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Menlo Park is holding off on removing parking spaces near Stanford University’s new Middle Plaza project on El Camino Real, after City Council members tried for an hour to eke out potential alternatives from staff.
The hesitancy from council, which voted 3-2 on the matter at Tuesday’s meeting, stems from a clashing combination of wants and needs.
Ahead of the opening of Middle Plaza this year, Stanford wants to add another crosswalk at the Middle Avenue and El Camino Real intersection to provide a pathway to the development.
Along with this, the city aims to build a raised, concrete median from Middle Avenue to College Avenue, giving better separation between the opposing traffic and a “small refuge” for the crossing pedestrians, according to a staff report. Currently, this small stretch of El Camino Real is one of the few that relies on flexible posts for separation.
At 2-feet wide, the proposed median is already narrow, said Hugh Louch, the city’s public works assistant director, and will provide “modest” safety benefits for pedestrians. But to carve space for even a small separation, something from El Camino Real’s finite width has to go.
City staff and the Complete Streets Commission members ultimately determined that the most feasible solution would be to remove eight parking spots between 441 and 401 El Camino Real, where several small businesses stand, including Namesake Cheesecake, Menlo Velo Bicycles and the new Level Lux Salon that opened during the pandemic. And to make up for lost parking near the businesses, staff recommended placing one-hour time limits on about seven unrestricted parking spaces on College Avenue.
Menlo Park may remove several parking spots on a strip of El Camino Real to make way for a two-feet wide median and a buffered bike lane. Map by Lloyd Lee.
Still, owners of the impacted businesses pleaded to the city on Tuesday to reconsider.
“You take our spots away and it literally will crush our businesses,” said Cherith Spicer, owner of Namesake Cheesecake.
City staffers had determined in their study that the eight parking spaces were not heavily used based on observations of parking behavior on two days, during the morning and afternoon, and a review of Google Maps’ street view history, which shows a snapshot of a street at a single point in time.
But two business owners argued that it’s partly due to the nature of their services. Spicer said the spots allow her clients, some of them senior citizens, to park for a couple of minutes while they quickly pick up their cake.
Alexis Treacy, owner of Level Lux Salon, said that many of her clients use the parking space to come in for a 30-minute haircut.
“El Camino is always full pretty much Monday through Saturday,” she said.
Another public commenter said that UPS trucks tend to take up some of the existing spots — there’s a UPS location on that small strip — and didn’t agree with moving customers to the side of College Avenue, spaces that are frequently taken up by construction workers, he said.
While staff isn’t proposing creating more parking spots, the logic behind the new one-hour time limits at College Avenue is to ensure that nobody will park in those spaces all day.
During the hour-long discussion, it was clear that there were little alternative solutions that could avoid cascading impacts.
The driving lanes on El Camino Real are narrow and the parking space by the small strip is currently about 7-feet wide — the minimum width a vehicle should have, Louch said — already leaving little room for the 2-foot median.
Council member Ray Mueller entertained the idea of shaving off a part of the sidewalk by the Middle Plaza project. But based on preliminary information provided during the council meeting, Louch said that that would require the removal of several street trees and the consideration of a major pipeline underground.
Moving the location of the median, say, further away from the side of the small businesses and closer to the Middle Plaza side, would pose another challenge, as it would move the alignment between the driving lanes further down El Camino Real. In other words, shifting a median in one spot may mean shifting a median elsewhere.
Staff is also proposing parking restrictions across the road along the Middle Plaza project, down to the Menlo Park-Palo Alto city limit, in order to create a future buffered bike lane.
While parking removal isn’t an issue in this case, since the new development has on-site parking, it was another pain point for Mueller, who said he preferred a protected bike lane with barricades to clearly separate cars from cyclists.
“I’m not convinced that what we’re doing here is safe enough, candidly,” Mueller said. “Because what we’re going to end up with is a 5-feet lane on one side of El Camino … which won’t be a protected bike lane. And then we’re gonna end up with a little 2-feet median that I don’t want my kid hanging off in the middle of El Camino, especially if there’s no parking on either side, where people are racing up and down.”
Council members Mueller, Combs and Cecilia Taylor voted against the staff proposals.
The City Council didn’t provide further direction for staff on Tuesday, but Mueller hoped that staff members will conduct a “good faith investigation” into a design that would allow for a protected bike lane and a wider median.
With this delay in the crosswalk decision, staff said the council must factor in Stanford’s timeline for the project, which is expected to open later this year.
Interim City Manager Justin Murphy said that while the exact implications of delaying the crosswalk installment are unknown, the city does risk having to take on the burden of any infrastructure improvement that the developer was initially slated to handle.
“The worst case would be that it becomes the city’s full responsibility,” Murphy said.
Community members can voice their input at a Complete Street project meeting on Thursday, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m, at Nealon Park or on Zoom. It will be the first community meeting to discuss bicycle and pedestrian improvements along Middle Avenue, spanning from Olive Street to El Camino Real.
For more meeting details, visit menlopark.org.
In other parking-related news, the City Council moved ahead with removing six parking spaces on University Drive, near Millie Avenue and Rose Avenue.
The concern was that drivers have an obstructed view of oncoming traffic when they’re about to turn left or right onto University Drive, due to the parked cars blocking their line of sight.
Derek Pecson, a resident on the corner of Rose Avenue and University Drive, said that while working from home during the pandemic, he has witnessed several near misses at the intersection.
“I’ve also witnessed a child on a bicycle being hit by a car due to a car encroaching onto University to see past the parked cars,” he said, noting that Rose Avenue becomes busy during school hours since Menlo School is nearby.
The City Council’s vote to remove the parking spaces was unanimous.
The only POTENTIALLY reasonable solution for adding biking facilities to El Camino remains PROTECTED BIKE LANES. These would physically separate riders from passing vehicles, AND include safety elements, e.g., signs, lights, that would protect riders from vehicles entering and exiting the more than 50 driveways that connect to El Camino within Menlo Park.
Only a comprehensive study can determine whether a design that is acceptable for bikers, motorists and businesses is even possible. Notes: Such a study was proposed and budgeted the last time the City considered and then dropped the idea of adding bike facilities to El Camino. Outcomes: (1) the study was not undertaken and (2) the City Council decided not to add buffered bike lanes. The former was a poor decision, and the latter a wise one.