planning& transportation commission

_____________________________________________________________________ City of Palo Alto July 25, 2012 of 46

PLANNING& TRANSPORTATION 1

COMMISSION 2

MINUTES 3 4

==================MEETINGS ARE CABLECAST LIVE ON GOVERNMENT ACCESS CHANNEL 26======================

Wednesday, July 25, 2012 Meeting 5 6:00 PM, Council Chambers 6

1st Floor, Civic Center 7 250 Hamilton Avenue 8

Palo Alto, California 94301 9 10 11 ROLL CALL: 6:06 PM 12 13 Commissioners: Staff: 14 Eduardo Martinez – Chair Curtis Williams, Planning Director 15 Susan Fineberg – V-Chair Cara Silver, Sr. Assistant City Attorney 16 Samir Tuma – absent Steven Turner, Advance Planning Manager 17 Arthur Keller Chitra Moitra, Planner 18 Greg Tanaka Jaime Rodriguez, Chief Transportation Official 19 Mark Michael Rafael Rius, Transportation Engineer 20 Robin Ellner, Administrative Assoc. III 21 Greg Betts, Director Community Services 22 23

24 25 Chair Martinez: Ok we’re going to begin. Welcome all to the July 25, 2012, hearing of the Palo 26 Alto Planning and Transportation Commission. Secretary Ellner, please call roll. 27 28 Robin Ellner, Administrative Assoc. III: Vice Chair Fineberg, Commissioner Keller, Chair 29 Martinez, Commissioner Michael, Commissioner Tanaka, Commissioner Tuma. Five present, 30 with Commissioner Tuma absent. The only announcements for this evening is the cancellation 31 of the August 8th Planning and Transportation Commission meeting. 32 33 Chair Martinez: Ok, Robin I wanted to ask you about the transcriptions of our, for our minutes 34 out. How is that going, are we making progress and improving? 35 36 Ms. Ellner: We are making progress, we are improving since the request has been made that the 37 Staff/Commissioners, speak clearly into the microphones with limited interruptions and not 38 speaking over one another. It’s been a lot easier on the transcriptionists and getting much more 39 completely accurate document to us. 40 41 Chair Martinez: Great, thank you. And thank you all for that. Well it’s great to be back and I 42 wanted to thank Vice Chair Fineberg and Commissioner Keller for their great work in 43 substituting for me while I was not present and for Commissioner Tanaka in taking the role as 44 Vice Chair for one of those meetings. 45


Chair Martinez: We’re going to go to Oral Communications. This is the opportunity for 1 members of the public to speak on any item that’s not on tonight’s agenda. We have one speaker 2 card. Tonight’s agenda includes a review of the Community Service and Facilities Element of 3 the Comp Plan and review of the Arastradero Re-Striping plan. So if you want to speak on any 4 other item at this time, you have time to submit a speaker card. Yes. And now for Oral 5 Communications. 6 7 Vice Chair Fineberg: I have one card. Councilman Greg Schmid. 8 9 Greg Schmid, City Council Member: Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I just want to 10 follow up the Chair’s point. I have always found the detailed minutes from the Planning 11 Commission to be the best read in town. I think it’s a unique document that allows a group of 12 concerned and talented people to look in detail at the most important issues that the City faces 13 and its long term future. I think one of the great things about this Committee is the diversity of 14 perspectives that are brought to each issue. My understanding is that this is Commissioner 15 Fineberg’s last meeting and I’d just like to acknowledge that during her two terms, if there has 16 ever been a question about statutes, codes, rules, regulations, precedents, can be assured 17 Commissioner Fineberg would find it and bring it up. And I wanted to acknowledge the value of 18 that over the last five years. I continue to look forward in the future to riveting weekend reading 19 from the Commission. Thank you. 20 21 Chair Martinez: Thank you Council Member Schmid. And with that we’re going to, we’re going 22 to close Oral Communications. 23 24 UNFINISHED BUSINESS. 25 Public Hearing: 26 27 1. Comprehensive Plan Amendment: Review of Vision Statement, Goals, Policies and 28

Programs of the Community Services and Facilities Element. 29 30 Chair Martinez: Item Number 1 is a review by the Commission of the Draft Community Services 31 and Facilities Element for the Comprehensive Plan update. We’re going to take a little bit 32 different approach in how we do this and I’m going to try to introduce this item and Staff will be 33 here to fill in the blanks and answer questions that members of the public and Commissioners 34 may have. I wanted to do it this way because this is not the first time that the Commission has 35 heard this item or has commented on the Community Services and Facilities Element. In fact, it 36 was probably a year ago that we first as a subcommittee began working on the update to this 37 Element, and I have to admit that I was terrified when the Community Services Director started 38 talking about healthy lifestyles. I was sure we were getting into policies and programs about 39 peanut butter and celery sticks. He showed us, and continued to work along with us for that year 40 that it’s much more than that. And through the work of Director Betts and his Staff, the 41 departments that work with him, the community stakeholders, Staff, and the Commission itself, I 42 feel that this has been our best work to date. 43 44 We have learned how to take the concerns of ourselves and the community and Staff and really 45 translate those concerns into object oriented policies and programs. I especially, in my absence 46 when this was heard last time, I was specially taken by the profound input that the Commission 47 and especially Commissioner Keller, as usual, but also Commissioner Michael gave in reviewing 48


this Element and in highlighting those issues that could be made even stronger and those items 1 that were missing from the Element as much as we had worked on it before. 2 3 In my pre-Commission notes I referred to the Community Service Element as a sponge. In that I 4 meant that it can take everything that we can throw at it and absorb it as to one more good idea 5 for our community. But now after several iterations of this, it’s time for us to let it go. It’s time 6 for us to stop wordsmithing and thinking of new things that it could be, but to focus on moving it 7 to the Council for their review with our support and with the acknowledgement of all the hard 8 work that so many in our community and in the Community Services Agency have given to this. 9 So, I want to stop at this point and give the Community Service Director Greg Betts an 10 opportunity to speak. Is he here? No? Ok. 11 12 Is there, then we’re going to before taking a round of Commission comments, open up the Public 13 Hearing. Do we have any speaker cards for this? Don’t have any. Ok. Then we’re going to 14 leave the Public Hearing open at this time and go to the Commission for their comments on the 15 work done following the previous review of the Draft Element before the Commission. 16 Commissioner Keller. And I’m not going to put a time limit on this. I want to see whether we 17 can get through this in one round before making a Motion. 18 19 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. So firstly I think that I agree with the Chair that this Element 20 has gone through a lot of work and I think what we have reached is in the economic framework 21 referred to as decreasing marginal utility. And I think that although we could do more on it, 22 there are a lot of other Elements in the Comp Plan that also need our attention. So, it’s time to, 23 to converge and get this to Council. 24 25 I will confine my specific remarks to the few comments on the, comments, responses to the 26 comments I made in the June 6, 2012, meeting which is, I’m not sure of the attachment number 27 here, but essentially it’s at the back of this document. It’s Attachment C, except it’s not labeled 28 as such. I guess it is labeled, it’s just, it’s labeled as such under the staple so it’s hard to find, see 29 Attachment C. Thank you. So in particular, comments five and six. So let me deal with 30 comment six first and, and I think that if we reword the proposal that I have under Policy C4.7. 31 What I said is “charge new developments to full cost of park and community facility impacts as 32 calculated by periodic Nexus survey,” survey, study, sorry. As calculated by a periodic Nexus 33 study. If we instead reword that as “charge new developments the appropriate cost of,” or 34 “appropriate share of cost of park and community facility impacts,” or the appropriate, whatever, 35 some wording like that, “their appropriate share of park and community facility impacts” or 36 simply, “charge new developments park and community facility impact fees as calculated by a 37 periodic Nexus study.” That I think would be better than leaving the Element alone. And the 38 benefit of doing that is that gives us Comp plan basis for periodic Nexus study, which was my 39 main intent and contrasted with merely the full cost. Certainly my preference is to charge the 40 full cost and I’m wondering what Staff thinks about that, “charge new developments a park, a 41 park and community Staff facilities impact fees as calculated by periodic Nexus study.” Is that 42 something Staff feels comfortable with? 43 44 Steven Turner, Advance Planning Manager: We do. We think that’s an improvement. 45 46 Commissioner Keller: Yes. So, if maybe we, when there’s an eventual Motion if that could be 47 added to the Motion to, to add that, that would be helpful. 48


The second thing is I think that there may be a similar concern with respect to number five. 1 Comment five, where I had the word “maximum,” but let me tell you what my intent was and 2 there is Quimby Act dedication it is the, it is the policy of Palo Alto to charge a Quimby Act. 3 To, to require that developments of over a certain size that satisfy for the Quimby Act do make 4 parkland available. So that is already our policy, but what I’m talking about here is that, is 5 several factors. First of all, I want that land to be usable so the biggest usable land that could be 6 done under the Quimby Act so because sometimes the way that’s configured might not be very 7 usable, so configuring in such a way that this is the maximum useable that could be obtained 8 under the parkland dedication Quimby Act. 9 10 Also, we have had discussions in this Commission as the question of who is going to be, who is 11 maintaining these little park, these little pieces of park that are done by the Quimby Act. And 12 we’ve talked often about the idea that without having specific plan for how these pieces of park 13 are maintained and different policies that it puts the future of these little parks which are useful, 14 and little parks are better, more useful than no little parks, but understanding how they should be 15 maintained is why that was there and I think, I don’t think that that’s controversial. 16 17 And the last element here is to encourage consolidation of Quimby Act land dedication for 18 adjacent or nearby developments. And that’s perhaps a new idea and what I was suggesting is 19 that there are multiple developments that are near each other that we might be able to have if 20 there are multiple developments occurring at the same, in comparable in time, you know, 21 proximate in time, that are physically near each other, that it might be possible with appropriate 22 land swaps instead of having a couple of disbursed Quimby Act dedication lands to try to 23 consolidate and have bigger piece of land that might be more usable in that way. 24 25 So, I think that this is basically addressing something that I think is within the current policy. I, I 26 don’t think, I disagree with the idea that this is change an existing policy from expanding our 27 traditional opportunities in existing parks because I’m referring to our existing policy with 28 respect to Quimby Act. And it doesn’t drive us towards policy of parkland application we 29 already have an acquisition. We already have that as a policy through the Quimby Act, namely 30 we have our, we have a Quimby Act dedication that happened as a result of the Elks Club 31 redevelopment and we’ll be seeing more of that in the future. So, I think that this allowed, that 32 this allows us to do that and this has nothing to do with in lieu fees. The issue is I believe, and 33 correct me if I’m wrong that the developers pay in lieu fees in addition to the Quimby Act 34 dedication and perhaps somebody could enlighten me on that. In the Elks Club redevelopment 35 did they pay in lieu fees? I mean did they pay park impact fees as well as Quimby Act 36 dedication? 37 38 Curtis Williams, Planning Director: I don’t recall the specifics on that. 39 40 Commissioner Keller: But we haven’t had any (interrupted) 41 42 Mr. Williams: We don’t generally have them pay both fees unless, yeah, I don’t think we have 43 anyone that pays both and Quimby. 44 45 Commissioner Keller: I think that the Quimby Act has only applied to one development, namely 46 the Elks Club. No development has come since. Is that right? 47


Mr. Williams: Well the, the Edgewood Plaza ten residential units and that, but they satisfied it 1 with their, parkland that was on the site. 2 3 Commissioner Keller: Right and I’m not even sure that the Edgewood Plaza is subject to the 4 Quimby Act because of, because it wasn’t a large enough development. 5 6 Mr. Williams: It’s not subject to the requirement to actually provide acreage. It would require a 7 fee or it alternatively could provide acreage if it’s accepted by the City and that was worked out 8 on that. 9 10 Commissioner Keller: Right, thank you. So what I was talking about here is dealing with the 11 existing Quimby Act law and trying to make that as, statute, and try to make that as useable as 12 possible. So I’m wondering if Staff have any comments on ways that we can reword this, 13 because the other program that was in there basically talked about getting rid of the Quimby Act, 14 and maybe that’s what we want to do, but I’m not sure whether the Quimby, exactly how this 15 works in terms of the Quimby Act and in lieu, and park impact fees. So does Staff have any 16 further comment? 17 18 Mr. Turner: No, we don’t have any further comment at this time. We could perhaps work with, 19 with the Subcommittee before the final language perhaps goes to City Council in the fall for 20 review, but that’s something that we can consider at that point. 21 22 Commissioner Keller: Ok. I’d also be happy to continue to dialogue with you further if you want 23 to figure out how to wordsmith this in a way that more indicates my intent. The other Program 24 4.9.2 that, that I was trying to replace, is, basically says, “assess the value and cost of new parks, 25 plazas, and other green spaces that are less than half an hour, half an acre in size and meet the 26 needs of surrounding neighborhoods.” And to me the main, main such spaces whether they’re 27 existing ones but the main such new spaces are Quimby Act ones. And so to me that this seemed 28 to be changing policy from the existing Quimby Act policy, and so I, I’m, you know I’m think 29 that in terms of this description here where we’re talking about new plazas, places, and other 30 green spaces this seemed to basically try to get rid of the Quimby Act and to me that’s a policy 31 change that’s dressed up in a Program without really being clear and I think that the wording I 32 have is not a policy change, it’s actually expressing the current policy of the Council. So, that’s 33 why I’m concerned about this. Thank you. 34 35 Chair Martinez: Steven, how do you want to go about addressing these proposed revisions? 36 37 Mr. Turner: Well certainly the Commission may as part of their Motion include direction to Staff 38 about specific changes that they would like to see in the language that would then get forwarded 39 to Council. The Commission may also want to reconvene the Community Services and Facilities 40 Subcommittee members to look at specific language changes if those cannot be specifically 41 identified at tonight’s meeting and then we could report back to the Commission, you know, at a 42 later date. So there’s, there’s a number of ways that we could, we could handle those types of 43 comments. 44 45 Cara Silver, Senior Assistant City Attorney: Chair Martinez? Cara Silver, Senior Assistant City 46 Attorney. I also wanted to add that of course the City is embarking on a review of all of its 47 impact fees and updating Nexus studies for park fees and other fees and so it might be 48


appropriate at that time to fold in those types of concerns into that ongoing study. And so you 1 might want to just have a general program that will address the comments that Commissioner 2 Keller has raised. And we can work administratively on some language. 3 4 Chair Martinez: That sounds fine. Are you ok with that? 5 6 Commissioner Keller: Well certainly the first item is, the first item I brought up does support the 7 general Nexus fees and for the Community Services and parkland I’m not sure any other ones are 8 relevant to this section of the Comp plan. With respect to the Quimby Act thing I think that it 9 seems that the sense of C4.9.2 is written in such a way that it makes it seem like Quimby Act is a 10 bad thing and what I wrote makes it seem like Quimby Act the existing policy is a good thing. 11 So I’m not sure. That’s, that’s, that’s the level of concern that I have is, is the wording of this, 12 basically the value and cost benefit is, is different. 13 14 Chair Martinez: Ok. Then I suggest we take it up as a Subcommittee. We don’t know yet. Me 15 and a person to be named later. Ok. 16 17 Before we go onto our Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Commission (IBRC) members, I wanted to 18 briefly say that we didn’t fully take up the idea of cost benefit. There is mention in some 19 circumstances using a cost benefit analysis, but I think not as had been discussed or envisioned 20 in terms of setting priorities. I think the discussion that you all had last time certainly sent a clear 21 message and we do reference the IBRC Study as a policy or a program and that’s new. And we 22 mention infrastructure I think eight times in this, but the Community Service Director pointed 23 out that Community Services isn’t about what things cost. And this Element is more of a 24 qualitative analysis and recommendations, but yet our policies and programs and even our vision 25 where we state this generation must invest is certainly influenced by those considerations but 26 we’re looking at it as an investment that does include fiscal concerns and it does include the hard 27 work that’s going to be required by everybody to make these priorities. So, there is a place in a 28 following Element for us to talk about cost benefits and leveraging our investments, which we 29 also do here, but it’s not taken with the sort of strident endeavor that some would like to see in us 30 getting the best dollar value for what we invest in community services and programs. I’m going 31 to ask Commissioner Tanaka. 32 33 Commissioner Tanaka: Thank you. So, first I do want to thank the Subcommittee and 34 everyone’s work on this it’s definitely come a long way, so thank you Staff as well. I also 35 believe in the idea of larger utility so I think it is time to move this forward. I was kind of 36 preempted on infrastructure if that’s, that’s fine so I think we could probably follow that up, 37 follow that up on the next Element. 38 39 One quick comment I did have is actually more of a question to Staff, or maybe the 40 Subcommittee, is Commissioner Keller and myself made a comment about trying to make better 41 utilization of Section C 1.7, and I was wondering if, I looked back at the comments that were 42 addressed and this is one comment which Commissioner Keller and I made last time. But I 43 couldn’t see where it was covered or addressed. Can Staff or Subcommittee tell me where that 44 was addressed? C 1.7. 45 46 Mr. Turner: Commissioner Tanaka can you repeat the question please? 47


