Publication Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2004
A neighborhood divided
A neighborhood divided
(January 28, 2004) How seven roadblocks stirred up trouble in Downtown North
by Jocelyn Dong
"roadblock. n. 1. An obstruction in a road; specif. ... a blockade of logs, wire, cement, etc., for holding up enemy vehicles at a point covered by heavy fire... 2. any hindrance or obstacle in the way of an objective." Source: Webster's New World
Each one is made up of an orange-and-white central pole flanked on either side by asphalt berms topped by white picket fences.
They are the seven roadblocks of Downtown North. Installed last June as part of a traffic-management experiment, the barriers appear as neutral street fixtures to the uninitiated passerby.
Yet, these simple road closures have sparked a divisiveness that's led to neighbors hurling insults at each other during public meetings, residents' lawn signs being snatched from front yards, weekly letters barraging local newspapers, city staff holding numerous -- and apparently fruitless -- meetings to restore harmony, and finally, some last-ditch involvement by City Council members to broker a compromise.
The project was launched about eight years ago to improve safety for residents living north of Lytton Avenue. But despite a city-led process that by all appearances went by the book, the project has created deep dissension among the very neighbors it was intended to benefit.
Last week, the Planning and Transportation Commission heard testimony from 80 residents who wanted to speak their minds about the project. One commissioner reportedly requested a police officer be present out of concern over a possible fracas. A second meeting has been scheduled for Feb. 25 to decide what to do with the trial.
With more traffic-calming programs in the pipeline throughout Palo Alto, residents citywide are wondering how this uproar happened, and what can be done to prevent similar tumult from turning their neighborhoods upside-down.
It wasn't supposed to turn out like this.
With council approval way back in 1979, Downtown North had been slated for help with its traffic for decades. The neighborhood, a grid of streets running east/west and north/south, had become a popular thoroughfare for commuters looking to go between Alma Street and Middlefield Road without taking Lytton or University avenues.
As Silicon Valley boomed, traffic increased and neighbors urged that the project move forward. Residents today recall streets where pets were regularly run over, and adults and children had near-misses. In 1996, the neighborhood obtained "public benefit" funding for a traffic study, and by 1999 members of the Downtown North Neighborhood Association, led by Dan Lorimer, were working with city staff and a consultant to measure traffic and design mitigation.
Over the summer of 1999, transportation staff held meetings for Downtown North residents to discuss traffic problems and solutions. A traffic study found that 60 percent of cars entering the neighborhood were using it to cut through. Depending on the day, that amounted to between 540 and 2,400 cars.
By the next summer, the committee of staff and residents had settled on a plan to place seven barriers on three roads, effectively making it difficult to cross the neighborhood without making frequent turns. When the neighborhood association asked residents to support the road-closure plan, about one in four households mailed back their postcard votes. Sixty percent of them approved. The project moved on to the planning commission and, later, the council.
But members on both bodies had serious reservations about closing roads -- the most extreme method of controlling traffic. Over the next five months, however, both the commission and the council gave the green light to a six-month trial. The commission voted 4-1 and the council 3-2.
Last June, after two years of funding delays, the city began installing the traffic plan, including the seven road closures.
In the blink of an eye, traffic-calming hell broke loose.
Residents packed the next neighborhood association meeting, held June 19. Discussion grew heated. Some residents charged they hadn't been consulted about the project; others responded that any ignorance was probably due to inattention.
Out of that meeting, a neighborhood group opposing the road closures was formed, led by 10-year resident Joe Durand. Calling themselves "Unblock Downtown North," the group immediately began holding meetings of their own, posting fliers around the neighborhood, collecting signatures on a petition and advocating to the city's transportation division for the closures to be removed.
Tempers in the neighborhood flared as neighbors chose sides. Fliers posted by Unblock were ripped down. Barriers were vandalized. Neighbors contacted the press and the city about incidents and personal experiences that bolstered their views.
Relations between neighbors grew so contentious, a facilitator at a neighborhood meeting last November brought copies of "Behavior Guidelines for Public Meetings" and stacked the sheets at the sign-in table for residents to pick up and follow. More than an hour into the meeting, one man stood up and exploded "You're selfish!" at a speaker who was praising the program.
Meanwhile, representatives of the two sides met with city staff to devise the post-trial opinion survey. Because of residents' ongoing disagreements over everything from who should be polled to what should be asked, city staff finally gave up and in December provisionally cancelled the survey.
Around the holidays, pro-closures lawn signs started vanishing from residents' front yards. Neighborhood association leaders blamed Unblock members. Unblock denied the crimes. Vigilant residents set their surveillance videotapes and cameras to work, capturing the thief in action, but police have yet to arrest a culprit.
In early January, council members Yoriko Kishimoto and Jim Burch took a stab at brokering a compromise between the two sides. But they reportedly left the two-hour meeting without reaching an agreement on the survey, and no future meetings were planned.
