Dear Menlo Park City Council members,
The safety of our children is of paramount importance.
In order to ensure the safety of children making their way to Las Lomitas, one of our community’s schools, it is very important to
create sidewalks along Sharon Road (between Altschul and Alameda). This segment of road is particularly dangerous during the hours
when kids go to school. I invite you to walk the segment on a school day at 7:45am to see for yourself.
Specifically, this narrow road accommodates traffic going in 2 directions. The traffic is brisk as parents use the segment to
drive their kids to and from school. We encourage kids to walk to school, so many walkers also use this segment, and there are no
other reasonable paths for children coming from this direction to make it to school.
Since there are no sidewalks on this segment, and cars are permitted to park on the shoulder, students horrifyingly often need to
venture out into the middle of the road dodging traffic to make forward progress on their way to school. The danger is amplified
in rainy times when the poor drainage creates puddles that students must avoid by walking into busy center of the street.
My daughter had a near miss with a FedEx truck along this stretch only one month ago.
I think it’s time for the city council to address this safety issue. We’ve watched as Menlo Park has nicely upgraded the student
safety around Hillview (beautiful sidewalks, flashing crosswalks) and Oak Knoll (wide roads, crossing guards), and it seems as
though Menlo Park has chosen to turn a blind eye to this problem at Las Lomitas.
Please put sidewalks on Sharon to help ensure the safety of our children. I can’t think of a more important item than this for you
to address in the coming year. It would be a tragedy if something happened to one of our children when such an obvious solution is
available.
Best Regards,Neil C. Barman, M.D.
Parent of children in La Entrada and Las Lomitas,Property owner and taxpayer in both Menlo Park City and unincorporated Menlo Park
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Neil C. Barman, M.D.
neilbarman@gmail.com [neilbarman@gmail.com]
mobile: +1.650.248.8387
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