Commissioner Tanaka: Sure. So last time we talked about, and this is I think only Commissioner 1 Keller and myself talked about this, was on C 1.7 and the fact that Palo Alto is a fairly expensive 2 place and a dollar here in Palo Alto doesn’t go as far as a dollar somewhere else. And I was just 3 wondering if there was in the, in the response to comments from June 6th, where was that 4 comment addressed? I looked through all the items. I didn’t find it in there. I was just 5 wondering if it was missed or maybe it was addressed and just not listed. 6 7 Chair Martinez: Commissioner, for the sake of everyone present, can you read the Policy and 8 then state what your question was? 9 10 Commissioner Tanaka: Sure, okay, so the Policy is “support and promote County, City, and 11 nonprofit services addressing the needs of the low income and un-housed community, especially 12 in the areas of temporary housing, food, clothing, healthcare, mental health, and transportation.” 13 The Program is “the City should work with Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, nonprofit 14 agencies, and other organizations to define roles and responsibilities in the comprehensive 15 provision of temporary shelter, food, clothing, and transportation for those in need.” 16 17 Mr. Turner: Commissioner Tanaka, I don’t see that Staff had addressed your specific concern 18 from the meeting, from the last meeting for the review of this. So we will take a look at that 19 again and provide some suitable response. 20 21 Commissioner Tanaka: Great, thank you. 22 23 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Michael. 24 25 Commissioner Michael: So I would first like to express some sincere and profound appreciation 26 to the Staff and the members of the Subcommittee, Chair Martinez and Vice Chair Fineberg for 27 their hard work in coming up with the revised draft which reflects, I think, substantial 28 improvements from what we saw in the prior draft. And I think it’s really, it’s really excellent. 29 So thanks for your attention and the quality of your, of your work. 30 31 I was looking also at the memo from Chitra Moitra which, which explained all the work that was 32 done and I had one question that actually did relate to infrastructure. There’s a reference on Page 33 five of the Report under “other changes,” which notes a decision by the Subcommittee and Staff 34 to place all “management of the City infrastructure program related Polices and Programs within 35 the revised Governance Element of the Comprehensive Plan.” But at the same time looking 36 through Section C3 there continued to be a number of references to infrastructure management. 37 So I didn’t understand what had happened what that change was actually implemented or what 38 was intended there? 39 40 Mr. Turner: Well the sense is that we felt that there were Policies and Programs relating to 41 Community Services and Facilities and infrastructure that were very appropriate to include 42 within this particular Element. What we wanted to try to do is have the discussion, Polices and 43 Programs relate to infrastructure globally beyond what would be considered in Community 44 Services and Facilities to be discussed in a whole as in the Governance Element, but we felt that 45 since Community Services and Facilities does deal, you know, by its, by its name, facilities, that 46 it was appropriate to address infrastructure in a limited more specific way within this Element 47


but have a larger, broader discussion about infrastructure and long term infrastructure goals 1 throughout the City in the Governance Element. 2 3 Commissioner Michael: Ok, so I think that’s a good call. I had a just one comment out of the 4 entire document that related to any kind of language. Let’s see if I can, and actually it wasn’t, 5 wasn’t really one of language, but it was sort of one of, one of philosophy and there was a, in C 6 3.6.2 is a new Program, “strive to provide some elements of universal access to play equipment 7 at all City parks when parks are renovated or built,” and just as a matter of philosophy sort of 8 attempting to do something or striving to do something is different from doing it. So, I’m in 9 favor of doing it. But I think it’s just excellent, so thanks for your hard work. 10 11 Chair Martinez: Thanks Mark. Community Services Director Betts is in the audience, called on 12 you earlier. Would you care to say a few words? Thank you. 13 14 Greg Betts, Director Community Services: Good evening Chair Martinez, Greg Betts, Director 15 of Community Services. I apologize for being late. I’m trying to balance or juggle three 16 meetings tonight for Rinconada Park, and Cubberley, and here so I, I apologize for running late. 17 I think that this draft does take our best effort at incorporating all of the comments of the 18 Commission, it certainly is, it greatly expands language having to do with access for special 19 needs communities, for expanding the inclusion of arts, culture, the sciences, and getting a better 20 representation from some of our partnership organizations. We’re extremely pleased that during 21 the process we had as much input as we did from the teen community, both from the Teen Arts 22 Council and participants from various high schools in the community meetings and I’d be glad to 23 address any questions you may have. Thank you. 24 25 Chair Martinez: Thank you Greg. Vice Chair Fineberg. 26 27 Vice Chair Fineberg: I’d like to start my comments tonight by saying that it’s been a pleasure to 28 be on the Subcommittee reviewing this chapter of our Comp Plan. I joined it towards the end of 29 its work and I was very impressed by the amount of work that our Staff had done, both Planning 30 Staff and Community Services. And even though this was supposed to be not something done in 31 a limited scope update with very little resources and compared to other parts of our Comp Plan 32 very little time, they made some quantum shifts adding some pretty significant new programs, 33 significant in terms of their value to the community. They did it with a tremendous amount of 34 input from the Parks and Recreation Commission and as Mr. Betts just mentioned, some really 35 good stakeholder groups that typically don’t deal with land use and Comprehensive Plan speak. 36 So, you know, having teen groups and other groups like that participate in the Comprehensive 37 Plan update, they may not know that’s not what they did, but I think it’s a just a great thing to 38 make this a stronger part of our Comprehensive Plan that’s going to govern the land use and 39 many of the Guiding Principles, you know, out over the next ten to twenty years. 40 41 I want to echo some comments that Chair Martinez made. I know there were questions asked 42 about the cost benefits and that our programs have more of an emphasis on allowing our 43 priorities to come from cost benefit analysis out of our Comp Plan policies and programs. And 44 in working with particularly the Community Service Staff, I realized that yes and you know 45 when we review Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) that cost benefit is very high priority in 46 what we’re thinking about in helping give and craft good recommendations for Council, but I 47 realized and particularly in the Community Services Element that the costs are easy to quantify, 48


but the benefits are qualitative and we could hire economists to calculate them and make our 1 lives very complicated and not get any benefit from it. So for an example what’s the value to the 2 citizens of Palo Alto or Mother Nature to protect the habitat of the Snowy Plover or other 3 endangered species? It’s something we have to do to be good stewards of our parkland, but what 4 is it worth to us in dollars? And I’m not convinced it’s worth us spending money analyzing that 5 so I was willing to say, you know there’s just some things we’re not going to be able to tag a 6 number to and I can live with that and I think that’s the right decision. And so it really helped 7 me understand that maybe some of these things we just aren’t going to have cost benefit analysis 8 with dollars attached to everything. 9 10 I’d also like to say that there are a number of new programs that provide access for special needs 11 community, not just the physically disabled, but people with social, cognitive, and learning 12 disabilities. I think that’s a jump into a new space and I think a wonderful addition. And then in 13 comment to something that our City Attorney made regarding the new program to review the 14 Nexus studies, if I can get her attention for a moment? That’s ok. You had mentioned that the 15 City is undergoing a review? Is that new program something you would see that would remain 16 in Community Services, or does it belong in the Government Element? 17 18 Ms. Silver: Well certainly to the extent that impact fees are going to relate to parks, libraries, and 19 community services, it still belongs in this Element. 20 21 Vice Chair Fineberg: Ok, so what things on your list would the schools, I’m asking this because 22 when the Motion comes up I want to make sure I have language for either in the Motion or 23 amendments, would the school’s impact fees be in this section or that will be in other locations? 24 25 Ms. Silver: The school impact fees are set by the State and the City doesn’t have the ability to 26 impose additional impact fees. So our ordinance does not include an impact fee for schools, 27 that’s administered through the State. 28 29 Vice Chair Fineberg: Ok, would the Public Safety Impact Fees be appropriately added in the 30 Community Services Element? Not that we’re imposing them, but the Nexus studies and the 31 analysis? 32 33 Mr. Turner: I believe that we would want to include that within the study. I think it’s very 34 appropriate to take a look at that in the broader context of what the study will be looking at. 35 36 Vice Chair Fineberg: Ok. Are there any other Community Service related impact fees that we 37 are hypothetically allowed to levy that we can add, or would it be best to just tag on “and any 38 others that are appropriate?” 39 40 Ms. Silver: Yes, I think that just a general statement of “and examine other appropriate 41 Community Service Fees” would be a good statement for an Element that is really designed to be 42 a living document and new fees may come online in the next few years that we don’t anticipate 43 now. 44 45 MOTION 46 47


Vice Chair Fineberg: Thank you. I’d like to go ahead then and make a Motion and I wholly 1 expect that there will be a long laundry list of friendly amendments and welcome them. I’d like 2 to Move the Staff Recommendation that we, let me word it differently, let me start over. I’d like 3 to Move that the Planning Commission has reviewed the revised draft of the Community Service 4 and Facilities and recommends its inclusion in the Comprehensive Plan and that it include a new 5 program to review the Nexus studies and impact fees for all community services including parks, 6 libraries, public safety, and any other community service fees as appropriate. 7 8 SECOND 9 10 Chair Martinez: Ok, we have a Motion by Vice Chair Fineberg seconded by Commissioner 11 Keller. Would you like to speak to your Motion? 12 13 Vice Chair Fineberg: This Element goes a long way to defining the values of the City. I think 14 it’s done a great job and I’ve added the new program so that we can have it as part of our value 15 system that we review what we can charge and what we should be charging. The, that will be it. 16 Thank you. 17 18 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Keller. 19 20 Commissioner Keller: I agree that this is a, an important document, and I think that it will be a 21 valuable update to the Comprehensive Plan. Originally that program, the new program was 22 under Policy 4.7, but now that it’s been broadened we should figure out whether that’s a new 23 policy rather than a program. Cause under 4.7 it was specifically talking about Parks and 24 Recreation facilities. So, I think that the, the Subcommittee will have to think a little bit more 25 carefully about how to do that. So, may I suggest a few slight changes? 26 27 Chair Martinez: Certainly, go ahead. 28 29 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT 30 31 Commissioner Keller: So the first thing is that rather than requiring that that be a new program, 32 require that that be new, language along those lines be added in the appropriate place by the 33 Subcommittee. If that’s acceptable to the Maker? 34 35 Vice Chair Fineberg: I’m not sure our process will allow for that because my understanding and 36 maybe Staff can comment, is that the next step would be Staff will present it to Council. So I’m 37 not sure it’s going to come back to Subcommittee. 38 39 Mr. Turner: The Commission may choose to reform the Community Services Subcommittee to, 40 to include the comments that were made this evening and to review that as a committee with 41 Staff before it gets transmitted to City Council. 42 43 Commissioner Keller: May I? 44 45 Chair Martinez: That’s fine. 46 47


Commissioner Keller: Do we, do we want the Motion to say that or is that the Chair’s 1 prerogative? 2 3 Mr. Turner: I think it’s the Chair’s prerogative. 4 5 Commissioner Keller: Great, thank you. So, two other things that I’d like to add to this Motion. 6 So the, so first of all did you accept the wording change that I proposed Susan? 7 8 Vice Chair Fineberg: So your wording change is not that we recommend its inclusion in the 9 Comp Plan, but that we’re sending it back to the Subcommittee prior and then is it going to need 10 review again? 11 12 Commissioner Keller: No, I don’t think it needs further review by the Commission as a whole, 13 but that the Subcommittee word the actual, word the actual policy or program in the spirit of that, 14 of that, of those language. 15 16 Vice Chair Fineberg: I would rather leave that to Staff, that I think they can handle it, but either 17 way. So yes, I’ll accept it. 18 19 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT 20 21 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. The second thing, so the two other things are one, that Staff 22 in consultation with the Subcommittee revisit comment five and figure out the appropriate 23 language for comment five, appropriate language to considering comment five, not necessarily 24 adopting it, but considering it. Is that acceptable? 25 26 Vice Chair Fineberg: Considering comment five? Sure. 27 28 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT 29 30 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. So, and the second thing is in concert with what 31 Commissioner Tanaka recommended, is that review Policy 1.7 in consideration of Commissioner 32 Tanaka’s comments. 33 34 Vice Chair Fineberg: Yes, I guess I’m struggling with though if it’s not coming back to the 35 Planning Commission, is there some information that Staff or the Subcommittee has now that’s 36 different than what they had last week? 37 38 Commissioner Keller: I think that the problem is that the Staff didn’t have that submitted as a 39 separate comment it was part this, it was part of the meeting discussion and therefore didn’t get 40 tracked and responded to. 41 42 Mr. Turner: And if I may add Chair Martinez, I think Staff interpreted Commissioner Tanaka’s 43 comment as more of a comment rather than direction, so I think if we go back and review 44 Commissioner Tanaka’s specific comment I think we can, it will provide direction to Staff to 45 take some action to respond. 46 47 Vice Chair Fineberg: Ok. Yes, I’ll accept that. 48


Commissioner Keller: And that’s it, and I look forward to having this go to the Council and 1 eventually come back to us for, with their, with Council’s feedback. 2 3 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Michael. 4 5 Commissioner Michael: Yeah, I had a question and it may lead to an amendment if necessary but 6 on Page 16 there’s a caption which says, “Opportunities to develop new Parks and Recreation 7 facilities.” And this is underneath the Goal C4 under planning for the future, which refers to the 8 plan for the future which our parks, libraries, and community facilities and so on continue to 9 thrive and adapt to the growth and change of Palo Alto. But the caption on Page 16 referring to 10 recreation facilities seems to limit rather than expand the notion, and did you mean for that to be 11 community facilities? 12 13 Mr. Turner: Which policy or program are you looking (interrupted) 14 15 Commissioner Michael: Well it’s not a policy or program, it’s a caption. It’s, it’s right above the 16 C 4.7 Policy on 16 about two-thirds of the way down. So the word “recreation” seems 17 inadvertently to limit the scope of what follows. It should be “community” to be broader which 18 could include recreation, but if that was an inadvertent change I would make it a Motion, or 19 propose an amendment to change the word “recreation” to “community.” 20 21 Mr. Turner: From Staff’s perspective that seems appropriate. 22 23 FRIENDLY AMENDMENT 24 25 Commissioner Michael: Ok. That would be a friendly amendment. 26 27 Vice Chair Fineberg: I’ll accept it so that on Page 16 in the caption it would read “opportunities 28 to develop new parks and community facilities.” 29 30 Commissioner Keller: I also agree with that. I have a question of the proposer of that 31 amendment, and that is do you want to make the same change, I realize this is wordsmithing, but 32 do you want to make same change in Policy C 4.7, refers to Park and Recreation facilities. 33 34 Commissioner Michael: I don’t see the need to, to, to revise the proposed Policy because that’s 35 entirely specific to Parks and Recreation, but I think the broader caption should be more broadly 36 stated and consistent with the earlier reference. 37 38 Commissioner Keller: Thank you, and also there are other things there are other community 39 facilities under 4., under this grouping that are not just Parks and Recreation so, yes I certainly 40 accept that. Thank you. 41 42 VOTE 43 44 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Tanaka, no comments? Ok. Before we vote on this, I just want 45 to say that through this hard work we’ve taking a somewhat tired and consequential Element and 46 really made it one of the most vibrant important parts of the Comp Plan and I wanted to thank 47


everyone, especially Staff for that. So, let’s vote. All those in favor of the Motion say Aye. 1 Aye. Opposed, none. The Motion passes unanimously. Thank you all. 2 3 MOTION PASSED (5-0, Commissioner Tuma absent) 4 5 Vice Chair Fineberg: You have to say who. 6 7 Chair Martinez: Not if it passes unanimously. Ok, we’re going to take a 10 minute break. Thank 8 you. 9 10 COMMISSION TOOK A 10 MINUTE BREAK 11 12 NEW BUSINESS. 13 Public Hearing: 14 15 2. Arastradero Road Re-Striping Trial Project: Recommendation for the Permanent 16