Ask 25 people what the furor has been about and you'll get 25 different answers: the need for safety; the right to have open streets; fear of change; unwillingness to accept the costs along with the benefits of living near downtown; a problem with neighborhood associations; denial about how Palo Alto is changing; lack of a workable citywide transportation plan; and good old human selfishness.
That the road closures have rid the neighborhood of about 90 percent of cut-through traffic is undisputed. So is the fact that, while many streets within the neighborhood now have dramatically less traffic, some have seen an increase of unacceptable levels, according to the transportation division.
To get at the heart of the imbroglio, though, requires looking at the wholly differing positions held by residents in the two camps. Their polarization sheds light on why the division has become so intractable that neighbors seem unable to compromise or even understand one another.
On the one hand are residents allied with the neighborhood association. They see themselves as mostly longtime residents and families looking out for the safety of children, pets, cyclists and pedestrians. They've felt put-upon by traffic for years and consider road blocks a matter of self-defense.
"We can't count on people to do the right thing," resident Becky Beacom said at last week's commission meeting.
Called elitist because of their intent to close off streets to the rest of Palo Alto, sending traffic to other neighborhoods, residents argue they're merely restoring some much-needed balance.
"Sharing of this excess traffic is long overdue," Joanne Beasley told the commissioners.
Other residents point out their streets are still open to downtown employees who park there all day. And under the current traffic-calming configuration, drivers can still use the streets, residents said.
The amount of time and effort that residents have spent working toward the traffic trial has no doubt entrenched some in their pro-barrier position. The project was voted on by the neighborhood in 2000, but not installed until last June -- three years later.
In the time it took to get implemented, "people built up such a head of steam," said closures proponent and former association board member Sally-Ann Rudd.
The famed, interminable "Palo Alto process" and the looming threat that Sand Hill Road may one day connect to Alma, bringing more cars, has seemingly contributed to a sense of desperation as well. More than one resident has said this trial is their "only chance" to get help with their neighborhood's traffic.
Also triggering their passions are fears for children's safety. They testify to their kids' near misses and bicycle/car accidents they've experienced. A few bring up the death of 6-year-old Amy Malzbender as an example of their worst-case scenario.
Mostly, though, it is people's personal experience of a calmer community the past seven months that endears them to the closures.
"It's made a tremendous difference to our family's life in the neighborhood. I'd like to echo how much safer the streets are for my children and for myself," said Susan Tachna, who lives near a closure.
"Truly heaven" is how another resident described her walks in the neighborhood. "It used to be so noisy. Now it's wonderful. People stop and talk to me."
A newfound sense of community is what Michael Harbour has gotten out of the traffic plan. He lives on a street that winds along San Francisquito Creek and noticed his neighbors are out walking more since the traffic-calming.
"I'm so much happier. People on Palo Alto Avenue now call it 'The Avenue,'" he said.
One thing some pro-barrier people aren't so happy about are the anti-barrier folks. They view members of Unblock as angry, loud and probably even responsible for pinching their lawn signs. The protesters' behavior is part of what makes the pro-closure residents even more determined.
"Because Unblock is so strident, it makes you feel you're not going to give in to that. 'I'm not going to give an inch,' " Rudd said.
But therein lies one of the issue's biggest ironies. Those who ally themselves with Unblock say it was the behavior of the proponents that got them so riled up in the first place. To the anti-barrier residents, the whole issue is largely about fairness.
From the initial choice of road closures to the cancellation of the post-trial survey, theirs is the voice that has been readily -- and repeatedly -- ignored by the neighborhood association, they said.
Resident Ed Glazier recalled going to an association meeting in 1999 in which, he said, "speakers were not listened to." When options were suggested, they were immediately dismissed by neighborhood-association leaders as ineffective, Glazier said.
Durand of Unblock has expressed similar frustration. After 80 percent of his members said they'd like the city to consider using speed tables, he broached the idea with neighborhood leaders and city staff. The idea was promptly dismissed, he said.
"This has become a continuing example of how to polarize and fracture a neighborhood," Durand told commissioners last week.
Those aligned with Unblock view themselves as advocates for inclusion. The neighborhood has the highest density of apartment units in the city, and they've pushed for the transportation department to have a complete mailing list of households -- including every apartment. When it came to collecting opinions on the effectiveness of the trial, they wanted to include residents along the neighborhood's boundaries as well, not just those in the interior.
Roadblock opponents also question how the project could have gotten the green light back in 2000, with only 15 percent of the neighborhood's approval via the postcard survey.
"It came down to 90 more people wanting it than didn't want it. It's not a good way to handle" neighborhood polling, Durand said. He said if the city had required the neighborhood to submit a petition signed by a majority of residents, the traffic trial would have looked very different.
