HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 1847City of Palo Alto (ID # 1847)
City Council Staff Report
Report Type: Action ItemsMeeting Date: 8/1/2011
August 01, 2011 Page 1 of 6
(ID # 1847)
Council Priority: Land Use and Transportation Planning
Summary Title: Arastradero Road Re-Striping Trial
Title: Approval of an Extension of the Trial Period for Phase 2 of the Charleston-
Arastradero Corridor Re-Striping Project through June, 2012
From:City Manager
Lead Department: Planning and Community Environment
Recommendation
Staff and the Planning and Transportation Commission recommend that Council approve an
extension of the trial period for the Phase 2 of the Charleston-Arastradero Corridor Restriping
Project for an additional 12 months, through July 2012.
Executive Summary
The Phase 2 Arastradero Road Trial Restriping project consists of a hybrid lane reduction to
include a combination of 4-lane and 3-lane segments between El Camino Real and Gunn High
School to help preserve roadway capacity, one of the initial project goals.
The Phase 2 Trial Restriping project was intended to begin in the Fall of 2010, and extend for a
one year period. Several features of the approved project and minor changes implemented in
response to community input were only recently implemented in Spring 2011. In addition,
delays in the delivery of equipment materials and construction staging delayed the final
configuration of the traffic signal modification at Arastradero Road and Coulombe Drive, which
is scheduled for completion in July 2011.
Staff has been notified that the bell times for school starting at Gunn High School are to be
adjusted to a time approximately 30 minutes later, and the Bowman International School also
plans to revise its start time to stagger times with Terman Middle School. These changes have
the potential to minimize traffic congestion during the morning peak hours.
Staff recommends that the Phase 2 Trial Restriping project on Arastradero Road between El
Camino Real and Gunn High School be extended for 12 additional months through July 2012, in
order to monitor conditions with the changes in place, particularly including the changes to bell
times at Gunn High School and Bowman International School. Additional striping modifications
in front of the Alta Mesa Cemetery and the Arastradero West Apartments are also
August 01, 2011 Page 2 of 6
(ID # 1847)
recommended in response to community input regarding improved left turn access. The
extension will also include the collection of traffic data outside of the core project area,
including Georgia Avenue, Amaranta Avenue, and Los Robles Avenue, and will look at additional
travel time runs during the AM peak period for the work commute peak (8:30 to 9:30AM).
Background
The Charleston Road/Arastradero Road corridor serves numerous residential neighborhoods,
eleven schools, and provides an alternative connection to the Research Park district. The
corridor also provides one of the few east-west through connections between Highway 101 and
Highway 280.
In 2003, the City Council directed staff to prepare a plan of transportation, safety, and urban
design/landscape improvements for the Charleston Arastradero Road Corridor that would
enhance pedestrian and bicyclist mobility, visual amenities and quality of life along the corridor,
and preserve as best as possible vehicle throughput.Phase 1 along Charleston Road from
Fabian Way to Alma Street plan underwent a trial striping phase in 2006, and was adopted for
permanent installation by City Council in 2008 after a two year trial period.
After the successful trial of the Phase 1 project along Charleston Road between Alma Street and
Fabian Way in 2006, staff began analyzing the Arastradero Road portions of the corridor.
Arastradero Road carries approximately 18,500 vehicles per typical weekday and approximately
11,800 vehicles on a typical weekend day. The trial project was initiated in August 2010 and
includes the following elements:
·Hybrid lane reduction from 4-lanes to 3-lanes with dedicated and two-way left turn
lanes
·Enhanced crosswalk at Arastradero Road and Clemo Drive
·Traffic signal modification at Arastradero Road and Coulombe Drive
In summer 2009, City Council approved the plan for the Phase 2 trial project on Arastradero
Road between El Camino Real and Gunn High School for a one year trial period.
Implementation started in August 2010 with several improvements made over the past year in
response to community input and observations over the past nine months.
Discussion
In the westbound direction, the two through travel lanes merge to one lane immediately west
of El Camino Real along the frontage of the former Volvo dealership site. This merge was later
relocated farther west in the Spring 2011 to 250 feet west of Alta Mesa in response to
community input and field observations. At Donald Drive-Terman Road, the westbound
approach widens back to two through lanes to help preserve roadway capacity for Gunn High
School and Research Park commuters traveling past Foothill Expressway.
In the eastbound direction, Arastradero Road merges from two lanes to one lane along the
frontage of Alta Mesa Cemetery. The one-lane approach is maintained until Donald Drive-
August 01, 2011 Page 3 of 6
(ID # 1847)
Terman Drive where the roadway widens back to two lanes through that intersection before
merging back to one lane at King Arthur Court. At El Camino Real the project merges back to
two lanes to align with Charleston Road. The two eastbound lanes approaching El Camino Real
were lengthened in Spring 2011 to McKellar Lane, also in response to community input.
The traffic signal at Arastradero Road and Coulombe Drive was modified to provide an
eastbound left-turn pocket to accommodate traffic heading towards Maybell Avenue with
special signal phasing. The traffic signal modification was delayed due to the procurement of
video detection system equipment that was obtained in June 2011. The traffic signal
modification will be completed in July 2011 and will provide dedicated left-turn arrow phasing
during peak periods depending on demand.
A new enhanced pedestrian crossing at Arastradero Road and Clemo Drive that includes a
raised median island, high-visibility step-ladder crosswalk, and pedestrian-activated flashing
beacon systems was completed in March 2011, delayed due to equipment procurement and
contract coordination with other projects to help bring the project in on budget.
In addition to the lane merge modifications near Alta Mesa-McKellar Lane, the City
implemented the following additional striping modifications during the one-year trial period:
·Westbound left turn storage increase at Arastradero Road and Donald Drive-Terman
Drive
·Vehicle speed feedback signs at Arastradero Road and Hubbart Street
·Arastradero Road and Alta Mesa-McKellar Lane –“Keep Clear” improvements
ANALYSIS
Traffic Data Collection
Daily traffic volumes were collected along the study corridor before and throughout various
stages of the project, along both Arastradero Road and Maybell Avenue. The intent was to
determine if the Phase 2 re-striping would result in significant changes in traffic patterns (cut-
through traffic).
Table 1 in Attachment C, the Staff Report for the Planning and Transportation Commission
(PTC), summarizes the measured traffic volumes during the Peak hours and during a typical
weekday at three locations along Arastradero Road. Table 2 in Attachment C summarizes the
traffic volumes on Maybell Avenue. Both tables show that traffic volumes are approximately
within three to five percent of the pre-trial conditions. This is generally considered within
typical daily variations.
Travel time traffic data was collected between during the AM school commute period, which
lasts approximately 30 minutes between 7:30AM and 8:00AM, and during the PM commute
peak hour between 5:30 and 6:30 PM.
August 01, 2011 Page 4 of 6
(ID # 1847)
The pre-Phase 2 trial surveys include travel times data along Arastradero Road from El Camino
Real to Foothill Expressway; they do not however, include data along Charleston Road. Travel
time data collected since the project implementation includes traveling time along Charleston
Road to help better measure the effects of the project, particularly at the intersection of El
Camino Real. Table 3 in Attachment C of the PTC Staff Report summarizes the travel time data
and shows that in the eastbound direction, travel times have increased slightly during the AM-
school commute period but differences appear to be negligible during the PM commute peak
period. In the westbound direction, travel times between El Camino Real and Foothill
Expressway are approximately the same. Charleston Road approaching El Camino Real,
however, may experience increased delays but it is difficult to be conclusive given somewhat
different data points and the delayed implementation of all project improvements.
Prior to implementation of the re-striping project, concerns along the corridor included vehicles
travelling at very high speeds during the off-peak periods. Although the posted speed limit is
25 miles per hour, the measured 85th percentile speed was consistently between 36 and 40
miles per hour, with some vehicles traveling as high as 50 miles per hour. Following
implementation of the Phase 2 Trial Restriping project, the 85th percentile speeds have
decreased by approximately two to three miles per hour. The number of very high speed
vehicles (travelling greater than 37 miles per hour) during the off-peak hours appears to have
been reduced by approximately 30 to 50 percent.
Gunn High School and Bowman International School –Bell Schedule Modifications
The Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) approved a permanent modification to the Gunn
High School bell schedule starting in the Fall 2011 term. The new bell schedule will move the
start of school activities from the current bell schedule of 7:55 AM to 8:25 AM. This change in
bell schedule may have a positive impact on traffic along Arastradero Road through the project
area by dispersing traffic over a longer period of time. Terman Middle School will maintain its
bell schedule start time of 8:10 AM. The Gunn High School bell schedule change may also help
to separate middle school and grade school traffic to Juana Briones Elementary School located
at Maybell Avenue and Coulombe Drive from student driver traffic to Gunn High School, a
positive safety change along Arastradero Road. The Juana Briones Elementary School bell
schedule begins at 8:15 AM.
The Bowman International School contacted the City after the PAUSD approval of the Gunn
High School bell schedule and noted that it would also be modifying its school’s schedule to
begin classes later than the new Gunn High School schedule.
Community Feedback
Staff held community meetings in October 2010 after the initial implementation of the Phase 2
Trial Restriping project, and again on June 2, 2011, approaching the end of the 2010-11 school
year. Approximately 70 people attended the June 2, 2011 community meeting.
In general, the feedback received at the community meetings was mixed, with substantial
expressions of concern and requests for improvements along with significant positive feedback
August 01, 2011 Page 5 of 6
(ID # 1847)
regarding improved safety along the corridor. The majority of community input regarding the
Phase 2 –Trial Restriping project focused around increased travel time during the peak hours.
Additional concerns relate to: areas where full access (left turn in and out) to residences has
been modified, requests for comparative traffic data outside of the project area including
Georgia Avenue and Los Robles Avenue, and improved safety across the El Camino Real
intersection. Attachment B includes a more detailed summary of the direct feedback comments
received during the June 2, 2011 community meeting. In response to concerns about left-turn
access at the Arastradero Road West apartment complex across from the Alta Mesa Cemetery,
staff will consider modifying the roadway striping to allow full access to and from the complex.
Extension of Project Trial
The Phase 2 Trial Restriping project was intended to begin in the Fall of 2010, and extend for a
one year period. Several features of the approved project and minor changes were only
recently implemented, however, due to unforeseen delays with materials and construction
phasing. Some minor changes such as the vehicle detection system and left turn phasing at
Coulombe Drive were implemented in July 2011. It is also anticipated that the change in bell
schedules at Gunn High School and the Bowman International School could provide a benefit to
operations along the corridor during the AM peak school period.
Therefore, staff recommends that the Phase 2 Trial Restriping project on Arastradero Road
between El Camino Real and Gunn High School be extended for 12 additional months through
July 2012. The extension would include the collection of additional traffic data outside of the
core project area, including Georgia Avenue and Los Robles Avenue, along with additional left-
turn striping improvements to the Arastradero West apartment complex.
Planning and Transportation Commission Review and Recommendation
The Planning and Transportation Commission discussed the Arastradero Road Phase 2 Trial
Restriping project at its July 13, 2011 meeting and approved a recommendation to the City
Council to approve the trial extension. The two primary issues of discussion were 1) the end
date for the trial and 2) the traffic periods to be monitored. After some discussion, the PTC
recommended extending the trial to the “June/July timeframe” to fully capture traffic patterns
in the spring of 2012. The PTC also suggested that staff monitor more than 30-60 minutes in the
morning,particularly with the alterations to the bell time at Gunn. Staff will monitor traffic
from 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM. A copy of the PTC staff report and meeting minutes are provided in
Attachment C and Attachment D respectively.
Timeline
The trial extension, if approved, would continue through July 2012, with reports back to PTC
and Council at that time for a final determination on implementation. Over the next 12 months,
Staff would collect additional data, make minor changes and adjustments to the corridor, and
hold community meetings.
Resource Impact
August 01, 2011 Page 6 of 6
(ID # 1847)
The estimated cost to extend the trial period would be minimal and will primarily require Staff
time to collect travel time data and two (2) additional community outreach meetings over the
next year.
Policy Implications
The installation of the Phase 2 Trial Restriping and lane configurations for Arastradero Road is
consistent with the Council-approved Charleston/Arastradero Corridor Improvement Plan. The
project furthers the following Palo Alto Comprehensive Plan Goals:
·T-1, Less Reliance on Single Occupant Vehicles;
·T-3, Facilities, Services and Programs that Encourage and Promote Walking and
Bicycling;
·T-5, a Transportation System that Minimizes Impacts on Residential Neighborhoods; and
·T-6, a High Level of Safety for Motorists, Pedestrians and Bicyclists on Palo Alto streets.
Environmental Review
Because no additional elements are being proposed to the project analyzed in the Mitigated
Negative Declaration that was approved for the entire project in 2003,no environmental
impacts are anticipated due to the extension of the restriping trial period.
Attachments:
·Attachment A: Location Map (PDF)
·Attachment B: Summary of Comments from June 2, 2011 Community Meeting (PDF)
·Attachment C: July 13, 2011 Planning & Transportation Commission Staff Report (PDF)
·Attachment D: July 13, 2011 P&TC Meeting Excerpt Minutes (PDF)
·Attachment E: Correspondence (PDF)
·Attachment F: Public Letter (PDF)
Prepared By:Rafael Rius, Traffic Engineer
Department Head:Curtis Williams, Director
City Manager Approval: James Keene, City Manager
Project Area
Arastradero Road ‐Trial Restriping Project
Phase 1 –Charleston Road Improvements
Phase 2 – Arastradero Road Improvements
Future Improvements at El Camino Real Intersection
Phase 1
Phase 2
Attachment A
Arastradero Road Re-Striping Project
June 2, 2011 Community Meeting
Summary of Notes and Comment Cards
Meeting Notes:
? Any Pre-construction data for bicycle and pedestrian counts
- Data presented means nothing. Staff is dismissing comments from residents
- Getting onto and off of Arastradero from Side Streets is a problem (during peak periods.
- How will the (negative) feedback effect the outcome of the project. The project is too driven
by the data and not the feedback
/ Going to Terman, the backup to turn right off of Foothill Expressway is problematic
+ Not experiencing significant delay changes. Traffic conditions about the same.
+ Lower speeds and safer for bicyclists. Recommends improving the free right turn at El
Camino Real (eastbound right turn)
/ Continue to, and re-evaluate the data. Collect new data and monitor Miranda and other side
streets.
/ El Camino Real intersection is dangerous and needs to be fixed
- Buses get cut off at El Camino and creates a worse danger with the merge area. Illegal turns
are made during the all-ped phase at Terman. Increase in road rage and horn honking.
- Traffic counts! VMWare and Roche will increase traffic. Rain increases traffic.
- Arastradero West (apartments) residents cannon get out of driveway (near the eastbound
merge by Gunn HS).
+ Thankful for project. Thinks it is successful. Safety issues have improved
+ Previously rear-ended four times while turning left into side street. The current configuration
is much better. Terman School drop-offs on side streets still occur.
+ Cycling through corridor is much improved. Multiple threat to pedestrian crossings are
removed. Understands concerns of residents regarding traffic.
/ Los Robles, Baron Park area – would like more data collection of traffic patterns in Baron
Park area as the project continues (not previously collected). On Los Robles, vehicles reverse
long distances due to “No U-turn” restrictions.
- Road Rage has increased significantly. People don’t allow others to turn left across them.
Drivers were polite before the project, but are now inconsiderate.
? When will the El Camino Real intersection be fixed?
- Georgia Street has seen an increase in traffic
- Residents should not be burdened by the increased traffic delay in order to improve bicycle
and pedestrian safety
/ Biggest issues are that school enrollment and employment will increase. Need to open
Cubberley School.
/ Need pre- and post-project data for bicycles. The merges result in increased road rage
- Thinks Arastradero is less safe, and cut-through traffic decreases safety on other side streets.
- Design should focus on neighborhood streets as well as Arastradero.
- Amaranta to Arastradero takes 15 minutes during the OFF peak periods. Maybell Avenue
should have more bike improvements (Bicycle Boulevard)
- (645 Arastradero) Double-double yellow lines on Arastradero means no left turns in front of
driveway. Long detours are necessary since left turns are not allowed. Wants to have legal
left turns.
+ Likes the left turn pockets at the side streets. Trade offs are worth it (the peak period delays).
+ Schools were there, local street drop offs, longer delays are better than the bad speeding and
accidents observed in the past.
/ (cyclist) Appreciates the wider lanes. Wrong way bikes to Termon on the sidewalk can be
problematic.
+ The project has been a positive experience
? Any carbon / pollution data available?
? = question, + = positive or supportive, - = negative or against, / = neutral
Summary of Comment Card Submittals:
• The traffic “calming” has created more road rage than has ever been seen in Palo Alto.
This “trial” has been a complete failure. Please restore safety by removing the new
striping. After being here for 20 minutes, I am shocked at how little you know about the
actual traffic flow and the impact on the people that live here.
• Please have the merge lanes always be on the same side when narrowing to one lane.
Traffic from Coulombe (or another side street) turning left onto Arastradero have right of
way over the through traffic.
• Great Job!! You addressed the problem with safety and resident’s needs.
• 1) Residents were all up in arms at the bright yellow school that is now Bowman at the
time it was built. Are we going to have that gosh aweful yellow ped crossing instead of
white? 2) Are they going to get rid of arrows to nowhere as in front of the church on
Arastradero? One arrow goes into the church parking lot but the other points to no where.
3) Why can we have twinkle lights in the road instead of the “railroad crossing” for peds
by the fire house? 4)Unsafe U-turns on Donald are the order of the day during 7:30-
8:15am. 5) Trying to make lefts onto Donald from Arastradero is dicey when traffic is
coming out of Willmar.
• Strategic planning please! If it is a poor design, you’ll get more respect if you just
admitted it.
• (paraphrased from letter) maze of switching and merging is confusing. Have seen
numerous close calls. The road works reasonably well when there are few cars on it.
Roads of the size of Arastradero Road were designed to handel greater, peak-period loads
of traffic between El Camino Real and the Foothill Expressway… There are long lines of
cars standing waiting for lights to change. Longer commute times, more driver
frustration, mor localized pollution. It is much more difficult to turn left onto Arastradero
Road, and greater usage of the side streets which we are forced to do, and before the trial
we would not have done so.
Arastradero Road Restriping Trial Project
6/2/11 Neighborhood Meeting
Please provide comments or Email to address below.
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Open Letter re: Arastradero Road Trial Project
We will be on out of town on Jnne 2ad and, thus, will not be able to attend the June 2nd
evening meeting. But, we want to make our feelings known about what is happening on
Arastradero Road.
The trial project is a maze of switching from one to two lanes and back again many times
that many people feel is confusing and prone to drivers speeding np to get by (in the two-
lane segments), bnt forced to merge or squeeze back in (in the one-lane segments). The
merge between Gunn High and the Alta Mesa cemetery seems particularly worrisome as
we've seen a number of very close calls during the merge, particularly when someone
unexpectedly slows down in front to enter the cemetery driveway as other cars are merging
behiud them.
The road works reasonably well when there are few cars on it Roads of the size of
Arastradero Road (2 lanes in each direction before the trial period started) were designed
to handle greater, peak-period loads of traffic between EI Camino and tbe Foothill
Expressway, which we think it did very well given our experience living just ten houses off
Arastradero for 37 years. We understand the reasons for trying a different design.
However, in our opinion, the redesigned roadway does not work well during peak periods.
By peak periods we mean (a) when parents are taking students to Terman Middle School,
students are going to Gunn, and people are going to work in the Research Park (Research
Park employment in the SW corner of the Park is down significantly from the early 90s
and presumably, in time, will return to normal levels, so Arastradero should be confignred
for greater usage in the future), (b) when students are leaving Gunn in the afternoon, (c)
when students are leaving Terman and parents are picking them up at the same time in the
afternoon, etc., and (d) when people are leaving work in the Research Park and traveling
on Arastradero toward EI Camino. There are long lines of cars standing waiting for lights
to change, sometimes all the way from the light at Terman Drive to Gunn and, on occasion,
beyond. When traffic is heavy there are also long lines (generally single lane) of stop-and-
go traffic between El Camino and the light at Coulombe andlor the light at Terman Drive.
Long lines of idling cars or single-lane traffic means longer commute times, more driver
frustration, and more localized pollution, none of which is good for the local residents.
Finally, it is much more difficult to turn left onto Arastradero Road and, of course, we've
noticed greater usage of the side streets, which we ourselves feel forced to do at certain
times of the day, when before the trial we would not have done so.
We urge a return to the prior 4-lane confignration. Thank you for taking these comments
onsideration.
J;&z£
149 Georgia Avenue
Palo Alto a At') J)f4~~~tr~ cY .
TO:
FROM:
PLANNING &TRANSPORTATION
DIVISION
STAFF REPORT
PLANNING & TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION
Jaime Rodriguez DEPARTMENT: Planning and
Chief Transportation Official Community Environment
AGENDA DATE: July 13, 2011
SUBJECT: Arastradero Road Re-Striping Trial: Planning and Transportation
Commission recommendation to City· Council whether to extend the trial
period of the Arastradero Road Re-Striping Project for an additional 12
months through July 31, 2012.
RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommends that the Planning and Transportation Commission recommend that the City
Council to approve an extension of the trial period for the Phase 2 of the Charleston-Arastradero
Corridor Re-Striping Project for an additional 12 months through August 2012.
BACKGROUND:
The Charleston Road! Arastradero Road corridor serves numerous residential neighborhoods, eleven
schools, and provides an alternative connection to the Research Park district. The corridor also
provides one of the few east-west through connections between Highway 101 and Highway 280.
ill 2003, the City Council directed staff to prepare a plan of transportation, safety, and urban
design/landscape improvements for the Charleston Arastradero Road Corridor that would enhance
pedestrian and bicyclist mobility, visual amenities and quality of life along the corridor, and preserve
as best as possible vehicle throughput. Phase 1 along Charleston Road from Fabian Way to Alma
Street plan underwent a trial striping phase in 2006, and was adopted for permanent installation by
City Council in 2008 after a two year trial period.
In summer 2009, City Council approved the plan for the Phase 2 trial project on Arastradero Road
between EI Camino Real and Gunn High School for a one year trial period. Implementation started
in August 2010 with several improvements made over the past year in response to community input.
During the preparation of this report, one final element still pending was the activation of video
detection equpiment at the intersection of Arastradero Road and Coulombe Drive.
City of Palo Alto Page 1
In January 2004, the. City Council approved the phased implementation for the Charleston-
Arastradero Corridor Improvement Plan illustrated in Attachment A. Improvements at the
intersection of EI Camino Real & Charleston Road-Arastradero Road were not planned but are
proposed by staff as a future project.
Phase 2 Trial Restriping Project -Arastradero Road (
After the successful trial of the Phase 1 project along Charleston Road between Alma Street and
Fabian Way in 2006,staJf began analyzing the Arastradero Road portions of the corridor.
Arastradero Road carries approximately 18,500 vehicles per typical weekday and approximately
11,800 vehicles on a typical weekend day. The trial 'project was initiated in August 2010 and
incl~des the following elements:
• Hybrid lane reduction from 4-lanes to 3-lanes with dedicated and two-way left turn lanes
• Enhanced crosswalk at Arastradero Road and Clemo Drive ':-"
• Traffic signal modification at Arastradero Road and Coulombe Drive
Throughout the duration of the project, Staff has held regular meetings with the Charleston-
Arastradero Corridor Stakeholder committee to discuss roadway operations.
DISCUSSION
The Phase 2 -Arastradero Road Restriping Trial project consists of hybrid lane reduction to include
either 4-lanes or 3-lane segments between EI Camino Real and Gunn High School to help preserve
roadway capacity, one of the initial project goals. In the westbound direction, the two through travel
lanes merge to one lane immediately west ofEI Camino Real along the frontage of the former Volvo
dealership site. This merge was later relocated farther west in the Spring 2011 to 250 feet west of
Alta Mesa in response to community input and field observations. At Donald Drive-Terman Road,
the westbound approach widens back to twO' through lanes to help preserve roadway capacity for
Gunn High School and Research Park commuters traveling past Foothill Expressway.
In the eastbound direction Arastradero Road merges from two-lanes to one lane along the frontage of
Alta Mesa Cemetery. The one-lane approach is maintained until Donald Drive-Terman Drive where
the roadway widens back to two-lanes through that intersection before merging back to one lane at
King Arthur Court. At EI Camino Real the proj ect merges back to two lanes to align with Charleston
Road. The two eastbound lanes approaching EI Camino Real were lengthened in Spring 2011 to
McKellar Lane, also in response to community input.
The traffic signal at Arastradero Road and Coulombe Drive was modified to provide an eastbound
left-tum pocket to accommodate traffic heading towards Maybell Avenue with special signal
phasing. The traffic signal modification was delayed due to the procurement of video detection
system equipment that was obtained in June 2011. The traffic signal modification will be completed
in July 2011 and will provide dedicated left-turn arrow phasing during peak periods depending on
demand.
In addition to the lane merge modifications near Alta Mesa-McKellar Lane, the City implemented
the following additional striping modifications during the one-year trial period:
City of Palo Alto Page 2
• Westbound Left Turn Storage Increase at Arastradero Road and Donald Drive-Terman Drive
To help accommodate left turn access into Terman Drive, a dedicated eastbound left turn
lane to King Arthur Court was modified to a two-way left turn lane providing stacking
capacity for the Terman Drive nlovements to King Arthur Court
• Vehicle Speed Feedback Signs at Arastradero Road and Hubbart Street
. To further encourage vehicle speed reductions along the western side of the project, two
dynamic vehicle speed feedback signs were installed at Hubbart Street to advise motorists
exceeding the 25-MPH posted speed limit to slow down. Installation of the signs also
included the installation of a raised median island to protect one of the signs and encourage
driver compliance along the roadway.
• Arastradero Road and Alta Mesa-McKellar Lane -Keep Clear Improvements
Several intersections along the corridor were restriped after implementation to add "Keep
Clear" stencils to help maintain community access to residential streets. At Alta Mesa-Kellar
Lane "Do Not Block Intersection" and enhanced "Keep Clear" stencils were also added.
ANALYSIS:
Project Implementation
Implementation of the Phase 2 Trial Restriping proj ect on Arastradero Road between EI Camino
Real and Gunn High School began in August 2010. Due to worldwide materials shortages in
roadway thermoplastic material, most of the restriping elements of the project was not completed
until October 2010. The enhanced pedestrian crossing at Arastradero Road and Clemo Drive, that
includes a raised median island, high-visibility step-ladder crosswalk, and pedestrian-activated
flashing beacon systems that was not completed until March 2011 due to equipnlent procurement and
contract coordination with other projects to help bring the project in on budget. Additional delays in
the procurement of video detection equipment for the traffic signal modification at Arastradero Road
and Coulonlbe Drive have delayed completion of that project element until July 2011.
Traffic Data Collection
Daily traffic volumes were collected along the study corridor both before and throughout various
stages of the project along both Arastradero Road and Maybell Avenue. The intent was to determine
if the Phase 2 re-striping would result in significant changes in traffic patterns (cut-through traffic).
City of Palo Alto Page 3
Table 1 summarizes the measured traffic volumes during the Peak hours and during a typical
weekday at three locations along Arastradero Road. Table 2 summarizes the traffic volumes on
Maybell Avenue. Both tables show that traffic volumes are approximately within three to five
percent of the pre-trial conditions. This is generally considered within typical daily variations.
