HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-11-07 City Council Summary MinutesCITY OF PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL
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Special Meeting
November 7, 2017
The City Council of the City of Palo Alto met on this date in the Council
Chambers at 6:03 P.M.
Present: Filseth, Fine, Holman, Kniss, Kou, Scharff, Tanaka, Wolbach
Absent: DuBois
Closed Session
1. CONFERENCE WITH CITY ATTORNEY-POTENTIAL LITIGATION
Significant Exposure to Litigation Under Section 54956.9(d) (2)
(One Potential Case, as Defendant) – Palo Alto-Stanford Fire
Protection Agreement.
Mayor Scharff: We're here for a Closed Session with conference with the City
Attorney regarding …
Vice Mayor Kniss: Move we go into Closed Session.
Mayor Scharff: You move to go into Closed Session. Do we have a second?
Council Member Wolbach: Second.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Council Member Wolbach to
go into Closed Session.
Mayor Scharff: All in favor, just vote. That passes 8-0 with Council Member
DuBois absent.
MOTION PASSED: 8-0 DuBois absent
Council went into Closed Session at 6:04 P.M.
Council returned from Closed Session at 7:30 P.M.
Mayor Scharff announced no reportable action.
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Agenda Changes, Additions and Deletions
None.
Oral Communications
Mayor Scharff: The first thing we have then is Oral Communications. Do we
have any Oral Communications? No Oral Communications. Moving on.
Action Items
2. PUBLIC HEARING/QUASI-JUDICIAL. 999 Alma: Council Determination
on a Waiver Request From the Retail Preservation Ordinance.
Environmental Assessment: Exempt in Accordance With the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Section 15061(b) (3) Guidelines
(Continued From October 30, 2017).
Mayor Scharff: We have our first action item, which is a public hearing, quasi-
judicial hearing. May we have a Staff Report?
Jonathan Lait, Planning and Community Environment Assistant Director:
Thank you, Mayor, and good evening, City Council. This is not Groundhog
Day, but you do have another retail waiver request.
Mayor Scharff: It feels like Groundhog Day, doesn't it?
Mr. Lait: This request is coming from the long-term leaseholder at 999 Alma.
Similar to last night's discussion on Portage, this is an applicant who is requesting a waiver from the Retail Preservation Ordinance. Unlike last night's
item, the Director did not make a decision on this application. It was referred
to the City Council as provided for in the Code. That's what was done here.
The same options exist, to approve conditionally, approve, deny, or continue
the matter. The subject property is located in SOFA II, zoned RT-35. The lot
and building is approximately 10,000 square feet. Anthropologie was the
tenant that's been there for greater than 10 years. They are now located at
the Stanford Shopping Center. There's no onsite parking, but the long-term
leaseholder does have parking available at 100 Addison. Here's an aerial view
of the site with the offsite leased parking to the left. The findings for approving
the waiver: demonstration that the retail or retail-like use is not viable; that
the proposed use will support the local zoning and Comprehensive Plan; and
that the proposed use will encourage the pedestrian-oriented activity and
connections. Applicant has proposed that half the building be used for retail
or retail-like uses and the rear half of the building used for office. The
applicant is responsible for providing information to support the claim. The
applicant has provided a letter and some statements included in the packet,
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the 10-year history, the broker statement, and a map of the surrounding
areas. Subject property is shown at the bottom. The yellow is the R-1 zone,
and the other color shown on the map is the SOFA II boundaries with some
different land uses that have been identified. We're asking that you conduct
the hearing and take action on the proposed waiver request. Your action
becomes effective immediately.
Mayor Scharff: First I'll open the public hearing. This is a quasi-judicial hearing. I need disclosures. I'll just start and say I don't think I've spoken
to the applicant or anyone else on it. All I've done is visit the site. Anyone
else?
Public Hearing opened at 7:33 P.M.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I've shopped there.
Mayor Scharff: You've shopped there. Council Member Fine.
Council Member Fine: I did speak with the applicant for a few minutes on the
phone. Nothing outside of the public record.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I know the site well and visit it often. I don't know
if this is subject to disclosure or not, but I also spoke with the broker.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine, I just want to point out that your light—there we go. You put it back on. Do you want to speak again?
Council Member Fine: Not unless you're ready to have questions and Motions.
Mayor Scharff: No, no. That's what that was for. It's a little too early for
that. The applicant gets to speak for 10 minutes if they'd like to. You don't
have to take the whole 10 minutes. Is there any public comment on this?
Since there's no public comment, there's unlikely to be a rebuttal, if there's
anything you want to say in the 10 minutes.
Christian Hansen, Alma Street Partners, Applicant: Thank you. I'll make it
brief. I know that I've been here before, in front of you. My name's Christian
Hansen. Maybe I can start with a little background on the property. My
partner and I bought this building back in—the leasehold interest in this
building back in 2014 with Anthropologie as the tenant. They had a couple
years of term left, and they had an option to extend. In 2015 was when the
Retail Ordinance came into play. Shortly thereafter, Anthropologie notified us
that they would not be exercising their option that they were going to move
to the mall to a bigger footprint. Immediately, we employed a broker. That
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same year, in 2015, we signed a listing agreement with our brokers and
started to market this building. Initially I don't think we were—after talking
to the brokers and hearing their comments that "This is a Downtown building,
and it's Palo Alto. We think you'll have a lot of interest." We were excited
that we would find a tenant. Over the last 2 years marketing it, after the first
few months trying to market it to a single-tenant user, we found that there
just wasn't really any retail user that was interested in a 10,000-square-foot block of space. We instructed our brokers, "Let's expand the net, and let's
tell everyone that we would be willing to demise the space." They started to
offer that to tenants. Furthermore, to maximize exposure we told them, "Let's
go out at an unpriced asking rate," so that we could bring all viable offers.
We wanted to maximize the exposure and really look at every offer that came
in. Unfortunately, fast forward 2 years, 22 months from the time we started
marketing, we still do not have any offers on the building. We are doing
everything we can. I need the Council to understand that I went to every
tour. I had weekly calls with my brokers. I am doing everything in my power
that I know how to do to lease this building to a retail user, whether it's a
single-tenant retail user or multiple retail users. I'm doing everything I know
how to do. Let me just flip here. I do have a couple slides. This just goes through our marketing effort. In 2015, we signed the listing agreement. In
2016, Anthropologie vacated. The building's been sitting vacant now for about
a year. Although we've had several tours and a lot of preliminary interest,
when the tenants get out onsite and they see the distance from where the
building is to University Avenue or the retail corridors, that's about as far as
we've been able to get any of these tenants. The people that have been
interested, office users, we've had some dentists or small medical office users
approach us about the building. Fitness groups have approached us about the
building, and we've sent them down to the City. I think one of the things that
scared them off was the size was an issue, and then I think yesterday, Mayor
Scharff, you were asking questions about commercial recreation uses. It's a
little confusing, and it's a CUP process. When the tenant goes down and they
ask, "Can I put my use here," the answer is "It depends." It takes several
months to get to a point. That does scare some away. We've also had
restaurants that are interested, but the parking's just not viable for
restaurants. It's not an approved use. There are some of our uses. You've
seen this map. White is the SOFA II zone. As you can see, what's hard to
see from this map is it's a very diverse tenant mix. SOFA II, as you know, is
a coordinated area plan. It took 4 years—it was talked about yesterday. It
took about 4 years to get this plan completed. I think it took a long time
because it's a very complex area. Our building in particular is flanked on both
sides by office, so there are no retail users on our immediate block, which
makes it challenging when tenants come out and they see that there's virtually
no pedestrian traffic and that there's no other retail users. With this, I also
included—in the SOFA II zoning, it's pretty clear that the Code does not
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permit—that I can have as much office as I want. It says that it allows up to
5,000 feet of office. In this building, we envision 5,000 feet of office going in
the building and having the frontage along Alma be marketed to either one or
two or more retail tenants. In short, we respectfully request the ability to put
5,000 feet of office use, which also could accommodate our company in the
future. Just so that you know, I've often thought back on this whole process.
If I could go back 2 years ago, I've asked myself would I have done anything different, could I have foreseen this emergency retail ordinance and my
building being caught in the net, was I careless in how I assessed the risk of
the building. All the scenarios I look at, I can't think of any way that I could
have foreseen this happening to this location. I wish I had. I feel like I'm in
the middle of an ocean, and I'm treading water, and I'm drowning, and I am
literally asking for a life preserver. We will do everything we can to lease the
5,000 feet to retail. To stay afloat and to tread water, I respectfully request
that you consider allowing up to 5,000 feet of office as the SOFA II permits.
Mayor Scharff: Before you go, I just have one question for you. In the Staff
Report, it talks about we have the choice of limiting that office as well to
medical office. Is that something you can live with?
Mr. Hansen: Yes. Obviously it would preclude us from ever putting our office, but anything, yes.
Mayor Scharff: You still have time. I thought you were done.
