The new sidewalks are complete. The roadway has been resurfaced and painted with new striping that includes bike lanes. There are many new medians. Traffic signals and flow at the “Y” intersection has changed.

The medians have raised considerable discussion and concern.

• Most medians are quite high 8″ and very long
• Visibility for several medians is compromised – often conditions make them difficult to see
• Medians on the south side of the “Y” are not crossable by emergency vehicles (they were supposed to allow vehicles to cross over, with rolled curbs)
• Several medians are in the traffic flow lane, requiring for motorists to swerve or jog right
• On Santa Cruz, County compromised cyclist safety in order to accommodate the median at Palo Alto Way (bike lane’s traffic safety buffer was removed to allow for median)
• Since the construction of the medians, over a dozen incidents with cars have occurred

More info is also on the County’s DPW project webpage.hat

County Board of Supervisors are voting on a change to the speed limits for two roads:
–> Santa Cruz Ave North of the “Y” will change from 30 mph to 25 mph
–> Alameda de las Pulgas between Liberty Park and Valipariso changes from 30 mph to 25 mph

The request for lower speed limits has been a decades long process. Thanks to the continued efforts by many in the community we finally will have a slower and safer speed. This means all of Santa Cruz Ave from where it begins at Alpine Rd/Sand Hill Rd all the way to Downtown will be one speed now. A short 800′ section in county was a higher speed — this is being lowered to 25 mph to be safer and consistent.

The other change in speed is on Alameda de las Pulgas, where the speed will be lowered to 25 mph between Liberty Park and Valipariso. There have been a high and unacceptable accident rate in this section of Alameda and this lower speed is welcome as it will reduce injuries and be safer.

A problem is that the business district, between Liberty Park and Ashton, is a very on safe area, especially in that this area has a very high population of school children. It is an area that is surrounded by schools, 3 schools being just a block away way and the main route for Las Lomita students. County was asked to lower the Business District to 20 mph. Many surrounding cities have downtown business districts in the 20 mph and 15 mph speed range. Our business district, as short as it is, has a very chaotic configuration of multiple styles and angles for parking. Cars tend to speed through here, making it unsafe for pedestrians and kids crossing the road. Cyclists also are at high risk in this area, with multiple cyclists being hit by vehicles. An on going problem and unaddressed by a 25 mph speed limit.

So while a 20 mph speed is recommended for the business district and in sync with Menlo Park’s 20 mph speed, it is lacking any additional provisions to make it safer for kids and for motorists to be aware of kids. Avy Ave is posted as 15 mph from Sherman to Alameda, it also has several signs that show “School Zone – 15 MPH”. Yet Alameda in this same area has no school signage and doesn’t require a slower speed when children are present.

More info is also on the County’s DPW project webpage.hat

County DPW has posted that construction will start on September 16. You can read an article on Menlo Park’s news. The contractor doing the work for the project is RK Engineering. They have posted a Project Construction Notice that is worth reading.

More info is also on the County’s DPW project webpage.

On Thursday, August 15, the County’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) received an update on the Santa Cruz/Alameda safety project from DPW. The update was a major disappointment as virtually all of the safety issues we raised with Supervisor Ray Mueller were, more or less, ignored. This means a major setback for safety in our community and a major risk for cyclists, residents, and vehicles.

You can read more detail about the safety issues by clicking the main menu links on this website; however, as an example consider you are a cyclists riding from Sand Hill Rd north towards Downtown Menlo Park. As you approach the “Y” intersection with Alameda, you would expect to smoothly ride along the road and head up the northern portion of Santa Cruz. You would expect that vehicles would be kept safely away from your bike lane. That is not the case!! Instead, as you approach the “Y” intersection, NB vehicles in the Santa Cruz lane. right next to you, have to suddenly swerve into the space where your bike lane should have been. That means you as a cyclist also have to suddenly swerve up into a narrower bike area that is now smashed up against the curb. The 2′ bike buffer that our community worked hard to get is eliminated. And the overall traffic condition? Chaotic! Highly distracted drivers trying to negotiate the lane shift. Consider also that Alameda cyclists have to merge through this chaos in order get to the bike lane that is immediately to the left of the same Santa Cruz traffic lane.

Yes, that is right: The Northbound Santa Cruz Ave will have bike lanes – one on the left AND another on the right. With the chaos of this configuration and highly confused and distracted drivers trying to figure it all out, it is a given that this is a dangerous mix. If a vehicle delays in making that sudden shift to the right, they positioned to slam the new median right in front of them and if they miss that median then they are inline to crash into any cyclists that is Alameda bound.

On just the Santa Cruz NB lane alone, we have 5,000+ cars that will have to suddenly swerve to the right all with in about 40′ (about 1 second at 25mph) — that is a good definition of ‘sudden swerve’. We had this configuration prior to 2018 when the community designed a fix that eliminated the chaos, smoothed out the traffic flow, and produced a safer roadway for all users, including residents. DPW has thrown those 2018 safety gains out the window and re-implemented this dangerous road configuration; however, this time adding a ‘bike sandwich’ that borders the NB Santa Cruz lane with bikes on each side. Both bike lanes are blocked on one side with 8′ high concrete curbs – no way to go if a car or bike that makes even a minor adjustment in the lane.

Why does this matter. Virtually everyone that uses the “Y” intersection and all of the people that live along this part of the corridor knows that the 2018 changes were a huge success. Back then, DPW did not want to do that fix, but our community gathered hundreds of signatures and were able to get it done. It initially started out as a Safety Trial for the “Y”, but the success was huge and it was kept…. until now.

Before that safety trial, every property along that portion of Santa Cruz – virtually every property at the “Y” – have experienced property damaged from NB vehicles. How is that acceptable to have a road configuration that results in vehicles crashing into property? That property damage means people using the sidewalk are also at incredible risk. How is that acceptable?

That dangerous and chaotic condition has been re-stored by DPW. What is the rational for creating a significantly less safe roadway? No thought into safety for residents to access their property. No meaningful thought on how to improve bike safety. Ignoring the recommendations of a formal traffic engineering Pedestrian Safety Assessment. Our community members and other stakeholders on the project have invested 1,000’s of hours in trying to achieve meaningful and effective safety — it feels to some of us that the effort has failed – DPW is going to do what DPW wants to do. Forget the joint effort, the real life experience of the community, and any attempt to engage with community to learn what we know — being ghosted by DPW is frustrating to say the least.

Since last October, many neighbors have been trying to work with our County Supervisor, Ray Mueller to DPW to address errors in the design and to inlucde critical safety changes. In April the entire County Board of Supervisors agreed and a resolution was put in place that DPW would engage directly with our community and discuss the needed changes to the Santa Cruz/Alameda road design. This contact DPW has not occurred yet.

Several of us in the community asked for updated road design plans and only recently did DPW finally provide us the document: It is a PDF and is available here: Santa Cruz/Alameda Road Design

DPW posted their new design mid February: DPW Feb Design
NOTE: While we had asked for updated design plans and worked for many months to get them, the plans provided appear to be older plans. DPW apparently will not provide the community current plans. Ray Mueller, in August, stated that DPW will provide ‘As Built’ plans after the project is completed. —- That said, we are still trying to get the plans that are current and that will be used in the construction.