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Letter: Still time to accept Stanford's $10 million

The following letter was addressed to the San Mateo County supervisors:

A female bicyclist was killed on Alpine Road this summer at the intersection of Interstate 280 in San Mateo County. Do we need to wait until another death or injury occurs to take action to accept Stanford's $10 million offer to plan and to repair this intersection and the three-mile stretch of trail along Alpine Road that is called the Lower Alpine Trail?

I demand that our three female county supervisors who voted "no" on even starting planning for this process change their vote immediately to "yes." There is still time. Supervisors Rose Jacobs Gibson, Adrienne Tissier and Carole Groom all need to walk or ride their bikes daily along this section of the road over the next week, not only to save carbon credits as was advocated at the supervisors' Dec. 13 meeting, not only to provide a way for children and adults to exercise safely, as they advocated for a fee-based indoor sport facility, but also to understand why roughly half of the people who waited four hours at that meeting demanded they vote to study this plan, using money available from Stanford University.

Karen Butterfield, Coquito Court, Portola Valley

Posted by another cyclist, a resident of the Menlo Park: other neighborhood, on Dec 20, 2011 at 7:39 pm

Yet another Stanford educated doctor rooting for Stanford - give it up already! There is a perfectly adequate bike lane in both directions throughout the county area. Menlo Park is getting a grant to fix its part of Alpine. There never has been a "lower Alpine Trail." That is a mere figment of Larry Horton's over active imagination. The late Mrs. Ward would never have used a bike path even if there had been one. The problem with Alpine Road is Stanford's over use, which it also committed itself to mitigate, yet has failed to do so. Stanford does not rule the world, not in San Mateo County, Los Altos Hills, or as it recently found out, in the Big Apple either. Stanford needs to act ethically and abide by its self imposed commitments.