UPDATE: According to Woodside Town Manager Kevin Bryant, the bus permit was granted on Monday morning, June 26. He clarified that the town offered to allow the Girl Scouts to drive into camp for this summer, rather than having children walk the last half-mile into camp, during a June 21 meeting with the Peninsula Girl Scouts.

The town plans to have signs alerting other drivers that camp buses will be on Kings Mountain Road during the morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up hours, according to an email sent to the Girl Scouts on June 21 that summarized the meeting. The town also offered to revisit the ordinance and future bus use later in the summer.

The Girl Scouts still don't have a permit from Woodside to drive buses into Huddart Park, so hundreds of children will have to walk the last half-mile into the county park to get to Peninsula Day Camp.

The Peninsula Girl Scouts say they won't be able to transport campers and volunteers via bus to the popular summer camps because of a new Woodside law that prohibits large vehicles like their day camp buses from driving the last half-mile of Kings Mountain Road to the entrance of Huddart Park.

Camp directors met with Woodside town staff and the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday, June 21, to discuss getting an exemption from the town ordinance, which quietly passed in the fall and bans vehicles over 35 feet in length. But an agreement was not reached and the town did not grant the nonprofit a permit for its summer camps, which run two weeks in mid-July at Huddart Park, located at 1100 Kings Mountain Road, according to representatives of the town and the Girl Scouts.

"The meeting was disappointing," said Monica Curtis, who directs the summer camp that draws hundreds of children from across the Peninsula annually. Peninsula Day Camp has been held at Huddart for decades, with most children arriving daily by bus. There are 500 children and volunteers expected at the camp this year.

"(Town Manager) Kevin Bryant started the meeting with a firm understanding he was not interested in talking about the future or the ordinance but finding a plan that works for this summer. Unfortunately that doesn't sit well with us. We are very worried about the future," Curtis said.

The Sheriff's Department and the County Parks Department will assist in getting the Girl Scouts' buses to Huddart Park, Bryant said in an email.

"Signage will be placed at the entrance to Huddart Park and at Kings Mountain Road/Entry Way alerting motorists and cyclists that buses will be on the road during the drop-off window in the morning and the pick-up window in the afternoon," he said. "Sheriff's Department or Parks Department personnel will be stationed at the entry to Huddart Park during the drop-off and pick-up window to further alert motorists and cyclists traveling down Kings Mountain Road that they may encounter buses."

The Girl Scouts said it submitted a bus permit request on June 12 and was informed it was on "hold" because the electric buses it chartered are 39.5 feet long. Historically, its buses have been even bigger, at 40 to 45 feet long. The group made the reservation to hold this year's camp in Huddart Park in July 2022, according to organizers.

On June 15, the town denied the permit via email, stating: "I spoke with our senior engineer, Sindhi, and she reaffirmed we will not allow buses over 38 (feet). The town will not issue a transportation permit for the buses you are proposing due to the 39.5 feet size of the bus and the road restrictions."

The nonprofit group said it can't afford to use smaller buses, which would double its transportation budget, which is at about $80,000 this summer. This year, attendance at camp is lower than usual, with the transportation budget running about $110,000 on average.

In terms of traffic impacts, each bus also keeps 50-60 vehicles off of Woodside Road and Kings Mountain Road, according to the Girl Scouts.

Skepticism about bus safety concerns

Curtis said Woodside and the Sheriff's Office "seem to make a lot of statements that buses are not safe and are involved in incidents." The long school buses use the majority of the opposing lane to navigate the turns, according to an October 2022 staff report and town staff received several reports from residents of near misses between the buses and bicyclists.

Town staff reached out to San Mateo County Parks about this concern and in 2019 installed an advisory sign at Entrance Way, according to the staff report.

Curtis argues there is no objective data to support claims that buses have caused safety hazards.

"Pre-COVID, our camp was utilizing 18 full-size school buses to transport over 1,000 San Mateo County participants to camp," she said. "This means a bus used the section between Entrance Way and Huddart Park 360 times within two weeks. Clearly buses can maneuver the turns, share the road and get campers and volunteers to and from camp without incident, and have been for over 35 years. There is another Girl Scout camp after ours that does the same the following two weeks. There are many other programs year-round that utilize school buses as well to help youth access Huddart Park."

Curtis thinks the actual issue on the road is that cars and cyclists go too fast on the downhill, pointing to a 2018 town study that said as much. Consultants from Parisi Transportation Consulting also called out the lack of paved shoulders or pull-outs, limited sight distances and vehicles passing or encroaching into opposing lanes at or near curves pose safety risks on Entrance Road on the way to Huddart Park Road.

"Cyclists traveling in the downhill direction were observed to ride at speeds equaling or exceeding the speeds of downhill vehicles and did not typically slow down near the curves," the report states. "We also observed that cyclists would travel downhill at speeds equaling or exceeding the speeds of downhill vehicles, would maintain these speeds at the curves, and would turn wide and often encroach into the opposing lane. These cyclists are at increased risk of collisions with uphill traveling vehicles."

Parisi consultants recommended installing better road markings and better signage, such as signs saying "Do not pass bikes on blind curves" and "Blind corner, bikes slow down."

Petitions

The Girl Scouts have launched three petitions urging for the town's large vehicle ordinance to be repealed. One is directed at the town of Woodside. One is addressed to San Mateo County and another is directed to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Upcoming meeting

The Girl Scouts day camp group plans to come to the Tuesday, June 27, Woodside Town Council meeting to speak about their concerns about the ordinance, regardless of whether the town decides to grant it an exception.

The meeting takes place at 7 p.m. on Zoom and in Independence Hall, 2955 Woodside Road.