Robert Wheatley, Alma Street Partners, Applicant: I'm Robert Wheatley. I'm
Christian's partner in this deal. You may think of real estate people as coming
in, buying a property, then trying to get the use shifted or something. This is
the opposite. This is something where we came in, we bought the building
with the SOFA II zoning. We thought it was reasonable. We thought we had
good options to be able to manage the property, and then the shift happened,
where we got restricted to a very limited use. Think of a Venn diagram, and
you like to have—we had this great bar of uses we could do. The market
overlapped several of them, so we thought we were pretty good. Then, we
get all that adjustment area taken away, and now we're just this circle out
here that says retail only in a 10,000-foot building, and the market's over
here. It's been a shift away from the market, a shift away from us that's hurt
us rather than us trying to weasel our way into some other use or try to get
the City to change something. Christian said it well that we got caught in a
net. We're on the periphery of any retail zone. We don't have any neighbors
in front of us, in back of us, to the sides of us. We have no retail; we're an
island out here. Anthropologie was a unicorn that came along and was willing
to try to go it alone because they're so popular. We haven't been able to
replace that unicorn, and I don't foresee that we're going to be able to do that.
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What we're asking is for the flexibility that we had when we bought it, the
flexibility that was worked out carefully over years in the SOFA II zoning.
We're asking just allow us to return to that, to give us the flexibility to be able
to successfully market it. If we are left with 5,000 feet of retail, that will be
much more manageable to divide up and use effectively and have the space
along Alma, which they would covet much more than the back alley space to
use as retail. Thank you.
Public Hearing closed at 7:44 P.M.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. I agree that 5,000 square feet of retail is much
easier to manage. We all as a Council—I'm speaking to my colleagues—have
also talked about we do need more medical, small medical-type space in the
City. These are some of the uses that we're missing. I will, just to kick things
off, move that we—how do we put it—grant the proposed retail waiver to allow
half the site, 5,000 square feet, to be used as medical office space.
Council Member Fine: Second.
MOTION: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by Council Member Fine to grant
the proposed retail waiver request pursuant to the standards set forth in Palo
Alto Municipal Code Section 18.40.180 (Retail Preservation), (c) (Waivers and
Adjustments) to allow 5,000 square feet of medical office.
Mayor Scharff: Is that fairly clear to Staff? I'll just briefly speak to it. I totally
believe that 10,000 square feet—if we as a City want 10,000-square-feet stuff,
it's going to be the fitness-type. What did you call it? Community …
Mr. Lait: Community recreation.
Mayor Scharff: Community recreation. I actually would be fine with this being
community recreation, but we then have to go and fix our parking
requirements for that. I'm not sure this site has enough parking to actually
do that. I don't see how they could move in that direction. The only other
use I can think of that's big enough for 10,000 square feet is restaurants. You
can't put restaurants here. We're left with something like an Anthropologie
or something like that. Anthropologie clearly made its view known that it
moved to the Stanford Shopping Center. I think a lot of those kind of retail
is—I agree with the characterization that it's a unicorn, and it's really, really
hard to find. With that said, don't expect to come back and get that 5,000
square feet of retail waived because I for one would never support that. I
don't know about my colleagues. Anyway, Council Member Fine.
Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for the
presentation. This is kind of a rehash of last night, so I'll just go through my
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notes again. I voted against the City-wide expansion of the Retail Preservation
Ordinance because that was designed for the Downtown area. This is clearly
on the limits of that area. There's no other retail on the block, except kitty
corner internally is the Creamery. There's no other co-location of retail. This
is not a great site for retail. The owners went out unpriced for the shop and
didn't find any takers. I think that should be a strong indication to us that the
market is not supporting retail at this location. I continue to believe that we're not going to see the local retail quote/unquote that we want to see by further
legislating and regulating the spaces here. Parking is a serious issue as it was
with the site last night. I guess there's a broader question. Do you really
believe that retail will survive here if we regulate it? What's our public purpose
in trying to require this? Is it to punish the owner? Is it to have the building
stay empty as it has for 3 years now?
Mr. Hansen: A year.
Council Member Fine: One year, thank you. We all call this the Anthropologie
site but, as the Mayor pointed out, Anthropologie moved to Stanford mall
where there's lots of retail. I think the Mayor's proposal will allow the owners
to make some income on the property they bought in a reasonable way.
Personally, I would be happy to grant the waiver. Overall, I don't know if that's where the Council (inaudible) all of us. Put simply, I just really don't
think we're going to see the retail that we want by creating restrictions on
retail sites. I hope you'll support this tonight.
Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I couldn't say it any better than Adrian just did. I
understand the reason, the rationale for splitting it. If we were to make this
whole thing into office, I'd be fine with that. I'm rather surprised to see that
we have nothing but office, in fact a vacancy across the street and then
another office. I am surprised you all have lasted as long as you have. Even
though I'm afraid I'm one of the ones that voted for the emergency retail, I
would certainly love to revisit that. When we have sites like this—there are
several other sites on Alma that are the same—it's just regrettable that we've
insisted on this being retail.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka.
Council Member Tanaka: I just also want to mention that I actually did meet
with the applicant. The applicant came to my office hours—I don't know—2
months ago; it's been a while. In terms of this project—in terms of what was
discussed, nothing that was presented already. In terms of this item, it seems
to make sense to me. I'll support the Mayor's Motion.
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Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I have a different thought about this. I have
different thoughts than apparently some colleagues do about the Retail
Preservation Ordinance. I have some different thoughts about this site. It's
hard to make the finding that it's not a viable retail site when it was retail for
10 years as Anthropologie and it was retail before that. I think it was
automotive sales, I think is what it was. Anthropologie I don't view as a unicorn. I view Anthropologie as destination retail. I've argued also that we
need an economic development person. We need such a person who's a
trained person, who has experience in that field to be able to help property
owners in situations like this. I look to Jonathan. The Council did grant a
waiver for education across the street. Has that property been occupied or
what's the status of that?
Mr. Lait: Yeah, it was for a daycare/preschool. I think permits were issued
this month or last month for that use.
Council Member Holman: I don't think that was the best use for that, but it
is what it is. Now, it's passed and it is what it is. What's really appropriate in
situations like this is that people who own property look for somebody as a
tenant that is sympathetic with the use across the street. I'm sure you can think of those. Here's where my biggest issue—this doesn't make me happy
to say this either. Here's where my biggest issue is. I don't like when property
owners put an unpriced marketing approach out to the public because it's
lacking transparency. I was wondering what was going on with this property
because it was vacant for a long time. Probably, I'm guessing, about 6 weeks
ago, I called the phone number on the sign and wanted to inquire about 999
Alma. Clearly identified when he called back that it was the Anthropologie
site. I was quoted $6.00 a foot. I promise you I was quoted $6.00 a foot.
That included triple net. This is not a $6-a-foot location. Nothing was offered
about negotiating the rate. Nothing was offered about demising the space. I
don't find that as something that's going to make me sympathetic to changing
the rules on this property. I would be open to reconsidering this after 6
months of transparent marketing attempts. Until that time, I can't. I can't
because this is not a transparent way to market property. There was no bad
connection. There was no equivocating. It was $6.00 a foot. That's the
reason I can't support it, because I don't feel it's transparent. I won't go
further than that, but that's where I am.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Holman, I understand. I think I need to give
the applicant a chance to respond to that because we probably should have
disclosed that as information.
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Council Member Holman: I did say that I had spoken to the broker.
Mayor Scharff: Yeah, but I think you have to disclose any information in the
public record that would impact your vote.
Council Member Holman: It was not a private discussion with the applicant.
It was not a private discussion with a neighbor. I don't know where the line
is.
Mayor Scharff: I'm just going to allow the applicant to respond.
Council Member Holman: I don't know where the line is, but it's all in the
public record now.
Mr. Hansen: I have my broker here. I wasn't on the phone call.
Matt Sweeney, Newmark Cornish & Carey: I don't know if you spoke with me
or with my partner, Josh.
Council Member Holman: I don't know that he gave me a name.
Mr. Sweeney: Our approach has been to take any and all offers. I don't know
if there was a conversation of the type of use or if it was just a …
Council Member Holman: I just asked about the space and what was the rate,
and that was the extent of the conversation. It was $6 a foot; it was triple
net. No negotiating and no demising of space was mentioned. It was a very
brief conversation.
Mr. Sweeney: I can say that we have been taking a very aggressive approach
in terms of taking any and all offers, splitting the space. We're marketing the
space with multiple square footages, multiple demising scenarios that we have
come up with. I don't know if you talked to somebody else in our office that
had that information, but we have it listed online as unpriced. We have
tenants that have expressed interest, that were worried about price. What
we've told them is market rent Downtown is $6-$7; market rent if you go
down on El Camino is closer to $3.00 triple net. We're somewhere in-between
there, and we're not trying to scare anyone away. We are open to seeing any
offer for any tenant.
Council Member Holman: It doesn't explain why my experience was so very,
very different.
Mr. Sweeney: Fair enough.
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Mr. Hansen: We've tried to pull in all offers. I don't know what to say other
than that's not what I'm aware of. That's not at all what we're trying to do.
I'm trying to lease the space.
Mr. Wheatley: I would just say we've had several hour-long discussions in
this space with multiple different tenants from salons to other people who had
an idea of what they could do. We've spent an hour talking with them about
how we could make it. The discussions were at much lower rents. We've had hour-long discussions trying to say how we could make this work for you,
could this be a possible location for you, let's get engaged in a discussion. It
never comes to can we lower the rate if you—we would do it if you lower the
rate. That's never been on the table; we never get that far because they find
a more retail-friendly site somewhere else. Pricing just hasn't been an issue.
Mr. Hansen: The last thing to add is just that it never is a cut-and-dry rate.
As you know, there's build out—when you have a building, there's build-out
scenarios. It's a lot different depending on who you're talking about. If
someone comes and says, "I want this space as is," that's different than
someone that wants you to build a salon for them or a big tenant
improvement. Again, I would never even in a transparent marketing
scenario—I don't know if anyone, my broker would ever—I would never quote that to someone.