Table 1
Traffic Counts along Arastrade~o Road
West of Georgia East of Pomona East of McKellar
Vehicles Spring Fall Spring Spring Fall Spring Spring Fall Spring
2010 2010 2011 2010 2010 2011 2010 2010 2011
AM Peak I Eastbound 592 560 585 680 672 638 733 720 702
AM Peak I Westbound 992 968 935 952 924 941 1016 924 878
PM Peak I Eastbound 963 1076 1011 960 996 1090 870 912 969
PM Peak I Westbound p38 596 698 653 596 727 712 682 804
Daily I Combined 18,523 18,022 17,728 18,458 18,467 18,504 18,137 18,467 I 18,531
Table 2
Traffic Counts along Maybell Avenue
Vehicles Near Maybell Way
Spring 2010 Fall 2010 Spring 2011
AM Peak Eastbound 448 461 468
PM Peak Eastbound 101 150 119
Daily Combined 1,638 1,646 1,614
Travel time traffic data was collected between during the AM school commute period, which lasts
approximately 30 minutes between 7:30AM and 8:00AM, and during the PM comnlute peak hour
between 5:30 and 6:30 PM.
The pre-Phase 2 trial surveys include travel times from EI Camino Real to Foothill Expressway; they
do not however, include data along Charleston Road. Travel time data collected since the project
implementation includes traveling time along Charleston Road to help better measure the effects of
the project, particularly at the intersection ofEI Canlino Real. Table 3 summarizes the travel time
data and shows that in the eastbound direction, travel times have increased slightly during the AM-
school commute period but appears to be a negligible effect during the PM commute peak period. In
the westbound direction, travel times between EI Camino Real and Foothill Expressway are
approximately the same. Charleston Road approaching EI Camino Real, however may have
experienced increased delays. It is difficult to be conclusive about travel times given somewhat
different data points and the delayed implementation of all proj ect improvements.
City of Palo Alto Page 4
Table 3
Travel Time Surveys -Average Peak Period Travel Times
Eastbound Westbound
Time Period Arastradero Rd Arastradero Rd Charleston Rd
Foothill Exp to El Camino to Alma Stto
EICamino Foothill Exp El Camino
AM Peak Hour 7:30AM -7:55AM
Pre-Project 2006 to 2007 4'49" 7'53" nla
Post Project Fall· , 10-Spring , 11 6'22" 6'24" 4'25"
PM Peak Hour 5:15PM -6:30PM
Pre-Project 2006 to 2007 4' 05" 3'46" n/a
Post Project Fall '1 O-Spring , 11 4'27" 4'00" l' 56"
Off-Peak Travel Speeds
Prior to implementation of the re-striping project, concerns along the corridor included vehicles
travelling at very high speeds during the off-peak periods. Although the posted speed limit is 25
miles per hour, the measured 85th percentile speed was consistently between 36 and 40 miles per
hour, with some vehicles traveling as high as 50 miles per hour. Following implementation of the
Phase 2 Trial Restriping project, the 85th percentile speeds have decreased by approximately two to
three miles per hour. J:he number of very high speed vehicles (travelling greater than 37 miles per
hour) during the off-peak hours appears to have been reduced by approximately 30 to 50 percent.
Collision History
Due to delayed implementation of the Phase 2 Trial Restriping project a meaningful comparison of
vehicle collision history is not feasible. Staff recommends that a longer data collection period of up
to at least one more year be allowed before comparing collision history to fully determine the effects.
Arastradero Road and Donald Drive-Terman Drive All Pedestrian Signal Phase
Arastradero Road under the Phase 2 -Trial Restriping project generally operates with acceptable
conditions outside of the nlorning school peak period. During the morning school peak period, the
all-pedestrian signal phasing at the intersection of Arastradero Road and Donald Drive-Terman
Drive stops all vehicle movements for approximately 26 seconds. The all-pedestrian signal phase is
considered to be an essential safety feature during the AM school commute peak period serving both
Terman Middle School and students walking/biking to Gunn High School. The all-pedestrian signal
phase occurs between 7: 30 and 8: 15 AM however, and contributes to delays along Arastradero Road.
Gunn High School and Bowman International School-Bell Schedule Modifications
The Palo Alto Unified School District (P AUSD) recently approved a permanent modification to the
Gunn High School bell schedule starting in the Fall 20 11 term. The new bell schedule will move the
start of school activities from the current bell schedule of7: 5 5 AM to 8 :25 AM instead. This change
in bell schedule may have a positive impact on traffic along Arastradero Road through the project
area by dispersing traffic over a longer period of time. Terman Middle School will maintain its bell
schedule start time of 8:10 AM. The Gunn High School bell schedule change may also help to
separate middle school and grade school traffic to Juana Briones Elementary School located at
City of Palo Alto Page 5
Maybell Avenue and Coulombe Drive from student driver traffic to Gunn High School, a positive
safety change along Arastradero Road.
The Bowman illternational School contacted the City after the PAUSD approval of the Gunn High
School bell schedule and noted that it would also be modifying its school's schedule to begin classes
later than the new Gunn High School schedule.
CommuriityFeedback
Staffheld community meetings in October 2010 after the initial implementation of the Phase 2-Trial
Restriping project and again on June 2, 2011, approaching the end of the 2010-11 school year.
Approximately 70 people attended the June 2, 2011 community meeting.
ill general, the feed back received at the community meetings mixed, with substantial expressions of
concern and requests for improvements along with significant positivy feedback regarding improved
safety along the corridor.
The majority of community input regarding the Phase 2 Trial Restriping project focused around
increased travel time during the peak hours. Additional concerns relate to: areas where full access
(left tum in and out) to residences has been modified, requests for comparative traffic data outside of
the project area including Georgia Avenue and Los Robles Avenue, and improved safety across the
EI Camino Real intersection. Attachment B includes a more detailed summary of the direct feedback
comments received during the June 2, 2011 community meeting. ill response to c9ncerns about left-
tum access at the Arastradero Road West apartment complex across from the Alta Mesa Cemetery,
staff will consider modifying the roadway striping to allow full access from the complex.
Extension of Proj ect Trial
The Phase 2 Trial Restriping project was intended to begin in the Fall of2010, and extend for a one
year period. Several features of the approved proj ect and minor changes were only recently
implemented, however, due to unforeseen delays with materials and construction phasing. Some
minor changes such as the vehicle detection system and left tum phasing at Coulombe Drive will be
implemented in July 2011.
Therefore, Staff recommends that the Phase 2 -Trial Restriping proj ect on Arastradero Road
between EI Camino Real and Gunn High School be extended for 12 additional months through
August 2012. The extension would include the collection of additional traffic data outside ofthecore
project area, including Georgia Avenue and Los Robles Avenue, along with additional left-tum
improvements to the Arastradero West apartment complex.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS:
The installation of the Phase 2 Trial Re-Striping and lane configurations for Arastradero Road is
consistent with the Council-approved CharlestoniArastradero Corridor Improvement Plan. The
project furthers the following Palo Alto Comprehensive Plan Goals:
• T-1, Less Reliance on Single Occupant Vehicles;
• T-3, Facilities, Services and Programs that Encourage and Promote Walking and Bicycling;
• T-5, a Transportation System that Minimizes hnpacts on Residential Neighborhoods; and
City of Palo Alto Page 6
• T -6, a High Level of Safety for Motorists, Pedestrians and Bicyclists on Palo Alto streets.
RESOURCE IMPACT:
Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Project P L-05 002 -Charleston Road/ Arastradero Road Project
provided funding for the implementation of the Charleston! Arastradero Corridor Phase 1 and Phase 2
Trial. Extension of the Phase 2 Trial Restriping project on Arastradero Road will not have a
significant cost impact to the City and funding is available within the original project CIP for
additional monitoring.
The estimated cost to extend the trial period would be minimal and will primarily require Staff time
to collect travel time data and two (2) additional community outreach meetings over the next year.
TIME LINE
A City Council hearing is tentatively scheduled for August 1, 2011. The trial extension, if approved
would continue through August 2012, with reports back to PTC and Council at that time for a final
determination on implementation.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW:
The City Council adopted a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) pursuant to the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for the Charleston!Arastradero Corridor Plan on January 20,
2004. The plan included mitigation that would reduce the identified environmental impacts to a less
than significant level. The MND covered the implementation of the full Charleston! Arastradero
Corridor project including the Phase 2 trial and Gunn High School intersection improvements.
Because no additional elements are being proposed, no environmental impacts are anticipated due to
the extension of the re-striping trial period.
ATTACHMENTS:
A. Location Map
B. Summary of Comments from June 2, 2011 Community Meeting
C. Correspondence
COURTESY COPIES:
Charleston! Arastradero Corridor Stakeholders Group
Katya Villalobos, Gunn High School
Katherine Baker, Principal, Terman Middle School
Matthew Nagle, Principal, Juana Briones School
Mary Beth Ricks, Bowman International School
Bob Golton, P AUSD
Palo Alto Bicycle Advisory Committee
PREPARED BY: Rafael Rius, Transportation Proj ect Engineer
REVIEWED BY: Jaime Rodriguez, Chief Transportation Official
~~ DEPARTMENTIDIVISION HEAD APPROVAL: _____________ _
Curtis Williams, Director
City of Palo Alto Page 7
Page 1
Planning and Transportation Commission1
Verbatim Minutes2
July 13, 20113
4
DRAFT EXCERPT5
6
Arastradero Road Re-Striping Trial: Planning and Transportation Commission 7
recommendation to City Council whether to extend the trial period of the Arastradero Road Re-8
Striping Project for an additional 12 months through July 31, 2012.9
10
Curtis Williams, Planning Director: Thank you Chair Tuma and Commissioners. We are here 11
tonight to discuss the Arastradero Road Trial Re-Striping Project status and request to extend the12
time period for review and report back. Tonight I have with me Jaime Rodriguez, our Chief 13
Transportation Official and Rafael Ruis, our Transportation Engineer, who have been hard at 14
work in looking at this issue for quite some time now. Jaime will be making the bulk of the 15
transportation but I did want to start out with some project background. Jaime then will be 16
talking about some of the changes that have been made since the initial implementation, some of 17
our data collection efforts, community outreach process and some of our additional 18
improvements we are looking at for the corridor and then we can come back to the Commission 19
and the public for comments and questions. 20
21
So in terms of background, this corridor effort goes back some time now, actually more than a 22
decade. But back about 10 years ago or so there were some projects that were being considered 23
in proximity to this corridor that cumulatively had the potential for certainly some impact. Those 24
projects included the Campus for Jewish Life, the project on Fabian Way near Charleston, the 25
Echelon Advantage Multifamily Developments on East Meadow and the Arbor Real Project at 26
the other end of Charleston at El Camino and subsequently next to those were a couple other 27
developments and the Campus for Jewish Life project had other components to it that were some 28
residential and some affordable housing project and a market rate project as well so all of that29
coming together coming before the city at one time and concerns that this corridor was going to30
feel the impacts of that particularly given the sensitivity of the safety issues on the corridor, even 31
its proximity to a number of schools and neighborhood commercial areas that it was really 32
paramount that we do something so in 2003 the city initiated this corridor study primarily to 33
create a safer and more functional corridor here for all the users and especially for the 34
pedestrians and cyclists along the corridor to better balance the needs of all road users so sort of 35
a precursor to our whole complete streets effort that we have as an ongoing goal of the city. The 36
project area for the corridor extended all the way basically from San Antonio Road to Foothill 37
Expressway but the sort of defined corridors were from Fabian Way to Gunn High School and 38
has essentially been broken up into two pieces. The first phase was the Charleston Road section 39
from Fabian to just short of El Camino and then the second phase was from the Arastradero 40
Road portion from El Camino to Gunn High School. 41
42
Jaime will talk a little bit more about the potential for future work and analysis to be done at the 43
El Camino intersection which is a very critical link and in some respect a bottleneck to this 44
corridor but it has not been the focus of either of those studies. Also, there was a portion of that, 45
see here is part of the Phase 1. While it focused on Charleston Road area, also included in the 46
Page 2
later parts of that phase, improvements to the Gunn High School driveway which had been 1
instrumental and integral to this whole discussion.So the whole corridor analysis and proposal 2
was an effort to try to mitigate the impacts of a lot of development that was anticipated there as 3
we know there is continued development potential along that corridor and that tends to make it 4
more critical that we continue to look for ways to resolve those potential existing conflicts and 5
potential conflicts in the corridor.6
7
So the original objectives that were stated in the study were to enhance the commute safety for 8
the students, to improve the bike and pedestrian experience along the corridor, to try in affecting 9
those two areas, particularly to reduce the traffic speed along the corridor and while at the same 10
time trying to accommodate a similar throughput in vehicular traffic so we could minimize the 11
traffic shift that might otherwise occur on adjacent streets. And then overall to create a more 12
pleasant streetscape and quality of life with medians and plantings and safety measures to 13
accomplish that.14
15
So there was in the first phase community evaluation,input period and trial for that Charleston 16
section of the corridor that included the four lanes to a three lane type of configuration, a number 17
of traffic calming treatments, and that was ultimately reviewed by the Planning and 18
Transportation Commission and recommended and approved strongly by the City Council in 19
2008. The striping improvements remain in place, the permanent funding for implementation in 20
terms of actually installing medians and landscape and to make that a reality is in our CIP but it 21
has not been implemented to date. Shortly thereafter there was also the recommendation to 22
proceed then with this phase of the Arastradero portion, similarly a kind of hybrid four lane to 23
three lane configuration and traffic calming treatments that has now been installed and that was 24
recommended by again the Commission and suggested and approved by the Council to proceed 25
with this trial and that brings us to where we have been for the last approximately year of 26
implementation through the striping. So at this point I’d like to turn it over to Jaime Rodriguez 27
who will take you through some more of the specifics of kind of what we’ve experienced in this 28
process and where we see it going from here. 29
30
Jaime Rodriguez, Chief Transportation Official:Good Evening Chair and members of the 31
Commission. Before I move on in the presentation I just want to make a quick note that 32
underneath the screen is actually a scaled drawing of Arastradero Road. It is a recent Google 33
aerial that shows all the recent improvements and what I’m going to do is leave at the dais here a34
pointer so if anyone wants to come up and perhaps point to an intersection while they are 35
speaking during public comment can do so, so I’ll leave that up there quickly and then I’ll move 36
on.37
38
As Curtis mentioned, this project began implementation about a year ago in August and the 39
initial implementation was completed around the early September timeframe but the complete 40
implementation of the project still has not been completed and we have held two major 41
community meetings during this process and we’ve been listening to the communities here, what 42
are their concerns, what are some of the areas we can improve in the project because as a trial we 43
want to make a conscious effort to help improve the project wherever we could. Since the 44
implementation of the project, we hear a lot of common themes and I’ll recap this again with the 45
results of the most recent community meeting at the end of this presentation. We did hear the 46
Page 3
community concerns very clearly from the very beginning and those concerns were very 1
consistent. Those were increased congestion specifically during the morning peak period. 2
Initially there were concerns regarding congestion in the p.m. peak period. There were concerns 3
about delays, crossing El Camino Real and as Curtis mentioned, that is definitely one of the 4
critical elements of this particular corridor that is still yet to be addressed. There were both 5
concerns as well as positive community feedback regarding left turn access. People both had 6
concerns that they lost access getting into their home. A lot of people also provided comments 7
saying that they liked the enhanced access they received turning left out of their residential 8
streets. There are still concerns regarding potential cut through traffic impacts to the streets to 9
the north of this corridor specifically Georgia, Maybell and as far north as Los Robles. In10
response to the communications we’ve been getting we’ve been trying to identify and implement 11
improvements with community support and what I want to do very quickly is go over what those 12
improvements were. 13
14
Immediately after the project was majority completed after the October timeframe, we 15
implemented a series of improvements in January and that is what I’m going to highlight here 16
because that was in response to that first few months of the improvements being in place at the 17
intersection of Arastradero and Ynigo Way, we implemented an additional raised median island 18
that was not initially put in with the first implementation in August. Now raised median island 19
as shown here in purple also houses an electronic vehicle speed feedback sign that provides 20
feedback information to drivers as to what speed they’re traveling in relation to the posted speed 21
limit. There was a sign installed in the median for westbound traffic as well as an additional sign 22
on a street light for eastbound traffic right across the street from there. That median was also 23
provided at the previous slide to help address concerns about people trying to drive through the 24
center lane of the roadway to bypass traffic that was accruing in the morning hour. We also at 25
the intersection of King Arthur Court modified the initial striping to provide a left hand turn lane 26
which also extended the left turn access onto Briones Elementary off of Maybell. There is 27
Terman Middle School at Donald. That same site also houses the private school, Bowman 28
International School and down toward the western end of the project is Gunn High School. That, 29
in addition to the research part of traffic to the west of Foothills Expressway. There is definitely 30
a lot of traffic coming in and what this slide shows you is just the major volumes, not all the 31
volume movements that are happening in these intersections, signalized intersections along the 32
corridor, but the major movements. So you see here you are basically crossing Arastradero and 33
we get a little over 300 cars during that peak period and really that peak period is the first half 34
hour so really that is a lot of cars trying to get through.35
36
As you continue down through the corridor, by the time you get to Coulombe we’re seeing about 37
800 vehicles traveling through the corridor and that remains a pretty consistent number at Donald 38
Terman and then you start to see the traffic drop off and split as you get to Gunn High School. 39
This is just for information. The bicycle and pedestrian counts for that corridor is also showing 40
red and support the highlight as we’re looking at this volume in relation to the vehicular traffic. 41
42
Some of the data that we have collected here for you is shown in three different states. The black 43
is the data we collected before the project was implemented in the spring of 2010. So what you 44
see here is at various points along the corridor, shortly after the project was implemented in the 45
fall and then recounted again in the spring, the volume counts are fairly consistent with one 46
Page 4
another. Within a 3 to 5% change of one another in relation to the previous condition and we 1
will revisit the state again when we talk about the project goals when the project was 2
implemented. But, again, a 3 to 5% change in traffic along Arastradero Road after and versus 3
before.4
5
On the traffic count data, what we see here is that along Maybell, the count data is also consistent 6
within about a 2 to 5% range. That was something we were really focusing on during the data 7
collection period because we wanted to see was any traffic being shifted off of Arastradero onto 8
those residential streets as we go through this project and that was a goal of ours to not do that 9
with this project so 2 to 5% change of traffic shift within the corridor. 10
11
On the bicycle count data, what we see here is there was a significant… enrollment change was 12
about the same, the top row here is the enrollment changes that determine Gunn year to year and 13
you see volumes of… I keep thinking traffic but I’m thinking population of the school here. 14
Traffic engineer falling point. The population of the schools was about the same but the number 15
of students that were actually biking has significantly increased along the corridors. That was an 16
important finding as part of this project. On the travel speed data, one of the goals of the project 17
was also to encourage speed reduction along the corridor. We’re also seeing from the prior trial 18
condition to shortly finishing in the fall and again in the spring, we are seeing about a 2 to 3 mile 19
per hour decrease. I think a majority of that comes from the speed signs we installed down 20
through the Ynigo Way area.We also noticed a much more significant reduction of over 50% of 21
high speed vehicles over that 37 mile per hour state in the after implementation versus before 22
implementation.23
24
In the travel time data, this is where we probably heard most of the concerns regarding 25
congestion as it relates to peak periods. I am going to try and walk you through this starting with 26
westbound. Westbound from El Camino to Foothill, what we have seen is an actual average 27
reduction in travel time. Traffic is actually moving faster along Arastradero Road in the 28
westbound direction going from El Camino to Gunn. Where I think we’ve heard a lot of concern 29
from the community is that we’re moving faster or about the same but it takes longer to get 30
across El Camino. What we’re finding is it takes on average about 4 ½ minutes to get across El 31
Camino Real so that’s about two cycles of that signal. We unfortunately don’t have data from 32
the before scenario because that’s something that wasn’t collected back in the spring. In the 33
eastbound direction though, this is again focusing in the morning, we did see an increase from 34
just under 5 minutes to just over 6 minutes in the eastbound direction going from Foothill to El 35
Camino Real. In the p.m. hour traffic has remained about the same. We don’t have the 36
Charleston, Alma towards El Camino Real data either but the data we’ve found was about the 37
same so what we’re calling the travel times are fairly consistent from before and after. 38
39
So again, this is a very quick summary of some of the most recent community concerns we heard 40
at our last community meeting about a month ago and a lot of those you’ll notice still echo some 41
of the comments that were received early on in the fall. Increased congestion along Arastradero, 42
we heard a little bit more concerns regarding cut through traffic in the areas north of Arastradero 43
back into the Barron Park area and along Maybell. We also received more concerns regarding 44
road rage happening on the road because people were concerned about their travel time. We did 45
receive more concerns about full access driveway impacts, full access being left turn in, left turn 46
Page 5
out and right turn in and right turn out access. Access might be limited to right in and right out 1
or some form or duration of that. We also received concerns regarding safety along El Camino 2
Real and perhaps being the need for additional signage improvements through the trial. 3
4
As a positive though, we did see no change in the congestion data. The volumes and travel times 5
were fairly consistent with each other but what we were seeing at the same time were reductions 6
in high speed vehicle traffic and we were still receiving some input from people that they did feel 7
the street did operate more safely as a residential street versus an arterial. But again, we heard 8
the feedback from the community and we’re still trying to address that.9
10
Some of the projects we have planned still are again the implementation of that arrow, that left 11
turn arrow at the intersection of Coulombe Drive that will get turned on again tomorrow. We are 12
looking at trying to figure out what we can do at El Camino Real to try to link the Charleston and 13
Arastradero corridors. This is one early on concept we put together to basically show bicycle 14
lane installations along Arastradero Road in the current gap which is between El Camino Real 15
and Alta Mesa McKellar. This does involve a sidewalk widening requirement. We would 16
require some utility relocation impacts. We are still working with our in house staff to see if this 17
would be feasible but we are trying to find a solution to that gap because that is the gap of 18
bicyclists along the corridor today right between Alta Mesa and El Camino Real. 19
20
One of the concerns that we did hear was, and I’m responsible for getting this implemented, is 21
during the trial we got a request for a Keep Clear at the intersection of Inigue. We have actually 22
implemented this as a work order request to our on-call contractor and this should get installed 23
within about the next three weeks. One of the other requests that we recently received was from 24
the Arastradero West Apartment Complex which is located along the north side of Arastradero 25
Road next to Gunn High School. That apartment complex has three driveways today, one just 26
before Gunn High School. They have a split driveway in the middle of their complex which is 27
an inbound driveway and then outbound. They also have a third driveway along the Hetch 28
Hetchy right of way and during the implementation of this project Arastradero West did receive 29
an impact with the loss of full access to all of their driveways. All of their driveways today 30
operate as a right in right out only. That was a petition that we received from some of the 31
residents that they weren’t so much opposing the project but concerned that they lost their 32
access. What we put together here is an option and we met with and discussed with the owners 33
of the apartment complex and would recommend as an implementation if this is approved for 34
extension. That would be to convert the dedicated left turn lane into Alta Mesa Cemetery and a 35
portion of the painted median north of that into a left turn lane which gives full access back into 36
their eastern driveway or the Hetch Hetchy right of way. It reintroduces the full access to their 37
center driveway by giving them an opportunity to stack in a middle area to turn into as well as 38
turn out of Arastradero West. It also produces the prior trial condition for them from last spring 39
where they had full access to at least two. We didn’t at staff level though this it would be 40
appropriate to reintroduce full access to their first driveway which is west most. That is the same 41
location where merge from two lanes to one lane eastbound is currently happening. We thought 42
it was too much to introduce a location where someone would stop and make a break over that 43
painted median so we worked out an opportunity with the apartment owners to do this 44
improvement and at the same time find a way further to the west to introduce a place for a u-turn 45
location opportunity to occur. What this is showing is a modification to the striping on 46
Page 6
Arastradero to the west of Gunn but before Foothill Expressway at Miranda to stripe any short 1
left turn pocket it would allow that traffic to make a u-turn or turn into Miranda more safely and 2
turn around and come back east along Arastradero Road. We submitted this to the county today 3
for input. We will know whether that is something we’ll get support on over the next few days.4
5
The evaluation criteria for this particular project, as you see there has been a lot of change and 6
we’ve been making a lot of change because we want to make sure we can meet the criteria here. 7
Specifically one is to not increase the peak or off peak travel time and I think that we’ve shown 8
in the previous data that at least within the westbound and eastbound direction within the project 9
has actually reduced in the westbound and stayed fairly consistent in the east but we do 10
recognize the community concerns that there was a potential increase in travel time along 11
Charleston Road approaching El Camino Real. That’s the thing we will continue to try to work 12
with with the state. 13
14
We also wanted to make sure there weren’t significant delays along intersections. This particular 15
design of the roadway did try to preserve the level of service by maintaining as many through 16
lane configurations along Arastradero Road at Culomne, Donald Sherman as well as the high 17
school. Another goal here was to try and reduce the vehicle speeds which we are starting to see 18
at those high level speeds over the 35 mph area and we are starting to see some reductions as 19
well in those 85th percentile areas. We also wanted to try to reduce the crashes but because 20
we’ve really just recently finished the initial implementation and are proposing changes we 21
haven’t focused too much on analyzing crash data yet because we felt it was too early. We also 22
wanted to increase pedestrian volume and we are starting to see that increase in bicycle 23
pedestrian traffic along the corridor and we also want to look at trying to increase public transit 24
boardings and that is something we are working with the VTA on to try to extrapolate data to see 25
what type of increases they’ve seen on their ridership.26
27
Some of the things that are going to be changing the way Arastradero Road operates today are 28
most significantly a change of the Gunn High School bell schedules through the district. The 29
start time for Gunn High School is 7:55 a.m. They have made a change that will begin this fall 30
in a couple of months to start at 8:25. This matches the bell schedule for Palo Alto High School. 31
We felt this will be a significant change for the corridor because it starts to break apart the cluster 32
of demand that happens in that half hour period and start to spread it out over an hour. Some of 33
the additional benefits to that change by the high school is that we start to separate the school 34
traffic from the traffic that is trying to get to Donald Terman, specifically the young youth 35
drivers who may have just gotten their licenses toward the end of the school year in the spring so 36
that may be a safety benefit for that particular corridor. 37
38
The all pedestrian phase that happens today for Terman Middle School does impact the ability of 39
traffic to move towards Gunn in the westbound direction. With the bell schedule change, we 40
want to look at ending that all pedestrian phase that happens at Donald Sherman from 8:15 to 41
8:10, five minutes after they’ve started school, to give a full 15 minutes of coordinated traffic 42
opportunities we haven’t in the past been able to implement along the corridor because of that all 43
ped phase to try and capture that for at least 15 minutes for traffic trying to get towards Gunn 44
High School. 45
46
Page 7
Shortly after the Gunn High School staff announced their bell schedule change, the Bowman 1
International School outreached to us to say what else can we do to try to improve operations 2
along Arastradero Road and they are actually looking at modifying their bell schedule for this 3
coming Fall term to start drop offs between 8:30 and 9:00 which is after the high school has 4
started and begin their school activities after 9:00. So before when we had this cluster of traffic 5
all within a half hour period it is now spread over an hour now and that is one of the other 6
reasons why we’ve made the recommendation to you in our staff report to extend this trial 7
project.8
9
I glanced over in the previous slides one of the improvements we’ll be making with the left turn 10
improvements was to an apartment complex. So again the Charleston Road trial lasted 2 years 11
and we are recommending an additional one year extension to August of next year which would 12
match the trial period of Charleston and also allow us to evaluate the corridor with all of the 13