Retention of the Arastradero Road Re-Striping Trial Project between El Camino Real and 17 Gunn High School for the re-striping of Arastradero Road from four lanes to a hybrid of 18 three lanes in some sections and various traffic calming and roadway modifications. 19

20 Chair Martinez: Ok ladies and gentlemen we are going to reconvene the Commission hearing. 21 Our next item, by the way we have quite a few speaker cards, but if there are others that care to 22 speak tonight you’re welcome to submit your card. Our next item on the, our agenda is the 23 review of the and a recommendation to Council on the Arastradero Re-Striping Trial Project. 24 we’re going to begin with a brief 12 minute Staff report followed by questions from the 25 Commission and then we’re going to go to members of the public who will have three minutes to 26 speak. And with that I’m going to open the Public Hearing at this time. Jaime, you want to 27 begin? 28 29 Jaime Rodriguez, Chief Transportation Official: Good evening Commissioner Martinez and 30 members of the Commission and actually Curtis Williams is going to start us off on the 31 presentation. 32 33 Curtis Williams, Planning Director: Thank you Chair Martinez and Commissioners. So I did 34 want to begin talking a little bit about the background, just bring us up to speed on the project 35 and sort of where it came from. This whole corridor, this is the second phase of a two phase 36 project for the Charleston Road/Arastradero Road Corridor and this is a particularly important 37 corridor because it not only provides key cross town vehicular traffic routes but also services a 38 lot of schools and parks and residential neighborhoods and such as well as more regional 39 facilities like the research park and Stanford. So that we have both access issues, safety issues, 40 and vehicle through put issues to deal with. 41 42 The initial study was begun in 2003 primarily as a response to the proposal for about 900 new 43 residential units in or adjacent to the corridor area and some like the Campus for Jewish Life 44 property and the projects on Meadow Circle and some of the things happening on El Camino 45 Real and so at that time the Corridor study was begun and in draft a negative declaration was 46 prepared. The purpose of the effort was to create primarily a safer corridor, safer for the users 47 that helps to mitigate the impacts of that expected development. It was in many was a forerunner 48


of the complete street concept that you’ve heard a lot about and is now embodied to some extent 1 in State law and is a planning practice and transportation practice throughout the nation of trying 2 to make multiple use of our streets for vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists. So we tried to balance 3 those transportation modes in this case, we have particular conflicts at the commute hour with all 4 the schools that are being serviced as well as the traffic trying to just get through crosstown so 5 that was a real focus was how to best balance those transportation modes. 6 7 The plan was, was actually, Council adopted a statement to initiate the plan as a mandate for 8 Staff to incorporate not only to develop the plan but then to incorporate the residential amenities 9 that are along the corridor and also to look at how this change would affect adjacent 10 neighborhoods, adjacent streets, through neighborhoods and trying to minimize impacts on those 11 areas. So the first phase was basically from Fabian Way to Alma, not actually all the way down 12 to San Antonio, and that was completed and the, was a two year trial and then ultimately the 13 Council approved it for permanent installation which is awaiting funding. 14 15 The second phase then is the Arastradero Road part of the improvements which is what we’re 16 here to talk to you about tonight. One key link is the middle of that whole project which is the El 17 Camino Real intersection which is clearly a bottleneck. It’s been kept separate largely because 18 we really need to work with the State on that. It’s a State highway and so we recognize there’s 19 some work to do there and Jaime will be talking a little bit about some of the differences, 20 differences in travel time that results largely because of congestion at that intersection. So this 21 phase one project again was two year implementation 2006 to 2008 and in 2008 Council adopted 22 the permanent implementation. 23 24 The Arastradero Road project began planning in 2008 subsequent to the first phase with initially 25 some changes to the Gunn High School driveway and to the parking lot there and then followed 26 shortly thereafter by the, the trial that you’re looking at now as its been modified initially four 27 lane to hybrid three lane with the traffic calming treatments and an original one year trial which 28 has been extended to two. We’re at the end of that second year; we’re here to look towards 29 permanent, whether to permanently implement all or part of the trial. So with that background 30 I’d like to turn it over to Jaime to provide the particulars and our recommendation tonight. 31 Thank you. 32 33 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you Curtis. Actually before I want to dive into the information here about 34 the project I want to provide a little more context for you and for the audience and for anyone 35 that’s listening at home just in general about what happens around Palo Alto when it comes to 36 vehicular movements and just traffic in general. And, you know, for the most part, you know 37 where I’m highlighting here on this graph for you is really the, the main vehicular thoroughfares 38 throughout the City of Palo Alto. You know we have of course 101 and 280 kind of to the east 39 and west, then we have some kind of north/south arterials along El Camino Real/Foothill 40 Expressway. Majority of these corridors again outside of the jurisdictional right of way of the 41 City of Palo Alto, but again the arteries that then feed into those begin to intermix with what the 42 City maintains, so if you look here you start to see how we begin to feed vehicular traffic kind of 43 across and through the City of Palo Alto. And these are arterials where we really focus vehicular 44 movements. And what we’re showing here in the orange for you is, you know, the residential 45 arterials that, you know, are poured for vehicular movements are predominantly they’re to serve 46 the community to serve, you know, the people kind of moving between business districts and 47 their homes and also to connect schools and other uses within the community and these are the 48


areas that we focused a lot of our more recent street type projects, you know, complete street 1 type projects themselves. But, where we’re focusing vehicular movements kind of east/west 2 across the City are really on those arterials. 3 4 There’s been significant investment by both the City of Palo Alto and really the region in 5 maintaining those connections. So we’re showing here are the active or recently approved 6 projects that are kind of occurring within the east/west vehicular corridor capacity so coming 7 forward again if you’re, you’ve driven down 101 lately you see the auxilliary construction 8 between Page Mill Road down to San Antonio eventually that goes all the way to Highway 85. 9 We’re working with the State and the County on visibility improvements for the interchange at 10 280. The County has received a significant grant from the Santa Clara Valley Transportation 11 Authority (VTA) and from Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for improvements 12 along El Camino, I’m sorry, around Oregon Expressway, I draw a blank there, and we’re making 13 significant improvements as a city along San Antonio Road to the periphery south periphery of 14 the City. 15 16 At the same time, you know, we’re trying to enhance those residential streets to really improve 17 the livability and quality of life of the community for the people that live on and along those 18 streets because we’re focusing so much of the vehicular movements kind of through those other 19 corridors. They are really vehicular based and some of the improvements that we have done 20 recently include, you know, the phase one improvements done on Charleston Road we are 21 making significant improvements over the summer on Park Boulevard, there’s a bike boulevard 22 through the corridor for bike usage. We recently completed biking improvements on Deer Creek 23 Road in partnership with Stanford University last year. We’re looking at improvements and 24 investments on California Avenue that’s of course something that went to the Council on 25 Monday. You may read a lot about it in the paper. We made improvements to Stanford/El 26 Camino. 27 28 The City is funding on its own a residential focus improvement at the Arastradero Road and 29 Oregon Expressway improvement to provide that connection for the bicycling community. And 30 if you look at Arastradero Road you see how that fits into that link of protecting the community, 31 protecting that corridor again for multiple uses not just vehicular, but really for bicycle and 32 pedestrian uses and transit uses. It’s really good to remember this because, you know again, we 33 really want to protect certain streets for multiple uses, you know, complete street type projects. 34 And there’s really some it would just make sense to focus vehicular movements and that’s what 35 we’ve been doing on some of the other arterials. 36 37 So now let’s kind of get back to the Arastradero Road project. So really in this current year that 38 just finished we really didn’t make too many improvements as far as civil improvements go, as 39 far as building the kind of things on the field. A lot of that happened over the first year. One of 40 the main reasons why the City Council approved the extension of the trial into the second year is 41 because so many of the improvements that we wanted to do in the first year didn’t happen until 42 the last half of that year. As a matter of fact one of the most critical improvements was a signal 43 modifications at Arastradero/Coulombe but that didn’t get finished until last summer, and so the 44 Council really felt that it was appropriate to extend that trial for an additional year because 45 mostly Gunn High School was also proposing bell schedules changes to have students start later 46 in the, into the, into the morning at the same time the Bowman International School, which is 47 located right adjacent to Terman Middle School at Terman and Arastradero, they also extended 48


their, their bell schedules an additional half hour to really stagger kind of vehicular movements 1 across Arastradero Road and the demand kind of over an hour’s time. 2 3 But we did of course make some corrections that we thought were appropriate in response to 4 concerns from the community within that first year. Those were really non-physical type 5 improvements; things that people didn’t really see but definitely things that people experience. 6 So we focused a lot of improvements on signal timing operations that we didn’t do in the first 7 year. Once again we talked about that new signal, that left turn movement at Arastradero Road 8 that we turned on last summer, right at the beginning of the school year. We actually 9 coordinated the traffic signals between Arastradero and Coulombe and Arastradero down at 10 Terman. That was something that we had not done before, there did not exist any previous 11 coordination between those two signals. At the same time as part of that coordination we did 12 make some adjustments to the way that the signal at Arastradero and Donald/Terman operated in 13 that it has what’s called an all pedestrian signal phase in the morning where for 45 minutes when 14 the crossing guard is there pedestrians move for only one interval of a cycle and all vehicle 15 movements stop while pedestrians move through the intersection. We did terminate that a little 16 earlier to allow coordination to begin between Coulombe and Arastradero Road. And then we 17 also made improvements down on the Charleston Road side at the Alma intersection in response 18 to concerns from the community about just people to get across the tracks during preemption 19 events in the morning. 20 21 So what we’re showing here is just kind of in general what traffic is like on, on a, on an average 22 daily basis kind of focusing down Arastradero and these last three bubbles here, you can see that 23 vehicle volumes ranged between about 19,000 to 20,000 vehicles a day and if you kind of just 24 spot focusing it, you know, there’s, you know, definitely been a little bit of an increase along the 25 corridor that’s consistent with a lot of the regional growth that we’ve been seeing just in general 26 across the City. But for the most part also, you know, things are kind of the same depending on 27 where you’re looking and those kind of changes and kind of growth factors kind of are consistent 28 all around the area of Arastradero. 29 30 But when we look at Arastradero what really comes to concern is the morning operation, you 31 know, people really most, most focus on how things work when people are trying to get to 32 school, people are trying to get to work through the corridor itself. And what we show here are 33 just average or the peak hour volumes in that morning commute. And you see here that from the 34 pre-project trial in black to the blue just like the average daily traffic there’s definitely been a 35 little bit of an increase and a little more of an increase in, you know, along Arastradero Road, but 36 again growth, growth rates are consistent with the region as well as, you know, increases in 37 population to the different schools such as Juana Briones. 38 39 Bicycle uses though of course has continued to rise just like vehicle uses has, and that’s, that’s a 40 positive thing for the community. And what we’re showing here is just in general over the last 41 decade how bicycle usage has increased at the various schools. And so what you’re seeing here 42 is just last year you see a little over 900 vehicles, or 900 bicyclists kind of traveling to different 43 schools in the morning. That amount of bicycle traffic which is on a lot of different streets, 44 Arastradero and Maybell and other streets, that’s equal almost in volume to the amount of 45 volume that’s just on Arastradero Road itself, so again, a lot of activity happening in that area 46 really kind of pushing the need for why we have to have kind of complete street type additional 47


projects to balance the loads. So this is something that is new for the community to see, 1 something new to the Commission as well. 2 3 Again, this is a corridor improvement, it’s not just Arastradero it’s how does Charleston and 4 Arastradero Road operate together. So what we’re showing here is just in general, you know, to 5 give the audience a snapshot of how long it takes to travel from Charleston/San Antonio across, 6 across Arastradero up towards Foot Hill Expressway. So in the, in the midday scenario, which is 7 kind a like a, kind of an off peak condition, it takes just a little bit over 11 minutes to basically 8 travel across the City from an east/west scenario. This is of course before all the construction 9 that was happening by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) right now. And we also show what it is 10 like in the evening hours, so again a little, about a two minute increase in the evening hours just 11 to cross the City. What we’re showing here in blue though is what things were like in the 12 morning before any of the improvements were implemented along Arastradero Road. And so 13 you see across Charleston Road travel time was pretty consistent with what it was, what it is with 14 the current project, but you saw pretty significant delay once you started crossing El Camino 15 Real started moving across the corridor. It took basically over 18 minutes to get across the 16 corridor in the morning under that pre-project four lane condition. 17 18 What we’re seeing now, in the morning with the current project is again, very consistent data 19 across Charleston Road. We definitely see in purple here a little bit of an increase crossing El 20 Camino Real. Curtis hinted towards the fact that that’s an area that has kind of plagued us with a 21 little bit of congestion, but once you pass, once you pass the intersection and you’re on 22 Arastradero Road vehicular movements, which is, this is trying to capture actually move fairly 23 consistently across the corridor and we actually have a decrease in travel time or an improvement 24 across the corridor in driving time compared to the pre-project condition. 25 26 So again another thing we focused on with the community has been just in general the speed of 27 vehicles and when we’re talking about speed we can’t really talk about the morning because in 28 the morning there’s a lot of, a lot of vehicles on the road already trying to travel across so we 29 focus on vehicle speeds really off peak because one of the measures of the project is, is are we 30 providing a benefit for the community? And what we’re showing here is what’s called the eighty 31 fifth or critical speeds of the corridor. And what we see on Arastradero Road is that the eighty 32 fifth percentiles have dropped fairly consistently across the corridor, with the exception up here 33 near McKeller where we see a little bit of a 2 mile per hour increase. Everywhere else there is a 34 decrease in that eighty fifth percentile speed. The other thing that we’re seeing though is those 35 high speed, the high speed vehicles because they are traveling kind of over 37 miles per hour on 36 the corridor, there has been a, a significant drop in those vehicular speeds kind of across the 37 corridor in general. So again what we’ve been seeing is about between a 2 to 5 mile per hour 38 reduction in vehicle speeds, but a significant reduction in vehicle speeds over, traveling over 37 39 miles per hour. 40 41 And actually I’m going to back up real quick because I do want to highlight one point here 42 because this comes up a lot in the community meetings, is that when we talk about vehicle 43 speeds it really is relative. What we have not done yet as a City is, kind of re-finalize what are 44 the recommended long term speed limits for Arastradero Road. We have to do what’s called an 45 Engineering and Traffic Survey or the general term is just a Speed Survey, and we typically after 46 making improvements wait about six months to a year to establish a new survey. We didn’t do it 47 this year because we wanted to see how the trial went. So, you know, following discussions here 48


and at Council this coming fall, we would like to do a Speed Survey for the corridor towards the 1 end of a, towards the end of the year. 2 3 Collision data here is also something that is new for discussion at the Commission and it’s 4 something that we didn’t do a lot of in the first year because we really needed time to see how 5 the corridor was responding to the improvements that we implemented. So originally here is 6 kind of improvements over the last several years, and again we started to see decreases in 7 collisions along Arastradero Road right after the start of improvements on Arastradero Road, 8 further improvements that went into the Gunn High School and the Gunn High School parking 9 lot. When the project was implemented in 2010 again a lot of construction happening over a one 10 year period, and a little bit of an increase in 2011, but this year, the first half of the year, we’re 11 far below previous year collisions. So at the end of June we had only seen four collisions on 12 Arastradero Road. Bike and pedestrian involved collisions, again ever since the improvements 13 started to go in, has been a significant drop in collisions on/along Arastradero Road that are 14 bicycle or pedestrian involved. And again at El Camino Real, again a lot of, a lot more 15 movement, but at El Camino Real there’s so far just been one incident this year and in previous 16 years, again either consistency with previous year collisions, mostly because we didn’t make any 17 improvements at the intersection itself. So the findings that we’ve seen definitely get a reduction 18 in bicycle and pedestrian incidences as we just discussed, overall reduction in automobile 19 collisions, consistent drop in vehicle speeds along the corridors, especially those, those speeds 20 that are, that are, were considered the high speed violators. 21 22 And on the traffic volume side, definitely a little bit of an increase, but that’s kind of consistent 23 with what we see around the rest of the region especially within the City of Palo Alto. And, I 24 guess again, that has also resulted in again a decrease of incidences that involve bicycle and 25 pedestrians and what we’re seeing is no apparent shifts for traffic in the Barron Park community. 26 That was, that was an important finding for us because one of the measures of the project during 27 the Council Monday was to protect those adjacent communities. 28 29 So what has the community been telling us about the project itself? Again, a lot of positive 30 feedback, a lot of concerned feedback as well. On the positive feedback side, people do say that 31 with the addition of the two-way left turn lanes along certain stretches of the corridor that they 32 are, make you feel like it’s easier to get out of, out of certain streets onto Arastradero Road. 33 There’s also again a reduction in the off peak vehicle speeds which we talked about earlier, 34 which again was a positive finding. Minimal congestion along Arastradero Road outside of the 35 school peak, and that’s what we saw in that travel time data that we showed you earlier again, 36 about 11 minutes to travel around the corridor, which is a, which is a pretty consistent travel 37 speed. We also saw a minor increase in travel time. Well some, some residents I should say, 38 noted concerns with an increase in travel time but that was offset by the safety benefits that were 39 occurring along the corridor. Clemo Drive specifically received a lot of improvements at the 40 very beginning of the year, first year of the project, with the brand new crosswalk, we put in the 41 rapid flashing beacon crosswalk and the step ladder crosswalks and a little median on it for 42 refuge so people feel safer now crossing that location which in turn a lot of people felt that they 43 felt at that same time then safer letting their kids walk or bike to school on their own as well. 44 45 But one of the main things we did hear was that it looks good, but hey, wrap it up! You know, if 46 you’re going to do this project, you know, get the medians built, of course we have to go through 47 this process and make sure that we give everybody the opportunity to, to provide their input and 48


