Menlo Park council favors lowering speed limits citywide

The goal of complete streets and some council members is to get people out of their cars. If they make driving anywhere frustratingly slow, they will achieve their goal.

Let’s get the city council out of the business of engineering our traffic flow. Remember what a fiasco it was when they applied their infinite knowledge of traffic to Santa Cruz Ave? Terrible outcome, tons of wasted taxpayer’s money, and a reversal after 6 or so months. Leave it alone—-where’s the data that says we have a problem?

Agree. Where's the data? Are we seeing an increase in auto/ped collisions? Auto/bike collisions? Are they primarily the fault of the auto driver? Lot's of questions. Leave the traffic engineering to the traffic engineers. Traffic needs to flow. Slowing it down clogs things up and makes things difficult for emergency vehicles.

This just means that people will get frustrated and speed. They will probably speed faster than the old speed limit and since we got rid of the Traffic unit due to budget issues they will get away with it until they hit and injure or kiss someone.

The speed limit on Valparaiso needs to be lowered, the street width is too small for 35 meaning 40-45, It's all residential plus 2 large schools with a lot of kids walking back and forth, Please reduce to 30, then people will only go 35-40.

@private pilot :
Where is your data?

What I would like to see are electronic speed monitoring signs near all schools, both public and private, in the city. Not all schools have them, but they should.

self explanatory, which one do you contradict

Atherton's City Council voted to lower the speed limit on Valparaiso Avenue to 30 MPH. Their justification was to align with Menlo Park: Web Link

It turns out Menlo Park got a traffic surveyor to recommend a reduced speed: "The 85th-percentile speed of 36.7 mph indicates a 35 mph speed limit. The 10 mph pace ranges from 30 mph to 39 mph and the suggested speed limit is within this range. The collision rate for this segment is below the expected rate. Due to the location of uncontrolled crosswalk and fronting residential properties, a downgrading of the speed limit by 5 mph is justified. Therefore, it is recommended that the posted speed limit decrease to 30 mph."

If the 85th percentile speed is 37MPH, a radar or lidar citation on Valparaiso for violating the 30MPH limit would be thrown out for violating the speed trap laws.

This street was always considered an arterial, intentionally designated with an increased speed limit and few stop signs and stop lights. It has been kept that way to encourage traffic to use it and not side streets. Now that this domino has fallen, it is time to put in some stop lights too.

85th percentile speed is 37 mph with fewer than expected collisions. So it seems @private pilot is incorrect with his/her assessment of traffic at 40-45 mph. So, once again, why drop the speed limit to 30? Do we want more people on Santa Cruz and Atherton Ave and cutting through neighborhoods?

I’m all for getting rid of lidar and radar. It means that the police have to follow you to cite you. Unfortunately, once that news gets out, there will likely be more people driving much faster than @private pilot would like.

Dumb decision by Council for seemingly no reason that is data driven. Go back to dealing with housing, development and re-opening our downtown area and attracting businesses to replace the many which have been shuttered.

Reducing Chilco from 40 to 30 mph makes sense; 40 was always a bit fast for that area, and with Facebook construction that area should have more traffic. Remember, a drunk driver killed a couple pedestrians in that stretch a few years ago.

And a drunk driver has nothing to do with the speed limit...