improvements that we just recently completed in the spring as well as the final changes we 14
would implement in July and August that we showed you in the previous slides. 15
16
Following the PTC presentation here tonight we are tentatively scheduled to go to City Council 17
to show this presentation in August and we will be looking for your support in this 18
recommendation. In response to the additional community concerns we’ve heard throughout the 19
project, we want to ensure the community that we will continue to collect more data than we’ve 20
done in the past to try to address some of the concerns about cut through traffic to the north 21
through the Barron Park area, we’ll collect data for traffic in the Los Robles area, Amaranta 22
which connects Maybell to Los Robles, more traffic along Maybell and Donald to Georgia which 23
are the connections to the back of the school to see if in fact there have been increases in the 24
amount of traffic to drop off kids and the path connection at the rear of the school and with that 25
I’m happy to answer any questions that you may have.26
27
Chair Tuma:Ok, thank you. Commissioner Tanaka, you are late as always. Is that inadvertent 28
or… Ok, thanks. Just for the record, Commissioner Tanaka did join us about 15 minutes ago, 29
not too long into that presentation. Is now the time or do you want to wait until after public 30
comment? Ok, I figured as much.31
32
So as the City Attorney does have some pressing things to do outside of our meeting, I just 33
wanted to check in with Commissioners and see if there is any need at this point that people 34
recognize for the City Attorney to stay with us during this evening’s proceedings. Commissioner 35
Keller has a question for you.36
37
Commissioner Keller:Are there any EIR related issues that go for an EIR before or go through 38
some sort of Environmental Impact Report? Are there any issues extending it and the changes 39
being made that require any further study in that regard?40
41
Donald Larkin, City Attorney:There was a negative declaration prepared for the entire corridor42
project and I don’t think it was so specific that it would depend on these different… I think it 43
anticipated sort of a concept of lane reductions and traffic calming improvements but not so 44
specific that it was one versus another especially for this phase. We do, and I think it is certainly 45
justified to be looking at this traffic information and all that but it is not part of the environmental 46
Page 8
study. 1
2
Chair Tuma:Ok. You’ll be upstairs in the case of an emergency. Ok, we know where to find 3
you. Very good. At this point we will go to the public. For anyone who is not familiar with our 4
process, I will call members of the public to speak and please come to the microphone. Give us 5
your name and each speaker will have three minutes. At two minutes, the light will change from 6
green to yellow just to let you know you have a minute left and when the buzzer sounds I would 7
ask you at that point to wrap up with any final points you have. If there is anyone else who 8
would like to speak there are speaker cards. You can fill those out and bring them forward to 9
staff and with that we will begin our contribution from the public. The first speaker will be John 10
Elmon to be followed by Jeffry Mille. 11
12
John Elmon:Yes, I represent those who feel this project should be stopped right now. It is a 13
little less pressure because the kids are not in school but during school, and I’ve done my 14
homework on this, I’ve walked up and down Mabel early in the morning, 7:15, 7:30, quarter to 8, 15
down Arastradero and El Camino. I’ve gone up El Camino and watched the bicycles. Just an 16
opinion, but I think the kids love the danger. I think weaving in and out of the cars and each 17
other on skateboards and inline skates is kind of exciting for the kids but darn it, from the 18
parents’ side of it it is pretty dangerous on Mabel. 19
20
When Mr. Rodriguez gave his presentation to the neighborhood meeting, he was laughed at 21
every time he presented the data, said we slowed down the speed. And somebody blurted out, 22
“Yeah to 6 miles an hour!” It takes me 16 minutes extra to get from my house on Hubbartt down 23
to the JCC to work out. A couple of weeks ago before school was out I tried going down Mabel, 24
up Amaranta, Los Robles, down across East Meadow to Middlefield, down Middlefield to 25
Charleston and boom, it took me the same amount of time. That’s what’s happened. You can’t 26
say the traffic has slowed down a little bit but it’s reduced the number of people. Where do you 27
think they’ve went? They went down Georgia and around and we have a count of our own. We 28
know its increased traffic on the side streets and that was supposed to be a no no in this project. 29
So we put kids in danger. You’ve heard in the stack of people that responded at the table back 30
there from almost everyone who supports the project. But the other thousands who don’t support 31
the project you haven’t heard from them. I represent them. If you vote to continue this project, 32
you are going to get an invitation from me next fall to come to my place at 7 in the morning, I’ll 33
feed you fresh brewed coffee, my orange ricotta blueberry pancakes, and then we’ll go out and 34
wander in the traffic and you can tell me if this has improved anything for the City of Palo Alto. 35
I could go on and on but daily use of the thing has not been reduced. Speeds have been reduced 36
drastically, not just a little bit, 2 to 5% but drastically and there is no place to go. This project 37
shouldn’t even be part of Charleston. It’s a separate project. There is 30% more traffic on 38
Arastradero than there is on Charleston. People turn up and down El Camino, people turn up and 39
down Alma and we have a mess there. The positive part of it is if you drive at say 10:30 in the 40
morning after traffic its kind of fun. They’ve got orange… (Buzzer) it’s a lot of fun because it’s 41
all kinds of colors on the streets. It’s got arrows and lines and colors and dashes and dots and 42
even that big machine at the end of the street that tells fortunes. It insulted my mother the other 43
day, “slow down you ”. You never know what message is going to come up there and that is 44
kind of fun. That has slowed the traffic down a little because you are trying to figure out where 45
the arrows go, what lane should I be in, where am I going to turn, where are they coming from, 46
Page 9
but the dang thing is a mess and I hope you’ll listen to people who object to this or go out and1
test it yourself. Thank you.2
3
Chair Tuma:Jeffrey Miller to be followed by Philip Melese.4
5
Jeffrey Miller:Thank you. I’m Jeffrey Miller, a resident on one of the side streets off of 6
Miranda. I just want to make a couple of comments. If we are going to continue with this, I 7
would recommend that we continue on a temporary basis and take more data. A couple of 8
comments, and I apologize in advance if this is too mathematical but I look at the statistics about 9
how long it is taking to go eastbound and I see that over the time period that the data is collected 10
there has been an approximate, by the seat of my pants calculation, 30% increase in the amount 11
of time it takes to get from Foothill to El Camino going eastbound in the morning. I can tell you 12
because I need to take my children to school that if you take the interval between a certain period 13
of time, maybe it’s a 30% increase, but if you take a derivative, maybe it’s a point in time, you 14
shrink that time, the amount of time has gotten a lot longer.15
16
The time it takes to make a right turn on Miranda and to get my kids to Briones is taking 17
dramatically longer than it used to before this project started so that was my first comment. The 18
reason for that is that we are forced into one lane and then the traffic forces this huge backup 19
between 7:55 and 8:05 when people are trying to get there kids to school. I am a little worried 20
that the change in the gun timing may make that worse because people are going to be dropping 21
off their kids and the next step when they need to leave they are going to cause more eastbound 22
traffic onto Arastradero and that is going to become even more when we’re trying to get our kids 23
to either Briones or Terman. That’s my first point.24
25
My second point and I didn’t plan on talking about this because I didn’t know about it but if Mr. 26
Rodriguez goes to slide 23 where he was talking about trying to make some adjustments to the 27
striping to make things a little bit better for the folks that live in Arastradero West. One of the 28
things he said that is extremely disturbing to me, maybe it was slide 24, sorry, that they are going 29
to try to start forcing people to Miranda so they can make a u-turn to go back around and get into 30
their apartment. Well, I don’t know if there is anyone else here from the Miranda area but 31
Miranda is not a very wide street. I had to do a u-turn once because I forgot something and that 32
is something I think the members of the 50 families that live there would be very against forcing 33
people onto our fairly narrow street and asking them to make u-turns to get back to their 34
apartment building. That’s all I have. Thank you.35
36
Chair Tuma: Philip Melese to be followed by Jumana Nabti.37
38
Page 10
Philip Melese:Thanks for the opportunity. I’m Philip Melese and I live close to the epicenter at 1
Arastradero and Donald. I wanted to thank Jaime and Rafael for doing a great job on the 2
restriping. I am in support of it. I moved to Palo Alto about 7 years ago and I’ve been living on 3
Arastradero all that time. When I first got there the sense of Arastradero is pretty much a 4
freeway with the four lanes and the fast speeds. That was something that was uncomfortable for 5
me because I had kids going to both schools and I ride my bike everyday up and down so I find 6
the current configuration has done what it promised. It makes Arastradero seem less like a 7
freeway where people are just going from one end to another as fast as they can and I feel its 8
more conducive to walking and biking which is what I feel our community should be about. 9
10
I know that there will be this conflict between people who are walking, biking, looking at the 11
speed of traffic and those who want to get from El Camino to Foothill to go to the freeway for 12
whatever reason. There is an inherent conflict and to say that you could solve both at once is 13
probably hard but I would vote in terms of safety. That’s what I would do and I think hopefully 14
that’s consistent with what we want in Palo Alto. That’s all I have to say. Thank you very 15
much.16
17
Chair Tuma:Thank you. Jumana to be followed by Penny Ellson. And just to remind the 18
members of the public, if there is anyone else who would like to submit a card to speak, please 19
do so. We’ll be closing off that opportunity in a couple of minutes here. 20
21
Jumana Nabti: Great, sorry, I’ve got a very short PowerPoint. My name is Jumana Nabti and I 22
live in the Miranda neighborhood also, over by Gunn. So, I am speaking in support of the staff 23
recommendation to extend the trial period and I’m going to speak mostly about speed and safety 24
related to pedestrians and bicyclists and basically this project provides critical safety 25
improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists and many of them on this corridor as you know are 26
mostly residents with children. A lot of the additional improvements that are proposed by staff 27
and that can be made in addition to those proposed by staff can be made to reduce impacts to 28
drivers. 29
30
This is data that was just provided at the public meeting and as you can see the 85th percentile 31
speeds are relatively unchanged and this is a reiteration of what Jaime presented. On the right, 32
there is a drastic reduction in the percentage of fast drivers and the only place where that is 33
relatively unchanged is west of Georgia which is where the two lane westbound area remains. 34
Why does this matter? Even a small reduction in speeds can mean considerably safer 35
environment for pedestrians so, for example, a five kilometer per hour speed drop leads to a 10% 36
fewer pedestrian fatalities and 20% less of your pedestrian injuries. This is data and research 37
that has been done on this. The likelihood of pedestrian fatalities drops very sharply from a 38
speed reduction of only 40 mph to 30 mph and that is kind of what we are looking at here with 39
the drop in various fast speeds. So,I would support this extension and I would like to add that as 40
someone who actually rode my bike as a junior high student along Arastradero, it can be very 41
intimidating with the fast speeds and all of the proposed improvements in the future at the El 42
Page 11
Camino intersection I very much look forward to for that reason and permanent implementation 1
with landscaping would probably further reduce speeds. Thank you very much.2
3
Chair Tuma:Thank you very much. Penny Ellson to be followed by Rich Ellson.4
5
Penny Ellson:Hi. I had a PowerPoint. Thank you. So I am Penny Ellson, 513 El Capitan 6
Place. Let me see if I can get this slide show to come up. I am going to skip an awful lot of this. 7
You guys heard a very nice backgrounder but I think the most important thing on this slide is that 8
safe multi-mobile access to all these facilities, the parks, the schools, the research park, 9
Arastradero Preserve, the three community centers, all of that stuff along the corridor is really 10
important for South Palo Alto design. You’ve seen this before but I don’t know that everyone in 11
the audience has. We’ve had a steady increase in bicycling at Gunn High School over the last 7 12
years and I personally want to make sure those kids have a safe route to school and looking at 13
our middle school numbers that feed to this school I expect to see these trajectories continue for 14
a while.15
16
So Curtis gave a very nice background on this but I just want to do a reminder that we added 4% 17
of all Palo Alto households to the area that this street serves. This project is traffic mitigation for 18
the aggregate impacts for all of that development. The four lane configuration had some safety 19
problems. The last speaker alluded to the speed issues so I’ll skip that. Long crossings, long 20
distances, bike lanes too narrow and had gaps, uncontrolled turning movements, high crash rates 21
for all modes of transportation, not just bikes and peds but cars. I saw a lot of accidents prior to 22
this and poor site lines. The Arastradero end of the corridor as another speaker mentioned earlier 23
has some special challenges, higher daily auto volumes, larger campuses with very close bell 24
times which the staff proposal now addresses and determine exclusive walk signal phase and I 25
think Jaime did a great job of explaining how separating the Gunn High School traffic surge 26
which is equivalent of about 1,200 cars entering per hour and the Terman surge equivalent to 900 27
per hour, separating those two surges is really important in getting the Gunn traffic to not hit that 28
four walk signal phase is going to help a lot.29
30
Phase 1 of the trial, the city staff is working very hard to get around the whole issue of the bell 31
time surges converging so one of the things they did is they added a new 5th right turn lane into 32
the Gunn driveway to improve driveway circulation and get rid of the spill back congestion that 33
was spilling onto the corridor. The idea was to temporarily relieve congestion and add some 34
additional capacity with the idea that that capacity would be used for the future safety 35
improvements. The reason we did this in Phase 1 is staff wanted to use the data from that change 36
to understand what kinds of efficiencies they could build into the plan for Phase 2. Peak hour 37
congestion is not new on this street. This picture was taken before the trial. It was four lanes of 38
traffic both directions, this is the Donald intersection looking west and to the same way going 39
east. So please extend the trial. They need time to evaluate the effects of the bell time change. 40
We need a full year of data subsequent to the many improvements made up to this month. I need 41
to wrap up so that’s it. Thank you.42
43
Chair Tuma:Rich Ellson to be followed by Andrew Boone.44
45
Page 12
Rich Ellson:Hi. Rich Ellson. I am fortunate to live at 513 El Capitan with Penny also. I 1
wanted to take you more down history lane and actually remind you that buses like elephants 2
don’t forget and encoded in the bus schedules is historical times for actually how long it takes a 3
bus to travel down the corridor. So one of the things you can see is basically not much has 4
changed in 8 years. Some of what you can see is during that congested period of time a lot of 5
students are no longer being driven to school. They are going on a bus. So if you look at bus 6
schedules, and I’ll show you that proof on the next page, they start out by measuring what time 7
the bus stops and the average scheduled time just west of El Camino and basically ending at the 8
Veterans hospital. So once you pass Gunn and go around the corner that is a free area.There’s 9
not a lot of traffic there so that’s very consistent and so is the rest of the corridor as well. 10
11
So the red bullets at the top, sorry for the small type, this is actually that peak hour. That is the 12
bus as it is traveling between 7:40 and 7:50 along the corridor on El Camino Real, at that stop 13
west all the way to the Veterans hospital. If you look today, that is actually the time today going 14
back in time. You can see that basically there has been very little change in the corridor over 15
time,even though there has been an increase in traffic and a relatively large increase in student 16
population at both of those schools with the expansion of Terman since 2003 and also with 17
Gunn, increasing the number of students. What’s interesting is you might think the corridor 18
modifications would be shown in the bus measurements because you can see these 19
measurements were made multiple times. In fact, multiple measurements of the bus schedule 20
times have been made since the corridor change and you see no blip here at all. In fact, the 21
major changes have nothing to do with the corridor. One is the improvements in the Gunn 22
driveway actually slowed down the bus, can’t really tell you why, but the other one is the 23
introduction of bus preemption along El Camino in early 2005. That started and also seems to be 24
coincident with a large increase in travel time along the corridor. So once again the Arastradero 25
changes happened in here and there is no effect in the bus transit times. So just confirming what 26
you’ve seen earlier from the city but with more historical perspective. 27
28
So the other thing is bus rapid transit I think is one of the things that we can perhaps work with 29
the VTA on. They’ve been helpful in providing us with the elephant’s memory. Maybe they can 30
help us get across the intersection. I don’t have the exact number of crossings of the bus through 31
that intersection but they do have the right to turn that light green to allow them to pass through. 32
That has been in effect for the last 6 years. But they also have the ability to turn that off. If you 33
read their own reports, they’ve done so and it has caused problems with Cal Trans and with the 34
highways so we should encourage them to see if they can work with us to turn off the green light 35
extension time that they give the bus going through that intersection and see if they can help the 36
cross travel and even improve the ADA travel times and as a result encourage more students to 37
ride the bus to school. So, just quickly wrapping up, there is no real history of big impact of 38
what’s going on in the road. The actual other factors are unrelated to the changes in the corridor. 39
I think we should work with the city and with Cal Trans and with VTA and see if we can do 40
something to change the signalization. We should give the chance for the corridor to settle down 41
in the new configuration where we spread out the time which everyone is going to school and see 42
how things work and analyze it in a year. Thank you.43
44
Chair Tuma:Andrew Boone to be followed by Litsie Indergand.45
46
Page 13
Andrew Boone:Hi my name is Andrew Boone and I live near the main library. I am a student 1
at DeAnza Community College in Cupertino so I ride my bicycle regularly up and down 2
Arastradero Road and I was amazed to see last in the winter term when I had an early class at 3
DeAnza how many students are walking and bicycling along that street now all at the same time. 4
There is this massive rush hour of students going to Terman and Gunn schools and I think the 5
staff’s idea to change the bell time is a great idea. All the other ideas that Jaime has presented of 6
how we can make Arastradero even better, of course data needs to be collected before any 7
decision is made about those ideas, so I support the staff’s recommendation. Thank you.8
9
Chair Tuma:Litsie Indergand followed by Markus Fromherr.10
11
Litsie Indergand:My name is Litsie Indergand and I live on Ely Place which is just south of 12
Charleston and a little east of El Camino. I try never to drive during rush hour because I am 13
retired and no longer have to leave at 8 a.m. and come home at 5 p.m. however; I find that 14
traffic, even in the middle of the day along east Charleston and Arastradero is terrible. I think it 15
was two days ago I was going up east Charleston toward Alma and I think there were 18 cars in 16
line behind me waiting for the light at Alma to change and that was the middle of the day, the 17
middle of the week. There was nothing going on. I think the place where we see particularly at 18
Arastradero, changes from two lanes to one lane is possibly very, very dangerous. I have had at 19
least two times when I have tried to switch lanes and somebody in a car much bigger than mine 20
has decided, oh no, no, no, I don’t want you to switch lanes and get ahead of me. I have not had 21
an accident but I have come this close to having an accident because I wanted to change lanes 22
when it was necessary.23
24
I think that when you switch from two lanes to one lane in the middle of a block it is potentially 25
very dangerous and it may slow traffic. Maybe it does, I don’t know. I don’t keep track of 26
exactly how fast anybody goes all the time, but if it slows traffic it slows it in a way that makes 27
to longer to get from where I am to where I am going because I have to keep my eyes out 28
constantly for the cars that want to be where I am and don’t want me to move, don’t want me to 29
switch lanes. I think that it would be a much better idea to try to look at this thing very carefully 30
and see how you could do something other than this constant switching of two to one and one to 31
two lanes. I think it is dangerous and it does not improve my driving. Thank you.32
33
Chair Tuma:Thank you. Markus Fromherr to be followed by Heike Schmitz.34
35
Markus Fromherr:Good evening. My name is Markus Fromherr. I am a resident at Barron 36
Park. I live on Amarant Avenue. I work in the research park up above Foothill Expressway and 37
I bike or drive every day along this road including mornings between the 7:30 and 8:00 time and 38
in the afternoon and even between 4 and 6, so I get sort of all periods especially those congested 39
Page 14
ones. I would like to recommend extending the trial and I will make three points as to why I feel 1
it is on the right track and why it’s working. So far I see a positive change.2
3
The first one is I feel the road is more structured, more organized the way it is now. Some 4
people expressed the clear turn offs along the way when cars used to block the left lane when 5
turning. Compare that to the four lane throughway that we had before, almost a highway where 6
cars dominated the traffic. Although I feel we are closer to a compromise between a road for 7
local traffic, schools, parks and much of it bikes and pedestrians and commute traffic which 8
much of it is of course cars going through there.9
10
The second point is I think this provides a number of improvements for bicyclists and 11
pedestrians. That includes more room for bicyclists, better turn protection for bicyclists, better 12
crossings for pedestrians and overall lower car speeds with benefits for all of these. I have heard 13
this confirmed from other bicyclists, people who work with me or live nearby and I’ve heard the 14
comments along this line too.15
16
As a car traveler I find traffic from Coulombe to Gunn acceptable, two minutes longer than 17
normal or even five minutes I find is acceptable given the environment given where we are with 18
this many large schools and all this traffic there. There has always been a traffic jam during 19
school start time as you heard before. Traffic in Amaranta seems about the same. Back up on 20
Coulombe is no more than three cars trying to get onto Arastradero so that is acceptable in the 21
mornings. I, myself, haven’t’ seen any road rage. I think there are some improvements needed 22
still. The El Camino Real intersection is one of the biggest problems with entering and exit 23
issues. The bell schedule change will really help and that has been one of those that people ask 24
for. Overall I feel we are on the road to that compromise between local and commute traffic and 25
therefore we should extend this trial to get the data on this. Thank you.26
27
Chair Tuma:Thank you. Heike Schmitz to be followed by Douglas Moran.28
29
Heike Schmitz:Thank you. My name is Heike Schmitz Fromherr. I live on Amaranta as well 30
with Markus and I would like to just make a little observation in favor of extending the timeline. 31
I want to speak out because we live on Amaranta, which is one of the areas of concerns and 32
because I started going back to school 15 months ago I could see the change because I am going 33
every morning like around 7:30 or 7:45, I have to go up Amaranta onto Maybe, up Coulombe 34
and up Arastradero and onto Foothill. I must say I say the change. There was a little bit more 35
time, 2 to 5 minutes, I can’t confirm the survey. When I come back about 3 p.m., everything is 36
fine from my point. I realize I am driving slow enough which is a very good thing because I 37
might have been one of the reasons this had to happen. Changes have to happen and my 38
observation is that in Barron Park and Palo Alto we are a great community. And great39
Page 15
communities take care of their weakest members and if you look at traffic, pedestrians and 1
bicyclists are the weakest members and I, from my point, I don’t mind leaving 5 minutes early if 2
it means I can keep all the children, pedestrians, and bicyclists safe so I would really like to 3
speak out in favor of extending the period and finding a better way of doing this to keep all 4
people safe. Thank you. 5
6
Chair Tuma:Thank you. Douglas Moran to be followed by Nina Bell.7
8
Douglas Moran:Hello I’m Doug Moran. I’m on 790 Matadero and I’ve been involved in the 9
public hearing for this for almost 10 years. I would like to comment on some things for a mid-10
course correction. First, you hear a narrow emphasis in traffic calming and you have copies of 11
my slides before you so, traffic calming as slowing traffic, cutting off the top levels but there is a 12
lot more to traffic calming than just that. It is maintaining throughput by smoothing out the flow, 13
eliminating the lows and eliminating the highs together. By eliminating the highs you improve 14
safety but the second aspect of it is more predictable traffic movement. That improves safety 15
because people have fewer decisions to make, there are fewer distractions, they are less stressed, 16
in less of a hurry so they make fewer mistakes. Now what we’ve had is there has been a very 17
toxic sort of behavior in a number of the public meetings where people have commented about 18
the bad behavior that this current plan has produced as so-called road rage. The advocates have 19
dismissed these concerns as well, drivers shouldn’t, and they don’t understand that you can make 20
the same argument. Drivers shouldn’t drive so fast either so there needs to be an accommodation 21
of all these concerns about the bad behavior that a plan does and you need to reduce them all, not 22
just focus on your particular one. 23
24
Now, cut through traffic. We have seen apparent cut through traffic arise on Matadero. You 25
say, that far? Well, if you go beyond Los Robles, it is two stop signs versus more stop lights on 26
El Camino. I wouldn’t think about, hey, can you integrate seeing random vehicles, but there are 27
measures. We’ve seen people waiting for the light to get onto El Camino more than double. 28
Lots of people have observed this during peak hours. Plus, things coming up Matadero from the 29
light, you’ve seen far more packs of cars than you’ve seen before during peak hours. So these, 30
not statistically significant but you know they indicate there is a problem.31
32
The next problem I have with this is that in the public hearings there has been an impression that 33
the needs of drivers have been disregarded. Now, the signage is too little too late so it comes up 34
and you’ve got the problem of poor predictability. At Terman, you expand to two lanes and you 35
narrow back down to one lane before you have a chance to spread out so you’ve got real conflict 36
going on there that doesn’t seem to be necessary. The last point was fixed on slide 24 of the 37
presentation so I won’t go into that but the fact that that existed for a while indicates that driving 38
problems are not getting priority and I avoid during peak hours and I’m seeing that it is worse 39
than before. Some flaws may be fixable in worrying about increased capacity.40
Page 16
1
Chair Tuma: Thank you. Nina Bell to be followed by Robert Moss. 2
3
Nina Bell:Good Evening. My name is Nina Bell and I live in the Green Acres 1 neighborhood 4
which is directly adjacent to Terman Middle School. Bottom line, given a choice, I would like to 5
see the Arastradero Road Striping made permanent right now. However, as a staff 6
recommendation, is to extend the trial until August 2012 then I give their recommendation my 7
wholehearted support. I have gratitude every day as I wait to turn into my neighborhood street 8
without fear and trepidation of being rear-ended. Having the designated turn lane has made it so 9
much safer for our residents. I am grateful too to have the protection of the mid block cross walk 10
to access Briones Park and points north. In speaking with bicycle commuters, I have only heard 11
enthusiastic responses when I have asked how the road works for them. I am grateful for that 12
too. The change in the Gunn High School bell time will play a huge part in making the morning 13
commute run more smoothly as will the new light system at Coulombe which I saw just being 14
installed today. I appreciate all that staff has done to address people’s concerns. They have 15
listened and worked really hard. There is no absolute perfect solution and we all have had to 16
make concessions but this new striping is so much better and safer than the way it was. I urge 17
you to recommend the extension of the trial. Thank you.18
19
Chair Tuma:Thank you. Robert Moss to be followed by Don Anderson. 20
21
Robert Moss:Thank you Chairman Tuma and commissioners. I think it is only logical since the 22
school starting times are being pushed back, to continue to trial. It is obviously going to have a 23
significant difference in the traffic loads and patterns so extending it for a year seems quite 24
reasonable but the extension exposes some real problems with the current study. One of the ones 25
I was reminded of this morning is that peak traffic is identified as 7:30 to 7:55 in the morning. 26
Not true. At 8:55 this morning I was on Charleston. The traffic was backed up to Alma and 27
beyond Wilke Way. It took four stoplights to get across Alma and that was at basically 9 a.m. in 28
the morning. I can also tell you from commuting along that corridor for 30 years that the time 29
between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m. in the morning is extremely congested. So if you are talking about 30
a.m. peak travel times you should be talking about 7:00 or 7:15 to 9:00 because that is when 31
people really travel. Also, you find a certain number of people are able to adjust their schedules 32
so that they don’t take Arastradero or Charleston during the major commute time for schools, 33
they move back 15 to 30 minutes and that extends the rush hour time. 34
35
Another thing you have to keep in mind, traffic for the school doesn’t stop when the school bell 36
rings. Parents are dropping kids off, going into the campus and then turning around and going 37
back creating traffic in the opposite direction they came from. That all has to be taken into 38
account. One of the things I thought was curious was the bicycle counts. You say we counted 39
the bikes and it shows more people are biking. In the case of Gunn, there are five major routes to 40
Page 17
bike to Gunn. Arastradero is just one of them. It is not the one that gets the most traffic. There 1
is Georgia, Los Robles, Paradise, and the bike trail through Barron Park. Those all get 2
significant bike traffic, so if you are going to talk about changes on Arastradero because biking is 3
safer, you should do a true bike count along Arastradero, not just say I’m going to count what’s 4
parked in the parking lot.5
6
Finally, and that was in one of the comments you got already, but at the community meeting in 7
June, someone spoke and said her husband was a traffic engineer and he found it disturbing that 8
sometimes when you merge you merge to the left and sometimes you merge to the right. I had 9
noticed that a little bit so I paid close attention the next time I went down Arastradero. It is a 10
really bad situation. You should always be merging in the same direction. Change the laning.11
12
Chair Tuma:Thank you. Don Anderson to be followed by Jackie Berman. 13
14
Don Anderson:I’m Don Anderson. I live at the corner of Alta Mesa and Arastradero, a short 15
block from El Camino. I’ve lived there for 25 years and I’ve had kids at Walter Briones and 16