that leads to again the concerns. There were concerns that this is only one of a few corridors that 1 gets you consistently across 101 to 280 and again, we as a region have been making a lot of 2 investments along Oregon Expressway a lot of those investments begin to take shape into the 3 form of construction this coming year. Again some people did note like an increase in delay in 4 travel time and specifically that focuses really in the morning commute period. There were 5 concerns of road rage really more in that first year, that first year we made a lot of consistent 6 corrections throughout the project. There were concerns of cut through traffic around Barron 7 Park, but again we don’t see that specifically within the numbers but you know where we do see 8 increases that does seem to match increases in school populations at both Barron School and at 9 Juana Briones Elementary School. 10 11 There were at the same time that there was positive feedback about being able to turn left onto or 12 off of Arastradero Road, there also were concerns from people being able to do the same 13 movement. Some people felt that they lost their left turn access directly into their home where 14 we had painted double yellow lines to shape future medians, people felt that the queues were too 15 long, specifically along Arastradero Road, but when we compare that to that travel time data that 16 we showed you earlier, you know we saw that traffic actually moves more consistently on 17 Arastradero once you pass El Camino Real. There were concerns about the El Camino Real 18 intersection specifically, and again that is an area we have not focused any type of 19 improvements. Specifically the concern there are no bike lanes across that corridor, and again, 20 the congestion along El Camino Real itself. 21 22 So, again, always room for improvement and so trying to really take a lot of that feedback from 23 the community to heart. We really kind of sat down and said what else can we possibly do to 24 this corridor? Again when you focus on the second year and not making any type of physical 25 civil improvements to the roadway, everything was more signal timing based, you know, that 26 you, you felt as you drove, but not you saw as you drove and there are things that we do 27 recommend to help address those ongoing concerns of, you know, bicycle safety along 28 Arastradero Road. 29 30 Just I’m going to, I’m going to walk you from the corridor from west to east so starting near 31 Gunn High School we would recommend the installation of green bicycle lanes to highlight the 32 bicycle movements that are entering near the school. We show here just the north half, or the 33 westbound movement, we could definitely mirror those same type of improvements and put them 34 in along the south side, along the frontage of the cemetery. Again, the green bike lanes 35 treatments were a recommended best practice, something recently adopted by the Bicycle and 36 Pedestrian Transportation Plan and our first bike lanes went in on Channing Avenue last year 37 and we have two additional projects happening this fall. 38 39 At the intersection of Arastradero and Hubbartt, specifically here between Ynigo and Hubbartt, 40 we actually built a median the first year in response to concerns at the beginning of the year. We 41 felt we put that median in first and foremost to house one of, a brand new vehicle speed feedback 42 sign that we put in. That’s one of those signs that tells you how fast you’re driving as you 43 approach the sign to try to encourage you to slow down. That sign is currently located in a 44 median that exists at this location. We would actually recommend to take the median out and 45 move the sign onto an existing streetlight on the north side to provide that continuous advisory 46 speed warning to vehicles traveling on the westbound, but we felt that there was enough concern 47 from the residents that were living on the north side of Arastradero Road off of Hubbartt and 48


from the residents living on Ynigo, I felt that that median made it too difficult for them to turn 1 off of their street. And so we feel that removal of that island is a positive change in response to 2 the concerns from that portion of the community along Arastradero Road. 3 4 Again continuing down the corridor here at the intersection of Arastradero and Donald, we 5 recommend more green bike lane treatments approaching the intersection, but specifically we 6 would actually recommend a traffic signal modification. So you, if you recall, I mentioned to 7 you earlier that we shortened the amount of time that that all pedestrian interval occurs, it used to 8 go from 7:30 until 8:15 in the morning and we cut that back by five minutes from 7:30 to 8:10 9 and that was so that we could try and coordinate the two signals at Arastradero/Coulombe and 10 Arastradero/Donald-Terman in the morning for that last kind of 15 minute push for the people 11 who are trying to get to Gunn High School in response to the school bell schedule change. But 12 that also had an impact because that all pedestrian interval works great to allow kids to kind of 13 move kind of freely across the intersection, you know, while vehicles are stopped, but once, once 14 the pedestrian movement finished that made sure that there weren’t any pedestrians that would 15 conflict with right turn vehicles coming out of Terman, and so now that we cut that off for five 16 minutes it did make it a little more difficult for cars trying to exit Terman to leave during that last 17 five minutes. 18 19 And so what a, what we recommend is what’s called an overlap modification. An overlap allows 20 left turns in the morning, it allows the right turns to move consistently while the left turns are 21 happening during that 40 minutes. And we’re trying to show that for you here, we’re extremely 22 lucky. You know, the odds were in our favor here, we actually were able to find a picture online 23 on Google where we knew where there was an overlap occurring and what’s showing here is you 24 see in this picture you see the left turn’s moving across an intersection, but the people in this 25 right turn lane they have a green arrow at the same time that that left turns moving. That’s 26 basically the type of modification that we would recommend to make at the intersection that 27 would only happen for 40 minutes in the morning. 28 29 At the same time though, we would recommend also to do another modification of striping 30 between King Arthur and Pomona. So today this is again one of those painted medians like the 31 one that was at Ynigo/Hubbartt. We would recommend to convert that to a two way left turn 32 lane so that residents that were trying to turn out of Pomona have an area of refuge to then merge 33 back onto when they are continuing west and same for the traffic that’s coming out of King 34 Arthur Court. At the intersection of Arastradero/Coulombe, again more of those green bicycle 35 treatments. Again, this is a corridor where green bicycle treatments make a lot of sense, and, and 36 at these locations where, you know, conflicts can occur at this location we’re recommending the 37 improvement. 38 39 At the same time at Los Robles today in the field this painted median goes all the way to Los 40 Robles and we do hear concerns again from people that they felt that they needed some type of 41 an area to provide refuge so they could then merge back into west, just like we did at King 42 Arthur and Hubbartt. Lastly at Suzanne, again this is showing that refuge area that already 43 exists, but we would recommend a simple change here just to add an arrow to note for people 44 that are traveling west that vehicles may be merging on their left side. But again, more of the 45 green bicycle lane treatments as well. So those, those are the recommended improvements that 46 we would suggest along the Arastradero corridor if the project were to be recommended for 47 retention. 48


So what are the next steps? Again, there’s a lot of things that are happening along the corridor of 1 Charleston Road, specifically at Charleston Road, the first phase of the project that was already 2 approved for retention by the Council the City funded the design phase of for median 3 improvements between Middlefield Road and Alma Street as part of the current year Capital 4 Improvement Projects (CIP). The $250,000 that came from traffic mitigation from the JCC is 5 funding the design phase. But we’re excited to announce to the community for the first time 6 tonight that we also received a $450,000 grant to build the median islands. So again we had set 7 aside money to do the design, but we didn’t really have any money to know when we could 8 actually build that improvement. We’ve already got close to 40 percent of the money that we 9 need to build those medians in the long term once they are designed this year. 10 11 On Arastradero Road, and we are here tonight with a very specific recommendation to you and 12 that is to recommend approval to the City Council for retention of those improvements. We feel 13 that there is definitely been enough improvements and protection of the community and we have 14 enough modifications in the, in the plan to really address those final concerns we’re hearing from 15 the community to recommend approval of this project long term. But, El Camino Real is still the 16 bottleneck. We can’t ignore that intersection in order, in order for us to really have a, a safe 17 corridor for the community we need to work with the State to make modifications to this 18 location. And we are working with developers and we have the opportunity to try and get 19 monies to help us fund feasibility studies to kind of come up with design concepts that may be 20 appropriate to help us put in bike lanes at that intersection and realign it to be a little bit more 21 similar to the improvements we’ve seen at the intersection at Stanford and El Camino. 22 23 So again our recommendation to the commission tonight is for you to again have a discussion, 24 provide us some additional feedback, but if possible, to provide a recommendation to the City 25 Council to approve the retention of this project. And if you have any questions we’d be happy to 26 answer them. 27 28 Chair Martinez: Thank you Jaime, very good. Before we go to the public I’d like to see if the 29 Commission has any questions about the Staff’s presentation. Commissioner Michael. Pardon? 30 Oh. Commissioner Keller. 31 32 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. You had mentioned that there was an increase in school 33 population in Barron Park Elementary and Juana Briones Elementary. Was that increase in 34 school population also an increase of students from outside of Barron Park, or was it indigenous 35 to Barron Park? 36 37 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you for the question. Yes, the increase that we saw in student population 38 was from the population coming outside of Barron Park into Barron school. And again, that 39 would of course result in an increase of vehicular traffic for, for people that do in fact drive to 40 school. 41 42 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. The second question (interrupted) 43 44 Vice Chair Fineberg: And just to add a quick detail to that, they added an all-day kindergarten 45 program which draws from the entire district and also it’s one of the overflow schools, so it 46 draws heavily from the other schools that are at or over capacity. 47


Commissioner Keller: And I think you’re referring to Barron Elementary? Thank you. The 1 second question I have is one member, at least one member of the public talked about the kinds 2 of crosswalks on San Antonio Road where there are flashing lights in the crosswalk that are more 3 visible to the walkers and perhaps the drivers, I don’t know. And I’m wondering what your 4 thoughts about if eventually putting those in at Clemo? 5 6 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you. We can definitely look long term at newer technology as it begins to 7 develop. We have installed what are called in-pavement flashing lights in the City in the past. 8 The installations that we do have though we’ve, we’ve currently taken the position of removing 9 them just from a, because of a long term maintenance impact. When the lights fail they are 10 extremely expensive to repair and then over time as the pavement fades, the lights actually wash 11 out. That’s why we took the position for Clemo of starting with that rapid flashing beacon and 12 we did see immediate compliance with, with drivers and pedestrians when that, when that light is 13 in place, but with that said, there have been a lot of new types of flashing beacon lights that have 14 come on to the market. And so I would say that it would be appropriate for us to consider, to 15 continue to consider those in the future. 16 17 Commissioner Keller: Thank you, and one other side thing and that is how visible is it to 18 pedestrians to be aware of when the flashing lights do start? 19 20 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you and that is actually one of the only issues with the existing beacon 21 that we do have. When a pedestrian pushes that rapid flashing beacon it does give an audible 22 beep that the lights have been turned on but it doesn’t the pedestrian any visual indication that 23 the lights were turned on. That actually is intentional because the light is a warning light. It’s a 24 light to advise motorists that there may be pedestrians in the crosswalk, but we still do want the 25 pedestrians to proceed and to continue to cross there with caution. That’s one of the main 26 reasons why that light just doesn’t flash, but we do give the audible warning to let them know 27 that the light has been activated. 28 29 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. 30 31 Chair Martinez: Others? Commissioner Michael. 32 33 Commissioner Michael: So thank you Jaime and Curtis for your presentation. I also wanted to 34 thank in advance the members of the public who are here this evening and will be speaking about 35 this proposal and for the many people who submitted comments in advance. There is a very 36 thick packet of letters and messages on the table that came in which I spent a lot of time reading. 37 So thank you for giving me all the reading material. One of the concerns that I had seen in the, 38 in the written comments were submitted had to do with the possibility of underestimating the 39 level of cut through traffic. And I noticed on page 10 of your presentation which was the daily 40 traffic count comparison there was a, seemed to be a, there was an increase on Maybell at Pena 41 Court from 2,700 to 3,348, which might be people turning off of El Camino and then going down 42 to make a left turn near Briones Park either before or I guess after, cause it’s, it’s blocked one of 43 those and to avoid the Arastradero. Was there any analysis of cut through behavior in that, in 44 that area? 45 46 Mr. Rodriguez: I think I’ll go ahead and let Rafael Rius from our Transportation Engineering 47 answer that question for you. 48


Rafael Rius, Transportation Engineer: Hello Commissioners. Yes we did notice the increase at 1 Pena Court, but what we typically look for to determine cut through traffic is like, if they 2 continue down through the corridor. You can tell as you go, there’s also an increase as you go 3 further west towards, past Juana Briones School near Maybell Court, but there isn’t as large of an 4 increase going down Donald and Georgia where they would cut through. We also, unfortunately 5 we don’t have pre-project data for Coulombe, but we looked at the change along, I’m sorry. We 6 do have the data for Coulombe for 2011 and 2012 and we have a very negligible increase of 7 about one percent over the past year along Coulombe. We don’t have pre-project or 2008 data 8 for Coulombe. 9 10 Mr. Rodriguez: Just to add also I think what we’re trying to say here is that even if we had really 11 been seen a concern of cut through traffic we really wouldn’t have envisioned to see an increase 12 in that right turn movement coming from southbound Coulombe onto Arastradero Road and we, 13 we weren’t seeing that, so that’s where Rafael was saying that we were seeing about a one 14 percent increase which is extremely negligible compared to the increase that is being shown 15 down at Pena Court. And so that’s not demonstrated to us that people are bypassing Maybell 16 trying to get onto Coulombe and avoid kind of the El Camino Real intersection. We’re not, 17 we’re not seeing that. 18 19 Commissioner Michael: Ok, so and then my next question was of the schools that are currently at 20 capacity in the district, I think Palo Alto High School is at capacity and if you’re a new student to 21 the District of Palo Alto you can, at the high school level you have to, have to go to Gunn. So 22 there may be because of that capacity issue at Paly some impact of increased or a future increase 23 in traffic related to the students being enrolled in Gunn. Have you looked at that or do you have 24 any coordination with the School Board on that? 25 26 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you Commissioner Michael. We haven’t really outreached to the School 27 District to kind of look at that level of kind of detail and what their kind of internal policy 28 changes may be doing to increase traffic there as far as like Paly students going to Gunn. We 29 haven’t had that discussion with the District. 30 31 Commissioner Michael: Ok, and then I just had, had one other question. After we’ve heard a 32 chance to hear the people from the public and their comments I may come back to more 33 specifics, but in the overall plan you showed for the City there are the arterials and then there’s 34 the residential arterials, the Charleston-Arastradero is one, Embarcadero is another, and I’m just 35 curious, you know, there isn’t sort of a similar sort of project underway to look at Embarcadero 36 for traffic calming the way you have been looking for the last nine years at Charleston-37 Arastradero. I’m just wondering if, if there’s a particular reason why the design of those two 38 streets is so different. 39 40 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you. First of all we are actually beginning to spend a lot more investment 41 as far as what we can do along Embarcadero Road as part of the plaza project that’s coming in. 42 that project is, we worked with that developer to make improvements at the intersection of St. 43 Francis. We this fall are actually going to be doing a study of Embarcadero Road for the signals 44 and how they operate at Paly and at Town and Country and so we’re, we’re starting to make that 45 improvement. And we’re also going to be at the same time this fall looking at trying to do a 46 traffic signal kind of coordination and changes at Embarcadero and Middlefield and 47 Embarcadero and Newell, specifically Embarcadero and Middlefield kind of has that same all 48


