Hello city council and staff
I am a resident of Allied Arts, I live 2 blocks from Middle and travel on the street pretty much every day by car, bike, or walk. I have 2 little kids so were often walking with a stroller or biking with a trailer.
Staff and council has done a great job gathering input from the community. I appreciate all of the meetings and, while Im sure not 100% of people in the area are happy with the proposal, I think we have been listened to and a lot of consensus has been reached. So thank you for doing a great job with the feedback process.
I also appreciate that staff did a parking study at Nealon which showed that (as many residents claimed), the park has plenty of parking.
In short, I feel that staff has incorporated most of the communitys (and my) concerns. My comments are:
1. The intersection at University is quite stressful to cross as a pedestrian. Based on the staff report, it seems the options are either a turnabout (Which sounds great but sounds like implementation may get complicated) or keep it as-is, I would hope we can find more of a middle ground here and make some progress to make a more "complete"/friendly street crossing.
2. Adding a stop sign at San Mateo Dr. is a great idea, to reduce people zooming down the street from Olive all the way to University (and vice versa)
3. I support the Blake street closure and Id love to see that pilot move forward. Thats how we walk to Nealon from our house and since Blake has no sidewalks it also becomes a stressful situation
4. People crossing to Nealon from Blake do not have easy access to the button to trigger the flashing lights, currently. Would be great to add one there that sticks out for cyclists. A similar one can be found at Embarcadero and St Francis in Palo Alto, for example. Its great!
These are relatively minor quibbles, in general I support staffs recommendations and thank them for their hard work.
Thank you
Misha Silin
