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.