Dear Councilmembers,
At this Tuesday's council meeting, you'll be voting on the Transportation Master Plan's goals and how to prioritize projects. The
Complete Streets Commission hasn't had a chance to weigh in on this yet, so I'm writing here as a resident. I'm confused as to
why, at this stage of the game, there is a new priority being proposed for the TMP, aka "congestion management." I don't see the
need for adding this 4th priority for these reasons:
1.) Respect the process. Staff and community members have been working on the Transportation Master Plan since 2017 and have come
up with three overarching goals: safety, sustainability, and mobility choice (aka multimodal transportation). These three goals
were arrived at through a careful process involving much community outreach.
2.) Congestion relief is already one of the prioritization criteria. The proposed prioritization system already includes
"congestion relief/management," which presumably covers measures designed to reduce cut-through traffic in our neighborhoods. in
the proposed system, safety would be the top priority and is weighted at 20 points, but congestion management and a host of other
considerations come in second, each weighted at 10 points. The proposed system is detailed in this staff report:
https://www.menlopark.org/DocumentCenter/View/21090/I2-20190326-TMP-CC?bidId=
[https://www.menlopark.org/DocumentCenter/View/21090/I2-20190326-TMP-CC?bidId=]
3.) Potential conflicts between existing 3 goals and "congestion relief."Congestion relief is an amorphous term that could cover a
lot, including regressive approaches for managing traffic. What happens when the most obvious way to relieve congestion is to add
an additional lane to a road instead of adding bike lanes (even though the extra lane will result in induced demand and ultimately
increase congestion)? That is why the top 3 priorities--safety, sustainability, and multimodal/alternative transportation--must
remain our city's top priorities. These 3 goals also address congestion relief by making it safer and easier to get around town in
ways that reduce the number of single-occupancy vehicles on our roads.
4.) True congestion relief needs to be tackled on a regional basis. If one road is widened, the bottleneck just moves somewhere
else. To have a real impact, it makes sense to work on making it easier to get around within city limits.
Thanks so much for your consideration,
Lydia LeeComplete Streets Commissioner