Council Member Holman: There was no equivocating. There was no bad
connection. There was no—I don't know what to tell you other than this was
my experience, my personal experience. There was no lack of clarity in the
conversation. I don't know what to tell you.
Mr. Hansen: I don't either.
Mayor Scharff: Thank you. Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: A question for Staff. Hassett Hardware is a block
away at Alma and Channing. I think it's probably a similar size, about 10,000
square feet. That place has like four parking places including the ones across
the street. Are they nonconforming?
Mr. Lait: I don't know (inaudible)
Council Member Filseth: How can they have like …
Mr. Lait: They're zoned RT-50. They're nonconforming for parking, but the
use would be fine.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks.
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Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: I think it was Council Member Fine earlier asked
about the goal. I think the goal of the Retail Preservation Ordinance is pretty
clearly to prevent conversion of retail to office space. This motion by limiting
it to medical, I think I'm comfortable with that, and because it's only half. I
think I'm going to support this motion. If it was simply to grant it for all office,
that would be a harder sell for me. This is reasonable. I would also be open to it being used for housing frankly. I don't know if that's something that's
been considered by the applicant. I don't think I'd be open to changing the
whole thing, but I might even be open to the other half being housing given
what's in that area. It's mostly office and housing in that vicinity. On the
question of the Retail Preservation Ordinance in general, I don't think that's
agendized to have a deep discussion about tonight. I'll just say given our
conversation last night and our conversation tonight, I do think that at some
point maybe we want to have a conversation about tweaks to make sure we
didn't set our own ordinance up to be counterproductive, to set it up to fail,
or to set retail up to actually make it harder for retail, especially through those
parking requirements that we talked so much about last night. That's not part
of the agenda, but I figure I'd, since others had alluded to it, just mention that for future discussions. I'll be supporting this motion not with a lot of
excitement. I do think you've done the work to make the findings.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou.
Council Member Kou: How many parking spaces are allotted to this building?
Mr. Lait: I believe the leaseholder has 15 spaces on 100 Addison.
Council Member Kou: I'm sorry. Where?
Mr. Lait: Across the street on Addison.
Council Member Kou: Are those leased or are those yours—are those the
applicant's spaces? Is that lot theirs or—I'm sorry?
Mr. Lait: There is a property owner who has provided a long-term lease to
those parking space to the applicant.
Council Member Kou: If it's a lease, how can we be assured that it's going to
continue along with the waiver?
Mr. Lait: Thank you. Let me back up one step. The Anthropologie building
is a legal, nonconforming building with respect to parking. There is no City
requirement for parking. It just so happens that they have a private
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arrangement for extra parking at 100 Addison. 100 Addison for the new use
that's going to be located there is meeting their parking requirement, and
there's still this surplus parking that could be used to support 999 Alma. None
of that's required by Code. 999 Alma does not have any Code-required
parking.
Council Member Kou: It's interesting. Yesterday we had a chat about how
we need housing. We went through a housing memo and all that. Vice Mayor Kniss has reminded us time and time again that throughout the campaign it's
always been about housing. Yet, the first opportunity we get is to revert it,
putting something that isn't preservation to change it over to office. While I
understand and I've read through the report and I do see where you're coming
from, I just find that there's still a very high priority placed on office space.
We know that already. We have a job and housing issue; yet, it's perpetuated.
I just want to remind—I agree with most of what Council Member Wolbach
had said. It'd be nice if you could change it to housing, but I also see that
that might not be within the Code. RT-35 doesn't …
Mr. Lait: Housing is a permitted land use.
Council Member Kou: It is permitted?
Mr. Lait: Yes.
Council Member Kou: Hopefully that might be a consideration; although—
hopefully that would be a consideration also. Lastly, I just want to ensure and
have it on record that you did say, the applicant that you were going to be
putting wherever the change is to the back of the building, still allowing for
the front where there's all the glass for retail. Is that so?
Mr. Hansen: (inaudible)
Council Member Kou: Mayor, can I just have him say it on record?
Mr. Hansen: Sure, yes.
Council Member Kou: Thank you.
Mr. Lait: Just so you know, you could condition that as part of your approval
if that were necessary.
Council Member Kou: I'd like to add that change, that the applicant proposes
for whether it's office or residences that is at the back of the building. Towards
the alley.
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Mr. Lait: The rear half of the building. I'm following you. I guess the other
part of that is the—no, I'm good. Housing, if they wanted to explore that,
would be permissible if the waiver were granted for the rear half. That would
be fine.
Council Member Kou: Right now the waiver is only for the medical office, not
for housing.
Mr. Lait: That's right. I guess you're saying it's for medical office, but maybe you want to consider housing too.
Mayor Scharff: I don't actually. I want this to have ground-floor retail. I
don't.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “and require non-retail uses
at the rear of the building.”
Council Member Kou: I'm fine with it.
Mayor Scharff: No, I'm quite happy with second and third-floor housing on
this. I think that would be totally fine if they want to redevelop it.
Council Member Kou: To Code.
Mayor Scharff: I personally think that 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail
on this space is a good thing to have. While I'm speaking to it since you raised it, I actually think there's a shortage of small medical office space …
Council Member Kou: I agree.
Mayor Scharff: … in the community. This is not turning it into—I'm actually
glad that we're going to have some community-serving stuff that we need. I
view medical office that way. I want to be able to drive to my dentist.
Council Member Kou: May I ask a question?
Mayor Scharff: Sure.
Council Member Kou: When you say medical office, does that mean dental
and also psychiatrists and therapists, those sort?
Mr. Lait: Yeah, all those examples would qualify.
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Mayor Scharff: We're now going to do another round. We have about a half
an hour left, so if we could just keep our second round short. Council Member
Fine.
Council Member Fine: Just a few points I want to respond to. One, the desire
to have housing here is actually stopped by our Retail Preservation Ordinance.
If these guys wanted to do housing on the ground floor there, our current
ordinance prevents that. We'd have to grant a waiver for housing or for a gym or for a gas station or whatever the heck we wanted to see happen there.
Mayor Scharff: Heaven forbid a gas station.
Council Member Fine: Heaven forbid. I'm just pointing that out. Two, to
respond to Council Member Kou, just because housing is not there and this
may be a viable space for office doesn't imply that we're necessarily against
housing at that location. It's currently prevented because of the ground-floor
retail protections. Third, I just want to float this as a point of discussion. Last
night and tonight, we've had some anecdotal evidence—I don't want to doubt
you, Council Member Holman at all in terms of the parking issues at 425 last
night or at this spot tonight. I do think we have to be careful about introducing
those at a Council meeting. I could have called these folks and offered them
$15 or $30 bucks a square foot, and they would have said yippee. I just want to float that, that it's important for us to couch our anecdotal experiences with
individual properties, their parking, their rental rates, and all that in Palo Alto
with the fact that we have an obligation to look at our Code, the public record,
and the market as visible to all of the public in terms of how we make these
decisions. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: All right, Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I was just going to say I can't support it for the
reason I mentioned earlier, but if it was going to be something else, I'm glad
that this is what it is.
Mayor Scharff: Vice Mayor Kniss.
Vice Mayor Kniss: As long as we've gotten into the residential aspect of it,
what could actually be allowed there, Jonathan? Let's say we were to put in
the requisite retail on the ground floor, which we've now said can be half
office. What could be added above that even though, as Adrian has just
pointed out, we also have a Retail Ordinance that wouldn't allow them to do
that and do it with housing? Let's just wave our magic wand and say we could.
How much housing could you actually get at that site? Square footage not
how many condos or whatever.
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Mr. Lait: I don't have a magic wand for mathematics in my head, so I'd have
to look at the Code and figure out what those numbers are. I can do that for
you this evening. Council Member Fine is correct. On the ground floor,
residential would not be allowed except if a waiver were granted. Certainly a
second-story or third-story addition to the building, if it could be retrofitted to
accommodate that, would be allowed. There's a provision for off-street
parking and, with the long-term lease, presumably those types of things would be permissible.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I'd certainly say Council Member Kou went in the right
direction, saying we've been talking about housing. Maybe there are more
opportunities that we have to say to an applicant, "Have you ever thought
about housing there? Have you ever thought about keeping the ground floor
in one way and adding housing otherwise?" I don't think we've had that
conversation with the applicant very often. It's probably one we should have.
Be interesting to know just what we can put there. I'm going to presume they
could go to 50 feet. Correct?
Mr. Lait: (inaudible)
Vice Mayor Kniss: I don't remember all of the SOFA requirements, but I think
they can go to 50 feet.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: A couple of things. Just looking at the text, I'm a
little concerned about the way this is phrased. I think I understand our
intention of how we discussed this. In the amendment that was added, I'm
worried about the wording. I'm worried that this says—if somebody's looking
at this a couple of years in the future and maybe there's turnover in Staff or
Council, they might read this to say that if a prospective tenant came and
said, "I'm interested in renting the whole 10,000 for retail," this says require
non-retail uses at the rear of the building. That might preclude that. I would
actually suggest that we change the wording to—instead of a semi-colon, just
say "at the rear of the building." Get rid of the semi-colon and "and require
non-retail uses." It'd say to allow 5,000 square feet of medical office at the
rear of the building.
Mayor Scharff: That's acceptable.
Council Member Fine: (inaudible)
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to remove from the Motion, “and require non-retail
uses.”