Gunn during that time.My gift to you is that I don’t have a PowerPoint presentation. I just have 17
some impressions as someone who has lived there for 25 years. I was part of the original group 18
at Gunn who got all this going several years ago when talking about the safety, especially on 19
Arastradero and my impression, which I don’t think is measurable, is that the psychology of 20
Arastradero has changed in my view for the better in the sense that it is no longer a freeway 21
psychology. If a pedestrian now looks as if he or she wants to cross Arastradero, people tend to 22
notice them, slow down and stop. That was never the case for years before this restriping 23
project. 24
25
Just for our little block of Alta Mesa, before the restriping we were prisoners on the block during 26
rush hour because it was simply impossible to get out of that block until rush hour was over. The 27
miracle of Keep Clear has changed that dramatically for us and I think a lot of the other markings 28
along that stretch of Arastradero have improved things dramatically in various ways. We have 29
our own issues about problems that happen on our block because of things that go on in that area 30
and I sympathize with the people who are on other blocks like Amaranta and Mabel and the 31
problems they have, but I’ve walked in those neighborhoods and on those streets early in the 32
morning for years and years and years and the problems with increasing traffic in those areas 33
really significantly predated anything that went on in the way of restriping on Arastradero. 34
Thanks.35
36
Chair Tuma: Thank you. Jackie Berman to be followed by Don Nielson.37
38
Page 18
Jackie Berman:Thank you. My name is Jackie Berman. I live at 810 Miranda Green which is 1
right off of Miranda Avenue in the back of the Alta Mesa Cemetery. I picked up one comments 2
as someone who spoke before me did made by the staff that in order to solve some problem 3
which I am not clear what the problem is, that cars would be encouraged to go to Miranda and 4
make a u-turn. I am not sure which side of Arastradero that Miranda that they would be5
encouraged to make a u-turn on is. If it is south, it would be where our houses are, if north, it 6
would be where the Veteran hospital is, that general location. I think either way would be a very 7
big mistake to encourage cars to make u-turns on the very narrow roads. We’ve had very many 8
problems as I’m sure you are aware, on Miranda, and encouraging cars to make u-turns is not a 9
move toward safety. Thank you. 10
11
Chair Tuma:Thank you. Don Nielson to be followed by our final speaker, Robert Neff. 12
13
Don Nielson:I’m Don Nielson. I live at 850 Miranda Green. I sent you an email today but just 14
in case it didn’t land, three quick things that I thought are worth considering. First of all, I’m not 15
sure the statistics gathered so far are in any sense comprehensive enough to deal with the 16
problem. It would be better, I believe, to first survey the data and the day variation and see when 17
those peaks really do occur and then do the traffic analysis accordingly rather than in two, 18
somewhat arbitrary, half hour periods.19
20
Another has to do with, I think by and large westbound is working okay. Eastbound I think it 21
really stinks. There is one little place in front of Terman, where you essentially get in a drag race 22
and there are two lanes, a very brief two lanes. Those two lanes are an occasion for the more 23
aggressive drivers to pull around and then try to get out and gain an advantage in a frustrating 24
line. If we are going to go ahead for another year on this, and I hope we do, it seems like a right 25
turn only turn lane might fix that so the traffic doesn’t assume the preferred route if you go 26
straight rather than doubling out into the second lane, just as a suggestion.27
28
The other thing that seemed to happen at the beginning of the whole Charleston and Arastradero 29
project was light timing, the synchronization of lights. I have not seen that. I have spent literally 30
a half hour getting from Miranda to Bay Shore and today it took me 45 minutes to get here from 31
my home in Miranda, 45 minutes to get here. That may be okay if we were walking or cycling 32
but right now it doesn’t fit the anticipation that we all have and maybe that needs changing but at 33
any rate, I would encourage you to extend this for another period of time so we can really get at 34
some of the nuances we haven’t gotten at yet. Thank you.35
36
Chair Tuma:Thank you. And our final speaker for the evening, Robert Neff. Welcome.37
38
Page 19
Robert Neff:Hello, I’m Robert Neff. I live at 3150 Emerson Street which is not in the 1
neighborhood but I’ve been commuting by bicycle from down Arastradero for about 14 years, 2
especially in the evening. So, the improvement to the Arastradero corridor has been positive for 3
me, I think, as a cyclist. The protected left turns are nice. The slower traffic speed makes it feel 4
safer. Although the other effect of the single lane is that the traffic comes through in a steady 5
stream and sometimes there isn’t a chance to get across a lane of traffic if you’re trying to get to 6
the protected left turn lane. The other thing about bicycling down Arastradero is that the 7
intersection at El Camino Real is the worst in the city. For any street that has bike lanes on it, it 8
is the worst. So improving that can’t come soon enough and the danger at that intersection is 9
way worse than anything cyclists experience on Arastradero the rest of the way through. 10
11
The other thing is I have experienced, for 14 years or so, occasionally commuting up Arastradero 12
in the morning or dropping my kids off at Gunn High School, and I must concur with other 13
speakers to say that the throughput is much worse. The backup across Charleston is really 14
unprecedented until this happened and so I hope that the proposed changes to the bell schedule 15
will improve that and stretch things out better but also I think that just the flow through, if there 16
are creative ways to improve the flow up Arastradero and keep the average speeds where they 17
are now which is pleasant around 25 to 30 mph, that’s perfect. At the same time, get more cars 18
through when they need to and there is certainly an opportunity for creative traffic engineering. 19
20
Chair Tuma:Okay, great. Thank you. With that, we will close the public comment period and 21
come back to the Commission. Commissioners, why don’t we go first round of five minutes 22
each to those who have comments or questions and we’ll go from there. We’ll start with 23
Commissioner Keller.24
25
Commissioner Keller:Thank you. So first, let me thank staff for their work on this effort and 26
also in terms of improving the trial over the last year or so.I think those improvements have 27
made a difference. Secondly, I’d like to thank the people who were involved in this and people 28
who have worked on this over the years and thirdly, I’d like to thank all the people who are here 29
and have voiced an opinion either in favor or opposed to it. Hopefully we’ll be able to come up 30
with something that will be as good as possible although it obviously is not possible to satisfy 31
everybody in all constraints. It is what we call in optimization, an over constrained problem and 32
therefore you try to do the best you can with the constraints you have.33
34
I was going to ask whether you are putting electrophacal charges on coolant. No, just kidding. 35
So, the first thing is in terms of evaluating this, I noticed that Rich Ellson had some data on 36
VTA. I’m wondering if it would also be possible with VTA data to go back to consistent VTA37
bus stop at Middlefield and Charleston because that one might give us the missing data that goes 38
across between Alma and El Camino and it would be helpful to do that. In particular, I vaguely 39
remember there were end to end data all the way from Fabian to the end of the corridor at 40
Page 20
Miranda so it would be helpful to go back and compare the end to end data with this to the end to 1
end data at the end.2
3
Secondly, I think it would be interesting to think about evaluating this in June rather than 4
evaluating it in August. I think June will allow us to do the count data in the April and May 5
timeframe hopefully in a consistent weather pattern as was done before that and that would allow 6
us to consider any changes that the commission and the council talked about doing over the 7
summer of 2012 rather than having that happen during the school year after school starts. 8
Remember that the summer of 2012 will actually be shorter because Gunn High School and the 9
other schools will end at the same time as they did in the spring but they’ll start a week earlier 10
because of the change to pre-break finals will happen in the 2012-2013 school year so therefore 11
we need to be cognizant of when that change is.12
13
I think that the left turn lanes, from my experience in driving that corridor for a number of years, 14
is that the left turn lanes do dramatically reduce the variance. Before left turn lanes were there, 15
people would go in the left lane, move along, and then somebody would try to make a left turn, 16
you’d get stuck and you’d try and move around to the right. There were rear-end accidents, side 17
swipe accidents, so that we have to take into account. 18
19
I think that it makes sense to help Arastradero West in terms of providing access to that however, 20
they did something that was not nice to Gunn High School and that is they closed off access to 21
bicycles, through the San Francisco Water Department Hetch Hetchy pipeline. They take that 22
land, public land from Hetch Hetchy and it used to be that bicyclists used to be able to get onto 23
the Gunn High School driveway without going all the way to corner of Gunn High School which 24
is much faster and reduces the car impacts. So I think that if they want better access for them, 25
they should provide better access for Gunn. It is perfectly fine to close that driveway, close off 26
the gates at the point and time when school starts. So if you wait until 10 minutes after school 27
starts and then close the gate, perfectly fine, but during that morning rush hour it would be 28
helpful for those bikes to go through there. I think those are helpful. I have a few more 29
comments later on but I think those are my initial comments. I’ll give them a later round. Thank 30
you.31
32
Chair Tuma:Commissioner Garber.33
34
Commissioner Garber:Comments. I see three things, that the study has not been completed 35
given its initial definitions. Two, that in the course of the study the variables have changed 36
which includes the Gunn information about their timing and periods, etc. and that the collection 37
of the existing data is incomplete. For those three reasons if no others, I believe the study needs 38
to be continued and I would support the staff’s recommendation that the study be continued.39
Page 21
1
This isn’t a project that is being foisted on our community. It is a trial and it has errors and as a 2
result it is structured in a way that we can address those errors and study them further and work 3
to correct them over time. The things that it appears to me need further study include all of the 4
things that have been mentioned today, but some of the things I wrote down, the u-turn on 5
Miranda, the El Camino intersection cut through, the eastbound traffic issues. But in general I’m 6
not hearing any need to change the goals of the trial or the effort that is in there.7
8
The last thing I wanted to mention is that there are comments about disregarding drivers and I 9
think that is probably a real comment but I interpret it differently and that is that I don’t think 10
there is disregard for drivers but I do believe the community has changed over the last 10 years 11
since the study has started and with increasing velocity it has changed even more quickly in 12
recent years to a re-evaluation or allocation of the values that driving has in our community. Its 13
not that driving has been disregarded or lowered in value, it’s that the pedestrian involvement 14
and biking involvement in our community has risen. As a result, you end up with streets such as 15
Arastradero which have historically been more cut through. I am going to get from El Camino to 16
the research park as fast as possible, but it also has residential uses and school uses, and children, 17
etc. so its not the freeway experience that some of the residents have described. It is a mixed and 18
really the street of our future which requires us to be able to slow down, requires us to rethink 19
about what this is and to accept slower drive through times as a result of the things I think are 20
now valued by our community. Thank you.21
22
Chair Tuma: Commissioner Martinez.23
24
Commissioner Martinez:I kind of heard something a little bit different, Jaime, when you were 25
talking about the u-turn at Miranda and I thought it was the u-turn for the residents to be able to 26
head east. Isn’t that what you were pointing to and not to be able to cut through Miranda?27
28
Mr. Rodriguez: That’s right, Commissioner Martinez. The goal of this left turn pocket that is 29
shown here, westbound is going towards the exit of the Council Chambers and this is going 30
through Gunn High School. This particular striping option does two things. It provides left turn 31
storage for the residents who live on Miranda today if you are trying to turn on Miranda. It’s the 32
one place on the corridor on Miranda that we didn’t introduce left hand storage from so it 33
provides an opportunity for left hand storage. It does allow u-turn opportunity for the people that 34
can make the u-turn in a car back towards eastbound and allows them to turn into the street and 35
u-turn within Miranda. That happens today. It’s not something we want to encourage but it 36
allows that access to happen more easily through the introduction of the left hand pocket. So I 37
guess I should correct that and say we don’t want to encourage, but there were some concerns 38
expressed by one of the public speakers regarding u-turns on that street, but that is what happens 39
today so we’re trying to make access a little safer on that road as well.40
Page 22
1
Commissioner Martinez:Thank you. And I wanted to ask, is it really police data in terms of 2
traffic, ticketing, accidents, and like that, that you can cite?3
4
Mr. Rodriguez:We don’t have any data that we can cite here today. That’s part of the analysis 5
that we’re saying we really haven’t focused too much on yet because the corridor has gone 6
through so much change in the last year and as of tomorrow we’ll be technically complete and so 7
we haven’t focused too much on collision or citations given. 8
9
Commissioner Martinez: And then, I’m not really sure I heard, I know about the bell schedule at 10
Gunn and that sounds like a real positive move but I don’t think I’ve heard, or perhaps you can 11
recap just what is being done or has been done in terms of the improvement at the schools, in 12
terms of the city’s response to public safety and making the streets safer and access around the 13
schools. Is there something specific that we’ve done apart from what the schools themselves are 14
doing?15
16
Mr. Rodriguez:Through the design of this project, working when Charleston Road was 17
implemented, Phase 1 of that implementation back in 2006 included driveway modifications to 18
Gunn High School, specifically as Penny mentioned in the previous comments, the addition of a 19
fifth lane in the westbound direction, is a dedicated right turn lane to feed into Gunn High 20
School. At the same time, Gunn High School also made configuration changes into their parking 21
lot to require vehicles to go in, circulate in a counterclockwise manner, and then back out along 22
the corridor. So those are the specific modifications that happened in that area to move traffic 23
into and out of that parking lot. 24
25
Commissioner Martinez:But in addition to that, any other traffic calming efforts, signage, 26
striping, anything that we’ve added or are adding over the next year?27
28
Mr. Rodriguez:Historically we’ve added speed bumps along Mabel, striping along Mabel to 29
encourage speed reductions to the high school. Within the next year, if this trial were to be 30
extended, we haven’t identified anything specifically within the parking lot at this time. I think 31
that as Gunn High School begins to reach its construction phase for the improvements, we are 32
going to work closely with them to make sure the construction improvements they are doing 33
doesn’t significantly impact the operations along Arastradero Road.34
35
Commissioner Martinez:Okay, good. Kind of a comment. I don’t think I’ve heard kind of such 36
disparate positions on an issue as I have in reading our email and some of the comments tonight. 37
Page 23
Its easy to understand the differences or different points of view from commuters or drivers 1
coming from Foothill to El Camino versus people with children and the schools, pedestrians and 2
bikers, but we’re also hearing it from people who live in the neighborhood and feel that its made 3
traffic congestion worse and do you have really a sense that you can make a response that 4
somehow a part of what Commissioner Garber said, our values are changing, something that 5
really is making it better for the neighborhood for those people that are seeing the impact of 6
traffic congestion?7
8
Mr. Rodriguez:I’ll try and answer that question for you. I think that what we’re seeing is a 9
positive impact to the community and has been in line with some of the residents of the street, 10
more specifically that the addition of the left turn access into the street, the left hand turn lanes 11
and safety of the street has been the number one comment from residents, that it feels safer. You 12
can actually get out of the through lanes into the dedicated area to make a left turn and that alone 13
changes the street. If we are to move forward into an extension phase and eventually be 14
implemented, the number one thing that will be the biggest improvement long term will be the 15
addition of landscape median islands. That is one of the biggest benefits of a project like this at 16
any street. Its great as a trial and makes you understand how the street would operate but really 17
until those final improvements are in you don’t see the benefits of what the project can truly be 18
like because the addition of large landscaped trees along the corridor visually break up the 19
corridor as you are looking down the street. It narrows down the feel of the lanes and forces 20
people to slow down even more. It is unfortunate we don’t have the capital resources to 21
implement improvements along Charleston. Its in the CIP now for the first time and constantly 22
trying to pursue funding for that corridor but that would be the other piece that long term would 23
have a large positive impact from a commute corridor as well as property value and just an 24
aesthetic benefit through the corridor but that will take time to see.25
26
Chair Tuma: Commissioner Tanaka.27
28
Commissioner Tanaka:So first let me say thank you for all your work on this. It looked pretty 29
comprehensive and thank you everyone for coming out tonight and giving us your comments. I, 30
also, am in favor of extending the trial for many of the same reasons that Commissioner Garber 31
highlighted. It seems to make sense. There is more data to be collected with the introduction of 32
new bell times so it makes sense but I did have a few questions about some of the things I heard 33
in the public comments that perhaps you could address. The first question I have for you is, I 34
know there is a bike trail that goes along Gunn and continues along the other side of the 35
cemetery. What’s the plan to allow bikers to cross? How do they cross? What’s the thought 36
behind that?37
38
Mr. Rodriguez:I think we’re talking about on the south side of Arastradero Road that goes 39
along the edge of the cemetery. There is a connection in the neighborhood to the south of that. 40
Is that the trail you are speaking to?41
Page 24
1
Commissioner Tanaka:Yes, there are two bike trails and then there is Arastradero which 2
because there is quite a bit of traffic on there people have a hard time crossing. I heard that from 3
one of the speakers. Because it is a major bike route, how do people cross that? 4
5
Mr. Rodriguez:What we’ve observed is if you are on either side, most people don’t continue 6
straight. That is not a location we’d recommend for people to go straight. Most people, if 7
they’re coming from the south they’d be on that trail and cross at the Gunn High School 8
intersection…9
10
Commissioner Tanaka:No, I’m talking about the bike trail that goes around Gunn High School 11
and it goes across Arastradero near the cemetery. Along the cemetery there is a bike route. 12
There is no crossing. There is nothing. On the east, west side. 13
14
Mr. Rodriguez:I think the location we’re talking about is here, this is the entrance, the Hetch 15
Hetchy right away. What we’ve seen is people who are coming through this corridor will stay on 16
the south side of Arastradero Road and then cross up towards Gunn. In the egress of the after 17
school, we’ve observed people crossing and then staying along Arastradero and then getting back 18
onto the trail at this point. That’s what our observations are. I haven’t seen any pedestrian 19
traffic at all crossing in this particular area.20
21
Commissioner Tanaka:I’ve seen people crossing at Georgia instead of going along the Gunn 22
High School driveway.23
24
Mr. Rodriguez:So you’ve seen people come through here and then cross at Georgia? You 25
know, I’ll be honest, I haven’t really observed that. We can look for that and see if there are 26
opportunities to cross at Georgia and put it into the trial extension if that were to happen.27
28
Commissioner Tanaka:The second question is, are you going to extend the peak measuring time 29
from the half hour to maybe 7 to 9 a.m.? 30
31
Mr. Rodriguez:That is a really good suggestion. I think that what we did initially was we were 32
actually looking at that whole corridor from 7:30 to about 8:30 and 9:00. We focused on doing 33
our trial time runs during that half hour because that’s the period in which the schools were all 34
converging onto Arastradero Road. I think as the trial were to extend with the council’s support, 35
Page 25
we would want to take additional run times to address the benefit we’ve seen at varying times up 1
until 9:00 if that’s what’s needed.2
3
Chair Tuma:Vice Chair Lippert.4
5
Vice Chair Lippert:Thank you. First, I’d like to thank the members of the community for 6
coming out. It is a very important part of our deliberations to be able to hear what members of 7
the communities have to say. Our staff writes an excellent report in coming up with their 8
recommendations here. It’s really the citizens of Palo Alto that need to live with this and so its 9
really important that we hear your comments and take those into account in terms of our 10
recommendation here to Council. 11
12
I have a couple of questions for staff and first of all, metrics regarding level of service at the 13
intersections. Do we have any metrics on that at all?14
15
Mr. Rodriguez:We have the data now. We collected data at the end of spring term. We don’t 16
have it in context of the level of service. One of the things we do know is that because we 17
preserved the lane configurations through most of the intersections, where there were four lanes 18
for example, those are still maintained, in theory that doesn’t impact level of service because we 19
know the volumes are the same. So level of service really hasn’t been the most positive way to 20
measure the effects of the corridor because from a computer model standpoint the levels will 21
remain the same. That’s why we focused data collection on travel time because that’s what’s 22
more quantifiable with people’s comments.23
24
Vice Chair Lippert:With regard to the construction that is going on at the tree house, has that 25
impacted the service at all here? Has that been an impact that has thrown things off a little bit?26
27
Mr. Rodriguez:You’re referring to the developments on the north side of Charleston before El 28
Camino Real. We haven’t observed that. There were strict requirements on that project through 29
its construction phase that required construction after a certain period if it required a lane closure, 30
so we haven’t observed their construction to be impact in the morning or the evening.31
32
Vice Chair Lippert:With regards to my feelings on this, this is definitely a work in progress. I 33
would support continuing the trial and part of the reason why that is it first of all has not been 34
fully implemented. There are some things that still need to be accomplished or finished before 35
we can adequately evaluate this. In terms of the gathering of the information, until those 36
Page 26
improvements are made there is no data, there is no final data on the system, whether it is going 1
to work or not, so it is one of those deals where we have to wait and see once all the 2
improvements have been accomplished but once they have been, a very important part is to go 3
back to the community and find out what works and what doesn’t work and to tweak it. 4
5
I live in downtown north. I’ve lived in downtown north for the last over 25 years and we had our 6
own little traffic calming project, trial and I live on Hawthorne Avenue. Hawthorne Avenue you 7
may not know is the furthest most street in Palo Alto that actually connects Middlefield Road to 8
Alma so we were basically an extension of Willow Road and that’s how people got through the 9
neighborhoods to get to Stanford. So, they did the traffic calming trial there and the neighbors 10
were basically split. A lot of people were opposed to it, a lot of people for it. Ultimately what 11
was initially recommended was not fully implemented but there were parts that came out of it 12
that were implemented and it did change the way people drive through our neighborhood and it 13
is a much calmer, safer neighborhood. This is particularly important because I’ve observed that 14
neighborhood change over the years and go from, I hate to use the words, slackers and college 15
students and people that were just single people working, to becoming a family neighborhood 16
with lots of kids and I’ve seen the kids grow up in the neighborhood and I’ve seen the kids grow17
up and go off to college and with that, that traffic calming was particularly important in terms of 18
having life on the street and people use the streets and when I talk about that, I’m talking about 19
the citizens or the residents in that neighborhood, not the cut through traffic.20
21
So with regard to what is being proposed here, until it is completed and the trial is able to 22
actually take some real measurements and the citizens and residents are able to respond to the 23
pros and cons, I think it is still a work in progress and so it should be continued at least through I 24
would say, as Commissioner Keller suggested, to June of 2012.25
26
Chair Tuma:Okay, a few questions. What time does Terman start?27
28
Mr. Rodriguez:Terman starts at 8:10.29
30
Chair Tuma:So in terms of the discussion that has been had this evening around timing of peak 31
times, I think at minimum, 9:00 if not 9:15 this needs to go until. When looking at the new bell 32
times you’ve got 8:30 at Gunn, 9:00 at Bowman, 8:10 at Terman so there is a stretch there. 33
Going 7:30 to 8:00 definitely doesn’t cut it. You’ve got a bell time until 9 and my own 34
experience going through town, I don’t know whether it is Silicon Valley and everyone sleeps 35
late or what, but this isn’t done at 8 or 8:30. The congestion lives until at least 9:00 so I think 36
9:15 for an observation time frame makes sense. Did I hear right that in terms of implementation 37
you are going to be done tomorrow? Okay. So one of the reasons we’ve had a year long process 38
here is because we haven’t been able to implement a shortage of materials on availability of 39
Page 27
equipment and also getting feedback as we go along so it definitely makes sense to me to 1
continue the trial but the question I have is, why a year? We clearly want to see how things go 2
with the new bell schedule, we want to see how things go through the start of school, maybe 3
even a little bit into the winter months, but why a full year? Why not look at this again in six 4
months or seven months and evaluate it then as opposed to a whole year. There may very well 5
be good reasons so I wanted to hear what the thinking was, why a full 12 months.6
7
Mr. Rodriguez:That’s a good question and there are several reasons why we recommend a one 8
year extension. One of them is to provide a consistency with the trial along Charleston Road. 9
Charleston Road went through that full two year trial. We want to get at least one year of data 10
and we are going to have that starting in the fall and after the improvements we have already 11
made and we currently propose to be implemented at the end of this month and early August, 12
with the support of yourselves and the Council, I think there really isn’t too many more things 13
that I can think of that we can do along Arastradero Road to help improve things. We’ve heard 14
other recommendations that we can look at tonight such as, a right turn only lane into Terman. 15
I’m not sure if that’s feasible or not. We can look at it and respond later, but we have a year’s 16
worth of data during various seasons and so now with a permanent implementation we can 17
compare that data with the data of the previous year. It may not be a full comparison because 18
we’d make minor improvements along the way, but we have something we can compare to say, 19
what was the change like in relation to the bell schedule change and help us get a better measure 20
of what the traffic is like. So that is why we recommend a year. Plus, if we did a shorter 21
analysis it would be harder to change that without significant impacts. Change the corridor 22
without significant impacts to the school traffic because if we chose to remove it we would have 23
to wait until the summertime anyways so it makes sense to wait out that full year.24
25
Chair Tuma:That was going to be my next question. In terms of implementation, not exactly 26
work wise but timeframe wise, both if the implementation was to take it away, or the 27
implementation was to make it permanent, how long does that process take?28
29
Mr. Rodriguez:If we were doing a retention beyond the one year, meaning that it was to remain 30
permanent, there would be no more change needed. The project would remain as it is. If there 31
was a recommendation at the end of the trial period to remove the improvements, then we would 32
still be looking at more than likely to wait until the next resurfacing season which would 33
typically for us be that summertime period. We use the spring to design the projects that we 34
want to resurface. We put them out to bid, develop plans and specifications and then begin 35
construction usually around that end of spring, beginning of summertime period.36
37
Chair Tuma:So if the conclusion was to pull this stuff out, really, in order to do that next year, 38
you’d need to make that decision in the spring time in order to design the changes and do the 39
resurfacing over the summer. I mean if you wait a full year and so we’re not going to make a 40
decision until the middle of July then you’ve missed the resurfacing season and you don’t have 41
Page 28
an opportunity to pull out those changes and make those implementations in the resurfacing 1
season.You’re getting awfully close to the start of the school year again. I hear what you’re 2
saying about a full year of data, but at the same time as you’ve sort of acknowledged, you are not 3
really comparing apples because the data from this last year, while relevant, isn’t necessarily a 4
direct comparison because you are going to make significant changes. You are going to see 5
changes with the bell schedule so again, I’m wondering, does this make more sense to evaluate 6
through, say February, and then evaluate and look at it at that point. Because if you decide to 7
pull some things out you have time to design those and then get them implemented in that 8
resurfacing season or in the summertime in order for it to be ready in the fall for the school year.9
10
Mr. Rodriguez:One of the things that is nice about this project now is that we have the design 11
files ready to make any types of changes right away. So even if we moved to a trial extension 12
for a full year, it would actually be very simple for us to immediately develop a set of plans that 13
would be implemented in the coming resurfacing year relatively quick. It is an option to do an 14
extension through the spring timeframe but what we saw was a pretty good spike in data over 15
this past year, even with the changes that we had made where during that winter season there was 16
a drop in bicycle and pedestrian traffic because of the heavy rain. Luckily one of the things that 17
I’ve seen in Palo Alto that I don’t see in too many others is that even though there was rain, there 18
were still a lot of kids biking. That was a positive thing I experienced when I was there watching 19
traffic. It was pretty amazing to me to see that even though we had bad weather there was still a 20
commitment from our community to continue that alternative mode toward school. That spike 21
was up again in the spring significantly and so that was one of the data points that we want to 22
capture through a year extension.23
24
Chair Tuma:Okay, I’ve got one last question and then we’ll move on. The issue that 25
Commissioner Keller raises with respect to the gate being closed by the Arastradero West 26
community. What are your thoughts on your ability to force trade that, or something, because 27
that does seem sort of… I don’t know what the background is or what the issues were, the 28
reasons for them wanting that to get locked off but what are your thoughts on that?29
30
Mr. Rodriguez:I’ll be honest, not knowing the history prior to that either, we do have a fairly 31
good relationship with the Arastradero West apartment management staff and we can definitely 32
