Publication Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Editorial: Survey or not, remove the barriers
Editorial: Survey or not, remove the barriers
(March 17, 2004) In Downtown North's uncivil war, "Modified Mixed Measures" plan shows promise -- but the problem has become divisiveness and hostility as much as traffic
The bitterness in Downtown North over "traffic calming" street closures barriers does not seem to have abated in recent weeks.
It appears the City Council will get a full dose of it when the issue comes before it next Monday night, even though an alternative plan to the existing barriers trial will be on the table.
The alternative, called the "Modified Mixed Measures" plan, would remove two of the seven traffic barriers and relocate another, add peak-hour turn restrictions along Middlefield Road and Alma Street at the neighborhood's boundaries, add two traffic circles and a "speed table" (gradual bump), and retain a "bulb out" sidewalk extension at one intersection. It would retain barriers on Palo Alto Avenue, the narrow, tightly curved street along San Francisquito Creek.
But city officials report little apparent let-up of angry opposition to attempts to curtail and slow-down traffic in the area.
This is a sad situation, as just about everyone realizes the area has been unduly impacted by east-west through traffic for many years.
Yet there seems to be no easy exit from the maze of conflicting views, suspicions, allegations and enmities created by the "six-month trial" of street closures, despite several well-meaning attempts to mediate.
Residents couldn't even agree on how a survey should be held, and there have been reports of intimidation, sign-stealing and even tampering with an online opinion survey to make it overwhelmingly pro-barriers.
The issue has become a complete time-sink for city staff members, who since 1999 have been either conducting traffic counts or working to assuage feelings of one side or another.
Now a new group, representing residents of "arterial" streets (Middlefield Road and Lytton Avenue, in the case of Downtown North), is emerging to battle against increased traffic from street closures or other traffic-calming efforts within neighborhoods.
And the city staff, in deep frustration, has abandoned the idea of doing any kind of survey of neighborhood sentiment.
There also are differences on the City Council about how to get through, or out of, this mess.
But the council is where the buck stops. It's time for this council to demonstrate its touted new problem-solving cohesiveness and take charge of a seriously out-of-control situation. This matter will only get worse, not better, if the council fails to act decisively.
Not having survey results makes the job more difficult. It would be nice to know what majority sentiment in the neighborhood truly is, as both sides claim majority support. The city staff in a recent report notes that names and addresses are ready for a household-based opinion survey -- not a one-person-one-vote survey demanded by officers of the Downtown North Neighborhood Association. But this is not a referendum vote -- yet -- and a household survey is the way almost all such opinion-gathering efforts are done.
With or without a survey, council members are responsible for making decisions in the best interests of the neighborhood and the broader community, which has had enough of this issue.
The latest staff proposal, as modified by the Planning Commission in late January, has many positive elements. To implement the measures, however, would cost about $74,000. Removal of the existing barriers is estimated at $30,000 -- a figure that seems unrealistically high for the flimsiness of the picket-fence blockages. Some residents have already volunteered to do the job.
Before the council votes to spend another dime on any traffic-calming, neighbor-infuriating effort, it should contemplate not just dollars but the real costs this effort has incurred in overall staff time, in frustration, in neighborhood enmity and in other city tasks not getting done. Without neighborhood consensus, whatever the council decides to try will soon be back before the council, with more expenditures attached.
It is time for the council to say, simply and clearly, "Enough!" It should forthwith remove the trial barriers and install what it should have put in place initially: peak-hour turn-restriction signs along Middlefield Road and Alma Street, the east and west boundaries of the neighborhood.
Then, when neighbors cool off enough -- maybe in a generation or two -- to agree among themselves on some traffic-calming measures, a unified neighborhood could petition the city to reconsider the matter. Far too much city-staff time and financial resources have been expended on this disastrous experiment already.
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