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Council Member Wolbach: That way, if you find, as you put it, another
unicorn, you find another tenant, you'd have that option. For that area that
is exempt, that 5,000 square feet at the rear of the building, I don't know if
the maker and the seconder would be interested in saying "medical office or
residential." That way they'd have it as an option.
Vice Mayor Kniss: You mean residential on the ground floor?
Council Member Wolbach: Yeah, for that ground floor. They could do the retail in the front and residential in the back. It wouldn't change the retail
half. It would just give them basically two options instead of just the one.
Council Member Fine: At this point, we might as well just grant a waiver.
Council Member Wolbach: What I don't want is regular office space there.
That was important. I'm not making the motion; I'm floating an idea.
Mayor Scharff: I don't quite see how you retrofit this building. I don't
understand how residential fits in the back of the building frankly. It makes
no sense to me.
AMENDMENT: Council Member Wolbach moved, seconded by Council
Member XX to add to the Motion, “and residential” after “medical office.”
AMENDMENT FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECOND
Council Member Wolbach: Is it not conceivable in the current structure of the building? I haven't toured the site well enough to know.
Mayor Scharff: I don't think so. I wouldn't want there to be like … You'd have
to probably have Code to meet our … I don't think this makes sense frankly,
but I'm unclear.
Mr. Lait: There would be a number of upgrades that would be required for
the building. Parking would have to be addressed. Presumably it could be.
There may be some other development standards that I'm not thinking about,
such as open space or things like that, where there may be some technical
challenges related to it.
Mayor Scharff: I guess I'm not really okay if we just decided they…say they
decided to retrofit one unit of residential in a loft back there. I'd rather have
the medical/dental frankly. What I would say is I don't want to put this in
now. If you guys came back with a plan to put it in the back of the residential,
you might get a positive feeling. I don't want to just agree now.
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Council Member Wolbach: Through the Mayor, could I ask the applicant a
question?
Mayor Scharff: Sure.
Council Member Wolbach: Have you considered adding residential in that back
half of the property? Do you have any thoughts about it?
Mr. Wheatley: We haven't considered trying to retrofit into a warehouse a
couple of units at the back. If you wanted retail here, it would be an additive thing, and you would probably have to go down with parking. It's probably a
total …
Council Member Wolbach: You mean residential?
Mr. Wheatley: … gut of the building. Residential. I think it'd be a gut of the
building. It would be underground parking. It would be some limited retail
along the frontage with uses that were sympathetic to the new retail, maybe
it's things that they would use, the residents and walking traffic. Then, you'd
have floors above with residential. I don't know that we could just add …
Mr. Hansen: Just to add, I think your thinking is right, though. It's probably
not us at this time, maybe several years down the road. When you try to
redevelop this building, the Retail Ordinance—trying to redevelop with a
10,000-square-foot retail requirement would prohibit anyone from redeveloping. If you do add, like you said, that language in, it just enables
either us in the future or a developer to not be restricted to 10,000 feet of
retail, so it's more likely that it'll happen.
Council Member Wolbach: It doesn't like there's a lot of appetite tonight for
making that an amendment to this motion. We've talked about it in the
meeting; it's on the record that we'd probably be open to a future attempt, if
there's interest in yourself or a future owner, in adding or redesigning the
building in some way to have some residential on the property. Looking at
what's in the area, that doesn't seem unreasonable, and that's allowed in the
zoning. I kind of like the building, so I'm not saying tear it down. It doesn't
sound like you're interested in doing that either. That's good. That's it for
my comments. I'll support this motion as it is now.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou.
Council Member Kou: I just want to state also the Retail Preservation
Ordinance is working. It works very well because it has kept a lot of retail
stores in place and has not been converted to office, which is something that
we are trying to grapple with in this City. In each case, yesterday's case and
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today's case are two different, separate cases. Yesterday, it was very stated
clearly that it was not precedent-setting. That's why we have the waivers in
place for you to come forward to see if we can help you with that. I do want
to state that it is working very well. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: I'm going to …
Mr. Lait: Could I just respond to the questions, and then I have one more
request.
Mayor Scharff: No. Yeah, of course.
Mr. Lait: The height limit is 35 feet for this particular building. For a mixed-
use project, if you kept the same ground-floor square footage, you've got
roughly another 2,500 square feet that you can add to the building. We would
require a minimum of three units. Three units could be added at a second
floor, each roughly about 850 square feet. Those are gross numbers. There's
a lot of stuff that goes into whether that would stick. Just wanted to—maybe
some of you saw one the applicants, Robert Wheatley, come and talk to me.
He made a comment, and I think it's probably worth noting. This dividing line
across the building may not be a straight line. There may be some jogging of
that line as we accommodate bathrooms and storage areas. The intent, as I
understand it, is that the front half toward Alma will be used for retail or retail-like uses. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: That was the intent. Council Member Fine.
Council Member Fine: Just one thing. I need to respond to Council Member
Kou. If you have evidence that the Retail Preservation Ordinance is keeping
retail operations in their spot and preserving the retail that we want to see in
Palo Alto, I would encourage you to bring it here to the City Council.
Council Member Kou: (inaudible)
Mayor Scharff: No, I'm going to comment on it, support you, and then we're
going to quit. I get the last word. I actually agree with Council Member Kou.
I believe the Retail Ordinance is working really well, and we are preserving
retail. You only lose retail—I hate to harp on things we've talked about. We
didn't need to lose Rudy's. We didn't need to lose (inaudible) Spa. We didn't
need to lose the pizza place. What was it called? California Kitchen, California
Pizza Kitchen. House of Bagels. I'm going to say that there is a bunch of
retail that gets saved by this. I think office does make more sense. The fact
that we're seeing the corner cases come to us means it's working. I gave this
some thought. I really strongly support retail, and a lot of my colleagues up
here do. When these corner cases come to us, I don't feel the need to be rigid
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in my thinking about it. Just the fact that we grant the waiver doesn't mean
I don't support retail. The fact that we are moving in this direction shows that
we are a thoughtful Council and respond to applicants when they come with
us with concerns. That's the way it should be. I appreciate all the comments
of my colleagues.
MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Mayor Scharff moved, seconded by
Council Member Fine to grant the proposed retail waiver request pursuant to the standards set forth in Palo Alto Municipal Code Section 18.40.180 (Retail
Preservation), (c) (Waivers and Adjustments) to allow 5,000 square feet of
medical office at the rear of the building.
Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That almost passes
unanimously; it's a 6-2 vote with Council Member Filseth and Holman voting
no.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 6-2 Filseth, Holman no, DuBois absent
3. Adoption of an Ordinance to Increase the Posted Speed Limit on Deer
Creek Road and a Segment of East Bayshore Road to Enable Radar
Enforcement and to Reduce the Posted Speed Limit in School Zones
Consistent With State Law; and Resolution 9718 Entitled, “Resolution of
the Council of the City of Palo Alto Establishing Target Speeds for Certain Arterials and Residential Arterials.” Environmental Assessment: Exempt
Under California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines Section
15301 (Continued From October 16, 2017).
Mayor Scharff: On to the next item, which is speed limits.
Joshuah Mello, Chief Transportation Official: Good evening, Mayor, members
of Council. My name is Joshuah Mello. I'm the Chief Transportation Official
for the City of Palo Alto. To my right is Ruchika Aggarwal, who is a member
of the Traffic Safety and Operations team within the Transportation Division,
and Chris Thnay with the consulting firm that helped prepare the traffic and
engineering speed surveys that we'll be discussing tonight. We also have
Chief Watson in the audience if any questions come up regarding police
operations. Just to give you a little bit of background on setting speed limits
in California, I'll go through this quickly. There are two options for setting
speed limits in California. The first is prima facie speed limits by statute.
These can be 15 miles per hour in school zones or railroad crossings and 25
miles per hour in business and residential areas. These are set by ordinance;
they don't require any kind of survey by radar or any other analysis. What
defines a business district is 50 percent or more of the frontage occupied by
businesses within a certain linear stretch of roadway. A residential district is
13 or more homes along a similar linear stretch of roadway. Where this causes
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an issue in Palo Alto is streets that have more than one lane in each direction
or over a certain width; speed limits cannot be implemented using this option.
This causes some issues on our residential arterials like Charleston and
Arastradero, Middlefield Road, and Embarcadero Road. Those are technically
not considered residential districts under the California State law, eligible for
the prima facie speed limit because of the width of the roadway and the
multiple travel lanes. The second option for setting speed limits on these types of roadways is to use what's called an engineering and traffic survey.
