How is it that Atherton can reach a conclusion that their roads have reached their capacity to handle traffic and is looking for solutions while Palo Alto leadership pays lip service to addressing traffic issues but keeps supporting continued development? Even with Palo Alto's state-leading jobs/housing ratio, we have no plans to address our traffic woes. Atherton is at least looking at the problems head-on. Kudos to Atherton Leaders!

Atherton is just pulling this "Saturation" thing out of their hat. It's a way of saying "No" to any future development or request for additional housing by the State. "We're at saturation level" LOL

Don't think for one second that Atherton has some magic potion to suddenly come up with an idea on how to reduce traffic WITHOUT reducing the number of cars on the road. That's pure fantasy. Once a large enough percentage of drivers get out of their cars, poof, traffic will improve for those who are in their cars.

Anyone else notice how comparatively great traffic is during Spring breaks? The traffic issue gets solved each time something takes a chunk of drivers off the road. Nothing else improves traffic like that because removing cars from the road is the ONLY thing that will improve traffic.

We are at saturation level! Some hours of the day we are nearly housebound as we can’t turn onto Valparaiso from Emile or Elena as stated. Not listed but a horrible issue is turning onto El Camino from Alejandra Avenue. Long,backups on Alejandra vision is obscured and can’t turn right because of SUV’s in the Alejandra left turn lane, especially during school mornings and afternoons. Can’t turn left onto El Camino because the left-turn entry lane on El Camino is so dangerous with all of he fast El Camino traffic. Oftentimes 2 cars will be dangerously backed up in this lane nearly missing El Camino traffic. Many accidents and nest accidents. Most often I wait for many minutes before I am able to turn in any direction. With 3 schools, Menlo college, Menlo School, Sacred Heart preschool, elementary and Prep, construction traffic and cut-through traffic it has become impossible. Pedestrian light helps but doesn’t resolve issues for drivers.

Atherton's problem is trees. Heritage trees. They hide behind those heritage trees. I guarantee you that for many of these improvements, they will find a way to scuttle it because they need to preserve trees.

The other issue is Atherton's government has no money. They killed off their parcel tax. They have no other revenue than property tax. They are spending all of their reserves on a new building.

Atherton will need to pass the hat to build any of these improvements. Many of them are on the borders of other jurisdictions. Will Menlo Park or San Mateo County play nicely? Will the public schools pay up? Unlikely.

Maybe I missed it, but where was the Marsh Rd report -- talk about traffic.....

Atherton's problem with traffic is far from unique in this area. They need to work with neighboring cities like Menlo Park and Redwood City to come up with a better plan. If they decide to go the Palo Alto route which is to think only of themselves and try to push traffic onto other cities streets they will find it will backfire. If every city on the peninsula decides to take matters into their own hands what we will end up is traffic chaos and not one will be happy.

I remember the days almost 40 years ago when there was no four-way stop on Alameda and Atherton Avenue. It was clear sailing and the traffic flowed well. Now because of that irritating stop sign on Alameda....after 3 PM I must cut over (going South) at the school to get to my house or face at least a 10 minute wait as everyone has to stop at that silly stop sign.
First remove the stop sign so traffic can flow again.
And then Menlo Park can add back that third lane that we had for many years before they reduced it to two lanes at Ravenswood (Southbound) to “reduce traffic” so they planted trees and made a median.
If you are a business from Ravenswood/Valparaiso to Middle / Safeway you’re chugging along with carbon omissions wafting into the businesses.

So you think the placement of a stop sign, and not an increase in the number of cars using those roads compared to 40 yrs ago has caused the traffic issue? Interesting.

Saturation is an understatement...js...
- Jennifer Web Link