement for this situation seems highly unusual.

City Attorney Bill McClure and City Councilwoman Kirsten Keith (who has recused herself from this matter) have a strong working relationship. This agreement restricting future use of the public street for public purposes doesn't seem proper.

City Councilwoman Kirsten Keith lives on Oak Court (from Almanac main story).

@Favoritism implies that a council member can influence public policy by dealing with others in a respectful and professional way. I'm please to read that Menlo Park City Council has a reputation for this kind of behavior.

Being a resident of this area, I initially thought it would make great sense to designate 1 enterance for busses and the other for cars.

Upon walking the area now more and more I realize that by doing this plan it is going to create a bottleneck on the single entrance rather than spreading out the flow of traffic. Watching how they have diverted construction vehicles across 3 enterances has worked to minimize that one street does not 100% of the construction traffic (although 2 of the 3 will flow into the super highway known as O'connor). Pushing traffic away from one street onto another is how the City historically tried to pass traffic measures in the Willows to divert traffic onto other streets causing those residents to complain and cause the measures not to pass. Can't all streets shoulder some of the load rather than have one take on 100% of it all?

It is poor planning on all the money to revamp this school that they did not have the forethought of having two entrances/exits to provide better traffic flow. Admittedly both streets are not ideal for heavy traffic, but at least it will split up the traffic from all being sent to one street.

Now if the city can actually implement a continuous sidewalk (present plan has gaps) in O'CONNOR and at least try to make one designated safe route to the school would be a good first step.