Tuesday: Packed agenda for Menlo Park City Council

I can't make the meeting, it will be interesting to see where MP is headed. Right now, ECR is too crowded due to narrowing to two lanes, it is taking too long to develop housing where the car dealerships were (and I mean affordable housing, hopefully tiered for all income levels) we shouldn't be using pesticides at all, in my opinion - I don't want my babies exposed - and what is the true story on sea level rise? Is it 30 feet this century?

I would welcome opening ECR to 3 lanes each direction through MP w/o bike lanes. The consultants say more people will drive on ECR with 3 lanes because they will not be using neighborhood streets and Middlefield Rd. That sounds good to me. I live on a 'cut through' street and would welcome those motorist to use ECR instead. It seems sensible to funnel bikes over the present 3 bicycle bridges to Stanford and Palo Alto (one parallels ECR near Alma). There are no bike lanes on ECR in Atherton or Palo Alto. What does a biker on ECR do when they reach Atherton or Palo Alto?

The best way to encourage drivers to get out of their cars is to make it safer to use some other form of getting around.
The experts say we'll get more traffic, not less, if there are more lanes.
We need a buffer between the heavy traffic and narrow sidewalks. The current parking provides that. Bike lanes would provide it, too.

If the consultants are right and another lane will add 50% to the traffic load on ECR, where is that traffic going to go IF WE DON'T ADD EXTRA CAPACITY ON ECR? If the answer is through the neighborhoods, I fear for the safety of kids going to and from school with all that extra traffic.
If the answer is that there will be no extra traffic anywhere -- which cannot be true -- why don't we remove one of the existing lanes (make ECR a one-lane road each way) and magically get rid of another 50%?
So, should we also leave the auto dealership area vacant so that we can avoid adding more traffic on ECR from any new construction? That could be the start of achieving the result Palo Alto got when they limited building and made San Mateo very happy as they receive new office space users.

Will the Council follow the carefully considered recommendations of the Planning, Transportation, and Bicycle Commissions to implement forward-thinking, environmental proposals for bicycle infrastructure on a key corridor, or will they overturn those volunteer citizen bodies and bend to shrill, negative voices of the past? Hopefully the former.