pedestrian phase in the morning, but Newell does not. We’re going to be studying this fall 1 whether or not we can actually do that at both locations and coordinate those signals to help 2 move traffic through. So again, we talk about improvements, it doesn’t have to be physical, it 3 can be operational changes through signal timing and that’s what we’re doing this fall. 4 5 Commissioner Michael: Ok. 6 7 Mr. Williams: If I could just add too, just a historical note, I wasn’t part of Staff then but I was 8 kind of around and some of you probably were, there was an effort, what 10 years ago or more 9 perhaps on Embarcadero Road to look at roundabouts as a method of traffic calming along that 10 road. And that caused quite a bit of controversy, was backed away from, and I think there’s been 11 a reluctance to sort of revisit Embarcadero Road from that time. And then there has been an 12 emphasis of course here and just from a staffing standpoint can’t really do much more than one 13 at a time. So, but I do think ultimately as Jaime said we’ll be looking at Embarcadero Road to 14 see what could be done there. 15 16 Commissioner Michael: Well, what I was interested in exploring and I think your comment’s 17 very responsive to that is just the overall context because we’ve looked fairly recently as the 18 Pedestrian Bicycle Plan the Rail Corridor Study, and all these point up to some of the challenges 19 or the constraints and the, I guess the east/west corridors of the City, and with Association of 20 Bay Area Governments (ABAG) expecting growth in the region and so forth anything that we do 21 that seems to impose a constraint on the flow of traffic, unless there’s some sort of a 22 transportation mode shift or other change of pattern of usage its going to be important as we go 23 into the future to make sure that we don’t, don’t impose a constraint that isn’t appropriate. 24 25 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Tanaka. 26 27 Commissioner Tanaka: So I also wanted to thank Staff for their work on this and also the 28 community for coming out and all the great input we’ve gotten. Just a really quick question. So 29 it looks like we’ve got some good grant funding on Charleston Road. Can you talk a little bit 30 about what’s possible for Arastradero? 31 32 Mr. Rodriguez: On the funding side? 33 34 Commissioner Tanaka: Yeah, the CIP. Well, if there’s any grant funding. 35 36 Mr. Rodriguez: Well we can’t really go after any type of grant funding to do any type of 37 permanent improvements on Arastradero Road because it is still a trial. And by all means we 38 still think that there’s opportunity for correction that’s why we have these series of 39 improvements that we’re recommending to you here tonight. But until the Council adopts the 40 plan it actually wouldn’t be appropriate for us to pursue permanent improvements, funding for 41 improvements. And, but again Charleston Road we’re very fortunate we’re able to, to come up 42 with that first $400,000 because again the forty percent of the overall construction. 43 44 Commissioner Tanaka: Yeah, good job there. Thank you. 45 46 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you. 47


Chair Martinez: Ok, let’s go to members of the public who wish to speak tonight. Each member 1 will be given three minutes to speak. When you’re nearing the last minute, a yellow light will 2 appear to just caution you. You’re welcome to complete your thought. You’re not obliged to 3 stop in midsentence when the bell goes off. So with that, Vice Chair. 4 5 Vice Chair Fineberg: Betty Lum to be followed by Sue Fikes. 6 7 Betty Lum: Honorable Commission Members thank you very much for this opportunity. My 8 husband and I have lived, I’m Betty Lum, 4202 Suzanne Drive. My husband and I have lived on 9 the corner of Suzanne and Arastradero since 1965 and over the last several years we’ve not only 10 seen an increase in the numbers of cars, but the speed at which these cars travel. It’s evident that 11 everywhere in Palo Alto the traffic has increased and this project that we’re talking about tonight 12 is an attempt to provide a safe corridor for all users while at the same time providing a smooth 13 traffic flow with minimum impact to travel times along the corridor. Attempts to solve traffic 14 problems are never easy. It’s rare when there’s total acceptance of whatever is proposed and as 15 you’ve heard there are 11 public and private elementary, middle, and high schools along the 16 corridor as well as some preschools where children need to cross Arastradero to get to the 17 schools. I believe that this project is providing a safe travel route, especially for the school 18 children and bicyclists and yet providing a smooth flow of traffic. There will always be some of 19 the people along the corridor who feel that they are being inconvenienced, but we must 20 remember the purpose of this trial period. Admittedly those of us who live on the, on homes 21 along Arastradero have difficulty getting, merging into traffic during the rush hours. With the 22 inconvenience that we face and the price that we have to pay for the inconvenience rewards us 23 with safer travel routes for the children going to school. 24 25 I’m very grateful and I thank the City Staff, Mr. Williams, Mr. Rodriguez, and Mr. Rius, as well 26 as the City Council for sharing our concerns and attempting to provide a safe travel route for our 27 school children, bicyclists, pedestrians, as well as minimizing the inconvenience to the motorists. 28 Taking these comments and thoughts into consideration, please consider making this project a 29 permanent one. Thank you. 30 31 Chair Martinez: Thank you. 32 33 Sue Fikes: Good evening, I’m Sue Fikes, I’m a Barron Park resident for 42 years. I’m recently a 34 daily walker in the Barron Park area and I have noticed the enormous increase in traffic on 35 Maybell coming off what we on our street call Coulombe and when evidently people are getting 36 that left turn signal if they’ve got a way to make that left turn signal onto Coulombe they’re 37 cutting through my neighborhood. I’m very concerned about safety. We’re not used to seeing 38 that much traffic. I counted in one block of my walk ten cars coming down through there. I 39 don’t know where, this was like at 8:30 in the morning. I’m also terribly concerned about the 40 traffic on Maybell. When you see the traffic back up on El Camino where there’s now no right 41 turn on red because the intersection was being so badly impacted, people are turning right onto 42 Maybell. The bicycles are everywhere. Good for them, but nobody has taught these children 43 bicycle safety. It’s scary to be a walker and cross an intersection when a bicyclist doesn’t stop. 44 It’s scary to see the speed of some cars on Amaranta. It’s scary to be passed at a stop sign on 45 Amaranta which I was recently. I’m stopped, they go. It’s scary that there are no police out 46 there. I think it would be wonderful revenue generator. I drive at 25. I am passed continually. 47


You cannot get off onto Arastradero unless you trigger the signal. For years I made that 1 commute, came out Coulombe, turned right, never triggered the signal. With one lane of traffic 2 it is impossible not to do that. There was always a gap somewhere, not now. I’m very 3 concerned. I’m concerned for my walking safety, I’m concerning, concerned with bicycles, cars, 4 and walkers on streets that don’t have any sidewalks. Keep in mind no sidewalks, no gutters, no 5 place to walk except on the pavement. I hope you’ll take all this into consideration. I’m 6 concerned that you’re all ready to vote yes on this and there are so many of us that are not happy. 7 Thank you. 8 9 Chair Martinez: Before you go I think a Commissioner has a question. 10 11 Ms. Fikes: Of me? 12 13 Chair Martinez: Yes. Commissioner Keller. 14 15 Ms. Fikes: Do I get more time? 16 17 Commissioner Keller: You get enough time to just answer my questions succinctly. Thank you. 18 19 Ms. Fikes: Oh darn, I have so many issues. 20 21 Commissioner Keller: Thank you. So I just like to understand when you were referring to left 22 turns onto Coulombe and thank you for correcting (interrupted) 23 24 Ms. Fikes: I think, I think, I think people are cutting the El Camino corridor. I think their cutting 25 that (interrupted) 26 27 Commissioner Keller: No, I’m trying to understand left turns from where onto where. 28 29 Ms. Fikes: They’re coming, they’re going, they’re going East on, is that East? North. 30 31 Commissioner Keller: East towards El Camino? 32 33 Ms. Fikes: They’re going towards El Camino, and they’re making the left hand turn at the, at the 34 new turn signal, have you, you don’t drive that part of town? 35 36 Commissioner Keller: No, I’m familiar with it. 37 38 Ms. Fikes: Ok. There’s now a left turn signal because you couldn’t turn before, ever. Now they 39 can turn left, and so they are. So they’re cutting off that entire corner of Arastradero and El 40 Camino coming down, turning on Maybell or going all the way down to Los Robles. The traffic 41 on Los Robles is impacted. 42 43 Commissioner Keller: Ok, thank you. 44 45 Ms. Fikes: You know all of this goes back to the schools, but we won’t go there. 46 47 Chair Martinez: Jaime have you looked at the, this issue of cut through on these streets. 48


Mr. Martinez: Yes we did actually Commissioner so again, when we did look again that, that 1 first the Coulombe to Arastradero right turn, we also looked at the left turn from Arastradero 2 onto Coulombe and what we actually saw was actually almost no change. In the first year we 3 looked at that during the peak hour we saw about 45 left turns, you know onto Coulombe from 4 Arastradero, in the second year we only saw 46. And so, again, not an, not an increase that we 5 would attribute towards diversion. 6 7 Chair Martinez: Ok, thank you. 8 9 Vice Chair Fineberg: Barbara Freeman to be followed by Nina Bell. 10 11 Chair Martinez: Can we ask the, oh, you’re doing it. Thank you. For the second speaker to 12 come up as well and be ready to kind of help us save a little time. 13 14 Barbara Freeman: I’m Barbara Freeman and I’m evidently the newcomer to the neighborhood. 15 We’ve only lived there since 1982 and I live on Donald. I want to urge you to really think about 16 the twinkle type lights that Jaime said that they would look into. First of all the lights that you 17 have put up I think are ugly as sin. They look like a traffic at a railroad crossing instead of a 18 residential street, and because as a pedestrian you can’t see when that light is on, and I had no 19 idea that that little beep meant that the light was on. I mean where is that written down, because 20 other lights beep when you hit them, like at Foothill, but that doesn’t mean that the light has now 21 turned that you can walk. So, I would like to have those where I can see them and not only do 22 they embed in the street, but the sign twinkles. In Mountain View, in Menlo Park, and in Los 23 Altos, so a lot of communities have it. 24 25 The other thing is as a pedestrian I don’t feel safe at the crossing at Coulombe, or however we’re 26 saying it today. It’s the one that goes across Coulombe, ok, parallel, going with the traffic of 27 Arastradero. I was thinking it was going to be a protected pedestrian crosswalk like it is at 28 Donald, but it’s not. You, you’ve got this other sign up there for the traffic turning left on 29 Coulombe, you can turn left as long as it’s green and no cars are coming. And so I’ve had 30 people whizz in front of me or whizz behind me while I’m in the middle of the crosswalk with X 31 many seconds left to run. And I feel very unsafe. I’ve got an elderly dog and I’m trying to get to 32 the park to walk him and that’s an unsafe thing. 33 34 As a motorist I don’t feel particularly safe. There is so much road rage, unrelenting along this 35 street. And you can witness all the keep clear marks, it doesn’t look as pretty as your pictures 36 because it says keep clear every block, every time there’s a road because people won’t let you in 37 if you are from a side street that doesn’t have a light and that’s because traffic used to go in like 38 schools of fish when it was two, two lanes in each direction. Now it’s one unrelenting freight 39 train. So, I urge the return to four lanes. Thanks. 40 41 Chair Martinez: Thank you. 42 43 Vice Chair Fineberg: Nina Bell to be followed by Michael Maurier. 44 45 Nina Bell: Hi, good evening. My name is Nina Bell. I live on Los Palos Avenue in the Green 46 Acres One Neighborhood, which is on the south side of Arastradero next to Terman Middle 47 School. I participated in the Charleston-Arastradero stakeholders Committee since its inception 48


about a decade ago. And before I continue I just want to make one correction. When Jaime was 1 showing his fine tuning with those left turn pockets out of neighborhood streets it was accidently 2 misidentified as Los Robles and actually it is Los Palos that is the correct name for that new left 3 turn which will assist us wonderfully to get in a holding position to merge going westbound. 4 5 So I fully support Staff’s recommendation that the Arastradero striping be made permanent and 6 include in that the fine tuning just proposed by Staff as these adjustments were in response to 7 community feedback gathered during the second year of the trial. The goals that were set out for 8 the corridor have been met, the data shows that vehicular speeds have reduced while travel time 9 has remained consistent, that bicycle usage has gone up dramatically, but that the incidents of 10 accidents involving bicycles has gone down dramatically. I’m particularly grateful every time I 11 wait in the center turn lane to make a left into my neighborhood that I no longer have to wait in 12 fear of being rear ended by a vehicle barreling up behind me as it was when we had four lanes. 13 14 I thank the Planning and Transportation Commission (PTC) and the City Council for granting us 15 the additional year trial. I thank the School District for changing the bell time. Last but not 16 least, thank you to the City Staff for their tireless work and vision, and a special word of 17 appreciation to Jaime who inherited this major project when he was hired in 2010. He jumped in 18 with enthusiastic energy and with creative problem solving. He’s listened to the community. He 19 has made adjustments according to their concerns. The end result would not have been possible 20 without his leadership. Thank you Jaime. Again, I ask you to recommend permanent retention 21 of the Arastradero striping plan and include in that Staff’s recommended fine tuning. Thank you 22 so much. 23 24 Chair Martinez: Thank you very much, and Jaime don’t let that go to your head please. 25 26 Vice Chair Fineberg: Michael Maurier to be followed by Christian Kalar. 27 28 Michael Maurier: Don’t worry Jaime, I called it in my letter last night Dos Palos and I live there. 29 Mike Maurier, I live on Fairmede. I’ve been part of this process since roughly 2000, when I 30 actually got started 2003 onwards. Thank you for showing up at the meetings Arthur. 31 Appreciate it. 32 33 Quite simply put I’ve lived in the south end of Palo Alto south of Charleston-Arastradero the 34 vast bulk of my life with excursions out for education, some of which took, some of didn’t and 35 I’m rather sensitive to it. I went to school here, went to all the schools in the area and so did my 36 children. The final straw for this came basically when the middle school reopened and 37 introduced a host of middle schoolers to an already manifestly unsafe situation which was not 38 controlled, not researched, not governed, and nobody knew much about it other than the 39 apocryphal stories and horror tales that abounded, many of which continue. 40 41 It was interesting to be part of the meetings. Most people talked about their sacred commutes 42 and shaving the numbers and traffic time and amateur traffic engineers helped or didn’t help the 43 Staff depending on what went on. The thornier issue of cut through traffic, you know, cropped 44 up later on as people became acquainted with the fact that things were going to change 45 regardless, whether anything happened there or not much like they changed for us in our little 46 loop neighborhood when Terman reopened. And interestingly we made a decision in that 47 neighborhood not to fight it even though we knew perfectly well that traffic in our neighborhood, 48


as it has, has really gotten interesting particularly at the rush hour and arsenic hour when they 1 drop the kids off and turn around and race out again. Net net the bottom line for us is we’re 2 heavily dependent on Arastradero and Charleston getting in and out of our neighborhoods so we 3 have no other avenues of ingress or egress. Anything that slowed it down, made people think 4 more, made more cautious particularly at the transit, peak transit hour has all been good. And 5 this has done that, and we appreciate it even though it is, it’s not always convenient, but people 6 are indeed being more cautious, more careful, and more thoughtful and I think the kids are safer. 7 I’d like to thank the Staff for all their long, long work and everybody who was involved. Thank 8 you so much. 9 10 Chair Martinez: Very nice, thank you. 11 12 Vice Chair Fineberg: Christian Kalar to be followed by Elizabeth Alexis. 13 14 Christian Kalar: Hi my name is Christian Kalar and I live at 3716 Laguna Avenue. I’ve lived 15 there over 20 years and I have two children that both bicycle to Terman and will be going to 16 Gunn via bicycle. With the trial over I’d like to request that Arastradero be returned to its 17 original configuration. 18 19 The conclusions in the Staff Report are contradictory to the data that’s included in that same 20 report and I’ll be specific to let you follow up. On page five the first paragraph states that the cut 21 through traffic has not been “significantly increased.” So they are admitting that there is cut 22 through traffic. And if you look on what I believe is page 14 although it’s not marked, it’s called 23 A.M. Peak Traffic you can see a 49 percent increase in traffic on Maybell at Pena Court which 24 was mentioned earlier, and so how is a 49 percent increase not significant? And I know there 25 was a question, they were like well it’s coming in but we don’t know where it’s going we’re 26 expecting a left turn here. If you look on page 10 of their presentation there is a, there is a cut 27 through pedestrian and bicycle path that goes from Georgia to Gunn. And if you happen to be in 28 that area in the morning which my wife and I do every weekday morning you will see tons of 29 bicycles and individual students that are dropped off going into Gunn. So that is part of the 30 mystery solved and there’s no mention to that cut through mentioned in this report as to what’s 31 going on with traffic going there. And you can see that that’s 49 percent increase is because 32 people have started cutting through Maybell because they weren’t going down Arastradero and if 33 they go down Maybell to Georgia and then back again. 34 35 Also, on page 6, Table 3 and Figure 1 show a count of only approximately 20 percent of the total 36 bicycles that go into Gunn. So where are the other 80 percent? The other 80 percent are going 37 in other avenues and a lot of those are going down Maybell and through that cut through or 38 they’re coming through Bol Park and along the old railroad. So, what I don’t see in the report is 39 any statistics on the speeds on Maybell or the bicycle traffic on Maybell and I encourage you, 40 and I know this is the middle of summer, but go down there at the end of school, before school 41 and look at all those riders and not only will you see the Terman and Gunn, but you also see the 42 bicycle riders for the elementary school. 43 44 Also, the, when there’s mention of you know 43 new students at Briones School, actually Barron 45 Park has always been an overflow because we’ve always, my kids went there and I had friends 46 from the other side of town their kids were going there. You need to look at where’s the drop off 47 for the Briones School? I believe it’s down Orme, which is on a completely other side so there’s 48


