Dear City Council, Please accept this email with the corrected letter below. Best, Cecilia Taylor Ms. Melissa Reggiardo September 30th, 2017 San Mateo County Transit District P.O. Box 3006 1250 San Carlos Avenue San Carlos, CA 94070 RE: Dumbarton Transportation Corridor Study Comments Dear Ms. Reggiardo, Belle Haven Action is a resident-led community organization based in Menlo Park. The Belle Haven neighborhood houses approximately 20% of Menlo Park’s current residents and at Belle Haven Action, we believe neighborhood residents are aware of their most pressing needs, have valuable ideas about ways to solve them, and need representation in public discourse. The Dumbarton Transportation Corridor Study is an opportunity to help positively shape a key part of the Peninsula which currently faces tremendous pressures. Traffic congestion, lack of housing availability and affordability, limited access to frequent and convenient transit systems, and challenges to income mobility for residents who are working in moderate to low income jobs are just some of the daily facts of life for residents. Some of the neighborhoods along the corridor, including Belle Haven, are recovering from decades of disenfranchisement and lack of investment from the city, county and state in place and people. Making significant changes to the Dumbarton Corridor has the ability to lessen some of those pressures and make a positive impact on the daily lives of residents and commuters. Overall, we welcome a new direction in a more equitable transportation policy and infrastructure improvements to the corridor, especially ones that focuses on multimodal transit solutions which would reduce regional traffic that comes right through our community on Chilco Ave, Hamilton Ave, Ivy Drive, Newbridge Ave, and Willow Road. We do have comments and concerns that we would like to raise and speak further with you about: • Transit Connections - We are supportive of a multi use corridor that is public transportation, pedestrian and bicycle friendly and safe. Ideally, we would like to see significantly improved connections made to Caltrain, BART and the Capital Corridor so that service is frequent, reliable and pleasant to use. Our preference is to restrict traffic on the new corridor to light rail and pedestrian/bike access, restricting vehicular traffic to existing roads, specifically limited expressways like Bayfront. • Flyovers - We are concerned that flyovers and express lanes will create more demand for car travel, thereby increasing commute times and by extension, making more noise and air pollution. In particular, we are concerned that traffic will exacerbate existing public transit ridership challenges because currently bus reliability is dependent on traffic. We are are also concerned that flyovers might generate lower property values and generate blight as we have observed homeless encampments under flyovers in other communities and we know that our community, like that of the entire region, has a significant issue with housing. ? Additional Access to South 101 - Many of the commuters that cross the Dumbarton daily are headed to cities south of our community. Historically, policies in the region have pushed commute traffic to and from the Dumbarton Bridge onto Willow and Marsh Road in Menlo Park and University Avenue in East Palo Alto. While it may not be politically feasible, we would like the study to consider all options for access, including access via Palo Alto. We are eager to see changes to the Dumbarton Corridor that will make it safer and more pleasant for all to live, work and play in Menlo Park and the surrounding towns. Our community, at the edge of the Dumbarton Bridge, is at the epicenter of upcoming growth and development and is poised to experience increased challenges with the promise of a growing economy. Steps to alleviate pressures facing our community-- a community that has disproportionately carried the burden of past transportation decisions-- would have a direct improvement on our quality of life, provided that our concerns are addressed. Given that the updating and augmenting of the Dumbarton Corridor provides a valuable opportunity to alleviate significant daily transit, mobility and environmental pressures for hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents, we welcome a continued conversation with SamTrans and other stakeholders to explore this further. Thank you. Sincerely, Cecilia Taylor, Founder Belle Haven Action Received on Sun Oct 01 2017 - 11:26:24 PDT