This is where a traffic engineer during free-flow conditions, not during rush
hour, uses a certified radar gun to determine what the average speed is, the
85th percentile speed. That's the speed at which 85 percent of motorists are
traveling at or below. That is used to determine the speed limit that can be
posted on that roadway and enforced by radar. It's typically rounded up or
down to the nearest 5-mile-per-hour increment. These engineering and traffic
surveys expire after 5 years. Jurisdictions can extend them from 7 to 10
years. Some of our surveys were expiring back in 2016; that's what initiated
this entire effort. Back in 2016, we actually conducted the engineering and
traffic surveys for 70 roadway segments in Palo Alto. These are primarily
collector streets, residential arterials, and arterial streets. The surveys validated the posted speed limit for 56 of those segments. We have the ability
to certify 56 segments for radar enforcement at the current speed limit, so we
don't have to make any modifications. We can certify those, and the police
can go out and start using radar enforcement. However, on 14 of those street
segments, the speed surveys show that there was a differential between the
posted speed limit and the operating speed; thereby, preventing us from using
radar enforcement on those roadway segments. This is a map that shows the
current speed limits in the City of Palo Alto. Everything that is not colored is
25 miles an hour. We generally have a City-wide speed limit of 25 miles an
hour unless otherwise posted. We have other speed limits posted primarily
on arterial streets, not the residential arterials like Middlefield and
Embarcadero. Those are also generally 25 miles an hour. The highlighted
segments here in the yellow and purple are the segments that were not able
to be certified using the engineering and traffic surveys. The ones that are
shown in purple would need to be increased to 30 miles an hour if we wanted
to do radar enforcement. The ones shown in yellow shading would need to be
increased to 40 miles an hour if we wanted to do radar enforcement. As part
of this effort, we did have a round of public engagement. We wanted to tackle
this a little bit differently, and not just do a technical exercise of radar data
collection and then bring you the report without any kind of community
feedback. If you remember last year in November, we went to both Planning
and Transportation Commission and City Council. We conducted Study
Sessions to determine what some of your thoughts were on these engineering
and traffic surveys before we decided to advance any kind of ordinance or
resolution. Subsequent to the PTC and City Council Study Sessions, we went
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out to the community in March. We had two meetings; we had a north Palo
Alto meeting and a south Palo Alto meeting. It was a workshop format where
we presented people with the findings of the engineering and traffic surveys,
and we discussed whether they had an appetite for increasing the speed limits
to conduct radar enforcement. Generally, the public was not supportive of
increasing the speed limits on the residential arterial streets. However, they
were open to making striping changes, adding speed feedback signs, looking at some types of traffic calming that's compatible with residential arterial
streets, additional crosswalks, median islands, landscaped medians, things of
that nature. We talked a great deal about some of the specific roadways. We
had a very long conversation about University Avenue heading towards 101
and some of the issues that the folks in the Crescent Park neighborhood have
observed along University Avenue. There was general support for reducing
the speed limits in the school zones, which I'll talk a little bit about later in the
presentation. Our recommendations this evening are to certify the posted
speed limit for the 56 segments that were found to be in line with State law
and eligible for radar enforcement. We are recommending increasing the
posted speed limit on only two roadway segments, these being Deer Creek
Road from the western City limits to Arastradero Road. This would go from 35 miles an hour to 40 miles an hour. East Bayshore Road from Embarcadero
Road bicycle and pedestrian overcrossing to Adobe Creek would be increased
from 35 to 40 miles an hour. These segments are relatively isolated from
residential neighborhoods. They're not part of any walk and roll routes for
any schools within Palo Alto. The abutting land uses are very low density, lots
of parkland. In the case of East Bayshore Road, instead of recommending an
increase all the way from Embarcadero to San Antonio, we are recommending
the increase only in the center segment where there's a separate, shared-use
path that can be used by bicyclists and pedestrians. They don't have to use
the existing bike lanes on East Bayshore Road. Those bike lanes are
continuous, but the shared-use path is only within the segment that we're
recommending. There's no sidewalk on the west side of East Bayshore Road,
so there's no pedestrian crossings occurring in that segment either, so we
thought it was a wise decision to recommend increasing the speed limit on
that segment. We're also recommending extending the 25-mile-per-hour
school zone speed limit from the current 500-foot radius to 1,000 feet, and
we're now able to do that under California State law. This is a law that was
passed in 2012. We're also recommending reducing the speed limit to 20
miles per hour within school zones within 500 feet of the school grounds. You
could also elect to reduce that to 15 miles per hour, but we really feel like 15
miles per hour is unrealistic from an enforcement perspective. These are the
streets that would be changed. There are several maps included in the
presentation. We analyzed the street network surrounding all of the public
schools in the City of Palo Alto. We did not look at private schools. If Council
wanted to direct us to implement the same speed limit changes in areas
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surrounding private schools, we could do that as well. That would need to be
part of the Ordinance. Finally, we're recommending establishing target
speeds. This is a relatively new practice. This has nothing to do with
enforcement. It has to do with the way we design our streets. We would
adopt target speeds of 25 miles per hour for the streets that are listed here.
These are primarily residential arterial streets. This would formalize the target
speed and enable us to make design decisions around that target speed of 25 miles per hour thereby ultimately reducing the operating speed along the
corridor as we implement these design changes. We could resurvey the roads
after some of these design changes are implemented and perhaps certify the
road for radar enforcement because we would have reduced the operating
speeds down to the point where they'd be eligible under State law for radar
enforcement at the current speed limit. Some of the things that we would
consider—we've talked to the residents specifically along Middlefield Road in
the Midtown neighborhood and Crescent Park, University Avenue and Crescent
Park. We had quite a long conversation about some of the treatments that
we could consider on those two roadways. Here's a list; I won't go through
all of them. I will tell you we've already seen success in this along Middlefield
Road between Lowell and Oregon Avenue. We reduced the travel lane width down to 10 feet just using striping, and we created some temporary curb
extensions and designed some of the tapers on the road at 25 miles per hour.
Just through that restriping that was done through the resurfacing, we saw a
4-mile-per-hour reduction along that segment of Middlefield Road. These
types of treatments can reduce the operating speeds and potentially get us to
a point where we could certify the roads for radar enforcement. This is a chart
that shows the effect of lane width reductions. Wider travel lanes generally
encourage higher travel speeds. Just by restriping the road and visually
narrowing the travel lane, you can actually reduce travel speeds. Some other
immediate next steps that we've already started moving forward. On the left,
you see speed feedback signs. We've recently upgraded seven speed
feedback signs. We replaced ones that were not functioning properly and
others that had become just static speed limit signs. We're about to roll out
another 12 new speed feedback signs. These are generally in areas where we
see high operating speeds or gateways where people are entering the City and
there may be a different speed limit in the jurisdiction nearby. We're also
moving forward with installing City-wide speed limit signs at the gateways into
the City. This would be City-wide speed limit unless otherwise posted. As I
mentioned, the vast majority of the streets in Palo Alto are 25 miles an hour,
so we want to let people know that Palo Alto is a little bit different. Our
residential arterial streets are 25 miles an hour, and these signs would be
installed at the key gateways into the City to provide that notification for
motorists. With that, the Staff recommendation is included in your Staff
Report. There is an at-places memo that was delivered to you, that has an
updated ordinance that cleans up some of the streets around the schools and
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also cleans up the description of Deer Creek Road to define it as the western
City limits to Arastradero Road. There is one additional change that needs to
be made. That's the segment description for East Bayshore Road. It should
read East Bayshore Road from the Embarcadero Road bicycle and pedestrian
overcrossing to Adobe Creek. In the ordinance, it currently reads from the
Baylands frontage to San Antonio Road. That's the only other modification
that we would recommend to the ordinance. With that, we're here to answer questions.
Mayor Scharff: Do we have any public speakers? Vice Mayor Kniss.
Vice Mayor Kniss: In that case, I would move approval of this and read the
recommendation off, if I get a second.
Mayor Scharff: I'll second it.
MOTION: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by Mayor Scharff to:
A. Adopt an Ordinance increasing the Posted Speed Limit from 35 miles per
hour to 40 miles per hour on Deer Creek Road between western city
limits and Arastradero Road and on East Bayshore Road between the
Embarcadero Road Bicycle and Pedestrian Overcrossing and Adobe
Creek to enable enforcement by radar pursuant to the California Vehicle
Code; reducing the Posted Speed Limit within school zones, consistent with State law; and amending Palo Alto Municipal Code Chapter 10.56,
including changes presented in the Staff Memorandum and detailed by
Staff; and
B. Adopt a Resolution establishing Target Speeds for certain Arterials and
Residential Arterials where the Operating Speed has been found to
exceed the Posted Speed Limit in order to reduce the Operating Speed
through roadway design; and
C. Find the requested actions exempt from review under the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as a minor alteration to existing
facilities (Guidelines Section 15301, Class One, Existing Facilities).
Vice Mayor Kniss: That should include the changes that you just read, Josh,
at the same time. This is brave of you to take this on because many times
people have suggested changing speed limits in Palo Alto, and many times
they have not been successful. I hope this one is tonight, in particular the
Deer Creek Road, which is surprisingly well traveled and surprisingly traveled
very fast, so that one in particular. I'd say congratulations on changing the
speed limit within schools zones; although, at many times of the day, you
couldn't even go 20 miles an hour if you tried to. That one I would say is
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good, but it's pretty hard to speed around those schools an hour before or
after the time that they start. Also, target speeds for certain arterials and
residentials, I thought that was very interesting through roadway design.
After we get through this, you might also say something to us about how the
road diet has worked on Middlefield. When I've driven it, it seems to work
well. Find these actions exempt from review under the California
Environmental Quality Act, under CEQA, and so forth. This is a very good report. Secondly, I also found on Page 3 what's fascinating is these are the
same streets that we've had discussions about any number of times as far as
changing the speed limit. Essentially, you have said it doesn't work to change
the speed limit on those 14 streets, which is Page 3 and Page 4.
Mayor Scharff: Thanks for all this hard work. I know you've been working on
this for a really long time and trying to get it. I also think that—you did the
community outreach. How many people came to the community—are we
talking ten people showed up or we are talking 100 showed up?
Mr. Mello: It was a handful at each meeting, but they were highly engaged.
It was people that had had this concern throughout their time in Palo Alto.
They had a lot to tell us, lots of observations about the particular roadways.