have that discussion within the near term to talk about that opportunity to open up those gates on 33
a timed basis. We do recognize concerns, the impacts regarding the loss of the full access of 34
their driveways, and came up with a pretty good alternative in working with them to try and 35
solve that. There is an openness on their part to work with us and make this project successful 36
and improve the benefits of their residence. We can definitely do that and report back to you as a 37
Commission.38
39
Chair Tuma:I think Commissioner Keller has a motion for us.40
Page 29
1
Commissioner Keller:Yes. Let me just finish up with a few points and questions and then I’ll 2
give my motion. With respect to the gate, I believe the reason the Arastradero West apartments 3
closed the gate is that students were hanging out there during the school day and that was very 4
annoying to the residents there is what I was told so if the gate was open during the morning 5
commute and then closed that would solve the problems of the apartment as far as I know as well 6
as provide the needs for Gunn High School.7
8
What is the story about synchronizing the lights on Charleston and Arastradero? Is that going to 9
be done? Has it been done? What’s the status of that?10
11
Mr. Rodriguez:Coordination along Arastradero Road today, and I’ll start with Arastradero 12
Road, it doesn’t exist. The reason why coordination doesn’t exist is that specifically during that 13
commute period, that all pedestrian phase, when we are seeing that spike of traffic, that all 14
pedestrian phase doesn’t allow for implementation of coordination between Coulombe and 15
Donald Terman. We plan to try to reintroduce the option for coordination with this new bell 16
schedule change because we feel there is going to be enough traffic to help move along the 17
corridor after the bell change has taken effect.18
19
On Charleston Road, we don’t have coordination either but we are actually in the process of 20
doing a couple of different projects in Palo Alto. I’ll try not to take too long but we have one 21
project which will actually replace our traffic signal controllers and our central system that 22
monitors that traffic system starting this fall. We are just waiting for authorization to expend 23
grant funds to secure that project. The second project is actually one we are working on with 24
coordination with CalTrans and VTA. We are actually beginning an upgrade of traffic signal 25
control equipment along Alma Street. We actually already replaced the older controllers we 26
were planning to replace in the fall along Alma at Meadow, at Churchill and at Charleston. As 27
part of that implementation, this is a comment that I’ve heard a lot in relation to people crossing 28
Alma just recently from the audience tonight. When we made these controller changes, we did 29
actually change the recovery sequence in terms of a railroad preemption. When we had a 30
railroad preemption in the past, the signal went straight to serve westbound Meadow, Charleston 31
and Churchill and then it went to the opposite side in the eastbound direction. As part of the 32
change, until all the equipment replacements are done, and we should be done next week we left 33
in the standard preemption, which was leave it on Alma and let it cycle naturally back to where it 34
will be based on demand. We are looking at recovery options which will then implement 35
additional coordination improvements along Alma as well as across Charleston Road.36
37
Commissioner Keller:I understand that there is going to be several thousand new employees at 38
VMware, is that right? And I’m wondering if you will do simulation analysis to see what the 39
impact of that additional traffic and employment will be on the Charleston Arastradero corridor?40
41
Mr. Rodriguez: In relation to VMware, the improvements that are happening now at the 42
VMware site are tenant specific improvements to the existing buildings. VMware is beginning 43
to occupy vacant buildings that are on the site that they are consolidating their full campus to. 44
So within the near term, which I would say about 2 years and if Curtis has any additional 45
comments he can add this in, within 2 years we don’t see any increase in traffic because all that 46
Page 30
is happening is that the existing sites are consolidated into one area so any volumes of traffic on 1
Arastradero should not increase in relation to VMWare but as VMWare begins to master plan 2
out its site which they are barely in the beginning stages of doing then whatever potential 3
increases in traffic can occur as a result of their new improvements, be can begin to work with 4
them as part of their TDM program, to implement some type of monitoring state. We are going 5
to be collecting more data along Arastradero Road and will capture changes as they are 6
happening as well. 7
8
Commissioner Keller: I think people mentioned the idea of merge directions, whether you 9
merge to the left or right, for traffic calming that it makes sense to always have the left merge 10
into the right if we can do that. I’m not sure if that’s always feasible.11
12
Mr. Rodriguez:That’s a good question and really whether you merge right or left isn’t a 13
function of you do it one way all the time. It’s a really a function of the geometry of the 14
roadways and that’s what’s been an issue in this project. We didn’t put merges without thinking 15
about it. I’ll start with the eastbound direction. The traffic #1 lane eastbound direction is 16
actually the lane that ends, that’s why you merge from the left to the right and when you are 17
actually past Terman, its actually the right lane that ends and that is in relation to the left turn 18
access lanes that were installed along the corridor so whether you merge left or right is really a 19
function of the geometry of the roadway, it isn’t a preference or right way to go, and that’s what 20
dictated this particular design.21
22
The same happens in the opposite direction. If you are coming westbound from El Camino Real 23
and the changes have been made, its again the #1 lane also that merges from left to right and as 24
we approach Donald Terman, that’s when the road again goes to two full lanes and is maintained 25
in that direction, so the merges we have again are geometry, not functions of the right or wrong 26
way to design merges.27
28
MOTION29
30
Commissioner Keller:Thank you. So let me make a motion that we continue the trial with the 31
improvements that have been made and that we come back in the June timeframe for results after 32
the data has been analyzed through the spring of the 2011 –2012 academic year.33
34
SECOND35
36
Vice Chair Lippert:Second. 37
38
Commissioner Garber: Are we making a recommendation to Council? 39
40
Commissioner Keller:Yes, I’m recommending that the trial be continued through…41
42
Commissioner Garber:You’re recommending to Council that the trial be continued? I didn’t 43
hear that.44
45
Page 31
Commissioner Keller:We are recommending to the Council that the trial be continued with 1
coming back to us in the June July timeframe. Okay. So a couple things, first of all I think that 2
because this project was essentially not completed until I guess tomorrow when the light at 3
Coulombe is being completed implemented that essentially the data is based on changes that are 4
happening. Secondly, I think that the dramatic change to the Gunn High School start time and 5
that being delayed half hour means that Terman and Gunn no longer conflict with each other so 6
people going to Gunn no longer have to wait through the Terman 90 second period of time, or 7
long period of time, when the students are crossing in all directions and that slowed down the 8
Gunn traffic dramatically so the Gunn traffic will now follow that so those changes alone justify 9
seeing what happens based on them. 10
11
I do think we need to be careful about some things. We have to think about what the impact of 12
later Gunn return traffic is. I don’t think that will be much of a problem but its worth taking into 13
account. I think its worth taking into account the impacts on other streets in Barron Park and 14
particularly one of the things that needs to be noted is I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that people 15
are dropping their kids off on Los Robles at the end where there is no u-turn allowed so instead 16
of u-turn they are backing up on Los Robles which is extremely dangerous because there are 17
bicyclists going the other way on Gunn so perhaps some enforcement from the police and other 18
analysis of that would be worthwhile and I think it would be interesting to see whether putting a 19
right turn from eastbound Arastradero into Terman might be useful to try to avoid the race 20
condition that is going on over there but I think there are things that can be done. I am 21
wondering if, without maybe having a session, if when there is a subsequent report or meeting 22
that happens, if you can sort of give us incremental data as a document to us without it having to 23
be an item so we can monitor it along the way, but that is just a request. 24
25
One last thing is that when you do your data analysis, it is useful to have a data analysis done by 26
half hour periods. Usually you do it over an average of 7:00 to 9:00. The data is too granular for 27
that to make sense so really we should have separate data from 7:00 to 7:30, 7:30 to 8:00, 8:00 to 28
8:30 and then from 8:30 to 9:00 because there are so many different things going on there that 29
understanding the data that goes on each half hour will be useful to realize what’s going on in the 30
corridor and the usual two hour average is just not useful enough. Thank you.31
32
Chair Tuma:Vice Chair Lippert, do you speak to your Second?33
34
Vice Chair Lippert:Yes, I am in support of the motion as stated. I think that tomorrow or 35
whenever you have this complete, it is not an end but in fact it’s a beginning so its important that 36
there actually be a full period by which the metrics can be made and evaluated but probably 37
what’s even more important than that and I hate to put you in such a delicate position but is to 38
hear from the community and what’s going to be important here is to be able to hear from the 39
residents of that area over that period of time and make adjustments. I think that looking at it 40
and seeing the level of services and how things move smoothly, what the accident rates are are 41
going to be particularly important and its truly not going to be able to be tested until the school 42
year begins and I think with the time shifting of when school begins and when school ends and 43
the different schools and commuting and all that is going to make a big difference in how this 44
functions particularly with so many high school students on their bicycles as well as those that 45
drive to Gunn.46
Page 32
1
So as I said before, it’s a work in progress and it needs to have a beginning of that trial period 2
once it’s been completed. 3
4
AMENDMENT TO MOTION5
6
Chair Tuma:Thank you. I’m going to offer a friendly amendment to motion and that is that the 7
trial be extended until the March timeframe with the notion that if there truly is additional time 8
needed, that staff can come back and ask for that. The reason I’m sort of pushing it forward a 9
little bit and balancing the time here is because there has been a great deal of consternation in the 10
community and I’m fond of the saying, I think you’ve all heard it by now, but we all tend to 11
grow to the size of our fishbowl. If there is a year to do the trial, we’ll take a year to do the trial 12
but to me I haven’t’ heard a compelling reason that it takes an entire year. Everything has now 13
been implemented, getting through the school year. So I think if there is a need to make 14
changes, if we wait until it comes back to us until June or July and then there are decisions to be 15
made, I’m afraid the changes don’t get made before the next school year starts. So its balancing 16
what actually will need to be done at the end of the trial if anything, in terms of implementation, 17
with the need to collect data, so I would rather see the recommendation that they extend it only 18
until March, we see what the data is at that point. If we need to extend it more we can but 19
otherwise are in a position for staff to come back with a recommendation about what the final 20
implementation should look like.21
22
Commissioner Garber:I’ll tell you why I would prefer it coming back at the end of the school 23
year and that is because…24
25
Commissioner Tanaka:Excuse me, do we have a Second to the motion? Don’t we need to do 26
that? Okay, who was it?27
28
Commissioner Keller:It was Lee. So can I respond to you before I accept it or reject you? So, 29
the issue is that the fall is different from the spring at Gunn High School and there are several 30
reasons. One reason is that in the fall you have a bunch of freshman coming onto campus who 31
are new, the parents are driving, and things don’t settle down for a few months in terms of the 32
traffic patterns on Arastradero once school starts. As soon as traffic patterns settle down the rain 33
starts and that starts a completely different traffic pattern and it gets busier then. Gunn High 34
School’s own timing on their driveway is in the spring after in the April May timeframe on a 35
clear reasonable warm day. That is when they do their timing so in some sense doing it in March 36
would still be the rainy season and we wouldn’t have any of the spring data. We might be able 37
to come back sooner than June but the issue is once you have data that covers early May you 38
really don’t have the spring data which is going to be qualitatively different than the fall. That’s 39
why I discuss that.40
41
Also, I think that the consideration that I see is that if the trial succeeds then obviously we just 42
keep it. If the trial fails, I don’t see us immediately going through a process of scrapping it and 43
going back to what? The question is to what? Even if the trial fails, I see us going through a 44
process that will take a number of months and figuring out what to replace it with. It’s not 45
simply restriping it back to the way it was before. It may be figuring out further changes to 46
Page 33
make, figuring out another configuration that’s better than what we had before and better than 1
what we have now so I think the design process is not going to be a simple revert or undo kind of 2
operation. At least that’s what I think but people may disagree. That’s why I think that the 3
advantage of starting in the June July timeframe allows us to do some of the design, put it into 4
the CIP process which starts in the fall and then it won’t happen in next year. If we do it in 5
August September timeframe it’s going to be hard to start in the CIP for the following year. I 6
think even if we make a decision in March, where is the money going to come from, how is it 7
going to be allocated, how will it fit into the CIP and we won’t be able to fix it anyway. 8
9
Chair Tuma:I understand the rationale. Mr. Planning Director,do you have any comments on 10
this timing issue?11
12
Mr. Williams:No, I think I’d probably yield to generally what Jaime said although it doesn’t 13
necessarily have to be a year but as far as the sense of how long it takes to implement changes 14
and so I guess my question would be of him, is it something that are we in a situation if we go 15
through March then decide over the course of a couple month of review probably to make 16
changes where they could be done in the summer and be ready in the fall or is it something that 17
would take longer anyway to incorporate? I’m assuming that as you go through and you have 18
your commissioning council that if there are decisions to be made they come out during that 19
process. Now there may be refinements to that too but at least some basic changes might be 20
decided on in that.21
22
Mr. Rodriguez:In this case, I think Commissioner Keller hit the nail on the head. If we want it 23
to go through just a March timeframe then we would need to agree what to go back to. If we 24
wanted to see a different type of design I don’t know if we could implement it fast enough 25
because we wanted to rebuild that community support again. If it was going to be as quick as go 26
back to just the four lanes then it could be implemented and even make a decision in the June 27
timeframe because we actually already have the design, it was just a matter of doing an 28
amendment against the CIP process. The bigger question is, if we don’t want to go back to the 29
four lanes and we have to introduce design options it is much longer of a period for the 30
community.31
32
Chair Tuma:Okay, I had a light from Commissioner Garber.33
34
Commissioner Garber:A couple of comments. I had actually thought the Chair was going to go 35
back and talk about the daily duration of observation to straddle the 9:00 period which he can 36
come back to. I recognize Commissioner Keller’s comments and our Chief Transportation 37
Official’s comments relative to how long it takes to process change through. It occurs to me that 38
maybe a way to think about this is the likelihood of something that isn’t working, will probably 39
be recognized fairly quickly and there are opportunities sort of on a quarterly basis for check in 40
as Commissioner Keller began to describe so maybe there is a check in in the January timeframe 41
and one in March to see where things are trending without taking up a lot of staff time to do a 42
full analysis at that point. Because then, if we get to March and things are clearly off rails and 43
we can make a preemptive recommendation at that point. Just a suggestion.44
45
Chair Tuma:Okay. Commissioner Martinez.46
Page 34
1
Commissioner Martinez:I think I fully agree with Commissioner Keller’s comments and why 2
we want to give this more time. I would also add Vice Chair Lippert’s comment about the 3
community process as well. We want to make sure that you have the opportunity to go back and 4
really have the kind of good extensive feedback from community as you’ve had to date. I just 5
want to add that I really want you to emphasize sort of the impact in your evaluation of what’s 6
happening in the neighborhoods and on the neighborhood streets because our public wasn’t 7
making that up today. There are some serious issues that aren’t going to be addressed by 8
landscaping and I’m not just saying this because I’m looking forward to the blueberry pancakes 9
next spring, but because I think it is a serious issue and when you do come back I’d like to hear a 10
little bit more about what really is going on there and what you are planning to do to address that. 11
12
Chair Tuma:Vice Chair Lippert.13
14
Vice Chair Lippert:I have one last comment. I look out into the audience here and I see adults 15
but one of the biggest users of that road are the high school and elementary school kids, also the 16
middle school kids. But I think it would be important to maybe hold some sort of community 17
meeting with the high school kids that are driving and get some of their feedback as well. I think 18
it’s really valuable and it seems to be lacking in this analysis. 19
20
Chair Tuma:Okay, with that Commissioners are we ready to vote? All those in favor of the 21
motion say I. Opposed? It passes unanimously with Commissioner Fineberg absent. Thank you 22
and we’ll close that item.23
24
MOTION PASSED (6-0-1-0, Fineberg Absent)25
26
27
Arastradero Road Restriping Trial Project
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Arastradero Road Restriping Trial Project
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6/2/11 Neighborhood Meeting
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Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Thursday, May 26,2011 10:19 AM
To: Rius, Rafael; Rodriguez, Jaime
Subject: FW: arastradero project
fyi
Zorich Betten 11
Planning Dept .. Ext. 2440
From: Denson, Mike
sent: Thursday, May 26,2011 9:27 AM
To: Scott Hayes; Transportation; Info, Plandlv
Subject: RE: arastradero project
Mr. Hayes,
I have asked to traffic motor team to respond and work this area for gridlock violations. They will be there as their
schedule allows.
Thank you for letting us know.
AlCaptain Mike Denson
Palo Alto Police Department
275 Forest Avenue, Palo Alto, CA. 94301
650-743-9931
From: Scott Hayes [maftto:scottchayes@gmall.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2011 8:39 AM
To: Transportation; Info, Plandiv
Cc: Denson, Mike
Subject: arastradero project .
I am writing to provide feedback on the arastradero project as I live on Arastradero in Tan Plaza.
In short, it seems like the project has gone very well and I can truly say that I have been very
pleased with the results, especially with the crosswalk at Arastradero and Clemo as well as the striping
in the same area and the fuehouse that says DO NOT BLOCK (or something like that). In fact, it's been
great for kids going to Tennan and Gunn to use the crosswalk at Clemo.
However, two items still remain (at no fault of yours / palo alto, but that of drivers conununting in the
area). In short, during the school commute people still block the road at Clemo and Arastradero as well
as the firehouse driveway onto Arastradero. The cross walk and striping have helped, but many people
do ignore it and block the intersection nonetheless. I understand this is out of your control, as such I
have cc:d Captain Denson ofP APD who may have a solution and would be able to assist in this matter,
Is it possible to put an officer in a patrol car or motorcylce out there for a day or two to dissuade people
from blocking the road at Clemo as well as the fire department? I know when an officer was there telling
7/2112011
kids to wear hel?1ets on their bicycles it worked very well --in fact, nly son's friends said it did :)
In addition, there's the continued issue of people driving north on el camino then turning left onto
Arastradero blocking the intersection when the people (like us residents) are heading east bound from
arastradero making a left heading north on elcanlino in the nlOTIling. Honestly, without having an
officer enforce this or at least striping 1 a sign saying don't block the intersection this will clearly
continue and potentially cause an accident in the future as people blatently are one or two cars into el
camino blocking th~ intersection when we have the green light to tuTIlleft or at times when people ar
heading straight to go east continuing on arastradero.
Again, I think the project has been a success but just need to see how we can get people to stop blocking
those interesections at clemolarastradero and el canlino/arastradero during the school comnlute.
Keep up the good work and your help on this matter is greatly appreciated!
Best,
Scott Hayes
7/21/2011
\
Arastradero Road Re-Striping
Arastradero Road Re-Striping
James Burian [cone78@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, June 17, 20116:39 PM
To: transportation@Cityofpaloalto.org
Cc: Arastradero West
Page10f1
'fh~~Tack~~f ~o~;ideni'tion t~~;Ide~t~'~A;~tradero W7sth;-b~~ egregio~"dttring the '~:;tripi;g'hHu.wm
project. . '
We now can no longer make a legal left tum into any of our 3 driveways anytime of the day or night.
Student hours are between 7:30 AM and 3:30 PM.
I suspect it is illegal to make any left tum from our driveways too.
Drivers seem so upset during rush hour with the long lines they now experience thanks to the re-striping
to never let us even make our legal right tum from our driveways.
Since there is a No U-Turn at Foothill Expressway, I still have not figured out a convenient, yet legal
way to head toward El Camino.
I hope you can do better to find reasonable solutions to our concerns as well as those of our bike riders
and pedestrians.
Sincerely yours,
James D Burianr>
724 Arastradero Road, #724
Palo Alto, CA
No PhonelFax
email: cone78@yahoo.com
https:l!owa.wres.com/owal?ae=Item&t=IPM.Note&id=RgAAAACbyJzOIo2bRSQpQ7%2bc... 6/18/2011
Against Re-striping Arastroadero Road Palo Alto
Against Re-striping Arastroadero Road Palo Alto
Catherine Qiuping Zhang [catherineqzhang@gmail.com]
sent: Monday, June 20, 201110:33 AM
To: Arastradero West
Pagelofl
~""N~~NN'r'nvrl~~~~~"'Y~~VN'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''<''''''''~''V«'oV~NYA-...,.'''tV~~;YV''~~~''''''N'''''''''~''''''''t"W\~Y'N~~~"I'''. Dear Sir/Madam,
We are a family four lives in 724 Arastradero Road, #209 for more then 7 years. Each day we have to
drive our car out of our apartment drive way or garage to work, shopping for food. We always need to
make a left tum to EI Camino. When you re-stripping,
please make a IIKeep Clear Zones" so we can get out of the building. Since there is "no U-turn" at
foothill Expressway, if you put double yellow line in front of our building, how much time and gas we
have to waste each day?
Please do not put double yellow line on Aradtradero road.
Thanks,
Catherine
https:llowa.wres.comlowal?ae=Itetn&t=IPM.Note&id=RgAAAACbyJzOIo2bRSQpQ7%2bc... 6/21/2011
Go & Kay Sasaki
P.OBox 536
Los Altos, CA 94023
June 28, 2011
Jaime Rodrigues
Chief Traffic Officer
City of Palo Alto
RE: Request for Modification of Arastradero Road Re-Striping at
724 Arastradero Rd. (Arastradero West Apartments)
Dear Jaime:
We appreciated the community forum that was held at Juana Briones Elementary School on June
2,2011. You and the City of Palo Alto made a presentation to the community, and neighbors and
others who use the corridor had an opportunity to voice their frustrations and opinions.
We understand that the "goals' of Re-striping are to provide a safer corridor, especially for the
many cyclists, pedestrians and students while keeping negative impact on the motor vehicles and
the neighborhood to a minimum. If so, we share and applaud those objectives.
I had the pleasure of meeting you at the end of the meeting and briefly for a second time at Palo
Alto City Hall in mid June. At the meeting on June 2, I spoke up on behalf of both the residents .
and owner of Arastradero West Apartments and stated that Re-Striping has "locked us in," and
has created a dangerous situation and much frustration for residents and those needing to access
our Apartments. I spoke for 63 Households, in other words, for....., 150-200 residents and
management when I said that we have been negatively and unfairly impacted by Re-striping.
Let us explain: we have been negatively impacted because prior to Re-striping, with only a single
double yellow line, the residents were able to tum left into and out of the three driveways on the
property, but now with the two double yellow lines, left turns in and out of the property have
become illegal. (I personally verified this by calling and checking with the Palo Alto Police
Department.) Additionally, with "No U-turn" at Foothill Expressway, our residents have to go
into private driveways to make U-turns if they wish to go towards EI Camino or make long
detours often at peak traffic hours. This has created a dangerous and frustrating situation,
probably more so for us than other communities further towards El Camino because Arastradero
by Gunn and Foothill expressway tends to be a congested area. Yesterday, the on-site manager
infonned me that since Re-striping, there have been several (serious?) accidents in front of
Arastradero West Apartments, two involving our Residents, whereas to his knowledge, we have
had none for a while prior to Re-striping. Residents are also saying Re-striping has not slowed
the motor vehicles, but instead, the vehicles are coming faster past the slight bend at Arastradero
Road where visibility is poor. It is no wonder our residents are feeling rage and frustration with
the Re-striping.
We say that Re-striping has impacted us unfairly because we see that the City has accommodated
other apartment communities/cuI de sacs along Arastradero Road with "Keep Clear" zones and/or
center tum features, etc. For example, we see that a small cuI de sac with only six homes like
Yingo, has been accommodated. However, it appears no accommodation whatsoever has been
made for the 63 Households at Arastradero West. That is inequitable treatment. Every time we
go out. we have had to struggle often to get out of our driveways and again to reach our
destinations. We face great inconvenience, frustration and a dangerous situation many times a
day. This is unconscionable, and we ask the City to address this problem now before the
start of this school year.
Due to our proximity to Gunn High School and Foothill Expressway and the often congested
area, we feel that a good option would be to install "Keep Clear" zones by our three driveways
(as they have done at Viola and El Monte in Los Altos to accommodate just six homes off
Foothill Expressway when Los Altos re-designed and re-striped El Monte at Foothill
Expressway) so our "'150-200 residents and visitors can enter and exit the property safely. Unless
this situation is corrected promptly, there will be more accidents and the City may become liable
for not correcting a dangerous situation now that the City has been notified. With 63 Households
wjth "'150-200 people going in and out at Arastradero West we expect no less.
We are already highly impacted by traffic since our property is located just three lots away from
Gunn High School. Also, coming from El Camino, there is a curve on the road just before the
first of our three driveways, making visibility an issue. As spokesperson for residents and
management,and as owner, we urge you to act promptly to resolve the access problem created by
Re-striping of Arastradero Road. Residents at Arastradero West Apartments deserve safe
enjoyment and use of the corridor as any other resident in the neighborhood.
Additionally, as owners we wish to notify the City that by not adequately designing in safe tum
features in and out of our three driveways, the City has made Arastradero West Apartments a less
desirable community and therefore has substantially and negatively impacted the value of our
apartment community.
A couple of weeks after the forum, we asked Resident feedback and attached the City Comment
Form provided at the forum. We had a resounding response. Enclosed are 18 Comment Sheets
or copies of e-mail from our residents (29% response rate). After you have had an opportunity to
review their comments, we would appreciate an appointment to meet with you at Arastradero
West. Please contact me on my cell phone at 650-868-1714. Now that June is over, time is of the
essence since school starts in mid August. Thank you so much for your time and assistance.
Sincerely,
(~~-t7 ;6?U<-(v
Kay &, Go Sasaki
Owners, Arastradero West Apartments, 724 Arastradero Road
CC: Arastradero West Apartments
W oodmont Real Estate Services, Managers, Arastradero West
Enclosures: 18 Resident Comments on Re-striping, from Arastradero West Apartments
Betten. Zariah
From: Gavin Tanner [gavin.tanner@comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 4:18 PM
To: letters@mercurynews.com
Cc: Planning Commission; Transportation; Arastradero West
Subject: Arastradero Road in Palo Alto
Dear Editor:
Apartment dwellers should have rights within the City of Palo Alto. At the 2009 meeting my comments
went to the special treatment being given to small cul-de-sacs on Arastradero Road with minimal or no
concern for those living in our apartnlent. Additionally the road is dangerous due to scofflaws rounding
a blind comer on the road. Those comments were ignored.
Presently we are told we can no longer pull in or out of these apartments on to the road as we could
previously. That will be hundreds of new short trips completed each day from this address. Was that
addressed in an EIR?
The road is no slower on the back side of the blind curve, and our rental value is lessened without good
cause.
Sincerely,
Gavin Tanner
724 Arastradero Rd
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 493-1036
6/30/2011
Rius, Rafael
From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:
Michael Goldeen [goldeen@goldeen.com]
Tuesday, June 07,2011 2:05 PM
Rius, Rafael
michael@goldeen.com; Rodriguez, Jaime
Subject: Re: Arastradero/Charlston Lane Reduction
Attachments: 110607-lnOut Ratios.pdf; ATT00001
Dear Mr. Rius,
Page 1 of 1
Thank you for your response. As it happens what you did provide doesnDt give any Idea of traffic
congestion and road rage which this project may have created. It would be nice to see some detail on
intersections adversely affected. Especially those outside your reportOs scope, which is limited to the
Arastradero Road section of the project only. While changes on Charleston alone may have had minimal
downside, changes on Arastradero may have adversely affected traffic on Charlston, EI Camino, Alma, and
Meadow. I would like to find out something about that.
Your reponse does show up one intriguing event. Assuming that folks go in the morning and return in the
evening r have to ask why there has been, as a rule, a dramatic increase in returning traffic during the rush
OhourlJ either way. For example west of Georgia the change in PM westbound traffic compared to AM
eastbound traffic (supposedly the same cars) went from a 7.8% increase to a 19.32% increase. In the
reverse direction the PM/AM ratio went from a 3% decrease to an 8% increase. The same thing happened
east of Pomona where the ratio changes went from 0.84% increase to 15.83% increase. And for east of
McKellar where they went from a. 14A% decrease to a 10.4% increase.
The size and consistency of these dicrepancies may well indicate that something is happening which your
report fails to expose. 10m curious to learn wha1 you make of them, and have enclosed a table showing
how I calculated these numbers.
Cheers!
Michael
7/21/2011
Page I of1
Rius, Rafaet
From: Douglas Moran [dbmoran@gmaiLcomj on behalf of Douglas B. Moran [dmoran@dougmoran.comj
FrIday, June 03,2011 6;07 PM Sent:
To: Rius, Rafael; Rodriguez, Jaime
Subject: Arastradero restriping: diverted traffic
Jaime and Rafael:
Follow-up to Thursday's public meeting:
I. That traffic volumes have stayed the same on Arastradero is not evidence that traffic has not been
diverted to other streets (Maybell, Los Robles and Matadero) because it assumes that there has
been no change in the traffic that wouLd have used Arastradero. This _may_ not be true given the
recent ups and downs of the economy and work force sizes in the Research Park.
