Dear City Council Members, I am a resident of the Seminary Oaks neighborhood. I am extremely sympathetic to the Willow Ave traffic crisis and the fall out facing the Willows neighborhood - my child attends school and after school activities at Upper Laurel and has many friends in the neighborhood. I need to get highly creative about how to navigate around and when. I agree that the city should be taking measures to help mitigate the cut through traffic. However, I am shocked and concerned by the language in your Report 17-294-CC that apparently is suggesting some seemingly hasty, unstudied (not backed by hard traffic data studies) calming measures to the Willows WOULD (not may or might) have potentially significant consequences to the surrounding neighborhoods. Yet the city intends to do nothing about it unless directed by the City Council. To be exact the wording I'm referring to is: "Each of these changes would have potentially significant unintended consequences; including drawing more traffic to Willow Road, University Avenue or other cut-through routes in the area, such as Ringwood Avenue, Santa Monica Avenue, Santa Margarita Avenue, etc. Staff does not plan to pursue any of these options at this time, unless explicitly directed by the City Council at this or future meetings." This is unacceptable. To solve some taxpaying citizens problems, knowing full well it will cause others more serious problems than already occurring, and having no plan at all to even attempt to mitigate it, should not be allowed. Coleman is already a serious hazard to walkers and bikers. Santa Monica is a safe routes avenue to Middlefield that my son uses to go to Hillview. There are no sidewalks in the Seminary Oaks neighborhood at all - so everyone needs to walk or bike in the road. There are few stop signs and no speed bumps on Santa Monica. Santa Monica Avenue is used by the Fire District to exit their main station. Currently, there is already a serious increase of traffic during commute hours and significant speeding and rolling through of stop signs next to Seminary Park and on Gilbert at Santa Monica and Santa Margarita. I have refrained from calling the police at every observance of speeding each day past my house, only because I am sympathetic to the frustrations of the drivers and do not want to impose on our police department. Obviously, by the language included in the report, the city sees the inevitable exacerbation of the current traffic problems in this neighborhood due to the Willows calming measures. Perhaps I should be phoning every day to complain, so that the data is in the system for our neighborhood as well? I hate to think only the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but perhaps this is indeed the case. No solution is perfect, however, I would sincerely hope that the City would conduct a comprehensive study of the Willows traffic problem and have plans to address any subsequent issues that are created by calming measures rather than allowing the city to "ignore them unless told otherwise." Please think about this issue as comprehensively as possible and specifically include language to that effect in Report 17-294-CC. Thank you for your consideration, Sincerely, Sara & Eric Filipek 787 Gilbert Avenue Menlo Park, CA 94025 Received on Sun Dec 03 2017 - 19:24:32 PST