Mayor Scharff: The only question—I even hesitate to bring it up in some ways. Embarcadero is one of the main ways you get across the City. I just want to
know—I don't want you to do anything to Embarcadero to make it more
congested or more difficult to travel than it is. To be honest, I actually think
30 miles an hour might be the right thing on Embarcadero. I do worry about
how people get out. I was going to ask you that question. Is coming out at
30 miles an hour really difficult? It might be. I don't know. I was curious
about—with everything else, I totally agree Middlefield should be 25, the rest
of them. Embarcadero I do wonder about. I actually wanted to hear from a
traffic engineer as opposed to the feedback from the ten people who live there,
who came out to talk about it.
Mr. Mello: Ruchika and Chris might have something to add, but I would
reaffirm that the type of treatments we're talking about are not dramatic
things like speed humps or road diets. In the case of Alma, we will be bringing
forward some lane reconfiguration for the section Downtown. Generally, we're
talking about things like median islands that will slightly divert people. The
goal would be to get them to travel at a moderate speed fluidly along the
corridor with not a lot of starts and stops, but keep them at a nice, smooth
speed.
Mayor Scharff: It's the stops that destroy the traffic.
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Mr. Mello: These would not be—we would not be introducing new traffic
signals or anything that would add additional stopping and going. It would be
more about moderating the speeds. We pay particular focus to the sections
that have the higher travel speeds. For Embarcadero, things we've talked
about is just adding an edge line. If you're coming from 101, there is
technically a parking lane, but it's very underutilized. That outside lane feels
15 feet wide, 20 feet wide in some place. Just adding an edge line and tightening that up would moderate the speeds a little bit in that outside lane.
We've already added a speed feedback sign on Embarcadero just past Newell,
two actually along Embarcadero. These are going to be minor treatments.
It's not going to be anything that's going to really impact motorists from a
congestion perspective.
Mayor Scharff: You didn't answer my question about going to 30 miles an
hour on Embarcadero, whether or not that's safe with people pulling out or
not. I'm curious.
Mr. Mello: Pulling out of driveways?
Mayor Scharff: Yeah, pulling out of driveways. Otherwise, the question is
why not go to 30 miles an hour.
Mr. Mello: I think the speeds that we documented on Embarcadero are around … The 85th percentile on some segments of Embarcadero is 37 miles an hour.
People are already going 37. If we were to set it at 30 and then do intensive
radar enforcement, we may see the average speed go down.
Mayor Scharff: Right, that's my question. Twenty-five on Embarcadero seems
a little low to me frankly. I'm really raising the question about—if we got it to
30 and we then enforced rigorously and did that, is that a more reasonable
option than telling people they really need to drive 25 on Embarcadero?
Frankly, you pull in there—there's no cars on the road at night. I think going
25 could be difficult for a lot of people. I think that's why you're seeing those
higher speed limits.
Mr. Mello: Increasing it to 30 is an option that's available to the Council this
evening. I would say that you feel like it's hard to go 25 because of the design
of the roadway. Our goal would be to make it feel more like a 25-mile-an-
hour roadway through design changes. That's what the target speed is about.
Mayor Scharff: I had one other question I'm asking about this stuff. When I
drive on North California now, it feels really, almost unsafely narrow when
another car comes down. I'm literally going like 15 miles an hour; yet, that
road feels very, very narrow. You're not planning on narrowing all our roads
like that?
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Mr. Mello: The width of that road was actually not changed. The goal of that
design was to make people slow down. It seems to be working. The actual
width of the travel way was not reduced. We actually shifted the white lines
over. By removing the center line, you take away that guidance that people
feel, and they actually have to pay a little more attention. It feels a little more
uncomfortable when a vehicle is passing in the opposite direction.
Mayor Scharff: It feels uncomfortable when a vehicle passes you even if you're doing it at a slow speed.
Vice Mayor Kniss: (inaudible)
Mayor Scharff: That may be the point. The point is that it's actually
uncomfortable. I think it's uncomfortable if you're an older driver. North
California you should be going really slow, but I'd hate to see that on
Embarcadero for instance, anything like that.
Mr. Mello: As I said, all we've really talked about for Embarcadero is adding
white edge lines to define the travel way and define the parking lane, and then
some speed feedback signs.
Mayor Scharff: What other roads are you thinking of making like North
California where you have that uncomfortable feeling when you pass
somebody?
Mr. Mello: North California is unique because it's a residential street with
bicycle lanes. All the other streets in that neighborhood do not have center
lines, but they don't have bicycle lanes, so the curb is actually your guide or
the parked vehicles. North California feels a little odd because …
Mayor Scharff: Because of the bicycle lanes.
Mr. Mello: … because of the bicycle lanes. The short answer is there aren't
many streets like that in Palo Alto, that we would look at that same type of
treatment.
Mayor Scharff: I think that's good. I actually wanted to say I thought you
thought this through really well. I thought it was great Staff work. I'm going
to support it. Thanks. Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: Thank you for the work, very much, and thank you
for listening to the community. A couple or three things. I didn't find College
Avenue. What's the tracked speed on College Avenue in College Terrace? The
reason I ask about that is because it's a very wide street. Council Member
Tanaka is very familiar with it of course. It's a very wide street with no trees
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in the middle, no medians, no anything. People speed on it. What was the
determination there and what's the plan for that street?
Mr. Mello: I believe College Avenue is a local street, not a residential arterial
or arterial, so we did not conduct an engineering and traffic survey on College
Avenue this go-round. It's eligible for that prima facie 25-mile-per-hour
speed.
Council Member Holman: There's no plan for making any improvements or any calming matters there then either?
Mr. Mello: Not as part of this study. We didn't identify improvements. If you
have any ideas, we'd certainly be open to …
Council Member Holman: If you haven't—you probably have. I think you've
been around a lot of this town. If you go check out that street and how
people—it's kind of a speedway. It really is. That's one. Another is—Vice
Mayor Kniss may remember this. I think if the speed limits on Embarcadero
were increased, Yoriko Kishimoto would run for Council again. That's what
got her to run for Council the first time.
Vice Mayor Kniss: As long as she's opened it up, I have seen this Chamber
jammed when we suggested going to 30 miles an hour. It is not a very popular
position to take.
Council Member Holman: It's not. Just wanted to put a little history down
there for the Mayor. I have another question. I support almost all of this, but
I have one question. I feel like the real curmudgeon tonight. I have a
question. We got in this situation because we haven't been enforcing the
speed limit, so the speed at which people have been traveling has been
growing or increasing. We can't enforce the roadways with radar. If we
increase the speed in these two segments that are suggested, are we going
to enforce them? I'm always told that we don't have traffic officers out there.
Why are we doing it if we can't enforce—are we going to enforce it? If so,
what kind of money do we have appropriated for Staff to be out there to
enforce?
Ron Watson, Interim Police Chief: Mayor, Council Members, Ron Watson from
the Police Department. I think the short answer is right now we can't enforce
it. If you do this, we can. As to how much we can enforce it right now without
having a traffic team, that's certainly a limitation. Our patrol officers can work
radar. If you put it out there, they will go work it more than they are now.
The other thing is I've been working with the City Manager. In the last couple
of months, we have deployed some traffic units on an overtime basis to fill
some of the gap of not having our traffic team. Certainly if these are certified
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as new roadways, it'll be one of their efforts to go out and start enforcement
with them. Right off the bat, people will see cops out there, so hopefully
they'll slow down.
Council Member Holman: Can I get a little bit more specificity on that? Is it
going to be an ongoing effort or is it going to be we change the speed limit
and traffic officers will be out there for a while or will there be somebody out
there once a week? We don't have the dedicated Staff; that's why I'm questioning about this. Is there real basis for increasing the speed limit? I
understand there's a practical thing about you can enforce it with radar if it's
increased. That's the tactical. I'm asking about the practical.
Mr. Watson: I think practically it's always going to be priorities. The City
Manager's made it a priority for us with the overtime that we've done to be in
the Downtown area, the Middlefield corridor, in the road diet zones, and then
also around the schools. Certainly during the times of day when the schools
aren't in and we're rotating through the other stuff, it'll be—I think his favorite
word is episodic.
Council Member Holman: Maybe that'll be enough to get people to comply.
Mr. Mello: If I could just jump in here. The 85th percentile speed on Deer
Creek and East Bayshore ranges from 44 to 47 miles an hour right now, and that's with a 35-mile-an-hour speed limit.
Council Member Holman: I'm aware. I am; I did read that. I'm going to
support it. I just have that one concern about the practical versus tactical.
We'd have more police officers that could attend to other things if they weren't
spending so much time at the corner of Middlefield and Forest. There was
another wreck there today. It's near me, so I experience them sometimes.
About 8 or 10 days ago, there were two wrecks in the same day. There's a
lot of time spent at that intersection. I'm not sure what the issue is there, but
there's a lot of time spent at that intersection. I'm sure you know about that.
I keep wanting to call you Jonathan tonight. I'm so sorry. Don't know why.
Thank you for answering the practical question.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Fine.
Council Member Fine: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just to be brief, I'm going to
support the motion. Two quick questions for Staff, maybe for our Chief. Some
of this is predicated on the fact that radar is the best way to enforce speed
limits. I want to put that to test. Is radar enforcement really our best
enforcement mechanism to control speeds?
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Mr. Watson: I think it's the most accurate way to do it, and it's also the most
safe way to do it. It's much better to sit at the side of the road with a very
accurate tool to gauge speed and not be chasing cars, to try and pace them.