2. The reason that many people think. that there has been signiticant diversion to Matadero is based
on the queue at the EI Camino traffic light in both the moming and the afternoon. I hear more
complaints about the moming--people are saying that where they used to get out in 1-2 cycles, it
is now 3, sometimes 4. In the evening, there is also a longer queue, but Dot so long mat it often
adds waits for additional cycles. What I see is a queue that used to be 1-2 and sometimes 3-4 is
now often 7-8. Note: Matadero queue length has variability that you rrught not expect: Many
residents have learned that the light is so long and the gaps in the EL Camino traffic is so large that
rather than wait for the light for a left turn, it is routinely faster to tum rigbt on EI Camino and do
a U-turn at the Kendall intersection. If cars waiting for the light leave enough room for other cars
to squeeze by on the right, you will often see a stream of people doing this maneuver and thus
significantly shorten the queue.
--Doug Moran
712112011
Betten. Zariah
fyi
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Monday, July 11,2011 7:32 AM
To; Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Williams, Curtis; Keller, Arthur; 'Dan Garber'; 'Daniel 'Garber';
'Eduardo Marttnez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert, Lee; 'Michael Picetti'; 'Samir Tuma'; 'Susah Fineberg'
Cc: Tronquet, Melissa
Subject: FW: Comments on the Arastradero Corridor.
Zariah Betten 1l
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Alice Smfth [maUto:asmlth36@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 07,20119:06 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Comments on the Arastradero Corridor,
1 strongly support the recommendation of the staff to continue the current Arastradero Road effort.
want to point out the benefits to those ofus who live along the corridor.
(1) I feel much safer turning left into Los Palos Ave from Arastradero Road
(2) When I try to move out from Los Palos Avenue or Pomona to turn left during commute times, I am
able to pull into the left, area where the road narrows into two lanes from 4, an unexpected benefit.
(3) It is much safer to pun onto Arastr~dero Road from the south ofECR.
(4) The signs which show how fast you are driving are making a great impact on those that have a
conSCIence.
(5) The lights at Foothill of course need to be adjusted and people have to learn rules about turning right
onto Miranda, which slows down people who really want to go onto Miranda going North.
r may not be able to testify on the 13th July hence this email
Remember: the neighborhoods need this Arastradero experiment.
Kind regards
Alice Smith
4284 Los Palos Circle
Palo Alto, CA 94306
asmith36@sbcglobal.net
7/21/2011
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Monday, July ii, 2011 3:42 PM
To: Williams, Curtis; Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Keller, Arthur; 'Dan Garber'; 'Daniel Garber';
'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert, lee; 'Michael Picetti'; 'Samir Tuma'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Cc: Tronquet, Melissa
Subject: FW: YES! on Trial Improvements Arastradero Road
fyi
Zarlah Betten ~
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: lynn Kidder [mailto:lykidder@gmaU.com)
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 3:19 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: YES! on Trial Improvements Arastradero Road
Hello,
I will be unable to attend the meeting Wednesday, but I wanted to let
you know that I LOVE the changes to Arastradero Road, and I hope they
are permanent! I
I feel the project is a huge success for severa I reasons:
1) Traffic DEFINITELY travels closer to the speed limIt (you probably
have data to back this up) rather than the 35-40 or even higher speeds
as before.
2) lIBack ups" only seem to occur at schoo! start/end times, and although
it may take me a few minutes longer to reach my destination) I don't
mind it a bit. It's much safer for kids crossing the street and bicycling,
I'd like to remind many of my neighbors that this corridor is NOT a
commute route---Page Mill should be used for commuting.
3) The new turn lanes make it much easier and safer to enter and
exit Arastradero. I used to fearfully check my rearview mirror every time
I slowed or stopped to make a left turn onto my street---with two lanes
traveling at 35-40mph, I would often see the car behind me veer into the
7121/2011
right hand lane at the last minute to avoid having to stop behind me,
especially during commute times .... Agggghhh! Very nerve-wracking.
The main negative impact I have noticed is th~ line of cars on Maybell in
the morning waiting to drop off kids at the Gunn bike path entrance on
Georgia (in order to avoid Arastradero, I presume). Based on my
observations, the overwhelming majority of these cars are driven by
parents dropping off their kids. These same cars then often make illegal
U-turns on Georgia to return the same way.
It would be great if the city could work with Gunn to offer incentives to
reduce what looks like quite a few able-bodied kids getting dropped off at
school by their parents.... .
Thanks so much for all your efforts to gather community input.
Lynn Kidd er
Willmar Drive
7/2112011
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Tuesday, July 12,2011 7:07 AM
To: 'Rodriguez, Jaime; Rlus, Rafael; Tronquet, Melissa; WlUiams, Curtis; Keller, Arthur; 'Dan Garber';
'Daniel Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; lippert, Lee; 'Michael Plcetti'; 'Samjr Turna';
'Susan Fineberg'
Subject: FW: ARASTRADERO ROAD RE-STRIPING PROJECT
FYI
ZariQh Betten ,J
PlannIng Dept .• Ext. 2440
From: Betty Lum [mailto:bylum@pacbell.net]
Sent: Monday, July 11, 201110:19 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: ARASTRADERO ROAD RE-STRIPING PROJECT
We had originally planned to attend the subject meeting to support the staff's recommendation
that the Arastradero Re-striping Project be extended to August 2012 to ensure a fair evaluation
of the effectiveness of the Project. Unfortunately we will in Europe during this period and
cannot attend the subject meeting.
There have been many changes recently to the Arastradero Project to address the concerns and
issues raised by the affected neighborhoods and the commuters. In addition, PAUSD will
change the starting time for Gunn High starting in the Fa1l201l term and Bowman International
School will do likewise to reduce the morning peak traffic congestion. Thus, it is only
reasonable to extend the trial for at least another year to evaluate the effectiveness of the many
changes.
We have been living jn our home located at 4202 Suzanne Drive (cOI11er of Suzanne and
Arastradero) since 1965 and have noted significant improvements since the re-striping project
began. A few of the improvements we have noticed are:
1. Significant pedestrian safety since the crosswalk was installed at the Clemo/Suzanne
Intersection.
2. Easier and safer access to our neighborhood with the dedicated left tum lane without fear of
being rear-ended which has happened to us prior to the installation ofthe dedicated left turn, In
addition, this lane improves traffic flow since on~gaing traffic need not stop for those of us
making a left tum lane into our neighborhood.
3. Safer and wider bike lanes encouraging more children and seniors to ride their bicycles.
4. More traffic calming and, indeed, people are very courteous in giving us space to get in or
out of our neighborhood even during peak traffic hours. The drivers are also more aware of the
crosswalk and tend to drive a little slower.
5. Our quality of life is significantly better since the Arastradero Re-striping Project began!!
7/21/2011
We strongly encourage the Planning Commission to support the Staffs recommendation that the
Arastradero Re-striping Project be extended until August 2012.
Henry and Betty Lum
4202 Suzanne Drive
Palo Alto, CA 94306-4335
7/2112011
Betten, Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Betten, Zariah
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:26 AM
Williams, Curtis; Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Tronquet, Melissa; Keller, Arthur; 'Dan Garber';
'Daniel Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; lippert, Lee; 'Samir Tuma'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Subject: FW: Arastradero restriping
fyi
Zariah Betten 11
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Joshua.Moore@parc.com [mailto :Joshua.Moore@parc.comJ
sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 7:50 AM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Arastradero restriping
I work at the Palo Alto Research Center at 3333 Coyote Hill Rd and own a condo in Mountain View near EI
Camino. In the past I have driven and cycled on Arastradero twice a day, five days a week. I do not support the
current restriping project.
I do not have children of school age and do not know what the accident statistics are, but the current trial
striping is really bad for traffic congestion. During peak hours -even in the evening -it can easily take twice as
long to drive down Arastradero. These delays increase pollution and greenhouse gas emissions which cannot be
good for our community and the world. As the VA Hospital, VMWare, and other employers grow, traffic on
Arastradero will only get worse.
I am not sure that the efforts to make the traffic slower have made it much safer as well. Now when you drive
down the street you must consta ntly worry about merging traffic, which distracts from paying attention to who
is in the bike lane.
Thanks for your consideration
Joshua Moore
14826 Skyline Blvd Apt 2
Woodside, CA 94062
7/2112011
Betten, Zariah
fyi
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 1 :25 PM
To: Williams, Curtis; Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Tronquet, Melissa; Keller, Arthur; 'Dan Garber';
'Daniel Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert, Lee; 'Samir Turna'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Subject: FW: Arastradero Road Re-Striping Project
Za,.lah Betten !l
Planning Dept.., Ext. 2440
From: Yao Zou [mailto:yaozou@mindspring.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 12,201111:26 AM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Arastradero Road Re-Striplng Project
Dear Palo Alto Planning Commission,
We are writing to express our strong support for the extension of the trial period to July 31st 2012. We live on
4205 Suzanne Drive with two school age children and are a user of the corridor on a daily basis.
The restriping has made left turns from Arastradero Road into neighborhood streets significantly safer. It
appears that the average speed of vehicles has been reduced. We also appreciate the installation of a cross walk
with a "safe island" in the street median that allows safe trips the Juana Briones Park. The availability of bicycle
lanes that are now usable by school children and residents is another benefit of the new design.
Please keep pushing forward with the trial. We look forward to seeing this configuration or one very similar to
the trial phase made permanent.
Best regards and thanks for the good work.
Yao Zou
Werner Goetz
4205 Suzanne Drive
Palo Alto
The information contained, in this message may be confidenllal &nd legally protected under applicable I(NJ. The message is inlendetl Solely for the
address!!6(s). If you are nol the Intended recipient. you are· hereby notified thai Clny use, forwarding. dissemlnalion, or reproducllon 01 this message is
strictly prohibited aod may \>13 unlawful. If you are nol U1e iOIended recipient. pIOOS& contact the sendur by return e·mail and destroy all CXljlles of the
original message.
712112011
Betten, Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
fyi
zariah Betten <5
Betten, Zariah
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 1 :26 PM
Williams, Curtis; Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Tronquet, Melissa; Keller, Arthur; 'Dan
Garber'; 'Daniel Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert, Lee; 'Samir Tuma';
'Susan Fineberg'
FW: Planning and Transportation, 7/13, Arastradero Re-Striping
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
-----Original Message-----
From: Raj Apte [mailto:raj.apte@grnx.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 10:02 AM
To: Planning Commission; Raj Aptei Byron Browni Pavlina Apte; KayAtPacbel1
Subject: Planning and Transportation, 7/13, Arastradero Re-Striping
Planning Commission
As a resident of Palo Alto since 1979, I feel that the Arastradero Re-Striping has been a
clear failure. Despite the only modest delays recorded ,in the staff report, I believe the
delays are longer and result in substantial noise, pollution, carbon-emissions r and
driver-discontent.
I live on Park Blvdr and we have seen a clear increase in angry through traffic in the
Meadow-Park-EI Camino area of Ventura/Mayfield as drivers have taken to commuting through
neighborhoods of Palo Alto with the highest concentration of children.
Intelligent Planning should seek to maximize car traffic through the major arteries (page
Millr Oregon r Arastradero, Charlestonr San Antonio) while proving safe routes for bikes
and pedestrians through the neighborhood streets. Park Blvd should be blocked with
bollards to all through car traffic (like Bryant) .
I commuted to Gunn High School as a student by bike for 4 years. There was never a reason
to stay on Arastradero--diversion through Barron Park is the best option for cyclists who
don't want to breath the fumes. The current r slow traffic produces sufficiently bad air
that I would not recommend anyone use Arastradero for bikingr regardless of bike lanes.
LastlYr please stop ruining Palo Alto by approving additional housing units. The city is
full (and has been for more than a decade). Stop adding condos or houses. The traffic
problem on Arastradero was created by thts commissionr which approved far too many units
along Charleston between San Antonio and EI Camino. If you want to stop ruining the city,
convert a commercial location to a park and focus on reducing the number of city
residents. Stop trying to farm property taxes.
Dr Raj Apte
Dr Pavlina Apte
210 Matadero Ave
Byron Brown
3786 Corina
1
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 2:18 PM
To: Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Tronquet, Melissa; Williams, Curtis; Keller, Arthur: 'Dan Garber'; 'Daniel
Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert, Lee; 'Samir Tuma'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Subject: FW; ARASTRADERO ROAD RE-STRIPING PROJECT
FYI
Zarian Bette" -.J
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Betty Lum [mallto:bylum@pacbell.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 12,2011 2:14 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: ARASTRADERO ROAD RE-STRIPING PROJECf
In addition to the comments my husband and I sent to you last evening, I would like to
add a few additional remarks:
1. ANYONE travelling near a school during the morning and after school hours is
confronted with massive traffic jams. I have accidentally been "caught" on Meadow on
my way to the Ross Road YMCA during the morning "rush" hours where parents make
lIIegal U-turns, double-park etc. causing massive tie-ups. This is also true near any
school zone as I have personally experienced such "inconveniences" near San Mateo
High School (in the afternoon hours) and Los Altos High School (in the morning), As one
resident remarked at one of the public meetings: "What is a few minutes' delay in getting
Into the flow of traffic if it means the safety of the children?"
2, I sympathize with people whose driveways are on Arastradero, as well as residents
on Miranda. However, as a resident of Suzanne Drive trying to enter west-bound traffic
on Arastradero in the morning rUSh, 1 have not encountered any rude drivers. --Eye-to-
eye contact with drivers of on-coming traffic is .usually quite effective in their allowing me
safe exit from Suzanne onto westbound Arastradero. Some are, definintely, not as
patient and/or courteous, but this is more the exception rather than the rule.
I urge the Commission to extend the trial period to see if the late start of Gunn High
School and Bowman International School will make a difference in the "rush hour' traffic
flow,
Thank you.
Betty Lum
45-year resident of Palo Alto;
on the corner of Suzanne & Arastradero
7/2112011
Betten, Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
BeHen, Zariah
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 2:40 PM
Williams, Curtis; Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Tronquet, Melissa; KeUer, Arthur; 'Dan Garber':
'Daniel Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert, Lee; 'Samlr Tuma'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Subject: FW: Public meeting of Planning and Transportation Commission 7/13/2011
fyi
Zorlah Betten tI
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Shirley Nathan [mailto:shirJdn@pacbell.net)
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 2:50 PM
To: Planning Commission; Council, City
Subject: Public meeting of Planning and Transportation Commission 7/13/2011
AHantion: Planning and Transportation Commission and Palo Alto City Council
Following up on my letter dated June 2, 2011 regarding the Charleston/Arastradero Utraffic calming" project, I urge
you to discontinue any further so-called trials on this fiasco. I have been concerned about this experiment for
many years and the more work that's done, the worse it gets. I cannot understand why the City would narrow
roads when more and more housing is being built requiring just the opposite a pproach such as adding lanes.
Some light has been shed on the maHer after reading the weekly last week in the front page article on regional
growth. Cities are actually being bribed to build housing promoting development near transportation corridors in
return for receiving funding for ~raffic reduction". Kudos to City Council for at last resisting this pressure! Pure
common sense tells us that building more housing and reducing lanes on the roads makes no logical sense. It
has already been proven with the situation on Charleston/Arastradero, causing more gridlock, pollution and traffic
rage rather than the "traffic calming" (warm and fuzzy buzz words) supposedly intended. The merging lanes
intensify frustration especially at Hoover school where the lane layout is quIte confUSing not to mention
dangerous. More parents seem to be transporting their children to and from school which causes added traffic
Jams at those hours.
The boHorn line is that however much authorities desire to see fewer cars on the road, they are living in a dream
world. Automobiles afford freedom to come and go as one pleases. Emphasis should be placed on making
roads safer and more compatible to automobile traffic. Other modes of transportation could be Improved as well.
The so-called "VIsion Scenario" is tuming into a "Nightmare Scenario". Palo Alto is losing its character and is
turning into a high density global village.
I appreciate Nancy Shepard's response to my previous letter and would like this correspondence to be placed on
public record and included on the agenda tor the meeting July 13,2011.
Thanking you,
Sincerely.
Shirley Nathan
7/21/2011
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 9:03 AM
To: Williams, Curtis; Rodriguez, Jalme; Riu5, Rafael; Tronquet, Melissa; Ke'Uer, Arthur; 'Dan Garber';
'Daniel Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert. Lee; 'Samlr Tuma'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Subject: FW: Request to extend Araslradero Striping Trial
fyi
Zoriah Betten >i
Planning Dept. r Ext. 2440
From: Evan Lurie [mailto:evlurle@stanfordalumni.org]
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 8:36 AM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Request to extend Arastradero 5tJfplng Trial
Dear Commissioners,
I write this email in support of extending the Phase 2 trial of the Arastradero Striping Project. I'm a father of two children under
age 10 and travel often by bIcycle both with and without them along Arastradero and the surrounding neighborhood.
To reflect changes requested by the public, initial Implementation was delayed. Major construction was not completed until
Sap, 2010. Enhanced pedestrian crossings at Araslradero Road and Clemo Drive were not completed unlil Mar. 2011. As of
the writing of City Staff's latest report, Coulombe Drive Signal Modification was not completed. In the Fall of 2011, both
Bowman and Gunn are delaying their starting bells to at least 8:25A. This change may diminish travel Ume by further
dIstributing volume through a longer window, although I have my doubts. In short. there hasn't been a ·complete", post
Implementation period from which to collect data.
According to staff reports, to dale 85th percenble speeds decreased by two to three miles per hour post Phase 2
Implementation, and motorists exceeding 37 mph of traffic diminished in number btween 30 and 50%. Dally average traffic
remained consistently around 18,500.
Most residents report no difference In commute period and that the corridor features more of a neighborhood street feel,
rendering It more comfortable and safe for botl1 cyclists and pedestrians. Some motorists are quite vocal about negative
[mplicatlons of these changes. It may be that during non-peak periods. the abatements have lengthened travel time. but as
there Is no pre-Implementation data on this topic trs not possible to draw defensible conclusions.
Cost implications of extending the trial through Aug. 2012 are minimal and primarily reflect Staff time to collect travel time data.
conduct two additional community outreach meetings, and summarize findings tor PTC and Council.
Thank you for your consideration.
Evan lurie
747 Marlon Avenue, Palo Alto 94303
7/2112011
Betten) Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Wednesday, July 20,2011 7:12 AM
To: Rodriguez, Jaime; Rlus, Rafael
Subject: FW: CharlestonJArastradero Corridor
fyi
Zarlah Betten II
Pl4nning Dept.. Ext. 2440
From: Ginny Chu [mailto:theodorechu@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 6:10 PM
To: Info, Plandiv
Subject: Charleston/ Arastradero Corridor
I would like to comment on the new traffic plan mainly between EI Camino and Foothill Expressway (Arastradero
Rd) ..
Illve in lower LA H. and use this almost every day. I am in favor of keeping the new plan the way it is. Many
drive far above the speed limit jeopardizing the safety of children and adults often going to and from Terman and
Gunn. Drivers also are at rIsk when observing the speed limit.
I hope you keep the traffic pattern the way it is (a lot of $s have already been spent on making this a safer corridor
between Middlefield and Foothill Expy.
Thank you.
Sincerely yours,
Ginny Chu
7/21/2011
Betten. Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent:
To:
Tuesday, July 19,2011 7:29 AM
Rodriguez, Jaime: Rlus, Rafael
Subject: FW: Please remove the Arastradero maze and restore two lanes in both directionsl
fyi
Zorlah Betten ~
Planning Dept" Ext. 2440
From: Teresa Smith Milo [mailto:tsmilo@gmaU,com]
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 5:02 PM
To: Transportation
Cc: dsa muels@dallynewsgroup.com
Subject: Please remove the Arastradero maze and restore two Janes In both directions!
This message is regarding Arastradero Road between EI Camino and Foothill Expressway:
Please remove the maze on Arastradero and paint the lines they way they wer~ with two lanes in both directions!
I have lived in Barron Park for about 50 years and this is my fLrst complaint to the city. The two lanes in both directions never
posed a problem along Arastradero in the past and allowed the traffic to get through. People have always driven cautiously
when children are present along Arastradero and speed up appropriately when they are not, so there have been very few
traffic accidents in the past.
Now it is not safe because the lanes change at all the intersections and drivers have to merge in and out of one lane!
With significantly more people living in Palo Alto due to the increased amounts of dense housing, such as on the comer ofE!
Camino and Arastradero where Ricky's used to be, and tbe two lanes are reduced to one, we have major blockages with road
rage every workday morning and evening that overflow in(o olht:r streets! Auclilionally, lhis lack oClraffic fluw makes Palo
Alto less accessible, which makes Palo Alto less desirable for businesses and residents!
The current maze is causing:
• More potential for crashes.
• More potential for hitting bicyclists and pedestrians.
• Definite increases in peak and off-peak travel times.
• Definite increases in delay at signalized intersections.
• Definite increases in drivers along side streets trying to get around the blockages on Arastradero.
'fbe solution is to remove the maze on Arastradero and paint the lines they way they were with two lanes in both din:ctions to
restore the traffic flow and improve the quality of life in Palo Alto!
Sincerely,
Teresa Smith Milo
7/2112011
Betten, Zariah
fyi
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 7:35 AM
To: Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael: Williams, Curtis; Keller, Arthur; 'Dan Garber'; 'Daniel Garber';
'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert, Lee; 'Samir Tuma'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Subject: FW: Please Support Staff Recommendation for Arastradero Trial to Continue for another Year.
Zorich Betten ~
Planning Dept.. Ext. 2440
From: Gary Bradski [mailto:garybradski@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 7:40 PM
To: Planning Commission
Cc: Sonya Bradskl
Subject: Re: Please Support staff Recommendation for Arastradero Trial to Continue for another Year.
Just to reiterate. My daughter biked to swruner school at Gwm from South Palo Alto (Greenmeadow).
There are 3 possible ways to go:
Los Robles (no side walk, little room for bikes, Jots of morning traffic)
Maybell (iots of drop off traffic to the elementary school, bikes forced into the street)
Arastradero (pinch point past El Camino ... but definitely the safest route.
As above, Arastradero has problems but it is the safest route. Expanding it will make it much less safe.
Keep it as is and try to find a way to eliminate the loss of the bike lane in the block past EI Camino.
Gary
On Tue, JuJ 12, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Sonya Bradski <sonyang~@gm.<Yl.com> wrote:
Dear PLaruling Commission:
Please support the staff recommendation for the Arasterdero trial to
go for another year.
I '1 have three children in the Palo Alto Unified School district. My
oldest daughter just started in summer school at Gunn High School and
was riding her bike up and down Arasterdero for 3 weeks this summer.
Now that Arasterdero was redone this was a much safer way for my
daughter to get back and forth to Gunn by bicycle. We are a big
bicycle family . We LOVE all the bike lanes in Palo Alto especially on
Arasterdero so my daughter could safely get back and forth to Gunn
High School. All my daughters will be attending Gunn High School for
the next 10 years and will all be biking up and down the
Arasterdero/Charleston corridor. Please continue to make this a safe
bike route for my three daughters.
7/21/2011
Again. please support the staff recommendation for the Arasterdero
trial for another year so my three daughters will continue to have a
safe bike route to Gunn High School for the next ten years.
Please contact me with any questions you may have about this letter.
Thank: you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Sonya Bradski
4082 N'e1son Dr.
Palo Alto, CA 94306
sonyangary@gmail.com
650-856-9366
7/2112011
Betten, Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Betten, Zariah
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 10:21 AM
Williams, Curtis; Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Tronquet, Melissa; Keller, Arthur; 'Dan Garber':
'Daniel Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez'; 'Greg Tanaka'; Lippert, Lee; 'Samir Tuma'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Subject: FW: In Support of the Arastradero Trial
(yi
Zariah Betten .oJ
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Becky Epstein [mallto:epstein@meer.net)
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 20119:52 AM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: In Support of the Arastradero Trial
Dear Planning Commission,
[am a 14-year resident of the Charleston Meadows neighborhood and r remember all too well feeling
unsafe bilcing along many stretches of the corridor. I applaud the pedestrian/cyclist improvements made
through Phase 1 of the project. Because of successful Phase 1 completion, my husband and I became
comfortable allowing our children to bike to school andlor other activities in the south Palo Alto area. I
estimate that as a direct result of Phase 1, our family collectively takes 15-20 fewer car trips per week
along Charleston.
Are there times when I am frustrated as a driver along the Charleston! Arastradero corridor? Yes, but
any inconvenience when behind the wheel is FAR OUTWEIGHED by the safety improvements on the
corridor and the overall reduction in car trips my family takes due to corridor improvements.
I've reviewed the staff packet and understand that your decision is not going to make everyone happy. 1
respectfully ask you to prioritize the safety and promotion ofwalkinglbiking along the corridor and to
enthusiastically support staff's recommendation to extend the trial period of the Arastradero Road Re-
Striping Proj ect.
Thank you,
Becky Epstein
Edlee Ave., Palo Alto
712112011
Betten, Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:
Subject:
Betten,Zariah
Thursday, June 3D, 2011 7:37 AM
KeUer, Arthur; 'Dan Garber'; 'Daniel Garber'; 'Eduardo Martinez': 'Greg Tanaka'; lippert, Lee; 'Samjr
Tuma'; 'Susan Fineberg'
Rodriguez, Jaime: Williams, Curtis; Rius, Rafael
FW: Arastradero Road Striping So Far ~ Keep Clear Area Required
Attachments: Arastradero Road Test So Far.doc
fyl
Zaria" Bet1en ,J
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Gavin Tanner lmalito:gavin.tanner@comcast.net]
Sent: WednesdaYI June 29, 2011 4:45 PM
To: Transportation
Cc: Arastradero West; Planning Commission
Subject: Arastradero Road Striping So Far -Keep Clear Area Required
Dear Transportation Committee:
Should the experiment of the Charleston-Arastradero Corridor Project fail the City of Palo Alto will need to get
ready to create another major artery for iTaffiC on its southern edge along these roads. The expense of that
action is enough 1 hope to provide a redoubling of efforts in slowing traffic and accommodating all residences
along the right-of-way.
Although the road has been l'estriped and new traffic surveys completed, more work is needed to make the
corridor the pathway desired by the city, Why have we not seen better and more comprehensive enforcement of
speed limits along the corridor? What work is going 00 or is planned to request our neighbors in PARC to drive
in and out of Palo Alto by another road?
Those of us living at 724 Arastradero Road have ample and good opportunities to tum on and off of the road -
provided speeding is limited. Why are we now prevented from legaJly turning offtl:1e road as we used to?
Where in the original corridor plan and in the original Environmental Impact Report on the corridor project
were the hundreds of extra short trips now mandated on residents of this building specified?
We require a "Keep Clear" area be made in front of the Arasu-adero West Apartments in order to become part
of a successful project. It would be interesting to see if there. is a legal course to be taken from here for the
owners and residents of these apartments both for the environmental impact now imposed on the local area or
for the lessening of the value of the apartments and the building presently imposed by egregious and
unnecessary road markings.
Sincerely,
Gavin Tanner
724 Arastradero Road
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 493-I 036
7/2112011
• Yingo Way has six houses and its own left tum lane off of Arastradero Road when
heading west. Arastradero West Apartments (724 Arastradero Road) has over sixty units
and more than sixty cars trying to tum on and off of the road, but currently cannot tum
off Arastradero heading east into any of the parking lots legally and currently cannot tum
on to Arastradero Road heading west from any of the parking lots. (However the
Arastradero Park apartments at 574 Arastradero Road have full ingress and egress with
the current striping.)