a number of Barron Park specifics that are missing from this Report and that’s why we as 1 residents are seeing this cut through traffic that isn’t showing up in this Report or isn’t being 2 summarized properly. Thank you. 3 4 Chair Martinez: Thank you. 5 6 Vice Chair Fineberg: Elizabeth Alexis to be followed by Adina Levin. 7 8 Elizabeth Alexis: Good evening Commission my name is Elizabeth Alexis and I’m here 9 primarily actually as somebody who uses the corridor on a daily basis. I bike from Green 10 Meadow to Barron Park and back again at the end of the day and my kids will be biking to Gunn. 11 I am fully in support of the project and I would urge you to move forward with this so that we 12 can get money so that we can get these nice beautifications that we can finally get this thing 13 done. Eight years or nine years or whatever it is, is too much to spend on this, but let’s not add 14 to that. 15 16 Again, this is, want to talk about why, you know where we were before this project. Just a 17 reminder that I mean this was again this was an issue by the City, the main goal was to make this 18 really a complete street, I mean before we knew this term. This was again mitigation for all the 19 development that I think everybody is familiar with, almost 1,000 homes and I believe there’s, 20 there’s more to come along this corridor. The four lane configuration had safety issues I think 21 that are understood there’s this idea right that if you want to make a left turn you have to stop 22 and people stack up behind you. For me personally it was very difficult on a bicycle to get 23 across all four lanes to actually bicycle on the right side of the road. And we had these crashes a 24 lot of which involved pedestrians and bicyclists. You know there were a lot of challenges going 25 into this, I mean there are a lot of, there are a lot of cars you have all these bell times which are 26 close together, the skill commute time was a particular problem but it’s like at Thanksgiving you 27 know if you add a couple people to your family and your table is no longer big enough, do you 28 go buy a new house, right? Or do you say well we’re going to start thinking, we’re going to 29 think smarter not harder and I think that is really commendable the approach that the City took 30 on this issue. 31 32 I mean we talk about people talk about the congestion, I mean this is the picture from 33 beforehand. I mean this has been, it has been a real challenge and this is what you started the 34 project with. The problem was you had this corridor that during, you know, a few minutes a day 35 you can’t move at all and then ironically the rest of the day you just speed down it, it’s like a race 36 track. And combined with what you have this, the four lanes make a specific issue for turning in 37 that a pedestrian cannot see a small person over a normal sized car cannot see that car coming, 38 that car cannot see the person, and a normal person with a large car has the same issue. So it’s 39 not only that people were going fast, but you also had these very unsafe crossings. Slowing cars 40 saves lives and this is why getting those people, how many people under 37 miles per hour 41 makes a difference. At 35 miles per hour if you get hit, you know, you’re probably dead. 30 42 you’re in the hospital and 25 it’s probably an emergency room visit. It’s a very serious thing and 43 that is why school zones are 25 miles per hour. So the goal to get those speeds, those top speeds 44 down and it is a tremendous change. So, anyway I want to just, I’m going to end now, but you 45 know we started with this is the project, right? We started with Gunn and we went on to the rest 46 of it. 47 48


Chair Martinez: Thank you. 1 2 Vice Chair Fineberg: Adina Levin to be followed by Joseph Hirsch. 3 4 Adina Levin: So my name is Adina Levin. I’m the Co-Chair of the Silicon Valley Bicycle 5 Coalition Palo Alto Team and I’m going to pick up where Elizabeth left off. So she showed that 6 slide that showed the tremendous congestion at Arastradero before this project and so the 7 changes that were done with the turning lane was intended to address that congestion and the 8 slides in the Staff presentation really showed the benefit to the overall travel time through, 9 through this project. 10 11 So, I want to go back to the objectives of the project. So maintain the existing travel times, you 12 saw the slide in the Staff presentation that said what happened. To reduce the accidents and to 13 improve the conditions for pedestrian and bicycle travel. So, you know, what actually happened 14 the level of speeding has decreased dramatically, a 50 percent decrease in the number of people 15 who are traveling greater than 37 miles an hour. As Elizabeth mentioned that’s really the 16 difference between life and death a collision that you’re going to survive and a collision that 17 you’re not going to survive. So if a main goal is to keep people from getting killed and in 18 particular keeping kids from getting killed, you know that, that’s the result that’s been achieved. 19 And if you look at the number and also the share of kids that are biking to school, that’s gone up 20 and this has been part of that increase. And you saw in the Staff presentation that collisions are 21 down even though the overall traffic volume is up. 22 23 So if you look at those main goals, reducing the accidents, reducing speeding while not 24 increasing overall driving time, that, that goal has been met. And as a advocate with the Silicon 25 Valley Bicycle Coalition, Palo Alto is really the bright shining star in this region. People all 26 around the region, Menlo Park, San Carlos, Los Altos, Mountain View, they ask to learn from 27 the team that has done this in Palo Alto how do we do this in our community? The level of 28 community engagement, the level of cooperation between the City, the PTA, law enforcement, a 29 thorough engagement and the end result being over the last decade Palo Alto has increased the 30 share of kids walking and biking to school below middle school doubled to 50 percent, high 31 school doubled to 40 percent. Palo Alto is the envy of the region and I’d like to encourage you 32 to move this project forward and move on to some of the next steps in the Bike and Pedestrian 33 Plan to make it even better. Thank you. 34 35 Chair Martinez: Thank you. 36 37 Vice Chair Fineberg: Joseph Hirsch to be followed by Peter Chu. 38 39 Joseph Hirsh: I live on Georgia Avenue near Gunn High School since 1974 and since January of 40 2003 five or six times a week when I’m in town I drive over to Cubberley High School. I go 41 6:45 to 7:00 Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and 7:15 to 7:30 on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. 42 That’s not a problem. There are not enough cars on the road to make a difference. People ask 43 me what it’s like I say it’s like a video game only you’re driving a real car on a real road. It is 44 arduous at times. 45 46 The real problem is coming back. I come back between 8:00 and 9:00 and on school days it’s an 47 absolute mess and I have great difficulty reading some of the conclusions that are in the Staff 48


Report that times have been reduced to get from Middlefield to my home. It has gone from 8 to 1 10 minutes to at least 20 and I have gone every which way possible. I come across Charleston-2 Arastradero, I cut up to Maybell, I now come up El Camino rather than using Charleston, 3 disregarding the traffic improvements, the gas line improvements that are going there, and I’ve 4 gone through Los Altos to come up the Foothill Expressway. Virtually every way is now 20 5 minutes. So when it says the travel time to reach the Foothill Expressway has decreased since 6 implementation of the Arastradero Road improvements during schools and in the morning that 7 just, my empirical data is absolutely not true. It has doubled. It has gone from 10 to 20 minutes. 8 9 The same thing with the table on number four, or Table Number 4 on page 8, which says there 10 has been a time improvement. You can’t have improvement if you’re trying to get across the 11 Arastradero, the El Camino intersection onto Arastradero and you have stop and go traffic until 12 you hit the merge and then you have stop and go traffic until you get past Coulombe. After that 13 it blossoms out as you get to Terman and things improve. But I would urge you, unless you have 14 gone down there during the morning hours, I would ask you to defer this and at least drive the 15 corridor from Middlefield to Foothill Expressway twice during the morning traffic to see what 16 it’s really like because I don’t think that the Staff Report tells you anything. And I would 17 certainly urge you not to improve it until the City gets together with the State and finds a way to 18 improve the flow through and the flow across the El Camino/Arastradero-Charleston 19 intersection. Thank you. 20 21 Chair Martinez: Thank you. 22 23 Vice Chair Fineberg: Peter Chu to be followed by Robert Moss. 24 25 Peter Chu: I’ve got some maps [note—not speaking into the microphone] 26 27 Chair Martinez: Sure, of course. 28 29 Mr. Chu: I’m Peter Chu, I’ve been in Palo Alto since 1986 and I drive through this corridor from 30 the West to East in the morning and back in the afternoon and I generally do not use the rush 31 hours, I tend to be later, but when I run into the morning rush hours it was horrendous. So I’m 32 here to really urge you not to approve it right now because I wanted to suggest additional 33 measures that can open up additional ideas. 34 35 The, the problem I wanted to reemphasize it was in the morning from 7:30 to 8:30, and the rest 36 of the benefit was clearly agreeable, meaning the highest speed was reduced. So we wanted to 37 find a solution that get both ways, meaning reduce the morning traffic jam, at the same time 38 reduce the maximum speed and I believe there is a way to do that. Ok, we don’t have to reduce 39 the capacity of the road which I believe is a problem. The problem from the Gunn School, Gunn 40 High School to the East is the four lanes reduce to three lanes too quickly. If you see the map 41 you see the four side streets are very close to Gunn High. I believe that is part of the problem. 42 So one solution I would suggest is you consider closing off maybe two of those four streets 43 permanently so that they become cul de sac. And then if you look at the comparison to the 44 Embarcadero their distance between traffic light is much longer and then I believe there is a way 45 to program the traffic light to encourage a maximum speed. Because if you time it right then 46 whoever traffic travel faster will be slowed down automatically, ok. 47


Then I wanted to also urge you to consider to work with Gunn High to open up the drop off 1 points at the west side. The Miranda Street, is that a, there is a commercial area west of Gunn 2 High and then there is a long commercial road you can implement drop off points and that that 3 would divert the traffic so that they never get on to this corridor in the first place. Thank you. 4 5 Chair Martinez: Thank you. 6 7 Vice Chair Fineberg: Bob Moss to be followed by Philip Melese. 8 9 Bob Moss: Thank you. I’m afraid this project is not ready for prime time with the current design 10 yet. Let me explain a couple of the problems. If you recall on the slides number 18 where it 11 talked about express concerns one of the ones that hasn’t gotten much mention is the brief 12 eastbound two lane section near Terman is confusing. That’s putting it mildly. There were also 13 some letters in the packet where people complained about cars cutting in and out, sideswiping, 14 and having real problems in that area, and Jaime says several times he’s going to change the 15 configuration of the merger because sometimes you merge left, sometimes you merge right, 16 sometimes you merge both ways at the same time, sometimes you go together at the same time. 17 God knows. 18 19 The best way to handle that section would be from basically Alta Mesa to Terman to keep it four 20 lanes. It simplifies things and eliminates the cars going in and out of traffic and getting the cut 21 offs and the road rage. First point. Second, as you’ve heard from several other people there is a 22 significant amount of spill over traffic into Barron Park proper. Maybell just to give you an 23 example if you look on page five the traffic count increases during A.M. peak by 70 percent. 24 The traffic count total increases by 22 percent, but that’s not the only street that has high traffic 25 count increases. Matadero increases by 24 percent and that’s not all due to changes in the 26 population of the schools because that would assume that every single new school child goes 27 down Maybell and I can guarantee you they don’t. I can guarantee you that most of them come 28 down Los Robles or Orme because they pass my house every day. 29 30 Then there’s the question of the increase in bicycle riders. The vast majority of cyclists who go 31 to Gunn go down Los Robles, they go down Paradise, and they go down the bike path. Only a 32 small percentage go down Arastradero. So the change in the bikes is nice, but it’s not adequate. 33 Now, finally in the list of things that have to be done there are five specific intersections which 34 have to be reconfigured and that doesn’t include the section between Alta Mesa and Terman. I 35 would suggest that those be reconfigured first and the trial continue for at least another three to 36 six months after reconfiguration and see if those changes were really effective and if those 37 changes improved or reduced the amount of cut through traffic, especially on Maybell. And 38 finally, one thing that was not tested but that I think would have been critical would be to get 39 traffic speeds along Maybell and along Amaranta, and along Matadero, because before and after 40 traffic speeds may also have gotten worse. 41 42 Chair Martinez: Thank you. 43 44 Vice Chair Fineberg: Final speaker Philip Melese. 45 46


Philip Melese: Close enough. Hi, I’m Philip Melese and thanks a lot for your time and I 1 appreciate this democratic forum here Commissioners and I’d like to thank the Staff has done a 2 wonderful job having patience with us both advocates, and you know people who don’t like it. 3 4 I personally like it and I’ve been here before the trial started for several years and I live kind of at 5 the epicenter at Donald and Arastradero, across the street from Terman right on Arastradero, so I 6 am in the middle of it, good and bad. My wife commutes, so she has a car every day. She has to 7 deal with getting in and out. I ride my bike. My kids went to both schools, Terman and Gunn, 8 so I’m completely immersed in it. My personal opinion is when I came here that Arastradero 9 was a freeway and that’s just wrong for a school corridor. And that’s basically my point in a 10 nutshell. As a, as a, you know, in any case that’s wrong. It should not look like Page Mill Road, 11 it should not look like Foothill Expressway, and it did. 12 13 And I think now people are complaining because you can’t go straight. You have to turn, you 14 have to think, you have to slow down. I think that’s the purpose of why we did this and I’m, 15 personally I’m very, I think that they’ve done a good job, the data supports it and logic supports 16 it. And I heard very early on when they were planning this eight years ago there was a traffic 17 expert consultant and he looked at this and he said this kind of road lends itself to speed and it’s 18 the way it looks. There are no trees, straight lines, no, no stop signs, no red lights, go straight. 19 And off hours that’s what would happen. Arbitrary speeds on the corridor, and that’s been 20 changed. And I believe that’s not only logical and you see it, but I do believe that people 21 actually feel it. 22 23 And I think this talk of road rage and the congestion that happens during school hour, that’s 24 universal. That’s not going to change. I mean that happened before, there was road rage before, 25 and the congestion was there before and you have to, you know, you live by the schools you die 26 by the schools right? You have kids, we moved here because of the schools and guess what? 27 There are kids going to school in the morning during rush hour and that’s the way I look at it. I 28 travel off hours. But I really appreciate the work that’s been done; I encourage you to support 29 the changes and sign it in. Thank you. 30 31 Chair Martinez: Thank you very much. Jaime any thoughts or comments on what we’ve just 32 heard from the public? I’m sure you’ve heard it before. 33 34 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you Commissioner. Yeah, I think, I think the things you heard tonight are 35 fairly consistent with the type of comments that we were hearing during the both the community 36 meeting process, our kind of ongoing meetings with the stakeholder group, and as kind of 37 consistent with what we summarized for you on the table again. You know a lot of concerns, 38 positive input, and I think that we’ve done a pretty good job I think, I hope you think that I 39 should say of trying to address those last few concerns. 40 41 Again, the data that we’re showing, you know, we really tried to be impartial that those travel 42 time summaries that we showed you, we actually hired a company to get that for us because we 43 felt that it was going to be a real important thing to make sure that the people knew that we 44 didn’t collect that data on our own, we hired a company to go out to kind of drive that corridor 45 and really kind of give us impartial feedback and that’s that data that we got which was 46 supporting the same things that we were seeing and so, again, my main comment here is that I 47 just want to make sure the community knows we really have heard you. This project has evolved 48