In some locations, it's really impractical. You can see us coming a mile away.
There's a lot of practicality to it, and then also it's clearly the safest way to do
it.
Council Member Fine: That's real helpful. Thank you. The second question. Thank you for the illustration of the green signs. I don't expect a yes or no
answer here. For motorists from out of town or even Palo Altans used to just
speed limit signs being posted in white or something like that, do we expect
or anticipate anybody being confused by these new green signs?
Mr. Mello: The speed limit signs, those are two separate signs. The sign on
top was just to let people know that they're entering Palo Alto. The sign below
is telling them that our City-wide speed limit is 25 miles an hour unless
otherwise posted. The one below will look similar to a standard speed limit
sign. These are used in other cities that have a similar philosophy around a
City-wide speed limit.
Council Member Fine: Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Filseth.
Council Member Filseth: Thanks. In the Staff Report, there's discussion on
the schools. A couple of things. There's some discussion about public schools
or private schools and so forth. If we pass this tonight, does that cover both
or just public schools?
Mr. Mello: We did not include private schools in the draft ordinance, but that
is an option that's available for Council tonight.
Council Member Filseth: Is there any reason—they're all kids. Is there any
reason we wouldn't include private schools?
Mr. Mello: Some of the reasons I've heard—there's really two reasons. A lot
of the private schools don't serve neighborhoods directly, so they have more
automobile commuters. You might not have the same safety issues that you
do with the high number of bicyclists and pedestrians at public schools that
are neighborhood-serving. The other difference with some of our private
schools is that they're in rented facilities, so they could move. We could make
a substantial investment in speed limit signage and markings that we would
make around a school, and then they could move to another location. That
doesn't happen that often, but that is a concern.
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Council Member Filseth: I was going to say that probably doesn't happen very
often. I'm going to ask the maker and the seconder of the motion in a second
here. They're all kids, so we ought to consider private schools as well. On
the issue of some streets may be different in car traffic and so forth, is that
the kind of thing that Staff could make a judgment on, on a case-by-case basis
if we gave you the latitude?
Mr. Mello: We would use the same analysis that we used for the public schools and then apply it to private schools.
Council Member Filseth: I'm going to propose a friendly Amendment that the
Motion cover private schools as well.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I actually would have included that, but I have no idea how
many private schools there are.
Council Member Filseth: He said there were ten.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Only ten?
Mr. Mello: Ten is what we've documented.
Council Member Holman: Can I … We did some looking online, and online it
says there are 25.
Vice Mayor Kniss: It certainly seems like there are a lot more than ten, to be
honest. Could we put it in as tentative and say after finding out where the public schools are and what kind of impact it has, we could include public
schools.
Council Member Filseth: When you say tentative, does that mean Staff would
make a judgment? It wouldn't have to come back to Council?
Vice Mayor Kniss: No, it's a Staff judgment. There are, I think, far more
private schools than one would think. It may include nursery schools and any
other kind of school, maybe even one that does tutoring. We'll leave it to your
good judgment. Also, give us an informational report back.
Mr. Mello: Could I just ask the City Attorney how much flexibility we have to
modify the draft ordinance based on the motion? We could come back with
another ordinance on Consent that included private schools, if that's
acceptable.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Will that work?
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Mayor Scharff: I don't know. It might not work for me. The only question I
have is—I'm thinking where Castilleja is. I don't want to see a 20-mile-per-
hour speed limit on Embarcadero there. I don't think the kids walk there
anyway. I'm just not sure what your methodology is. I want to basically
make sure that it doesn't include Embarcadero. What are you thinking?
Mr. Mello: I think we could come back to you with an Ordinance that had the
specific streets, and we would use our judgment similar to what we did for the public schools.
Mayor Scharff: I guess I would agree as long as it doesn't include
Embarcadero. As long as we put that in the (crosstalk)
Vice Mayor Kniss: Or any other really challenging street.
Council Member Filseth: I don't think it should include Embarcadero or El
Camino or something like that.
Mayor Scharff: Right, no El Camino. That's right. No El Camino, no
Embarcadero.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Maybe you'd better come back to us to be quite honest.
Mr. Mello: I could clarify, though. We were not able to reduce the speed limit
on multi-lane roads to 20 miles an hour. Embarcadero would be excluded.
Mayor Scharff: All multi-lane roads, so El Camino. That's what I was thinking. I was worried about our arterials.
Mr. Mello: The City Attorney's opinion is that we would have to come back
with another ordinance because it wasn't noticed as part of this item.
Vice Mayor Kniss: In case somebody wants to speak to it at that point.
Mayor Scharff: It's accepted then.
INCORPORATED INTO THE MOTION WITH THE CONSENT OF THE
MAKER AND SECONDER to add to the Motion, “direct Staff to return with an
Ordinance addressing Posted Speed Limits near private schools.” (New Part
D)
Council Member Filseth: Thank you. Just a couple questions about the Deer
Creek and East Bayshore. Actually I wanted to ask a question about your
outreach meetings, where you said there was public opposition to raising
speed limits. Did they understand it was about enforcement as opposed to
getting people to drive faster?
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Mr. Mello: We gave them quite a bit of background on the reasoning and the
State law. The goal would be to actually get more enforcement out there.
There's just an immediate negative reaction to raising speed limits, especially
on the residential arterial streets.
Council Member Filseth: It's interesting. I know people that say, "Don't raise
the speed limit on Embarcadero because I like driving fast, and I don't want
to get a ticket." I actually know people that do that. I don't think that's good policy. On Deer Creek and East Bayshore, the goal here is radar enforcement
as opposed to we think people just drive faster on those roads. Is there any
accident history on those roads of significance?
Ruchika Aggarwal, Associate Engineer: For Deer Creek Road, we have
approximately 5,000 vehicles per day as the average daily traffic that's been
measured. The collision rate is about 0.7. I don't have the number of
collisions that we looked into with me. It was five over a period of 5 years.
Council Member Filseth: Is that high or low or nominal?
Chris Thnay, Senior Project Manager, Stantec: Below state average.
Whereas, East Bayshore is above state average. East Bayshore between
Embarcadero and Bay Landing, it's 3.8. State average is about 1.22.
Council Member Filseth: The issue on East Bayshore would be, if we think raising the speed limit and more enforcement will reduce the accident rate—
is that the thinking? We'd have to actually enforce.
Mr. Mello: The higher accident rate also allows you to reduce the posted speed
limit by 5 miles per hour if we elected to—from what you calculate. That's
how we arrived at the 40 miles an hour, right? If we were to follow the strict
letter of the State law, we would actually need to increase East Bayshore to
45 miles an hour Under State law, if there's a high collision rate, you can
actually round down another 5 miles an hour and still do radar enforcement.
That's how we arrived at the 40 miles an hour.
Council Member Filseth: Are we going to check and see if the accident rate
goes up on East Bayshore after we do this?
Mr. Mello: One of the thing Ruchika and Rafael will be working on—he's the
other member of our Traffic Safety and Operations team. We've implemented
a program called Crossroads, which is being used throughout Santa Clara
County. That's a collision history database. We've started pulling top ten
crash locations. Middlefield and Forest is actually on that top ten list. They're
going to start strategically working through that list and implementing traffic
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safety improvements and signal timing changes and other things that address
the collision histories at those locations.
Council Member Filseth: I understand the thought process. It seems a little
counterintuitive to raise the speed limit on a road where there's a higher than
average collision rate. I understand the thought process, so I hope we'll
monitor it. Thanks.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Tanaka.
Council Member Tanaka: First of all, thank you for your work on this. Overall,
I thought it was really good. I have a few quick questions for you. In the
Staff Report, I saw parts where it said the speed limit around schools would
be reduced to 20 miles per hour, but then I also saw 15 miles per hour. I
wasn't quite sure which one it really was. I saw your presentation today, so
I was wondering—maybe you can clarify which one is it really.
Mr. Mello: The State law, which was passed in 2012, allows cities to do either
20 or 15 within 500 feet of the school grounds. Staff is recommending 20,
but it's well within Council's purview to instead go with 15.
Council Member Tanaka: In terms of the reduced speed limit, is that going to
affect the bus schedules at all around the schools?
Mr. Mello: No, it should not.
Council Member Tanaka: For me, I actually spend most of my time either
biking or long-boarding around Palo Alto. I have a great appreciation for
slower traffic. I've changed my route to get to City Hall now to go up North
California just because of what the Mayor said in terms of cars go slower there.
What you did there actually seems to be working in terms of slowing traffic.
One of the things I've heard from a lot of residents is the speed problems on
Middlefield. I understand the constraints around that. The thing that you said
today that I thought really seems to be spot on to me is the idea of instead of
trying to enforce a speed limit, to try to design the road so that it causes
people to drive slower. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we still don't have
a traffic team that's dedicated—we don't. We still don't have a traffic team to
enforce speed limits. If that's the case, this idea of auto enforcement or—
what was the term you used again? Designed for speed?
Mr. Mello: Target speed.
Council Member Tanaka: Target speed seems to make a lot of sense actually
to me. One recommendation I wanted to make—it's something which I've
seen a lot of other cities do. This is for streets that have bike lanes and parked
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cars. Maybe you've seen it as well. I haven't seen it much here in Palo Alto.
It's to flip the bike lanes and cars around, the parked cars, so you have a
protected bike lane. Before I make a proposal, can you comment on that?
