The Oak Grove bike lane is a good idea on paper, but needs some minor tweaking in the vicinity of El Camino to work well. 1) The throughput of Oak Grove westbound at El Camino has gone way down, causing backups on Oak Grove during peak periods, and often during non-peak periods. Why? When westbound cars wait to turn left behind the mattress store or into the parking plaza, you used to be able to zip around them on the right. No longer. This is easy to solve - put up "no left turn" signs at both locations. People can go down to the fire station/Gray's Paints and enter the parking plaza from that direction. There is a precedent - on westbound Valparaiso just west of El Camino, there is a "no left turn" sign into the first driveway which is Coldwell Banker. 2) I've almost been hit by large trucks who are unable to maintain lane when traveling westbound at the chicane where the lane takes a sudden S-turn. This turn is too tight for a large truck to make without crossing over into oncoming traffic. Also easy to solve - remove the tree that was the reason for this tight chicane. With the tree gone, the transition can be more gradual and trucks will be able to stay in their lanes. Making the transition more gradual will also allow cars to travel at a normal speed, reducing the backup which happens as cars slow waaaay down when they hit this curve. Sue Kayton 1854 Doris Drive Menlo Park kayton_at_(domainremoved) Received on Thu Sep 21 2017 - 17:56:36 PDT