• Pulling out on to Arastradero Road eastbound however heavy the traffic load can be
safely made -provided there is not a scofflaw rounding the curve on Arastradero heading
westbound at more than forty miles per hour.
• Pulling out on to Arastradero Road westbound from the apartments is actually generally
more dangerous as any approaching scofflaw will likely rear end a car pulling out on the
road and crossing the path of scofflaws can be made more readily. '
• If the current traffic timings on Arastradero Road show a slowing of the average speed
traveled as stated in the June meeting, why isn't there an increase of enforcement to the
speeding still occurring?
• What would happen if intemlittently one police officer with a radar gun sat behind the
blind curve represented by these apartments and two other officers sat at the High School
parking lot to ticket westbound speeders at the newly defined speed?
• If the City of Palo Alto is serious about keeping Arastradero Road safe as a local use
street why hasn't any marketing gone out to the Palo Alto Research Center (P ARC)
companies advising those employees of better ingress and egress paths from the city?
• In addition to, the marketing efforts which should be made to our local businesses, what
plans have been made to mark the exits of P ARC with signage showing the best path to
Highway 101 out through the Page Mill A venue/ Oregon Avenue corridor?
• Can Page Mill Road and Oregon Expressway be timed to allow better flow of traffic from
P ARC to Highway 101?
• Why isn't the radar sign in front of Yin go Way hooked up to a battery besides the solar
panel so at least it could run later at night? And if a battery isn't available, what will it
take to make that sign (which is crucial to potentially slow down traffic so those at
Arastradero West can safely pull out on to the road -whichever direction is mandated)
hooked directly to CPA power to run 24 x 7?
• Would it violate the vehicle code if every time that signal processed a speeder the
proceeding light in front of the High School automatically turned red?
• Why isn't the "Driveway Ahead" sign at the comer of Georgia Avenue and Arastradero
put in front of the city tree so as to actually be visible twelve months of the year?
• Why doesn't the "Driveway Ahead" sign at the comer of Georgia Avenue and
Arastradero say "Three Driveways Ahead" and show all three of the impending
driveways on a blind curved street in the graphic used? [I have seen both the verbiage
and the graphic used for other dangerous roads in the State, and it should be done here.
The straight street showing the cross of a single driveway does not show the danger
ahead.]
• And when nl0ving the "Driveways Ahead" sign can a yellow warning sign showing a
recommended speed of 20 MPH be added?
• Where in the original Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for restriping of Arastradero
Road was the redirection of all westbound traffic in to the apartments and the redirection
of all eastbound traffic out of the apartments mentioned? (Residents to remain legal will
minimally need tomake hundreds of extra one quarter mile to halfmile loops each day.)
• Do any of our neighbors on Georgia Avenue, Hubbartt Drive, Yingo Way, Miranda Way,
or Willmar Drive know that we're planning to use those streets as turnarounds for dozens
and dozens of trips per day?
• Why not mark the apartments appropriately in front with a "Keep Clear" zone to allow
ingress and egress from the apartments for either direction as needed? And even without
that marking what would happen if the double line of yellow 'bots-dots' were broken to
allow ingress and egress to the apartments without violation of traffic codes at the
discretion of drivers? Wouldn't it be safer to allow drivers from the apartments to cross
Arastradero and head eastbound than force all exits from the apartments to go westward
in to the path of a scofflaw?
• Should the correct marketing, enforcement, and restriping of Arastradero Road not
succeed is the City of Palo Alto ready to absorb the expense of buying properties and
building another thoroughfare such as Oregon Expressway on this corridor? [With that
destruction, rebuild and widening at least the renters at the Arastradero West Apartments
will have easy and correct U-turns at hand.]
Betten. Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2011 11 :01 AM
To: Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael
Subject: FW: Arastradero Road Re-Striping
fyi
Zariah Betten 11
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Andrei Bandrovsky [maIlto:abandrovsky@gmailcom]
Sent: Friday, July 01, 2011 10:15 AM
To: Transportation; arastraderowest@wres.com
Subject: Arastradero Road Re-Striping
Unfortunately, I have to say that your re stripping project became a huge failure and waste of public
money.
First of, the quality of the road surface after re stripping ren1ains almost as terrible as before. I don't
know how cheap your contractors are, but the bumps on the road are unacceptable any more.
Second, with all good intentions behind this idea, Arastradero Rd. first of all is a road, that suppose to
handle increasing traffic. Now, with all those unwise pockets & build ups in the middle of the road,
Arastradero Rd. became clogged traffic artery with excessive an10unt of exost fumes form the cars, that
are most of the time standing in traffic. There is no real improvement of the safety of the road besides
the positive effect of the speed displays with "slow down" advise.
Regards,
Andrei Bandrovsky
724 Arastradero Rd. # 320
Palo Alto CA 94306
650-917-2447
andrey@campi.com
7/2112011
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent:
To:
Subject:
Monday, June 06, 2011 7:00 AM
Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael
FW: Palo Alto Online article today
fyi
Zariah Betten 0
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Willits [mailto:rwillits@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 11:38 AM
To: Transportation
Subject: Palo Alto Online article today
I just read today's article in Palo Alto Online on a meeting held on the
Arastradero/Charleston project, and the complaints from motorists about the project.
I want to say how much I appreciate how intelligently this project was designed. I walk,
ride and drive this road, and find the improvements wonderful. They make me feel like
bicyclists are being listened to in this city. When I am caught in a car on this street in
the morning commute, I find it no worse than before, but I find myself always thinking:
"how could I have avoided using a car for this trip?" Or better yet "how could I have
avoided this trip?" I know the bike/scooter/motorized chair/walk is now a safer
alternative.
The only voices you hear should not be the harried commuters who are never satisfied. The
kids, seniors, and those who plan their travel well appreciate this.road more now.
Thank you for the work you do.
Richard Willits
3396 Greer Road
PA, CA
1
Betten, Zarlah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 6:59 AM
To: RIUs, Rafael; Rodriguez:, Jaime
Subject: FW: AraslraderofCharlston Lane Reduction
fyi
Zarlah Betten 'II
PlannIng Dept.. Ext. 2440
From: MIchael Goldeen [mailto:goldeen@goldeen.com]
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 2:36 PM
To: Transportation
Subject: ArastraderojCharlston Lane Reduction
To person concerned,
David deBolt reports in today's Post that at Thursday's meeting "Officials presented data showing the
reduction in lanes hasn't increased the volume of cars or slowed travel times through the thoroughfare
during the experiment."
I find that remark incredible -possibly just inaccurate. Consequently 1 ask you provide answers to the
following questions.
1) Has traffic volume decreased on the "thoroughfare"? Ifso. then by how much?
2) What is the "thoroughfare" being discussed?
If the "thoroughfare" referred to in the official's remarks is not the whole stretch of road from the
intersection of Charleston and San Antonio Roads to that of Arastradero and Foothill Expresway, then
3) What change in traffic vollune during peak hours if any has occured on the segment of Charleston
Road from San Antonio to Middlefield Road, and from Middlefield to Alma, and from Alma to El
Camino Real?
4) What change if any during peak hours has occured in southbound travel times on the segments of
Charleston Road from San Antonio to Middlefield Road, and from Middlefield to Alma, and from
Alma to El Camino Real?
and 5) What increase in diverted traffic has been observed on streets which can be used to by-pass that
road? Is there a record of the changed munbers?
Thank you for your answers to my questions. Without them I am forced to take any remarks made by
your officials about the project as self-serving.
Michael Goldeen
7/2112011
2350 Tasso Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Phone 650-391-7247
E-mail michael@goldeen.com
7/2112011
Betten. Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Betten, Zariah
Friday, June 03, 2011 11 :33 AM
Rius, Rafael; Rodriguez, Jaime
Subject: FW: Arastradero Road traffic review
fyi
zariah Betten
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
-----Original Message-----
From: Carolyn Tucher [mailto:catucher@pacbell.net]
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 11:24 AM
To: Info, Plandiv
Subject: Arastradero Road traffic review
My husband and I live on Manuela. Arastradero Road is our principal route to city
services, meetings, friends and shopping. Because the Arastradero Road traffic project
affects us, I wrote and asked to be informed of future meetings. Although no one answered
my email, I thought we would receive notice of future reviews. I was disappointed to read
that a meeting was held last night that we knew nothing about .. I read the Weekly and PA
Online thoroughly but did not see information about the meeting if there was any. Please
put us on your mailing list for future meetings. Also please answer my email this time so
that I know it reached the right desk.
Thank you
Carolyn Tucher
4264 Manuela Way
PA 94306
catucher@pacbell.net
1
Betten, Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
fyi
Zariah Betten 0
Betten, Zariah
Friday, June 03, 2011 9:24 AM
Rius, Rafael; Rodriguez, Jaime
FW: arastradero project
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
-----Original Message-----
From: Kathleen Eisenhardt [mailto:kme@stanford.edu]
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2011 7:58 PM
To: Transportation
Subject: arastradero project
transportation fol~s
i unfortunately had to miss tonite's meeting. my father is ill, and i had to go out of
town.
but i did want to express my opposition to the project. it has made driving less safe on
arastradero because of the switches in the number of lanes. it has also created more
congestion on both arastradero and the local streets (people avoiding arastradero). i also
dont see any change in the number of people riding bikes or walking.
overall, this seems like a costly experiment that has ended with a less effective
situation than previously existed.
please let me know if you would like me to follow up further.
kathy eisenhardt
(
4184 donald drive
650 799 9264
1
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Thursday, June 02.2011 2:14 PM
To: Rius, Rafael; Rodriguez, Jaime
Subject: FW: Charleston/Arastradero Corridor Restriping Trial-Meeting
fyl
Zoriah Betten 1l
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Peter Knopf [mailto:petenann@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Thursday, June 02,201111:29 AM
To: Transportation
Cc: Ellen Whitmore; Dick Whitmore
Subject: Charleston/Arastradero Corridor Restriplng Trial -Meeting
At tonight's meeting please infonn us (area residents) when this trial
will finally be evaluated and what are the pass/fail criteria. It would
seem that a return to 4 lanes with possible added left turn lanes would
alleviate the current morning commute congestion.
Peter Knopf. 927 Paradise Way
7/2112011
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten. Zariah
Sent: Thursday, June 02,2011 9:31 AM
To: Rodriguez. Jaime; Rlus. Rafael
Subject: FW: Trial ImprovementsArastradero Road
fyi
Za,.lch Betten \I
Planni"g Dept., Ext. 2440
From: lynn Kidder [mailto:lykidder@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2011 9:12 AM
To: Transportatlon
Subject: Trial ImprovementsArastradero Road
Hello,
I will be unable to attend the meeting tonight at Juana Briones school, but I
wanted to let you know that I LOVE the changes to Arastradero Road, and I hope
they are permanent!!
I am aware that some of my unhappy neighbors will be at the meeting to
complain, but I feel the project is a huge success for several reasons:
1) Traffic DEFINITELY travels closer to the speed limit (you probably have data to
back this up) rather than the 35-40 or even higher speeds as before.
2) "Back ups" only seem to occur at school start/end times, and although it may
take me a few minutes longer to reach my destination, I don't mind it a bit. It's
much safer for kids crossing the street and bicycling. I'd like to remind many of
my neighbors that this corridor is NOT a commute route---Page Mill should be
used for commuting.
3) The new turn lanes make it much easier to enter and exit Arastradero. I used
to fearfully check my rearview mirror every time 'I stopped to make a left turn
onto my street---with two lanes traveling at 35-40mph, I would often see the car
behind me veer into the right hand lane at the last minute to avoid having to stop
behind me .... Ack!
The main negative impact I have noticed is the line of cars on Maybell waiting to
drop off kids at the Gunn bike path entrance on Georgia (in order to avoid
Arastradero, I presume). My personal observation is that the overwhelming
7/2112011
majority of these cars are parents dropping off kids/ who then often make U-turns
on Georgia to return the same way.
Can the city work with Gunn to offer incentives to reduce what looks to be a lot of
able-bodied kids getting dropped off at school by their parents?
Thanks so much for all your efforts to gather community input.
Lynn Kidder
Willmar Drive
7/21/2011
Betten) Zarjah
From:
Sent:
To:
Betten, Zariah
Monday, May 3D, 2011 7:13 AM
Rius, Rafael; Rodriguez, Jaime
Subject: FW: Arastradero re-striping: comments on
fyi
Zorloh Betten 1.1
PlannIng Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Douglas Moran [mailto:dbmoran@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Douglas B. Moran
Sent: 'Sunday, May 29,2011 3:21 AM
To: Transportation
Subject: Arastradero re-striping: comments on
Comments on Arastradero striping problems I have encountered:
1. North-bound at Terman/Donald intersection: The signage for the merge down to one lane occurs
too late and creates substantial unnecessary conflict between vehicles. I suspect that this could he
reduced by starting the merge-left markings where the middle lane begins (before the
intersection). This merge seems designed to cause fender-bender accidents because both lanes
think they have the right-of-way in the merge: People in the right lane see it as a lane-shift where
it is the other lane merging in.
2. South-bound at Miranda. The two Miranda intersections create substantial unnecessary back-up
in the afternoon. On multiple occasions it has taken me three cycles to get through the light to
turn left on Foothill despite it being light traffic, that is, all the traffic going straight or turning
right easily makes it through the flrst cycle. all several occasions, it bas taken me at least 4 cycles
(the backup at 4pro-ish was almost to the cemetery entrance).
1. Cars turning left onto south-bound Miranda typically face a long delay until there is a gap in
the oncoming traffic, from Foothill and the west, and thereby create long backups in that
lane. Two left-turning cars can be devastating. My experience is that this happens outside
of the times that traffic is turning into Gunn and I wonder if the west-most portion of the
dedicated east-bound left-turn lane could be redesignated to also allow turns onto south-
bound Miranda.
2. The traffic Jight at the north-bound Miranda intersection.appears to be on a fixed schedule
and not responsive to actual traffic conditions. I have sat there countless times While the
light was green for non-existent cross-traffic, wasting much of the cycle of the light at
Foothill, time that could bave been weU used to clear the backup created by someone
turning left onto south-bound Miranda.
--Doug Moran. 790 Matadero Avenue
7/21 120t 1
Betten, Zar~ah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2011 8:40 AM
To: Rius. Rafael: Rodriguez, Jaime
Subject: FW: arastradero project
fyi
Zaria'" Betten !I
Planning Dept .• Ext. 2440
From: Scott Hayes [mai Ito:scottchayes@gmaILcom)
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2011 8:39 AM
To: Transportation; Info, Plandiv
Cc: Denson, Mike
Subject: arastradero project
I am writing to provide feedback on the arastradero project as I live on Arastradero in Tan Plaza.
In short, it seems like the project has gone very well and I can truly say that I have been very pleased with the
results, especially with the crosswalk at Arastradero and Clemo as well as the striping in the same area and the
firehouse that says DO NOT BLOCK (or some1hing like that). In fact, it's been great for kids going to Terman
and Gunn to use the crosswalk at Clemo.
However, two items still remain (at no fault ofyow-s I palo alto, but that of drivers communting in the area).ln
short, during the school commute people still block the road at Clemo and Arastradero as well as the firehouse
driveway onto Arastradero. The cross walk and striping have helped, but many people do ignore it and block the
intersection nonetheless. I understand this i3 out of your control, as such [ have cc:d Captain Denson of P APD
who may have a solution and would be able to assist in this matter,
Is it possible to put an officer in a patrol car or motorcylce out there for a day or two to dissuade people from
blocking the road at Clemo as well as the fire department? I know when an officer was there telling kids to wear
helmets on their bicycles it worked very well -in fact, my son's friends said it did :)
In addition, there's the continued issue of people dri ving north on el camino then turning left onto
Arastradero blocking the intersection when the people (like us residents) are heading east bound from arastradero
making a left heading north. on el camino in the morning. Honestly, without having an officer enforce this or at
least sniping I a sign saying don't block the intersection this will clearly continue and potentially cause an
accident in tbe future as people blatently are one or two cars into el camino blocking the intersection when we
have the green light to tum left or at times when people ar heading straight to go east continuing on arastradero.
Again, I think the project has been a success but just need to see how we can get people to stop blocking those
interesections at clemo/arastradero and el camino/arastradero during the scbool commute_
Keep up the good work and yow-help on this matter is greatly appreciated!
Best,
Scott Hayes
712112011
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Monday, May 23,2011 7:47 AM
To: Rlus, Rafael
Subject: FW: Community Meeting Notice re: Charleston/Arastradero Corridor Restriping Trial Improvements
at Arastradero Road
Fyi
Zarlah Betten 1.1.
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
From: Daniel Fields [mailto:dfields68@yahoo,com]
Sent: Saturday, May 21/ 2011 6:15 PM
To: Transportation
Subject: Re: Community Meeting Notice re: Charleston/Arastradero Corridor Resbiping Trial Improvements at
Arastradero Road
Hello,
I won't be able to attend the meeting on June 2, 2011 at Juana Briones School, but 'I would like to give
some feedback on the Arastradero Road improvements:
1 live on Cherry Oaks Place, and it is very difficult to make a left turn from Cherry Oaks Place onto
Arastradero when traffic on Arastradero is very busy, especially when school traffic is on the road in the
mornings and evenings. Sometimes it can take 10 minutes to make a left tum at peak traffic times. The
IKeep Clear" sign painted on the junction of Arastradero and Cherry Oaks Place is regularly ignored by
dri veTS on Arastradero.
Is there an easy improvement that can be made 10 facilitate a safe left tum ontO Arastradero from Cherry
Oaks Place during peak traffic times? Thanks!
Daniel Fields
4189 Cherry Oaks Place
Palo Alto, CA 94306
7/2112011
1
Betten, Zariah
From:Hanwant Singh [hanwant.b.singh@gmail.com]
Sent:Tuesday, July 26, 2011 11:10 AM
To:Transportation
Cc:Raman Singh
Subject:Arastradero Road Restriping Project
Dear sir/madam,
This letter is to strongly support the trial period extension of the Arastradero Road
Restriping Project with the hope that it is eventually made permanent. We have lived on
Arastradero for over 20-years and have experienced the traffic flow situation on a daily
basis before and after the Restriping project. The addition of several turn lanes have
greatly improved safety and convenience for residents and school children. In the past
there was extremely fast (and unsafe) traffic on Arastradero mostly from people who
treated it as a 4-lane throughway. We have seen multiple accidents on Arastradero and
fast cars have also run into neighboring homes causing huge property damage. The new
arrangement has slowed through traffic
a bit making things a lot safer. Staggering of School times should
further improve the peak traffic situation. Overall our experience leaves no doubt that
Restriping offers a significant improvement over the situation that existed in the past.
We strongly recommend that Arastradero Road Restriping be made permanent.
Sincerely,
Dr. Hanwant B. Singh and Raman H. Singh
681 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 493-1079
Betten, Zaria.h
From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:
Subject:
Keri Wagner [keriw1 @earthlink.net]
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 1 :38 PM
Planning Commission
Keri Wagner
Please extend Arastradero trial
Dear Planning Commissioners --
Please extend the trial period for the Charleston/Arastradero corridor. with the changes
to the Gunn bell schedule, we really need to see how well traffic flows, with accurate
data taken over a full school year. The changes to the road have been fantastic, slowing
down traffic and making the road much safer. Yes, it's slow at peak times but it has
always been slow at peak times and at least the road
is now much safer. We have lived in Charleston Meadows since 1994.
The bike lane improvements and crosswalk improvements mean that my boys can now ride their
bikes or walk to Terman and Gunn, and I feel it is safe enough for them to do so.
Thank you for your consideration.
Keri Wagner
311 Edlee Ave
Palo Alto
1
Betten. Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:
borisfoelsch@gmail.com
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 1 :49 PM
Planning Commission
pellson@pacbell.net
Subject: Arastradero Extension letter (Planning.Commission@cityofpaloalto.org)
7/28/2011
D ARastradero Extension letter.docx
July 13, 2011
Palo Alto Council of PTAs
25 Churchill Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94306
www.paloaltopta.org
Honorable Commission Members,
We are writing to support staffs recommendation to extend the
Arastradero Re-Striping Trial. We agree that it is important to give
staff adequate time to evaluate the effect of changes made since the
initial restriping. There were multiple changes made to the initial
striping plan during the latter parts of this school year as well as delays
in implementation of the hardscape and new signalization (to be
installed this month).
7/28/2011
(
We are particularly interested in understanding the effect of Gunn
High School bell time changes. This is a change that the Palo Alto
Council of PT As Traffic Safety Committea-requested ten years ago
along with the city. The committee believed then that this change
would have a significant positive effect on morning peak hour
congestion, and we are very glad to see that P AUSD is now willing
and able to implement it.
Please support staff s recommendation to extend the trial.
Thank you for considering our comments.
Sincerely,
Boris Foelsch, Co-Chair & Middle Schools Representative
Penny ElIson, High Schools Representative
Palo Alto Council ofPTAs Traffic Safety Committee
Google Docs makes it easy to create, store and share online documents,
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docs
Betten, Zariah
From: Betten, Zariah
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 12:55 PM
To: Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael
Subject: FW: Resurfacing of Channing Avenue East of Middlefield
fyi
Zariah Betten 11
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
Fronl: Jonathan Foster [mailto:jfoster@jfoster.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 11:06 AM
To:· Transportation
Subject: Resurfacing of Channing Avenue East of Middlefield
Hello. I was unable to attend the community meeting that was held last night on the issue of resurfacing
Channing Avenue east of Middlefield. I would be interested in hearing what options were presented and what
feedback was presented. I suspect I will have some feedback to add once I hear what options ~ere presented.
If you can forward to me whatever presentation was used in last night's meeting and whatever materials were
distributed, I would appreciate it. And if anyone has summarized the feedback that was received, please
forward that along as well (either now or, if it has not yet been summarized, but will later, then when it
becomes available). Thanks.
Jon Foster
Channing Avenue
(650) 533-0945
7/28/2011
Betten, Zariah
From: Don Nielson [nielsonz@pacbell.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 11 :02 AM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Arastradero's Future
Dear Commission Members,
Though I lead the small Miranda Neighborhood whose only access is from
Arastradero, and while I know a number of its residents are frustrated by the
restriping, I'll let them speak if they are serious enough to do so. This is more
of a personal note.
First of all, given the separation between Page Mill and San Antonio Roads,
the Arastradero-Charleston corridor will always have through-traffic pressure!
Thus, in the language of the Comprehensive Plan, it is likely a Residential Arterial.
Which leaves open the question of whether bicycle and pedestrian use is just
enabled or preferred. Keep in mind that only a small fraction of local residential
use will be car-less and essentially none of the non-residential will ever be.
My own experience is that westbound Arastradero traffic is pretty well
accommodated by the new striping while eastbound traffic is not. But I will
limit this to three brief observations:
1) This new corridor was to include traffic light synchronization and it seems
unfulfilled. Perhaps it is impractical given El Camino and the railroad
crossing but why hasn't this been addressed?
2) I'm not convinced by the traffic statistics because I don't believe they are
comprehensive enough. Any such characterization should begin with an
broader diurnal assessment of when traffic really is heavy rather than
assuming the two limited half hours they chose. I have often seen a continuous
eastbound line of cars from the Cemetery to the RR crossing in the 830-900am
time frame.
3) The eastbound backup turns the brief two-lane section near Terman into
an aggressive drive drag race.
All in all, I believe the assessment must continue for another year for what is
now present is largely unsatisfactory during heavy eastbound traffic.
Thanks for listening,
Don Nielson
850 Miranada Green
7/28/2011
Betten. Zariah
From: maravan@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 11 :36 AM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Arastradero Corridor
As a resident living on Arastradero for nearly forty years, I have witnessed first hand
the "rampant speeding" and "reckless drivers" which caused the City to implement
this project. This experiment is nothing short of genius. For the first time in many
years, cars pass at staggered speeds so I can actually leave my driveway
safely. No longer do I hear careening vehicles, fearing that I am about to witness a
car driving into my living room. I was fed up with vehicles using this residential
neighborhood as a convenient detour to speed through illegally. This is not
hyperbole. The City knew they had to do something and so they did something
drastic. I for one applaud them.
Please maintain this project for at least another year.
Thank you,
Marilyn Van Horn
King Arthur Court
7/28/2011
Betten, Zariah
From: Michael Maurier [mmaurier@pubpow.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 4:49 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: July 13, 2011 Meeting: Arastradero Road Re-Striping Project
Palo Alto City Planning Commission Members:
In your meeting tomorrow (July 13, 2011) please support the staff's recommendation to extend the trial
period of the Arastradero Road Re-Striping Project through July 31,2012.
The extension would give staff adequate time to:
evaluate effect of changes made since the initial restriping. Though the initial restriping was
complete in late October, there were multiple changes made to the striping plan in response to
citizen input during the latter parts of this school year, including delays in implementation of the
hardscape (which was only completely installed at the end of the school year because the city
combined the project with hardscape installations at other locations to save money) and new
signalization (to be installed this month).
properly evaluate the effect of bell time changes. As you are doubtless aware, PAUSD has
announced that they intend to change Gunn bell times-starting in the Fall 2011 term. Gunn High
School will be modifying its bell schedule to begin classes at 8:25AM instead of the previous start
time of 7:55AM. The Bowman International School is also making bell schedule modifications to
begin school activities after 8:30AM. This is expected to reduce morning peak hour traffic
congestion. We are doubtful that any sort of changes to the traffic routing will ever wholly solve the
congestion in the area at peak traffic hours. But the bell-time changes are about the only thing I
currently believe might very well significantly improve the peak hour congestion without
compromising safety results. So these unanticipated but very welcome school bell time changes
unquestionably merit the requested time-extension to be properly evaluated.
collect a complete crash data set that measures the safety effects of the improvements.
review and possibly implement additional requested striping modifications near the west end
of the corridor to accommodate enhanced access to the Arastradero West apartment complex.
As you may have seen or heard at previous community meetings, there are a few people who continue to
be opposed to the project. These people seem primarily concerned with real or imagined inconveniences to
them that the project has caused and seem entirely unconcerned with the increasingly unsafe conditions on
Arastradero -especially since the reopening of the Terman --,-and the particular dangers this poses to
students.
We live on Fairmede Ave, have no other way to get in and out of our neighborhood than via
Arastradero, so we are also occasionally 'inconvenienced' by the project. But are willing to live with such
relatively minor inconveniences because the project has been a long-awaited, a badly needed effort to
improve safety along Arastradero ... particularly for school. age-children, and so far, appears to us to be
vastly improving safety for drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. The safety improvement aspect/intent of this
project is a critical point that the complainers seem all to willing to ignore.
Getting in and out of our Greenacres One neighborhood on Arastradero has always been somewhat
difficult/inconvenient at best, especially at peak traffic hours. But feels a lot safer now with the somewhat
slower traffic speeds, the various turn lanes and the fact that one doesn't have to contend with double
7/28/2011
lanes and faster traffic speeds in both directions. We'd really like the opportunity to see if our personal
impressions are borne out by empirical data.
Insofar as the complaints we have heard about traffic impact on adjacent neighborhood streets, we are also
somewhat inconvenienced by the now completely unregulated Terman drop-of and pick up congestion
traffic along our street and on adjacent Pomona. But we were aware that Terman might eventually be
reopened as a middle school when we secured our property and needed to be prepared for such a
possibility. One wonders just how many of those that complain of the varioius possible inconveniences
attendant living next to al the schools in our area would claim they weren't aware of the possible
ramifications of that over time. Or how many of them were the happy but naif supporters of all the increased
housing density in the city in recent years -never thinking that it might somehow impact them and their
sacred commute times. Or cause additional traffic on their adjacent neighborhood streets.
Apparently the critics of the project expect the project to be discontinued/4 lane-high speed traffic on
Arastradero restored based on their apocryphal experiences and have scant regard of empirical evaluation.
