Good morning Mayor Keith and Council members, I was pleased to see several of you at the school safe routes discussion this week. Thank you for making the time to be there. Following up on my email from last week (below), I'm sharing a couple of photos of the construction traffic I'm talking about along the Middle Avenue School Bike Safety Route. These photos were taken at ~8:15am today, after I biked home from dropping the kids off at Oak Knoll Elementary. The majority of school pedestrian and bike traffic is gone by the time the photo was taken. Unfortunately, these several cars/trucks/heavy machineries were also present when we left for school at 7:45am. As you can see, there's no remaining bike lane available, no cones, no team members directing traffic. It's also the same site where my 1st grader and I were almost hit by a team member pulling out in his car at 3:10pm on Tuesday afternoon. We were biking on a trail-a-bike. Thankfully, this was only a near miss, not an injury or fatality. There were no cars in the road so I was able to swerve out of the way before the car struck us. I've been able to talk with many of the workmen who are working on these sites and they are typically not aware of the times kids will be on the road. They care about kids too. When they can, they move vehicles out of the way when they see the kids, but of course this is not always possible because big equipment is already set-up and running. This is not a complaint about a single construction site. This is an example of typical construction traffic faced daily by pedestrians and bikers along Middle Avenue. There is no signage along Middle about school hours. There appears to be no communication of school hours or safety routes to the people working there every day. We're fortunate to have this neighborhood improvement happening now and for the foreseeable future. I want to make this doesn't come at the expense of the safety of our residents, especially our kids. Please share how you plan to follow up on this issue after the meeting with Parents for Safe Routes. Thank you, Elena On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 8:35 AM, Elena Battles wrote: > Good morning, > > I am the parent of two Oak Knoll Elementary School students and a resident > of Central Menlo Park. Can you please tell me more about the intended > meaning of the school safety route signs posted along Middle Avenue? I'd > like to understand what our expectations should be as residents. In my > experience, Middle is not safe for kids. Construction trucks and cars > consistently block the bike lanes and force kids to ride their bikes into > traffic. Cars frequently miss pedestrian crosswalks because there are no > crosswalk lights or flags. > > Thank you in advance for your response. > Elena Battles > (image/jpeg attachment: Middle_Ave_Sept_21_2.jpg ) (image/jpeg attachment: Middle_Ave_Sept_21.jpg )
