Hello MP City Council,
Happy Monday. I hope you all are well.
I am writing to provide input on the Middle Avenue Bikeway design spending plan. I think this proposal, while well intentioned, falls short of the mark in addressing the problems and fails to spend the taxpayers money efficiently.
I have had two children go to Hillview and both play in local club soccer, so I have frequently used Middle Ave as the route to and from school as well as crossing town to Portola Valley. Middle is wide. There is only one stop sign between El Camino and Olive at University. In my experience, the area from El Camino to University is the most dangerous as it has the most traffic congestion with the shopping center, the beautiful Nealon Park/Ball fields/Little House areas. The remainder of the road is wide, easy to navigate, rarely has cars lining the side of the road and is not generally congested. There are no stop lights or stop signs. This is why I cut through Middle (rather than take Sand Hill or Santa Cruz).
The problem with the stretch from University to Olive is speeding. Lots of speeding. I will put on my speed limited in my car some days to avoid speeding down Middle myself when Im running late because its so easy to do. I get tailgated - aggressively. There are no speed bumps. There are no stop signs. The few cross walks arent very obvious/lit up.
Taking the parking away during school days/dismissals, that might be reasonable. But completely taking it away hurts the neighborhood feel of the area, inconveniences the neighbors, and can cause more potential for accidents. How?
First - parking on one side only means that friends, elderly parents, delivery service people are more likely to jaywalk across Middle than walk down to a cross walk and walk all the way back to get to a home. Speeding and jaywalking dont mix. I have friends that live on Middle and Im comfortable pulling over to the side to park to do drop off (again - rarely are parked cars in my way). Im not as comfortable with parking in the driveway and then having to back out onto Middle with speeding cars.
Second - if someone is inclined to speed, where do they speed? On a wide street with no parking on either side and no stop signs or traffic calming where the obstacles that might make them consider slowing down (like parked cars and potential doors opening) are gone. You want to increase the speeding on Middle Ave? Then by all means, open the road up even more and take the cars away. Then it wont feel like a neighborhood street. It will feel like a wide thoroughfare where speeding is "safe".
We are better off finding a solution where cars and a bike lane can coexist AND adding stop signs at least in 2 intersections or more from University to Olive. That will keep the impression that this is a neighborhood street. It will slow down cars (a stop sign is harder to ignore). It will make pedestrian crossings safer (again, stop signs are harder to ignore).
If we must go with one of the three listed options, then the one that allows parking on one side, does the most to keep the neighborhood feel, but I would strongly suggest also adding traffic calming measures / reducing the speed limits/stop signs to that area.
Please focus on the problem on that road - the speeding. Dont create an environment where its easier to think of it as a highway rather than a route through a neighborhood. Thank you.
Cheers,
Sara
