Safer 4 Us

Welcome to Safer4Us.com. This website’s purpose is to be a community resource for information and discussion on safety topics and actions that will improve our community and quality of life. Primarily, this website focuses on pedestrian, residential, cyclists, and vehicle safety issues.


September 2024: Start to Santa Cruz/Alameda Safety Project

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.

August 15 -BPAC Update on Santa Cruz/Alameda Project

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.

July-August 2024 Update

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.


Santa Cruz/Alameda Safety Project — Info, Discussion, Details

To try and discuss the entire project all at once is difficult. It seems best to focus on specific corridor locations that people have the most concerns and where obvious safety issues exist. So, from North to South there is discussion on the following locations: (Click links in left column)

1: Liberty Park & Alameda intersection

2: Northern Half of the Alameda – Santa Cruz “Y” intersection

3: Southern Half of the Alameda – Santa Cruz “Y” intersection

4: Palo Alto Way and Santa Cruz @ Sand Hill



Overall – What is changing?

The corridor has a speed problem – designed for 45+ speeds, speeding has and is a major problem. Just way too fast for a residential area. Too fast for the children and seniors. Too fast for cyclists to be safe. Way to fast for residents to access their own driveways. The “Y” intersection is part of that problem. It has the clam to fame of being one of the most dangerous intersections in San Mateo County. Below is a simple animation of what the Y looked like 15+ years ago and what county contractors are proposing. It focusses on crosswalks, size of intersection, and medians.

Please review the noted issues listed on the graphics – those are issues that make this intersection so dangerous and that the Santa Cruz / Alameda safety task force identified and had the goal of fixing. Project contractors have not delivered, even with a budget now of over $6M. Please see the webpages that discuss both the North portion of the Y and the South Portion of the Y for what these contractors have proposed and the feedback from our community.


Over time, this Safer4Us.com website will grow and expand to include other locations that have safety issues in which the community wishes to engage the neighbors in helping city/county provide competent and effective actions to address safety concerns promptly. To see how you can help identify other safety focus locations, please visit the West Menlo Park page and leave a comment on that page.


Ways to Help

Donate by credit or debit card or Paypal.  It’s not tax deductible but it does help fund community events and cover the costs of the many things we all do here, both on safety and on disaster preparedness.  The University Park Neighborhood (UnivPark.org) and RonSnow are helping with this donate button so you will see both names on the secure donate form.

 
Money collected is used to cover the cost we incur. This includes web hosting, associated software, printing of posters, flyers, and similar signage, community info events, meetings, and related costs. Thank you for acknowledging the work.