Menlo Wants to Stop Traffic at Santa Cruz and Elder

$291,000 in traffic signal changes coming to intersection near school

Source: by Sandy Brundage, Almanac Staff

The Menlo Park City School District and the city will each chip in $120,000 to add a new traffic light at the intersection of Santa Cruz Avenue and Elder Avenue, and take away a pedestrian signal in front of Hillview Middle School at that intersection.

The lighted, in-pavement pedestrian signal will shift to the corner of Santa Cruz Avenue and Olive Street.

The city will spend an additional $15,000 for staff time and $35,000 to create a right hand turn lane from Elder Avenue to Santa Cruz Avenue.

First things first, though. At the request of the City Council at its Feb. 15 meeting, Menlo Park will also spend $1,000 to create a "keep clear" zone in front of Atkinson Lane, a residential street that intersects Santa Cruz Avenue about a block from the school.

During the meeting, three Atkinson Lane residents expressed concern about traffic problems worsening if the city installs the traffic signal, saying it's already hard to pull in and out of their driveways.

"I do know that if we want to get into our driveway on Atkinson we're stopping all the traffic behind us and we can't go, because the cars are in front of our street," Anny Levin told the council. "Traffic is much more dangerous at that particular intersection than where it is now (on Seymour Lane)."

The residents asked the city to postpone the changes until it knows whether there truly is a problem with the current arrangement.

Data provided by the Menlo Park police department shows five accidents occurred at intersections around Hillcrest Middle School during the past two years. Three happened at the juncture of Santa Cruz Avenue and Olive Street, while Elder Avenue and Atkinson Lane had one each where those streets joined Santa Cruz Avenue.

Engineering services manager Chip Taylor told the council existing traffic issues would already benefit, and that waiting could make the problems worse. "The student population is going to slowly increase over the next four to five years," he said. "It takes time to get a signal in place, so if you wait until you see the problem, it could be six to eight months before you can get the signal installed."

The school district would like to see the changes made sooner rather than later since it plans to use bond money to pay for its half of the costs, Mr. Taylor said, and hopes to have construction start by May 2012.

The council unanimously approved the changes, as well as creating a "keep clear" zone as soon as possible.

inMenlo -- a Hyper Local Blog

My dear friends, Linda Hubbard and Chris Gulker have been Blogging in a new "Hyper-local" Blog about life here in Menlo Park.

They are featured in the January 6th edition of the Almanac.

Here is a link to the Blog -- inMenlo.com

Here is their story --

News - Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Menlo Park blog captures local life, people, vignettes

by Sean Howell


It's a cool winter's day here in Menlo Park, California, latitude 37 degrees, 44 minutes; longitude 122 degrees, 11 minutes. The sky is beginning to show some sneaks of light in the east there, over the Stanford foothills.

The shops on Santa Cruz Avenue are opening up, getting ready for business. They're already open at Peet's at the corner of Santa Cruz and University, serving steaming coffee to the early risers on their way to work, or on their way home from an early morning walk.

Dan Dowler over at Cook's Seafood is preparing crabs; he's optimistic about this year's catch after talking with some of the fishermen in Half-Moon Bay and seeing the first haul. Dr. Bill, a chiropractor and a familiar face around town from his days coaching Little League and chairing the Chamber of Commerce, is greeting patients in his practice in the Sharon Heights Shopping Center.

A custom '53 Corvette is sitting in one of the public lots; a lone protester is standing on Sand Hill, holding a "Condi lied" sign; some road work's going on at one end of Sharon Park.

And in a Sharon Heights home, Linda Hubbard Gulker, Chris Gulker and Scott Loftesness are blogging about it, all of it — that is, assuming they're not out on the street already, talking to their favorite local people, poking around in unfamiliar territory.

They are the founders of a "hyper local" community blog called InMenlo (inmenlo.com), and they're striving to convey some sense of what it's like to live here. While the news divisions of traditional print newspapers, including this one, tend to focus on what's changing — warning residents of land development proposals or pending school expansion, for instance — InMenlo sketches the community, and the people in it.

"We love unearthing characters, scouting out stories," said Mr. Gulker, who handles most of the photography for the site (with rare exceptions, each story comes with a photo).

They catalog local people, hang-out spots, community events, trends, and weather reports. They give shopping tips. They look into complaints of increased ticketing by police — but not too deeply.

"We aren't a news site," said Ms. Gulker, who does most of the writing. "We want to focus on people."

There's not much "negative" news, the blog's founders admit, though they did post a blurb about a community meeting on preventing teen suicide. Though they say they would welcome contributors, they're wary of the blog getting hijacked by political activists.

The stories tend to focus on Sharon Heights and the downtown area, where the founders spend most of their time, though there have been a few posts from east of Middlefield Road. At the moment they are seeking topical rather than geographic diversity, though they say they will look to expand their scope as the number of contributors grow.

For now this is just a hobby; Mr. Loftesness pays the fees to maintain the site out of pocket. Visitors fluctuate wildly day-to-day, a sign that the site hasn't yet gained a toehold, according to Mr. Gulker.

Still, for a project that started on a whim, the bloggers have been remarkably persistent, posting at least one short story per day. The goal is to establish a "daily cadence" that readers can get used to, Mr. Loftesness said.

Ms. Gulker's favorite stories are the ones about places that people tend to overlook. She particularly enjoyed writing about the cemetery on Santa Cruz Avenue, where the street kinks.

"For most people, it's just noise, it's part of the landscape," she said. If her story gets people to pause for a moment the next time they pass the cemetery, she's done her job.