over the last two years is really, you know, our attempt to try to respond to those concerns and I 1 think that this is a corridor that is a residential arterial and that’s why we showed you that slide in 2 the beginning that, you know, we want to focus vehicular movements kind of along those larger 3 arterial streets and provide those capacity improvements to support those, but this, this is a 4 residential community and you get a lot of concerns like this, not just in Palo Alto but in any 5 community where you have really three plus schools focused just in one area. Juana Briones, 6 Gunn, Terman, the Bowman International School, it’s very consistent with what I’ve seen in 7 other communities, but it’s an isolated event. Throughout the rest of the day the corridor seems 8 to function extremely well and, you know, its, I think that the argument from the last speaker is 9 true. People move here for the schools and we have an increase as a result. 10 11 Chair Martinez: I wanted to thank everyone who’s come out to speak from their heart of what 12 they live with, what they see, what values they see in what the City is trying to do. Nevertheless 13 I’m just struck by the polar opposition. I was hoping that someone who said that I have to drive 14 20 minutes every day to get through this, but it’s worth it for the safety of our kids, or from the 15 other side, you know we’ve got 10 more cars cutting through our street, but I see kids safer every 16 day in going to school. That, I’m hoping that we see the value in what the City has attempted to 17 do, the problem that existed before there was any kind of intervention and that the City will 18 continue to try to make this corridor a safer place for everyone. Commissioners, comments? 19 Commissioner Keller. 20 21 Commissioner Keller: So do you want comments first, or can I make a Motion? 22 23 Chair Martinez: Your pleasure. 24 25 MOTION 26 27 Commissioner Keller: Ok, so I will make a Motion to accept Staff’s recommendation so as 28 worded on the slide there. 29 30 SECOND 31 32 Chair Martinez: Is there a second? Motion by Commissioner Keller and seconded by Vice Chair 33 Fineberg. Do you want to speak to your Motion? 34 35 Commissioner Keller: Yes, thank you. So I have a number of comments here. Firstly, 36 Arastradero Road prior to the trial was a raceway, especially during the period when it wasn’t 37 rush hours. And it was quite a dangerous place where people tried to make left turns off of 38 Arastradero Road would often get rear ended. And so a four lane street without left turn lanes is 39 simply not a safe condition. So from my point of view it is completely unacceptable to go back 40 to the state beforehand. My personal position was that I was considering between whether we 41 would do what is proposed, what was being in a trial and whether there would be something that 42 we could do that would be better than simply going back to the status before. And I think that 43 there’s enough improvement in the trial and proposals that are set by Staff that will improve this 44 further that we should proceed along on this process. 45 46 I have a few specific comments to make as well. First of all, the I think the, Chief Transportation 47 Officer Rodriguez talked about, mentioned Los Robles instead of Los Palos, but the diagram 48


says Los Palos so it was clearly a slip of the tongue. Secondly, the, I do think that it makes sense 1 to increase law enforcement in terms of speeding and it’s not part of the Motion, but is, I think 2 it’s a, I think it does make sense to increase law enforcement along the corridor and Barron Park 3 in terms of cut through traffic and speeding and failing to stop at stop signs, particularly focusing 4 on the beginning of the school year when there’s increased traffic and when school children 5 safety is the highest issue at that time. 6 7 The next issue is with respect to the Clemo crosswalk and I appreciate Staff saying that they are 8 going to revisit this and look at additional options particularly consideration of this crosswalk as 9 this comes back in terms of more permanent. I mean obviously when we make this permanent, 10 there will be attempts to get grants and funding to implement things and as far as the further 11 implementation that’s one to consider in further funding. 12 13 I appreciate the member of the public who corrected the pronunciation of Coulombe to 14 Coulombe. I guess it’s not quite potato/potato, but and I seem to have misplaced my book on the 15 streets of Palo Alto and how it actually says to pronounce it but since it’s pronounced differently 16 then Jaime warned me not to talk about electric vehicles but there’s a company called Coulomb 17 that’s spelled differently so I can believe that there’s a pronunciation that that would be 18 pronounced with the “e” at the end, but I never knew how to pronounce it so thank you for that. 19 But it does indicate that the left turn lane which is not a, which is a permissive protected left turn 20 lane, and that, that when people turn left and there’s a green crosswalk that, that causes a left turn 21 lane vehicle to pedestrian conflict. And I’m wondering whether signage such as “Yield to 22 Pedestrians” underneath the, the traffic light, turning cars must yield to pedestrians or something 23 like that, you know the proper signage, but something like that might remind people of what the 24 law is in that regard, because left turn lanes, left turners are supposed to yield to through traffic, 25 but in particular pedestrians in a designated crosswalk. So reminding people of that would be 26 helpful. 27 28 The next point is the speaker referred to the Gunn High School drop off off of I guess it’s 29 Miranda. I understand Gunn High School is considering that, but it wouldn’t be, it would be off 30 of the, it would be off of the driveway that’s at Miranda, that’s very close to the intersection of 31 Miranda and Arastradero and so there are also safety issues involved in that. And I, but that, 32 that’s something Gunn High School would consider, that’s not something before us in the here. 33 34 In terms of traffic speeds on Maybell, Amaranta, and Los Robles that was mentioned by another 35 speaker the issue of traffic enforcement seems to be an appropriate thing for that. Another 36 speaker referred to the merge directions and I believe that all the merge directions are from the 37 left to the right with the exception of the eastbound one past Terman Drive. And that one I 38 believe is one of the things that’s being corrected is to go from the left lane into the right lane so 39 they will all be consistent. 40 41 And finally one of the speakers mentioned that his commute back from Cubberley to his house in 42 Barron Park was, has been slowed down between the 8:00 and 9:00 hour, and I observe that the 43 shifting of the Gunn High School starting bell time meant that the shift of the peak, which 44 previously was between 7:00 and 8:00, the peak is now later than that. And because the peak is 45 now between 8:00 and 9:00 as opposed to between 7:00 and 8:00, sort of the peak comes when 46 people are approaching Terman before the, I guess 8:10 bell time, and Gunn High School I 47 believe is 8:25 bell time, so therefore the congestion that happens until 8:30 or so would be much 48


greater than it would have been previously when Gunn had a 7:50 bell time. So, I would venture 1 to say that past 8:30 after traffic has a chance to flow through there and clear out that that 2 congestion would be decreased and my experience in driving that corridor has borne that out. 3 That the traffic does considerably clear up after that. And so if your experience was timing 8:15 4 from three years ago to 8:15 now, yes it would be slower because the peak has shifted so that’s, 5 that’s worthwhile considering. 6 7 So all in all I think that this is a significant improvement of, of safety and no improvement 8 comes, very few improvements come without any issues attached. Certainly there are some 9 issues here that Staff will continue to resolve, but I think that on the whole this is a great 10 improvement. I thank Staff for their hard work here. I thank the members of the public who 11 have weighed in both tonight and as one of the speakers mentioned I’ve been at most if not all of 12 the meetings of the public that Staff have run for the, for this, for Arastradero portion of the 13 corridor. I think that there has been a lot of concern. Some people will get their way than others 14 as happens when there is some division in the community. 15 16 And I’d also like to close my remarks to acknowledge somebody who’s not here but whose 17 presence is actually looms large over this and that is Penny Ellson. She planned to be here but 18 this was originally going to be earlier and it was scheduled, rescheduled to today and it coincides 19 I understand with her long standing travel. And I hope that she’ll be able to make it when this 20 comes to the City Council but I think that, that her dedication to improving safety on Charleston-21 Arastradero is well noted and I think that her work in realizing that with the community that the 22 great increase in amount of housing that occurred on the Charleston-Arastradero corridor 23 necessitated improvement in safety and that this certainly does implement the vision of 24 improving safety on that corridor. Thank you very much. 25 26 Chair Martinez: Commissioner next time let’s try to get through the Motion before your 27 commentary because I believe that the seconder should have had the opportunity to weigh in 28 before we entered into our discussion. Vice Chair Fineberg, do you want to speak to your 29 second? 30 31 Vice Chair Fineberg: Sure. Do you want me to follow my second with comments or then hold 32 them? 33 34 Chair Martinez: Yeah, just go ahead so we can just begin to get to the other Commissioners. So 35 go ahead with your comments. 36 37 Vice Chair Fineberg: Ok. I second this because I believe it’s a mission accomplished. I’ve lived 38 along the Charleston-Arastradero corridor for over 10 years. I drive it daily. My heavy use of it 39 is in the afternoon peak rush hour. I live far enough off it. For 10 years I was down at the end 40 near Fabian and now I’m near Middlefield, but I live far enough off it that I am not impacted by 41 the sort of contortions that are caused to the people who live immediately on the route. 42 However, I know very well firsthand what has happened along the route and the impacts of the 43 changes that have been made over the years produce. 44 45 Taking a step back I’d like to thank Staff, particularly Mr. Rodriguez and Rafael Rius for their 46 hard work on this. As previous commenters have said the project has been long in the making 47 and you’ve moved it along quickly but not too quickly. It’s not perfect. I’m pleased there are a 48


number of improvements. I saw you both taking notes and it’s good that there’s still a concept 1 that you’re open to changes and improvements and that those tweaks will continue. I also would 2 like to echo Commissioner Keller’s thanks of Penny Ellson. She has dedicated many years and 3 thousands of hours of work to creating an environment that is safer for our bicyclists and 4 pedestrians as well as car commuters who use the route. 5 6 It used to look like a speedway. It used to be fast and furious and you know, speeding at 40 and 7 crazy cars would pass you going even faster, I just don’t see that anymore. Even when there’s 8 nobody on it there’s enough jiggling and jogging that cars drive slower. It has created an 9 environment where it’s not a speedway. The increases in safety as Chair Martinez said, offset 10 some amount of minor inconveniences, but I understand that the people who bear those 11 inconveniences are the most burdened by that. But the single data point for me that makes the 12 difference is that the survivability of our kids is increased when that speed is lower and if, if my 13 commute is 10 minutes longer and somebody else’s kid doesn’t get killed by a crazy driver, it’s 14 good. It’s that simple. 15 16 If you look at page three of our Staff Report there were five goals for the project. We’ve 17 accomplished all but one and I hope that that last one, I know that that last one will go forward as 18 the project is implemented. We’ve enhanced the school commute safety for K to 12 students, 19 we’ve improved the quality of bike and pedestrian experience, we’ve reduced the amount of high 20 speed vehicles, and we’ve minimized traffic shifts to adjacent streets. What still needs to be 21 done is we have to enhance the streetscape and quality of life in the corridor for local residents 22 and Mr. Rodriguez, I’m expecting in the future to hear you announcing a grant or funding 23 sources that will take care of the phase two portion and I’m thrilled that you’ll be able to 24 implement those hard scape improvements on phase one. This is consistent with countless 25 numbers of policies in our Comprehensive Plan. Staff has listed some of those on page 11 of our 26 Staff Report. And I look forward to seeing the work continue. 27 28 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Michael, comment? 29 30 Commissioner Michael: So I think this is obviously a very significant project and it needs to go 31 forward in substantially a form presented. I think a lot of people have spoken about their 32 personal experience with the conditions on the corridor and having grown up in Palo Alto I lived 33 in Barron Park for over 10 years. Subsequent to that I had a daughter going to school at Terman 34 when I lived in Midtown and then she went to Gunn and I experienced a lot of the taking 20 35 minutes to go from El Camino to Gunn for the drop off. And I guess, and I like to say also that 36 I’ve been on the Commission now for only part of the year and this is the first project which I’ve 37 seen such an outpouring of public comments and participation which I think is really wonderful 38 because often times I find myself wondering what does the public think? I mean are there people 39 who are proponents and opponent and what are their reasons? So I, I really spent a lot of time 40 turned out today going through all of the documents that were submitted in great detail and 41 looking at exactly what the reasons were either in favor or not. And by my informal survey 42 roughly 76 percent of the people who took the trouble of submitting a written comment by letter 43 or e-mail were favorable and there were a smaller number of people who were opposed or who 44 had certain concerns but I find some of the concerns that were expressed to me aren’t 45 satisfactorily addressed in the Report. 46 47


So at the very least there’s some loose ends, and I think that the, the explicit objective to 1 minimize traffic shift to adjacent streets is one that seems to me not to be buttoned down. I think 2 that the, the allegation that there’s insufficient data about the extent of cut through traffic strikes 3 me as credible and it needs to be investigated. I think your statistics regarding the uptick on 4 Maybell are consistent with some of the comments that we heard this evening and definitely 5 consistent with my experience as a cyclist and as a parent and living in Barron Park and knowing 6 those cut throughs to Gunn High School. 7 8 There’s there are phenomena going on that are daily occurrences that aren’t really reflected in 9 your analysis because I think you focused appropriately on the main corridor and not so much on 10 the impacts to the Barron Park neighborhood, so when I’ve spoken to people who are current 11 residents of Barron Park neighborhood they all had opinions and most of them were negative as 12 it turned out. That sampling was decidedly different from what I just referenced. There was a 13 concern about road rage, a surprisingly authentic concern that this road rage was real. So I think 14 that the issue of traffic enforcement somehow being insufficient or sporadic is something that 15 ought to be coordinated with the Police Department. There’s something going on with this cut 16 through on Maybell and I don’t know what the solution is and I’m not a traffic engineer qualified 17 to tell you how to do the job, but I don’t know if it’s speed bumps or something but there’s 18 something going on that’s not really reflected in what we see here and then even among the 19 supporters of the, of the project who were very sincerely delighted with the balance of safety to 20 schoolchildren and minimizing the admitted inconvenience to the commute car traffic and 21 motorists, they had some ideas about specific improvements on the striping in the medians 22 versus having a raised or landscaped median. I noticed that that was not in the Capital 23 Improvement portion of this, maybe for funding but that seemed to be something that came up in 24 numerous of the comments and you probably have looked at that but that seems to be valid. 25 26 So I’m tempted to offer an amendment to suggest another six month extension of the trial to let 27 you investigate more completely what goes on in Barron Park although if you could undertake 28 that analysis of the cut through traffic and some of these other comments that I think were 29 important that were raised this evening as a project in parallel I think that the issues and the 30 design of the Arastradero sort of itself seem to be reasonably well done so that it could go to the 31 Council. But can you give me some assurance that you can undertake those in parallel or does 32 this need an amendment to extend the trial? 33 34 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you Commissioner. Within the Staff Report there’s still a couple of other 35 improvements that we recommend that we didn’t get to discuss in the presentation today and two 36 of your comments specifically reminded me that it might be a good opportunity to call those out. 37 Specifically when it comes to kind of just how Maybell is operating there were a couple of 38 improvements that we had in the Report that I think begin to address that concern. And first and 39 foremost you know Maybell Avenue is a bicycle boulevard within our Bicycle Plan and it is 40 technically an existing bicycle boulevard, I don’t think though that I would probably think that 41 most of the bicycle people would agree that it really isn’t to the caliber of what most people 42 would expect a bicycle boulevard to be. And we did recommend an acceleration of design and 43 implementation of the Maybell bicycle boulevard within the Staff report and what we do to make 44 it a bicycle boulevard begins to hit the comments that you’re suggesting Commissioner. 45 Specifically, what do we need to do to make Maybell safer for the bicycles that are using that 46 corridor? It can be a combination of additional speed bumps on the street, it can be a 47 combination of new types of striping, it can be combinations of you know, those little median 48


islands at certain locations near the rear of Juana Briones. Those are things that we can 1 definitely look at, I defiantly can commit that we would look what types of, at making 2 improvements on that street because it something that we already have recommended within the 3 Staff Report and would be appropriate to do as part of the implementation of the Bike Plan itself. 4 5 The other thing that we recommended with the Staff Report that we’re going to begin to move 6 forward actually as early as August is the acceleration of the development of walk and roll, 7 suggest your ride to school maps for all of the schools on and along Arastradero Road. So as a 8 quick diversion we did receive a grant last year and started the implementation of our safe ride to 9 school program this past, this past spring and we’re recommending that Terman, Gunn, Juana 10 Briones each be accelerated to develop for the development of walk and roll maps in the fall at 11 the very beginning of the school year and that process involves us at the very beginning at the 12 head end of the process meeting with parents, walking the routes that parents take to walk to 13 school, taking the routes that parents and students bike to school and trying to figure out a 14 document and develop education material to help actually encourage change in the behavior of 15 bicyclists. That was a comment that I think was a very valid one by some of the, by some of the 16 audience members that, you know we do a good job as a community in helping to educate at the 17 third grade level the rules of the road to sort of drivers. But we don’t really do a good job of 18 reiterating that at the junior high level and that that’s something that is another element of our 19 Safe Ride to School Program that we begin to develop new more educational materials for 20 middle schoolers and begin to implement that into the programs coordination with the District. 21 And again that is already something that’s already happening this year. 22 23 A bigger piece of that though is also that we want to develop education for parents. It’s just as 24 much an issue of a, of a bicyclist adhering to bicycle rules of the road, rules of the road as much 25 as it is for a driver to respect the use of the bicycle use of the road as well and so that they know 26 what bicycles should be doing so that they can watch for different types of for potential reactions 27 of bicyclist so that they know how to react as well. And so I do think that you know we can 28 make a strong commitment to you tonight Commissioner that we would begin to accelerate a lot 29 of those improvements at the same time next year. 30 31 Commissioner Michael: Ok, that’s a, so two other elements that I had raised, one was where you 32 have striping in some cases would it be possible to budget and install raised landscaped medians? 33 Because a number of the comments that I saw seem to make the valid point that where there’s 34 merely striping on the ground you still had behavior by some motorists that was not safe and if 35 you want to achieve the full benefit then using the raised medians would be, would be useful. 36 And I guess the, the comment about the, the improved safety of the, the school kids on their bike 37 to school, I’m not sure if that’s entirely responsive to the cut through traffic of, of cars. So what 38 I got was that you might not have accurate data with respect to that and maybe you could do a, 39 sort of make a commitment to update that data so that if that needs mitigation then you could 40 come back to us at a later date. 41 42 Mr. Rodriguez: Yes Commissioner, I’m sorry. Yes, we will definitely make it a point to collect 43 more data. Actually one of the things that we talked about internally because that has come up 44 is, is actually doing that very first thing in August and in September and potentially going to 45 Council a little later in September so that we have the opportunity to kind of collect and process 46 that data and show those findings to the Council. 47 48