Mr. Mello: In California, they're called Class IV separated bikeways. One of
the difficulties installing those is that when you flip the parking lane and the
bike lane you need a buffer of at least 3 feet. You don't need that same buffer
if the bike lane is adjacent to the travel lane. In a lot of cases, we don't have the roadway width to implement that. We are looking—whenever we are
building new bikeways, that's the first class of bikeway that we consider
because it provides separation, especially for families and children. It is hard
to fit those into constrained environments.
Council Member Tanaka: For any of the study segments, could it fit on any of
the study segments? One of the things that we're trying to do here is trying
to encourage more people to bike, for instance. If people don't feel safe
because they have a car going 40 miles an hour next to them, then they're
probably not going to bike. They're probably going to drive, which causes
more of the problem. I was just thinking about what you were saying in terms
of having a target design speed and it's really expensive and hard for us to
have active enforcement, whether we could design the roads where it encourages more biking, slows the traffic down not through getting a ticket
but just because of the psychological effect. How many of the study
segments—first of all, are you already actively trying to do this or does this
have to be part of the Motion? What's the status?
Mr. Mello: No, we're actively trying to implement the highest quality bikeway
we can when we're designing bike facilities. The Charleston-Arastradero
project actually includes some parking-protected bikeway segments on the
section west of El Camino. That'll be starting construction next year. We've
gotten a grant to do a parking-protected bike lane along East Meadow Drive.
That's not one of the study segments tonight. Whenever they can fit, that's
the first type of bikeway that we try to consider.
Council Member Tanaka: I was listening to Council Member Holman's
comment about College. I live right next to College. She's right. It's a super
wide street. We've got traffic circles, and we've fiddled with the stop signs.
Council Member Holman's right that cars go fast on that street, especially
where I am on Princeton. Why not have protected bike lanes on that street
because that street's more than wide enough?
Mr. Mello: I promise you tonight we'll go ahead and do a speed survey on
College Avenue and see what the travel speeds are there, and then we'll work
with the Police Department. We can also go out and look at if there are ways
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to reconfigure the cross-section. We then have to find the funding to
implement that type of project. I promise you tonight we'll go ahead and get
a speed survey in the works for that corridor.
Council Member Tanaka: Of course, I'd love to get College because that's
near where I live. For me, it's also just trying to get protected bike lanes in
as many places in the City as possible just because it seems like a cheap, easy
way of getting the speed we want. Encouraging more biking reduces traffic. Does this have to be part of the Motion or this is already happening? I'm not
sure.
Mr. Mello: It's already happening. If you wanted to encourage us to look at
implementing bikeways as part of the design around target speed, that would
certainly be appropriate. We're already doing that.
Council Member Tanaka: I think we're fine then. Thank you.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Wolbach.
Council Member Wolbach: Just a couple of comments. I'm not going to make
any Amendments. Actually just a question first. Just my own anecdotal
experience. It seems that a lot of the backup and congestion on Embarcadero
is from people turning left off of Embarcadero without a protected lane,
meaning they stop in the middle of the number one lane, the one closest to the median, trying to make a left turn. People back up behind them. People
will swerve out of the number one lane into the number two lane to get around
them, and then speed up thinking they can make up for the lost time. I'm
just curious if reducing unprotected left turns by either adding protection for
left turns or having no left-turn signs and making people do three rights, are
those the kinds of things among the menu of tools you might use?
Mr. Mello: Yes, but if you talk about restricting left turns, that's something
that would require quite a bit of community engagement and (crosstalk)
outreach. We are open to those types of treatments. We have identified, for
example, a collision pattern at Cowper and Embarcadero that could be
addressed by restricting left turns. That's something we're probably going to
be surfacing at the neighborhood shortly.
Council Member Wolbach: Those are the kinds of things worth discussing. I
would hope that you'd do more outreach in the community and maybe even
bring it back to Council before you move forward with it. I'm glad you're
looking at those kinds of options. I just want to say in general aesthetics are
important. Council Member Fine might have been getting at this earlier.
When it comes to signs, when it comes to the street design, I'm not making
specific recommendations. I think it's important to keep in mind that
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aesthetics matter. When it comes to speed bumps, speed humps, personally
I'm not a big fan. I hear a lot of people complaining about them. If your goal
is to have more—if our goal is really to have even but moderated speed, at
least my experience and I hear a lot from community members—tell me if you
think it's different as the experts. A lot of times people will slow down for the
bump and then speed up again to make up for lost time. I think it just adds
aggravation. It doesn't seem to add to that smooth but slow speed. Both for motorcyclists and for bicyclists, I just want to make sure that safety is really—
keep that in mind. I'm thinking in particular of the intersection of Lewis, where
it hits Charleston. You have a series of really small, little bumps right in the
middle of the median to dissuade people from crossing over, but they're
almost invisible. It's really a death trap for anyone on a scooter or motorcycle.
I've never hit it myself, but it's something that would basically punish
somebody with injury for hitting it rather than something that's visible and
that would dissuade them from crossing over. I just want to point out that
example and hope that we don't do things like that. We want to have those
visuals that are easy to see, that will slow people down, not endanger them.
I will be supporting the motion. Thanks.
Mayor Scharff: Council Member Kou.
Council Member Kou: More of a question. When it comes to bicycle lanes as
what Council Member Tanaka said, why do we not separate the bicycles from
moving cars maybe by putting the parked cars between the moving cars and
the bicycles?
Mr. Mello: On streets where we have enough width to do that, that would be
the first configuration we would consider. As I mentioned earlier, there's
design criteria around those that require a buffer between the parked cars and
the bike lane for doors opening. That eats up a lot of space that the bike lanes
adjacent to the travel lane don't require. You need an additional 6 feet
basically of width in order to implement those.
Council Member Kou: For example, the passenger side.
Mr. Mello: Where we can fit them, we will. They can't fit on every roadway.
Council Member Kou: I understand that. Especially near the wider streets
that go to school, where there's a lot of bicyclists using it. I don't know if you
still can consider that something for Arastradero or Charleston.
Mr. Mello: There are segments of parking-protected bike lanes planned on
Arastradero Road as part of the reconfiguration project.
Council Member Kou: Isn't that closer to El Camino or …
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Mr. Mello: Between El Camino and Terman. There are a couple of segments
that will be parking-protected. We've gotten a grant to do a parking-protected
bike lane along East Meadow between Alma and Fabian.
Council Member Kou: I saw that on your chart in your … That's why I always
think why is it that the bicyclists—just something to buffer them and separate
them from moving cars. It's hard stopping every time you watch them riding
on the street next to the cars. When they overtake each other, they actually come out onto the street in front of traffic. There's not expected movement
coming from them. Thanks.
Mayor Scharff: I believe everyone has spoken. The question is you didn't get
back to Vice Mayor Kniss on her question. You were looking it up.
Vice Mayor Kniss: I asked you how North Middlefield on University Avenue
was being received and was it being successful.
Mr. Mello: We're coming to you with an information report on that project in
December. That'll have a complete collection of data that we collected both
before the pilot was implemented and then we collected in October as well.
It'll report the impacts to the neighborhood streets, the collision history, the
speeds, the volumes. We're also doing a neighborhood survey. Do you want
to talk a little bit about the survey?
Ms. Aggarwal: As part of the evaluation, we sent out postcards to the
residents in that vicinity. So far we've received about 115 survey responses,
which is much higher than the response rate that we received at the beginning
of the pilot. In addition to what Josh mentioned about speed, volume, we are
also making analysis on our signal timing and taking feedback from transit
agencies, Police Department, and compiling the report and bringing it for
Council on December 11th.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Overall anecdotally, are you …
Mr. Mello: It's been pretty quiet. We haven't heard a lot from the community
since it was implemented.
Vice Mayor Kniss: Thanks.
MOTION AS AMENDED RESTATED: Vice Mayor Kniss moved, seconded by
Mayor Scharff to:
A. Adopt an Ordinance increasing the Posted Speed Limit from 35 miles per
hour to 40 miles per hour on Deer Creek Road between western city
limits and Arastradero Road and on East Bayshore Road between the
TRANSCRIPT
Page 38 of 38
City Council Meeting
Transcript: 11/07/17
Embarcadero Road Bicycle and Pedestrian Overcrossing and Adobe
Creek to enable enforcement by radar pursuant to the California Vehicle
Code; reducing the Posted Speed Limit within school zones, consistent
with State law; and amending Palo Alto Municipal Code Chapter 10.56
including changes presented in the Staff Memorandum and detailed by
Staff; and
B. Adopt a Resolution establishing Target Speeds for certain Arterials and Residential Arterials where the Operating Speed has been found to
exceed the Posted Speed Limit in order to reduce the Operating Speed
through roadway design; and
C. Find the requested actions exempt from review under the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as a minor alteration to existing
facilities (Guidelines Section 15301, Class One, Existing Facilities); and
D. Direct Staff to return with an Ordinance addressing Posted Speed Limits
near private schools.
Mayor Scharff: If we could vote on the board. That passes unanimously with
Council Member DuBois absent.
MOTION AS AMENDED PASSED: 8-0 DuBois absent
Inter-Governmental Legislative Affairs
None.
Council Member Questions, Comments and Announcements
Mayor Scharff: That brings us to any Council Member Questions, Comments,
Announcements. Council Member Holman.
Council Member Holman: I'm just wondering, because of Slide Number 11, if
we have an Ordinance that prohibits polishing, repairing, and washing cars in
parks. Look at the image; you'll see why I ask.
Mayor Scharff: No one else? The meeting's adjourned.
Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 9:13 P.M.