As strident as they may seem to pro-barrier residents, the Unblock affiliates see themselves as moderates. They continually point out that less drastic traffic-calming measures could have been tried first.
"The problem is what went in was a fairly extreme solution, so you had immediate polarization," Durand said. "Getting compromise from polarization is difficult."
And while they've been accused of stealing lawn signs, Unblock members respond with tales of their own -- of Unblock fliers being torn down within hours of posting, and of walking door to door and having a neighbor roll up their petition and throw it at them.
Perhaps one significant reason for anti-barrier residents' ire lies not in what was done but what was not done. Some say they didn't raise too much fuss over the six-month trial when it was proposed because they expected it to be easily modified, or at least put up for a vote in the end. The fact that neither happened has left some feeling betrayed.
Jane Stern moved into the neighborhood three years ago and wasn't aware of the project until she noticed traffic patterns changing in front of her house last June. More trucks began trundling by. Her neighbor across the street explained to her that "it was just a trial and we'd be able to vote on it once it was over."
"That was enough for me. We'll try it and see how it goes," Stern said. "I was hopeful the survey would prove that there were people were unhappy (with the plan)."
Had there been a survey, Stern said, she would have been glad to abide by the results. Now, however, Stern feels her voice will go unheard.
Not surprisingly, Lorimer has a different view of the neighborhood association's and the city's actions, saying the process has been open throughout.
"My reaction to that is the same as when people say they don't know what's going on in the world. It takes a certain amount of initiative. When people tell you they weren't properly included ... it's just irresponsibility. They had plenty of chance," Lorimer said.
Some residents are sympathetic to the complaints of their neighbors. Barrier opponents realize people have been working for years toward a traffic solution. Pro-barrier residents acknowledge that some neighbors feel disenfranchised.
"There were obviously people who were totally clueless about what was in the works. That helped engender the feeling they'd been sandbagged," said Michael Griffin, a Downtown North resident and planning commissioner. He was one of five neighbors who worked at the outset with city staff on the project advisory committee. "That was our worst fear when we started off on this thing -- people would wake up, see the things, and feel they were not properly involved."
And even anti-barrier residents acknowledge some neighbors failed to inform themselves when the idea was floated years ago, due to naïveté or busy schedules.
Former Mayor Gary Fazzino, a Downtown North resident who helped push for the neighborhood's traffic-calming in the mid-90s, said lack of participation is typical, however.
"Unless someone is very engaged ... one doesn't get involved until one's ox is gored," Fazzino said.
Some residents who've benefited from decreased traffic are aware the plan's been less-than-successful for others, and have volunteered their own problem-solving skills in trying to remedy the situation. Steve Fram and David Solnick spent three evenings last week devising their own, improved version of the traffic-calming plan to create better traffic patterns neighborhoodwide. They presented their map of roadblocks and traffic circles to the commission last week.
People still scratching their heads about why a spirit of compromise hasn't permeated the Downtown North neighborhood need look no farther than the roadblocks themselves -- and human nature.
As Joe Kott, Palo Alto's chief transportation official, succinctly put it: "Road closures are a binary topic. It's a zero or a one."
Unlike speed bumps, closures can't be made shallower or steeper, bigger or smaller. They're either in or they're out. For that reason, and because they force people to change their habits, they are inherently controversial.
A second reason has to do with whether a person believes roadblocks are worth changing behavior. One of the stated goals of the Downtown North project is to reduce cut-through traffic by 65 percent. Those willing to have whatever solution it takes to achieve that goal seem to have accepted the road closures. Those eschewing the barriers, but favoring traffic calming, seem willing to live with less than a 65 percent cut.
It boils down to one side choosing the goal as most important, and the other favoring the methodology.
Most likely this irresolvable philosophical difference is why the transportation division has, as neighborhood association Vice President Joshua Mogal put it, recently proposed a "Solomonic" solution: Take out half of the roadblocks currently installed and replace them with traffic circles and a speed table. The planning commission will consider whether to make that alternative permanent at its Feb. 25 meeting.
Finally, there's human nature.
Kott, who has been on the frontlines for months listening to countless opinions on the Downtown North trial, shared his observations on how conflicts start, and how they can be resolved.
"I'm a great believer that people ought to engage in dialogue, continue dialogue and seek out solutions that meet shared values. That's the best approach," Kott said. "What happens when the lines get drawn too soon and too firmly is it's difficult to engage in open dialogue. It becomes a contest rather than a search for shared solutions."
It is a contest, however, that is apparently addictive. One neighborhood resident admitted her friends make fun of Downtown North's divisiveness, and she realizes there are bigger problems in the world.
Yet, "I'm surprised by how I've gotten sucked into it myself," she said. "What's wrong with us?"
Jocelyn Dong can be e-mailed at jdong@paweekly.com.
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