Dear Mayor and Council members,
I am a Menlo Park resident, a parent of two children at Oak Knoll, a bike bus parent, and an active member of our local school community. My family lives on Cambridge Ave in Allied Arts, and we regularly join other parents to help bike and shuttle children between Oak Knoll, Hillview, and other neighborhood activities through the streets directly affected by the Allied Arts plan.
We urgently need real street safety. I urge you to approve Item H-2 tonight, but with two binding directives to staff:
First, the program must not exclude dangerous streets based on incomplete or inappropriate data. If access to the program is going to be determined by scoring criteria, the data must be accurate and the criteria must reflect actual risk. The current draft appears to gate access behind either a documented injury or inconsistent and incomplete speed data. That is not enough. Please direct staff to use accurate and appropriate speed measurements that capture the vehicles creating the greatest risk of serious injury or fatality. Dangerous streets should receive help before a child, cyclist, pedestrian, or resident is injured. At minimum, the program should allow access through other reasonable demonstrations of need.
Second, please launch a real pilot now. I strongly request that the City begin an immediate 90-day, low-cost, quick-build pilot starting with the full Allied Arts plan that SFMTA validated over 5 years. This should not be diluted into a smaller or symbolic version. The Allied Arts plan addresses a real safety problem on streets used every day by children and families.
Over the years, my family has had multiple near misses with our children on streets relevant to this plan. I have a 6 year old and a 10 year old. We bike these routes. We cross these streets. It should not take a serious collision before the City acts.
Please vote to approve a strengthened Item H-2 tonight, with clear direction to staff: use appropriate safety data; allow reasonable demonstrations of need, and launch the full Allied Arts quick-build pilot now.
Thank you,
Danielle Benecke
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