Commissioner Michael: Thank you very much. 1 2 Chair Martinez: Thank you, Commissioner Tanaka. 3 4 Commissioner Tanaka: So I also had, first of all I appreciate everyone’s comments on this and 5 for people coming out to, to speak on this item. I also was curious about the possibility of cut 6 through traffic on Maybell. It looks like there’s actually already three speed tables on Maybell at 7 least that’s what I saw and there’s only two stop signs. But I was wondering if the Chief 8 Transportation Official could talk a little more about your feel about the cut throughs. Do you 9 think there’s really a problem here already that’s not being solved, or do you think that it’s 10 something which is just general increase in Palo Alto traffic? 11 12 Mr. Rodriguez: Well you know I think that when the community kind of comes out kind of in 13 strong unison that shows that there’s concern. And so again we’re not at all trying to dismiss 14 that, that feedback from the community. I think that the recommendation by Commissioner 15 Michael is a good one, I think that we’re definitely committed to studying that corridor a little bit 16 more at the beginning of the school year and again school year starts a little earlier this year, 17 mid-August and so we want to wait till probably the last weekend of August and really just 18 collect a lot of data and really validate that concern. And so I don’t want to say it exists or 19 doesn’t exist, I would say that, I think that Commissioner is correct we collect a little more data 20 in connection to speed and cut through traffic. 21 22 Commissioner Tanaka: When were the speed tables, speed tables put in on Maybell? Was this 23 during the trial, was it before or after? I mean, do you, do you know? 24 25 Mr. Rodriguez: I honestly personally don’t know I just talked with Rafael as you asked the 26 question and he was telling me his understanding was they went in about 2008. That was about 27 the same time that we did the improvements at the Gunn High School driveway. Whether or not 28 they were specific because it was working in conjunction with that, I honestly don’t know the 29 answer. 30 31 Commissioner Tanaka: Ok. So if as part of the Bike Boulevard Plan, I would assume that you 32 would also look at perhaps speed tables on Coulombe or is it just Maybell that you guys would 33 consider? Or would you consider kind of the whole route? 34 35 Mr. Rodriguez: We can definitely look at the whole route. The way we typically treat speed 36 tables and speed humps is that we usually wait for the community to address them. For a bicycle 37 boulevard though we, we can practically preempt a request for community consideration for that 38 type of an improvement. I think that when we look at the bicycle boulevard for Maybell if, if we 39 need to pay some special attention to Coulombe to help address that concern as well that, yeah, 40 yeah we can definitely do that but we also then want to make sure like what is the bell schedule 41 times for Juana Briones to any relations of that peak as well? We need to understand that to 42 make sure we don’t impact people’s ability to get to school either. 43 44 Commissioner Tanaka: Sure. I guess my main comment is that you have three speed tables, two 45 stop signs, and so if you’re really trying to cut through it doesn’t seem like much of a short cut 46 because you have all that traffic calming already, so I’m just trying to figure out is there enough 47 already, does there need to be more? I mean would you put five speed tables? There’s already 48


three and two stop signs. How many, how much do you need? So that’s what I’m trying to get a 1 feel of and what more would you do on that street? It’s not very long and there’s already quite a 2 bit on there. 3 4 Mr. Rodriguez: Again for bicycle boulevard type treatments there’s signage and marking type of 5 treatments that we could look at. That’s part of the design of the bicycle boulevard. Do we need 6 more improvements to the west of Coulombe? I don’t know without looking at some more data. 7 Specifically want bicycle usage as well as just lower vehicle speeds because it is a while before 8 you get from Coulombe I used to get towards the Georgia area, so there’s opportunity for vehicle 9 speeds to increase in that area. And so we want to make sure that we look at the concern and the 10 cause is that just because there is no controls in that area and that’s just a natural street segment 11 where people can increase or is that a result of Arastradero and it’s really important for us to kind 12 of, you know, to be able to identify the cause. 13 14 Commissioner Tanaka: Ok. The other question is one of the members of the public mentioned 15 about pedestrian lights and how they’re hard to see. I actually haven’t witness, witnessed it 16 myself but can you speak a little bit about that. Is there, what’s the issue and is that a real issue 17 in your opinion? 18 19 Mr. Rodriguez: You’ll have to remind me a little bit more Commissioner. 20 21 Commissioner Tanaka: It was something that at Clemo. 22 23 Mr. Rodriguez: The flashing beacon at Clemo. Yes, I’m sorry. Again just to reiterate if you are a 24 pedestrian and you push the rapid flashing beacon at Clemo you do not get any type of visual cue 25 that the lights have been activated. Again that was intentional because we want motor, we want 26 pedestrians to cross with caution. There have been just a lot of advancements in new types of 27 technology and there was a lot of reference to signs that have kind of lights embedded within the 28 lights, the signs themselves. They also provide a visual, I’ve seen that and they work great. 29 Definitely I think we need to look at something like that as we’re implementing the longer term 30 improvements of the project. 31 32 Commissioner Tanaka: Ok. I think I understand your rush now. Thank you. 33 34 Chair Martinez: Vice Chair Fineberg with a follow up comment. 35 36 Vice Chair Fineberg: Yeah I appreciate Commissioner Tanaka’s question on the little blinky 37 lights because it just made me realize something I’ve seen when I drive there’s often a pedestrian 38 standing there just waiting to cross and I tend to try my best to be considerate and slow down and 39 stop and provide safe crossings to pedestrians and I like doing it at that particular crosswalk 40 because I know how hard it is to get across but sometimes they just stand there and they don’t 41 step out and I’m like you know, I’m stopped, come on and there’s no cars to my left or my right 42 and car you know, next to me possibly has stopped, so they have safe passage and they just don’t 43 walk. And that just explained why. Because they don’t know it’s kind of their time and we’re 44 stopping because of the blinky lights, but they don’t know we have them. So tweak it however 45 to make it work. 46 47 Chair Martinez: Commissioners, oh, are you done? 48


Commissioner Tanaka: Yeah, no I think in general I think the work has been pretty, pretty great 1 on this thing so I do support it. Thank you. 2 3 VOTE 4 5 Chair Martinez: Ok Commissioners, let’s vote on the Motion. Those in favor say aye. Aye. The 6 Motion passes unanimously. I want to thank everyone for your hard work on this and we look 7 forward to the permanent installation. Thanks Jaime. 8 9 MOTION PASSED (5-0, Commissioner Tuma absent) 10 11 Mr. Rodriguez: Thank you very much Commissioners. 12 13

Commission Motion: Planning and Transportation Commission to recommend that the 14 City Council approve the permanent retention of Phase 2 of the Charleston-Arastradero 15 Corridor Re-Striping Project, with additional street modifications outlined in the 16 presentation. Motion by Commissioner Keller and seconded by Vice Chair Fineberg (5-17 0) 18

19 APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Minutes of July 11, 2012 20 21 Chair Martinez: Ok. We have minutes from June; excuse me, July 11, 2012. Do I hear a Motion 22 to approve? 23 24 MOTION 25 26 Commissioner Michael: So moved. 27 28 SECOND 29 30 Chari Martinez: Ok, Motion by Commissioner Michael. Second? 31 32 Commissioner Keller: Second. 33 34 VOTE 35 36 Chair Martinez: Second, Commissioner Keller. Those in favor say aye. Aye. Ok, Motion 37 passes unanimously. 38 39 MOTION PASSED (5-0, Commissioner Tuma absent) 40 41

Commission Motion: Minutes approved, Motion by Commissioner Michael and 42 seconded by Commissioner Tanaka (5-0) 43

44 REPORTS FROM OFFICIALS/COMMITTEES. 45 46 Chair Martinez: Reports from subcommittees, liaisons, etcetera. The, what about the housing, I 47 forget the name of your, yeah liaison. 48


Vice Chair Fineberg: The Regional Housing Mandate Subcommittee. 1 2 Chair Martinez: That’s the one. 3 4 Vice Chair Fineberg: Met prior to the Council meeting. I reported out on that income at our last 5 meeting in combination with Council’s action of recommending the, I’m sorry, of approving 6 sending the Housing Element to HCD so my comments on that are reflected in our last meeting 7 and I’ll just wrap up the others. I’m thrilled that the Transportation Element will be moving 8 forward to the Commission sometime in late August/September and then the Community 9 Services Element we wrapped up tonight, and that’s another good one. 10 11 Chair Martinez: Thank you Susan. What about the Cubberley? There was a meeting tonight? 12 Do you want to report on that? 13 14 Commissioner Tanaka: Well you see the issue with Cubberley is that those meetings are 15 scheduled almost at the same exact time as this meeting. So it’s basically impossible to attend 16 both at the same time unless you could clone yourself. So I hope in the future this would be 17 remedied with a different meeting time of one of the meetings. Thank you. 18 19 Chair Martinez: Commissioner Keller anything to report? 20 21 Commissioner Keller: Yes I was representative at the Council meeting on Monday and the 22 Council approved the California Avenue Streetscape Improvement and did not recommend, did 23 not include in that having a trial. The trial was, a Motion to have the trial was defeated on a two 24 to seven vote and it was a unanimous vote to move forward on the continued improvements to, to 25 California Avenue and completing the design. 26 27 Chair Martinez: Thank you. Anyone else? Ok. Our next meeting is going to be August 29th I 28 believe it will be the first meeting. We have scheduled Curtis, a joint meeting with the 29 Architectural Review Board (ARB). Since it’s going to be, this is going to be our first meeting 30 with two new Commissioners and Commission business to do, I was thinking maybe we should 31 look at rescheduling that to a following meeting. And it just seems kind of awkward to step into 32 this joint session before we have had a chance to have some kind of introduction of our new 33 Commissioners. 34 35 Curtis Williams, Planning Director: Ok, I’m just a little concerned that that, I mean we have time 36 on the 29th, and I’m not sure how much time we’ll have because the other, especially since the, 37 so the Transportation Element is coming to you so that will probably take a lot of time on the 38 29th anyways so that might be fine. 39 40 Chair Martinez: Was that the only other, was that the only other (interrupted) 41 42 Mr. Williams: That, election of officers, and the, we had talked about whether to put the 43 procedural rules, which I don’t know if that’s just a consent item basically but the ex-parte 44 language I guess on your, it was going to be on August 8th and that was the only thing that was 45 left on August 8th, so we can put it on August 29th. And I mean if we’re not going to have the 46 joint session then we definitely should put that on as well. But the Transportation Element was 47 the only other. 48


Chair Martinez: Oh, I thought there were (interrupted) 1 2 Mr. Williams: The Transportation Element and the joint session with the election. [Note—3 talking over one another] Let me talk to Amy about it and sort of see that, I mean I understand 4 your point is well taken too. It’s kind of hard to you got to get up to speed a little bit on the 5 Commission activities before jumping into Commission and ARB roles so maybe that’s better to 6 put that off. Then we can also sort of gauge where were are in September with the meeting items 7 and see if that looks like we have time then to come forward. 8 9 Chair Martinez: We also have the Natural Environment Element in that one (interrupted) 10 11 Mr. Williams: That was going to be on August 8th, but apparently there’s some delay in getting 12 to the Parks and Recreation Commission and some other things getting done so they didn’t think 13 that could be ready by the 29th, but I’ll check. I’ll double check on that. We might not really 14 have pushed that point because we knew there was the ARB study session on the 29th so it 15 wouldn’t have fit anyway, but if the ARB session is off, you know, maybe they would be ready. 16 But I’ll check on that cause that would be a good alternative if it’s ready. 17 18 Chair Martinez: Ok, I appreciate that. 19 20 Mr. Williams: I did have one comment that we can talk about more offline too but I think we 21 need to have some discussion about the messages that, message that gets sent out to the 22 Commission the day or day before the meeting about the meeting. Partly in light of some of the 23 discussions we had with the conflict of interest thing I think City Attorney is getting a little 24 nervous about sending those out. I think we can still send them out but we may need to work on 25 pairing it down or being very specific about the process and not anything about what we’re 26 discussing during the course of (interrupted) 27 28 Chair Martinez: The pre-Commission notes? 29 30 Mr. Williams: Yeah, the pre-Commission notes, right. So we can talk about that at our next pre-31 Commission meeting if not before. 32 33 Chair Martinez: Ok. That’s fine. Well I think most everyone could feel the meeting tonight was 34 a little subdued. This is going to be a big change for us going forward. When, when I came on 35 the Commission three years ago it was somewhat easier for me to learn and move quickly 36 because there were giants of Commissioner Holman and Commissioner Garber and 37 Commissioner Fineberg that really helped me learn quickly. I see the formation of a new 38 Commission being quite different than that. I sat between Karen and Susan and I was fascinated 39 that there were notes being passed by and I thought this was the coolest thing, [making policy], 40 but I complained to Karen that I wasn’t getting any of those notes and she handed me one it said, 41 “Eduardo, fetch me some dinner.” So, I learned when to shut up really quick. But even Susan 42 was very sweet to me, she would often say I want to support whatever Commissioner Martinez 43 just said and that meant a lot to me too. 44 45 It’s a cliché to say that you know we’re going to miss the wisdom and perspective of Susan being 46 here with us. It’s more than that; it’s almost part of our operating system to have her here with 47 us. It’s not only because she knows the muni code and the Comp Plan and so much more of 48


what we do better than the rest of us, but that the way she or you, I’m sorry I’m speaking like 1 you’re not here. Just takes this information and gives it back to us in a way that makes us think. 2 And I realize that this isn’t popular with some folks sometimes but I think it’s really the duty of 3 the Commission. We’re not politicians, we’re citizen volunteers and the ideas we express should 4 push the limit. For example when we had the debate about what did the Council really mean in 5 saying we should explore the 50 foot height limit and we all just said well, you know if it’s near 6 transit and you know it’s a good housing site then yeah, why not? And Susan would say, no 7 that’s not what the Council said. The Council said that it should be considered to be part of the 8 Housing Inventory and we all looked like no no, but it turns out that she was absolutely right 9 about that and right about so many other positions that she’s taken that has been unpopular. And 10 I hope that for us as a Commission going forward that we take this courage to speak up and to be 11 unpopular and to send a message to Council that this is our concern, not because the community 12 said that’s what they want, but that’s the way in which we looked it to be the best way to serve 13 the community. And I just for all of us want to thank Susan for always representing the best of 14 us in that and yes, we will miss you. Thank you. Meeting adjourned. 15 16 ADJOURNED: 9:25 PM 17

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