Dear Members of the Menlo Park City Council,
I am writing to express my urgent opposition to the proposed development at 80 Willow Road. As a resident of this neighborhood for nearly 50 years, I have witnessed a severe, cumulative decline in our traffic conditions. I strongly urge the City Council to deny approval for this project, as our regional infrastructure is entirely inadequate to absorb the resulting vehicle trips.
The level of service on our local roadways is already at a breaking point. The sub-regional infrastructure spanning Menlo Park and neighboring Palo Alto is fundamentally small-scale and unable to accommodate current demand, let alone a high-density influx. The existing arterial network is so choked that gridlocked drivers systematically use our quiet residential streets as cut-through shortcuts to bypass inadequate main thoroughfares.
Approving a project of this magnitude will compound these systemic infrastructure deficits. My key technical and community concerns include:
Arterial Capacity Overload: The Willow Road corridor cannot support the increased Level of Service (LOS) degradation and peak-hour trip generation this development will cause.
Residential Cut-Through Traffic: Neighboring residential streets are experiencing dangerous volumes of displaced traffic. This poses immediate safety risks to pedestrians and cyclists while destroying the established neighborhood character.
Regional Infrastructure Failure: The small-scale configurations of both Menlo Park and Palo Altos connecting networks are facing a bottleneck effect that requires comprehensive regional solutions, not piecemeal densification.
Loss of Neighborhood Scale: This project accelerates an unsustainable shift from a small, connected community feel to an overdeveloped, big-city environment that violates local zoning intents.
The data on our streets proves that our infrastructure cannot support this density. I urge the Council to act defensively on behalf of long-term residents and reject the 80 Willow Road proposal.
Thank you for your immediate attention to this critical issue.
Sincerely,
Shawn Paul Santos
115 Emma Lane/The Willows
Nearly 50-Year Resident of Menlo Park
Sent from my iPhone
