Honorable Councilmembers Boyle, Cline, Fergusson, Robinson; and Mayor Cohen,

Tonight (11 March) you will be setting priorities for fiscal year 2008-2009. In particular, I would like to call your attention to item T4 "Willows Area-Wide Traffic Study" in the City of Menlo Park Project Priorities List. I had intended personally to attend tonight's meeting but cannot do so because of illness.

Please approve this long-overdue study and place it on a fast track to completion. Although requests for it grew out of Willows resident outrage over recent and increasing crime in our neighborhood, it is really a long overdue action traceable back to the 2003 series of all-Willows meetings and a sense that Willows quality of life is eroding under the burden of high levels of shoot-through traffic.

Development on areas surrounding the Willows -- in Linfield and on Middlefield; in East Palo Alto; and in Stanford -- will further aggravate traffic problems in our neighborhood. To my knowledge no EIR associated with these developments has addressed the inevitable spillover of cars into the Willows as major arterials become ever more congested. The Willows Traffic study will go a long way towards quantifying the current and future effects of traffic on our community, and in suggesting palliative measures.

The Willows, with its many 1950-era homes with low street setbacks, is especially sensitive to traffic noise and pollution. The neighborhood's curving, narrow streets increase hazards to children when traffic is high or unruly.

It is profoundly disturbing to me that there is considerable ongoing intra-neighborhood discussion as to the best brand of monitor cameras and burglar alarms. Has our once family-friendly community come to this ? As I am sure you are by now aware, numerous academic studies have correlated neighborhood crime rise to high outside traffic flows through neighborhoods. So far, we in the Willows have been treated over the last year to several shootings; a drug transaction; numerous and persistent burglaries; and several holdups. Although the Menlo Park police have greatly increased patrols and done an excellent job, we cannot turn the Willows into a police enclave: the community's reputation will suffer, and there will be a continual drain on City budget. A more permanent solution addressing root causes is required.

Please approve the study and assure that the appointed consultants are free to recommend curative actions which are optimal in an engineering sense and free from political constraints.

Sincerely,

Ross Wilson
695 Woodland Avenue
Menlo Park Received on Tue Mar 11 15:51:22 2008