And a few persist in the belief that their real or imagined 'inconveniences' and observations should be given
precedence over careful measurement and data analysis. Which is not the way fair, rational, and effective
traffic planning is our should be done.
Finally, some of the critics don't seem to remember or otherwise make much connection with our south-end
experience in 2003 when 6 year old Amy Malzbender was killed and her 10-year-old friend, Chloe
McAusland, was injured on nearby Miranda Ave by A Palo Alto HS student who hit the girls with her car, but
failed to stop and continued in her all-important haste to get to her school. But some of us do remember this
horrific tragedy in our south-end neighborhood. And are more than willing to make sacrifices and support
carefully planned and exhaustively and objectively evaluated steps to try to prevent anything like it
happening again.
We therefore support the safety improvement efforts thus far made along both Charleston and Arastradero,
and ask your support for the staff's recommendation to extend the trial period of the Arastradero Road Re-
Striping Project through July 31,2012.
Sincerely,
Michael Maurier
Fairmede Ave.
Palo Alto
7/28/2011
Betten, Zariah
~"--~~~~ ~--------------------------------~
From: Kurt Partridge [kepart@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 8:53 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Please extend the Arastradero trial
I am writing in support of continuing the trial to study the improvements of
the Arastradro road-restriping project.
I am a Palo Alto resident who regularly conunutes on Arastradero, often
late at night. I have found the changes to add greatly to the road's
safety, especially by protecting the left tum at Coulombe, which had
previously required either hopping onto the sidewalk, stopping in the narrow
bicycle lane, blocking traffic there, or crossing four lanes of fast-moving
traffic.
The city's support for bicycling makes it possible for me to live without
a car, and encourages others to do so as well, to the benefit of their
health, their pocketbooks, and the environment. It makes me proud to be
a Palo Alto resident.
--Kurt Partridge
4129 EI Camino Way Apt U
Palo Alto, CA 94306
7/28/2011
Betten, Zariah
From: Ellen Fletcher [ef@ellenfletcher.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 12,2011 8:58 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Arastrastradero Rd Restripting Project
Members of the Planning and Transportation Commission:
I urge you to approve the staff recommendation to extend the Arastradero Road restriping project for at least
another year.
It appears that bicycle and pedestrian safety has improved since the implementation of the restriping. Bicycle
and pedestrian safety considerations must be first and foremost in any decision you make.
Sincerely,
Ellen Fletcher
899 E. Charleston Road #E-407
Palo Alto, CA 94303-4650
7/28/2011
Betten. Zariah
From: HSGolden@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 10:44 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Re: the Arastradero Road Re-Striping Project
To: City of Palo Alto Planning Commission
Re: the Arastradero Road Re-Striping Project
I have had the misfortune of being hit and injured by an automobile while I was crossing
Charleston Road so I have been closely monitoring the progress of the Arastradero Road
Re-Striping Project.
I encourage the Commission to extend the trial period (as was wisely done in the past) in
order to give some additional time to think through and review the changes that have
occurred ~ince the last evaluation (i.e. observe any effect that Gunn bell time changes might
make).
Process is important.
Thank you.
Helen S. Golden
460 EI Capitan PI,
Palo Alto CA 94396
7/28/2011
Betten, Zariah
From: Claire Kirner [chkirner@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 11 :25 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Arastradero Re-Striping
Dear City of Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commission,
I am writing to ask you to follow staffs recommendation to extend the trial period of the
Arastradero Road Re-Striping Project through July 31, 2012. I feel that a project of this scope
needs to be adequately assessed before anything is decided. Since the initial re-striping, there
have been changes (such as installation of the hardscape and new signalization to be installed
this month). We need time to evaluate the effects of these changes, along with a change in
school start times for both Gunn and Bowman this fall. The city has invested a lot of time and
energy into this project, and it would be a waste to not properly review and examine all
relevant variables and data. Please give this project the time and careful analysis it deserves
by extending the trial.
Thank you,
Claire Kirner
3934 Nelson Drive
Palo Alto, CA 94306
7/28/2011
To: Planning Commission, City of Palo Alto
Re: Arastradero Phase 2 project.
3150 Emerson Street
July 12, 2011
I am writing as a member of the community, an experienced bicyclist who primarily travels by
bicycle within Palo Alto. I have been a member of PABAC (Palo Alto
Bike Advisory Committee) for about 18 months, but this letter only represents me.
My experience with Arastradero is that I have been commuting by bicycle from Foothill to EI
Camino Real every weekday evening between 6:00 pm and 7:00 pm for about 5 years,and before
that about 30 minutes earlier for 9 years. (I take the bus on a different route in the morning).
First the EI Camino Real (ECR) I Arastradero I Charleston intersection is one of the worst for
bicycling in the ci~ and is nearly unaffected by this project. Bike lanes disappear and lanes are
narrow within a half block of the intersection on W. Charleston, and for an entire block on the
Arastradero side. The danger and risk for cycling that section is an order of magnitude higher
than the sections affected by this Phase 2 of the corridor project, yet it is a well used cycling route
for Terman and Gunn students.
Speaking to this project, The Arastradero Phase 2 project has been a small improvement to my
commute. The changes affecting me are:
1) The left tum pockets make it much easier to tum left and continue my commute down
Maybell, instead of keeping to Arastradero all the way to ECR.
BUT: The way the traffic tends to be a steady stream in one lane, instead of clumpy in 2 lanes,
makes it more difficult to get across traffic to the left tum pockets. A less experienced cyclist
might choose to just stay right, and use the pedestrian light at Coulombe for a left tum there,
instead of getting across traffic to the protected left tum. This maneuver, using the pedestrian
signat was available before the trial.
2) The configuration of 1 traffic lane plus a bike lane transitioning to 2 traffic lanes at
McKella~ one block before ECR, feels a little safer in the case where I choose to continue in the
traffic lane. In the previous configuration two traffic lanes were continuous while the bike lane
disappeared, and I was likely to ride onto the sidewalk.
BUT: This helps only one small aspect of this scary intersection. I see very few other cyclists
using this new configuration to "take the lane". Many prefer to scoot by next to the curb, or just
go onto the sidewalk.
3) I do perceive the traffic to be a little slower. This makes the road feel safer for cycling.
As an auto driver, I have occasionally driven West on Arastradero, to either drop off one of my sons
at Gunn HS, or to commute to work. Before this triat I think the backup going West on
Arastradero from 7 :40 to 8:00 am often was from East of Clemo all the way to Gunn, but I don1t
ever recall the backup spilling to W. Charleston and to left turning traffic on ECR, as it did daily
this past school year.
My personal opinion is that Palo Alto needs 4 lanes on Arastradero just to maintain enough traffic
throughput to avoid complete congestion, at many hours of the day. The new configuration
reduces the flow and queuing of traffic, leading
to end-to-endbackups. Slowing traffic, especially at off-peak times, is a great improvement.
Maybe this can be achieved without reducing the lanes. For example speed tables could be added,
like on Louis, or the current electronic speed detectors could be coordinated with the lights. Cars
detected travelling 15% over the speed limit could be greeted with red lights at the next
intersection! '
I am hopeful that the new bell timing at Gunn HS will help traffic (with either lane configurationt
but will that be enough, and solve all the other problems created on the corridor? Should city
planning choose to extend the triat I hope you will reconsider it again shortly after the start of the
school year to see if the most recent changes will make the situation tolerable for the community.
Sincerely,
Robert Neff
3150 Emerson Street
Palo Alto
650-858-2436
robert@neffs.net
Betten, Zariah
From: Richard Swent [RSwent@pacbell.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 7:44 AM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: I support Arastradero project
Dear Planning Commissioners,
I am unable to attend the meeting, but I want to express my support for the staff recommendatiqn to continue
the trial project on Arastradero Road. As a bicyclist I find the conditions to be considerably improved. I know
there is some peak-hour congestion, as there was before the changes. That congestion lasts for only a short
time on weekdays, but a wide road that encourages speeding has negative safety consequences for 24 hours
every day. The change in Gunn starting time will help reduce the peak-hour congestion, and we should give staff
time to work on other ways to reduce this before we abandon the project. I don't want to see my family's safety
compromised in order to save a few seconds of time fpr someone in a car.
Richard Swent
2950 Clara Dr
Palo Alto, CA 94303
7/28/2011
Betten, Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Betten, Zariah
Monday, July 11,2011 7:32 AM
Rodriguez, Jaime; Rius, Rafael; Williams, Curtis; Arthur Keller; Dan Garber; Daniel Garber;
Eduardo Martinez; Greg Tanaka; Lee Lippert; Michael Picetti; Samir Tuma; Susan Fineberg
Cc: Tronquet, Melissa
Subject: FW: Charleston Road Re-Striping
fyi
Zariah Betten 1l
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
Fronl: Shirley Campbell [mailto:sjccolts@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 2: 16 PM
To: Planning Commission
Subject: Charleston Road Re-Striping
Dear Commissioner,
I live in the Greenmeadow area of Palo Alto and use Charleston Rd. regularly in the morning commute
hours and at various times of the day. I have observed the striping consequences on Charleston Rd. now
for several years and it is a nightmare. I see by the mailing I received that you are considering re-
striping Arastadero and I think you should seriously consider doing the same further east on Charleston.
It is a real bottleneck at Nelson and Charleston and sometimes it takes 2-3 light cycles before I can make
a right turn onto Charleston. This was not true with the former striping. In these several years I have
seen only 4 cars make a left tum or u-turn on Charleston at that intersection. Since there is only one
through driving lane now the cars back up 16-20 cars of so. It's really congested. Someone needs to
seriously consider returning to the earlier striping with 2 lanes in each direction. It doesn't make sense
as it is now striped.
I tried to reach you department bye-mail and phone previously and never reached a viable
number/address. I sincerely hope this get through.
Thank you for considering a change to this dilemma.
Sincerely,
Shirley Campbell
494-1378
244 Greenmeadow Way
Palo Alto 94306
7/28/2011
Betten, Zariah
From:
Sent:
To:
Betten, Zariah
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 1 :18 PM
Rius, Rafael
Subject: FW: Arastradero Road Restriping Project
fyi
zariah Betten a
Planning Dept., Ext. 2440
-----Original Message-----
From: Hanwant Singh [mailto:hanwant.b.singh@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 11:10 AM
To: Transportation
Cc: Raman Singh
Subject: Arastradero Road Restriping Project
Dear sir/madam,
This letter is to strongly support the trial period extension of the Arastradero Road
Restriping Project with the hope that it is eventually made permanent. We have lived on
Arastradero for over 20-years and have experienced the traffic flow situation on a daily
basis before and after the Restriping project. The addition of several turn lanes have
greatly improved safety and convenience for residents and school children. In the past
there was extremely fast (and unsafe) traffic on Arastradero mostly from people who
treated it as a 4-lane throughway. We have seen mUltiple accidents on Arastradero and
fast cars have also run into neighboring homes causing huge property damage. The new
arrangement has slowed through traffic
a bit making things a lot safer. Staggering of School times should
further improve the peak traffic situation. Overall our experience leaves no doubt that
Restriping offers a significant improvement over the situation that existed in the past.
We strongly recommend that Arastradero Road Restriping be made pe:manent.
Sincerely,
Dr. Hanwant B. Singh and Raman H. Singh
681 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 493-1079
1
[PLEASE CONTACT THE CITY
ICLERK'S OFFICE TO VIEW
~DITIONAL PAGES OR
Minor, Beth ~TTACI:mfEN'l'S RELATED TO THIS
__ ~ __ ~~~~OcmmN'l'.
From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:
Subject:
Wayne Martin [wmartin46@yahoo.com]
Friday, July 22, 2011 4:09 PM
Council, City
Keene, James; Williams, Curtis
Traffic Accident Analysis Of The Charleston/Arastradero Corridor
Attachments: wem_pa_ charleston _ arastradero _traffic_analysis _reL 1.doc
Palo Alto City Council
City of Palo Alto
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Cc: James Keene, Curtis Williams
Subject: Traffic Analysis of The Charleston!Arastradero Corridor
Elected Council Members:
Page 1 of1
The attached MS-WORD file contains a traffic analysis of the so-called Charleston! Arastradero
Corridor. It is sugested that this material be used when considering the future ofthis roadway.
Wayne Martin
Palo Alto, CA
7/2512011
Charleston/ Arastradero Corridor Traffic Accident Analysis
Table of Contents
Section
T~k #
Executive Summary 1.0
Preface 2.0
Introduction 3.0
Overview Of The Charleston! Arastradero Transportation "Corridor" 4.0
PicturesNideos Of "C/ A Corridor" Intersections 5.0
Perspective: Traffic Accidents In Charleston! Arastradero Corridor
vs City-wide Accidents 6.0
IS-Year Traffic Accident History/Trends On the "C/A Corridor" 7.0
Traffic Accident Locations 8.0
Issues Involved With Traffic Accident Analysis 9.0
Intersection vs Non-Intersection Accidents In Palo Alto 10.0
Accident Locations On The "C/ A Corridor" For 2009 11.0
Top-10 Most Dangerous Intersections In Palo Alto 12.0
Breakdown of Palo Alto-wide Accidents--Intersections vs Non-Intersections 13.0
Breakdown of Intersection vs Non-Intersection Accidents on
"C/ A Corridor" 14.0
Traffic Volume On Arastradero Road 15.0
S-Year Overview Of City-wide vs "C/ A Corridor" Traffic Accidents 16.0
IS-Year Casualty Counts For Charleston/Arastradero Corridor Accidents 17.0
Bicycle/Pedestrian Accidents In Palo Alto For 2009 18.0
Bicycle/Pedestrian Accidents On The "C/A Corridor" For 2009 19.0
Bicycle/Pedestrian Accidents In Peninsula Cities 20.0
Accidents Per Million-Vehicle-Miles Driven On Arastradero Road 21.0
Age of Parties Involved In Accidents On "C/ A Corridor" 22.0
AlcohollDrugs Involved Accidents 23.0
IS-Year History of Accidents At Gunn High School 24.0
Accidents At the Alma/Charleston Caltrain Crossing 25.0
Effects of School Crossing Guards on Traffic Accidents On "C/ A Corridor" 26.0
Root Causes of Traffic Accidents On "C/ A Corridor" 27.0
Effect of Cell Phone Use on Traffic Accidents On "C/A Corridor" 28.0
"C/A Corridor" End-to-End Travel Times 29.0
Discussion 30.0
Future Investigations 31.0
Conclusion 32.0
1.0 Executive Summary
Traffic accident data for Palo Alto (CA), obtained from the Califomia Highway Patrol
(CHP) for the years 1995-2009, has been analyzed to provide insights into the number of
accidents in Palo Alto, the kinds of accidents, and to investigate possible relationships
between accident locations and the frequency/kind of accidents at those locations. This
analysis, necessarily data-intensive, is being released in sections. This section
investigates the so-called "CharlestoniArastradero Transportation Corridor". Given the
numerous details involved in such an analysis, several readings might be required to fully
appreciate the implications ofthe results. The results are presented in tabular fashion,
and graphically, where trends can be easily demonstrated.
This analysis reveals:
• There has been, on the whole, a decline in the number of reported accidents in
Palo Alto over the past fifteen years.
• The total number of traffic accidents in Palo Alto, on the average, tends to be a
little higher than those of other Peninsula cities.
• Traffic volume data obtained from the Traffic Engineering Department shows that
there has been a decline from about 25,000 vehicles a day in 1999, to about
19,000 vehicles a day in 2011.
• Accidents/MVM (Million Vehicle Milles) have decreased from about 3.3 in 1999
to about 2.5 in 2011, based on decreased traffic volume alone.
• Accidents on the "CIA Corridor" for the 15-year study period constitute about 4-
7% of the yearly accident count for Palo Alto.
• Accident counts on the "CIA Corridor" parallel the 15-year decline in the number
of city-wide accidents.
• During 2009, there were, on average, slightly more than one accident a month on
Arastradero Road, and East Charleston Road, and fewer than one accident a
month on West Charleston Road.
• The number of fatal vehicle accidents in Palo Alto is very small. In like manner,
the number of fatal accidents on the "CIA Corridor" is quite small. No
pedestrians have been killed because of vehicular accidents during the past fifteen
years on the "CIA Corridor".
• The number oftraffic accidents in Palo Alto, and the "CIA Corridor", that involve
alcohol/drugs is small.
• "Unsafe Speed" Is Not The Dominant Reason For Traffic Accidents On The "CIA
Corridor" .
• The number ofbicycle/pedestrian accidents is somewhat higher on the "CIA
Corridor" than in Palo Alto, on the whole.
• The intersection at East Charleston & San Antonio Road is the third most
dangerous in Palo Alto, based on accident count.
• Twenty-five percent of the accidents occur at intersections on the "CIA Corridor",
the remaining 75% occur between intersections.
• The traffic accident data does not include 2010, which would be helpful in
determining any clear impact on "safety" for the so-called Charleston! Arastradero
Downsizing Road Reconfiguration Project.
• The highest number of vehicle accidents for 2005-2009, on average, occurred on
Segment #1 (San Antonio Road to Middlefield Road) and Segment #4 (EI Camino
to Foothill).
• Frequent traffic volume/speed data is needed to make meaningful correlations in
year-to-year variances in the accident data.
• Access to raw Traffic Accident Reports is restrict~d by state law, inhibiting the
ability to provide detailed traffic accident analyses.
• The perception of "safety" on the "CIA Corridor" is based on the prevailing 25
mph speed limit, which is probably too low for this road segment.
Since Palo Alto traffic accident data has not been systematically monitored, and reported,
by Traffic Engineering in the past, it is suggested that traffic accident data be included in
the decision process in the future, where issues involving traffic "safety" are concerned.
This is particularly true now, since Traffic Engineering is proposing the continued
reduction of the number of lanes on Charleston/Arastradero Corridor without presenting
data to the public about the effects of this downsizing on the occurrence of traffic
accidents that can be attributed to the road design.
2.0 Preface
During the initial promotion of the so-called Charleston!Arastradero Downsizing Project,
in the 2003-2004 timeframe, the Palo Alto Transportation/Engineering Department made
many claims about various reconfigurations to Palo Alto streets and roads that involved
the reduction of risk to cyclists and motorists. However, when pressed to define terms
like "safety", "danger" or "risk"-the key players in these Departments could not provide
definitions, or metrics, that were used by the road/street design discipline that provided
any sense that any of the streets in Palo Alto, or in the so-called Charleston! Arastradero
Transportation Corridor, were ''unsafe'', or "dangerous". Moreover, these same key
players could not provide any metrics that the streets would necessarily be "safer", or
"less dangerous" if their reconfigurations were applied to this roadway. For the most
part, the whole topic of traffic accidents based on road design, or traffic volume on this
roadway, was not discussed in a meaningful way, if at all. Overall, it is difficult to be
impressed by the Palo Alto Traffic Engineering Department's use of historic data to make
decisions about traffic engineering designs for the future.
Personal research revealed that traffic engineers do use one metric, however:
accidents/million vehicle miles as an indicator of "safety". Unfortunately, this is a very
rough metric, and can not readily be applied from street-to-road-to-highway, without
coming to conclusions about a road's "safety" that are more likely wrong, than not.
Attempts to obtain this metric from the Palo Alto Traffic Division has not been fruitful in
the past, although they did recently provide some traffic volume data which can be used
to estimate this number for the Arastradero Road segment of the "C/A Corridor".
Other indicators do exist, such as number of deaths, injuries, and the nominal damage to
the individuals in terms of medical care, lost productivity and wages. However, while
this data is available to the public (via the CHP), such data is generally not used as
metrics to justify engineering decisions reconfiguring roadways.
Publicly available accident data for Palo Alto does exist, however. The fact that this
wealth of data was ignored by the people entrusted to make the best decisions for the
public good caused me to want to do an analysis of this data to see what there was to be
learned, and to introduce this information into the public record so that the decisions
involving traffic accidents here in Palo Alto would not be ignored by government
officials in the future.
Since there are no standardized approaches to traffic accident analysis, this study has
developed in a more-or-Iess "organic" fashion, based on the results of attempts to
establish correlations between the numerous "variables" that are collected from each
accident investigation!report. The most interesting relationships that were revealed by
these inquiries have been included in this study.
This research has produced about 60,000 of SQL (Structured Query Language), using
MySQL as the database engine. The data was provided by the California Highway
Patrol, per request.
3.0 Introduction
Over the years there has been a lot of hysteria expressed by certain residents about the
traffic "problems" on the "Charleston! Arastradero Corridor". At one point, the City
actually declared a "Development Moratorium" along this roadway while it did "studies"
in order to halt development on two major projects on!near the "Corridor". These
"studies" added significant project delays, which turned out to be a contributory factor in
these projects being either abandoned, or greatly reduced in scale.
Periodically, some residents have made unsubstantiated claims about "how dangerous"
the "C/ A Corridor" is, but little, or no, real evidence of this danger was presented in a
formalized fashion, by anyone associated with the City, or even those making these
claims. The former Chief of Police (Lynn Johnson) stated at one point that: "this
roadway is not particularly dangerous" (or words to that effect), but no official accident
data was ever produced to prove, or disprove, that point, either way. In fact, no definition
of "danger", "risk", or even "safety", has ever been introduced into the dialogue by the
City that provided residents a rational way to review, think about, and come to
conclusions about, the safety of Palo Alto roadways.
At the time of the primary Charleston! Arastradero dialog, it seemed that hysteria, not
facts, prevailed--driven by some of the so-called Neighborhood Associations-that were
key to killing off the Rickey's Hotel expansion project. One City Council Member went
so far as to proclaim: "The Charleston! Arastradero Corridor is a Mini-Oregon
Expressway" (or words to that effect), without providing any details, or proof. Politics,
not traffic engineering, or rational inquiry, seemed to be the primary "stakeholder at the
table" as this process wound its way to the City Council.
To remedy the lack of actual traffic accident data in this debate, traffic accident reports
from the California Highway Patrol's SWITRS (Statewide Integrated Traffic Records
System) database were acquired, and examined from a number of different points-of-
view. This paper on the "Charleston! Arastradero Corridor", is a section of a full-city
traffic accident study reviewing traffic accidents throughout all of Palo Alto.
The work is not intended to be an engineering analysis of the "Charleston!Arastradero
Corridor". Instead, it is a study ofthe traffic accidents along this roadway, with some
interpretations oftrends revealed by the data. This paper is only intended to provide
residents along the "Corridor" hard data to use in discussing the changes on
Charleston! Arastradero in the future-<iata which has been provided by the City in the
past.
Errors will be correct when identified, via future releases of this document.
4.0 Overview Of The Charleston/ Arastradero Transportation "Corridor"
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Map of Charleston/ Arastradero Transportation Corridor
Segment Color Codes
Seg.l-Red
Seg.2 -Yellow
Seg.3 -Green
Seg.4 -Blue
Seg.5 -Violet
The so-called Charleston Road/ Arastradero Road Transportation Corridor that runs
through southern Palo Alto starts near Highway. 1 01, in a light-industrial area, and
proceeds in a southwesterly fashion through the residential sections of South Palo Alto,
traversing a very badly designed., at-grade, Caltrain crossing, eventually passing into Los
Altos Hills, then into the foothills, where it finally terminates at Alpine Road--not quite at
the ridgeline. All of Arastradero Road is included within the confines ofthe so-called
"Corridor" in this study, whereas the City of Palo Alto Traffic Engineering does not
include the segment from Foothill Expressway up to Alpine Road (Segment.S) in its
definition.
There are perhaps ten stop lights between the easterly terminus of the "C/ A Corridor",
and Foothill Expressway. On the three blocks of East Charleston, between Middlefield
and Alma Street, there are four (4) stoplights, and a railroad (at grade) crossing-which
require frequent stops for vehicles, resulting in a higher probability of accidents.
Additionally, the south-westerly "orientation of the roadway allows the sun to be in
drivers' eyes at certain times of the year, and certain times ofthe day. This geographical
condition results in many drivers running red lights at these intersections in the
afternoons of some parts of the year, and no doubt has been a contributing factor in some
accidents.
All told, the "Charleston! Arastradero Corridor" runs just over seven miles, end-to-end.
Since traffic accidents outside the Palo Alto municipal jurisdiction are often assigned to
the Palo Alto Police Department for responselinvestigation, non-Palo Alto accidents on
Arastradero are included in this report.
According to the City of Palo Alto Traffic Engineering Department,
Charleston! Arastradero Road is a residential arterial and a designated School Route that
serves:
• 11 public & private elementary, middle & high schools
• Multiple preschools
• 3 community centers
• 6 public & private parks
• Stanford Research Park
From a traffic accident analysis point-of-view, this study sub-divides the "Corridor" into
five segments, as the traffic volumes, number of signal lights, and school locations, all
contribute to the traffic dynamics that are contributory to traffic accidents. The following
table identifies the segments:
Se_9ment # S~gment
Near Highway 101 to
1 Middlefield
2 Middlefield to Alma
3 Alma to EI Camino Real
4 EI Camino to Foothill
5 Foothill to Alpine Road
The years 1995-2009 are included in this study of the CIA "Corridor". (Unfortunately,
complete data for 2010 will not be available for several months from the CRP.)
Traffic volume data previously obtained from the Palo Alto Traffic Engineering
Department (1965-1999) shows constant growth in traffic volumes on all major Palo Alto
streets, with the San Antonio segment carrying 24,900 vehicles a day, the West
Charleston Segment carrying about 18,100 vehicles a day, and the East Charleston
Segment carrying about 18,500 vehicles a day. Data published by Traffic Engineering
for the Lane Reduction Project shows traffic volumes in the mid-18,000 vehicles a day.
This 25% reduction in traffic volume is not related to the Lane Reduction Project, but can
be attributed to the general decline in the Silicon Valley business climate, that started
with the end ofthe so-called "Dot.Com" bubble in 2000.
5.0 PictureslVideos Of Charleston/ Arastradero Corridor Traffic
The following videos, and pictures, should help to fan1iliarize people who might be
unfamiliar with this roadway, or with current traffic conditions on this roadway:
Traffic Counts For Major Streets In Palo Alto (1999):
http://www.flickr.comlphotos128767 526@N06/5945330512/
Traffic At East Charleston/San Antonio Road:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYnFzJmbUoA
Traffic At East Charleston Road/Fabian Way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URp2fXt4N-8
Intersection At East Charleston/Road and Middlefield Road:
TBD:
Hoover Parents Making Unsafe Exits From School:
http://www.youtube.comlwatch?v= XDyZ8 _ az 1 ok
Alma Street/East Charleston Road Intersection:
http://www.youtube.comlwatch?v=pLwKTBENJGw
Vehicles Crossing Caltrain Tracks At West Charleston/Alma Street:
http://www.youtube.comlwatch?v=kDZQx9Qrn8HY
Queued Vehicles On West Charleston Road During Train Crossings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQsHltg-YV A
Intersection At West Charleston Road/EI Camino Real:
http://www.youtube.comlwatch?v=p2PLqAVwt8g
Traffic At McKellar Lane and Arastradero Road:
http://www.youtube.com!watch?v= aOfQw8QMLA
Arastradero Road When Lane Reduction Work Performed:
http://www.youtube.comlwatch?v=7v_T-yHyPXI
Traffic On Arastradero Road As Viewed From Crossing Island:
http://www.youtube.comlwatch?v=dQernSVCVbSU
Speed Limit Sign On Arastradero Obscured By Tree:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4ErnFLegpUk
New Speed Monitoring Sign On Arastradero Road:
TBD:
Questionable Car Parking Lane On Arastradero Road:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCHW AaGSzIY
Left-Tum Lanes On Arastradero Road:
TBD:
Driveway At Gunn High School On Arastradero Road:
http://www.youtube.com!watch?v=IBJrnXMlt9KY
Intersection At Arastradero Road and Foothill Expressway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwP404tkpU
Note--other videos documenting dangerous intersections, and other traffic-related issues,
can be found on: www.youtube.comlwrnartin46.