From: M. Fruth <mafruth_at_(domain_name_was_removed)>
Date: Tue Mar 18 2008 - 23:39:59 PST

These are my comments for the massive proposed Stanford projects, including, but not limited to, for the EIR.

Everything in this project will be driven by transportation capacity. It looks as though the hospitals, medical offices, and medical school will max out Stanford’s available transportation capacity by themselves. Road capacity must be increased, mainly through widening, everywhere serving the project. Specifically, Galvez, Quarry, and Campus Drive must be widened. The former shopping center entrance on El Camino between Quarry and Sand Hill Road can be reopened, with a signal. For Sand Hill Road, all entrances between El Camino and Pasteur can be closed, to facilitate emergency traffic. From what I've seen of private vehicles’ emergency stops in response to sirens, signal override will not be sufficient at these intersections. TSM and/or Marguerite cannot be used to replace road capacity, because they can easily be eliminated.

I see no road capacity to support either any additional shopping center capacity or a hotel of any size. Because there is no transportation capacity for the shopping center, the size of the shopping center must be permanently frozen. Because there is no transportation capacity for the hotel, the hotel must be permanently deferred. Since Stanford has a history doing projects piecemeal, please include this fact of permanent limit in your approval. Alternate traffic measures, such as TSM and Marguerite, must be considered auxiliary to the road improvements, not replacing them, and cannot be used to replace road capacity.

If the Emergency access is to move to Sand Hill Road, traffic access must be improved, particularly to the east. . All entrances between El Camino and Pasteur can be closed, to facilitate emergency traffic. From what I've seen of private vehicles’ emergency stops in response to sirens, signal override will not be sufficient at these intersections. If they do not already, all traffic signals must have emergency override.

Ambulances will not make a U-turn in Menlo Park, and less critically ill patients should not. Therefore, Alma Street and El Camino must become fully functional in all four directions. That means traffic must flow freely to and from Alma Street. If the City of Palo Alto cannot accept this, the Emergency access change is not viable.

As I advised you the last time Stanford built big, north of Sand Hill Road, Stanford needs to provide a school site acceptable to the PAUSD Board, to cope with what has since developed into existing overcrowding in PAUSD. If Stanford had been candid about its plans at that time, those projects could have been scaled down to free up road and school capacity for the new hospital.

Please include a reasonable new location for the new Alpine Trail as a condition of approval, one acceptable to its neighbors. This can be justified as part of the traffic reduction.

Please include housing for at least half (50%) of the hospitals' blue collar workers, set up so they can walk to work. This would reduce the traffic load.

I would appreciate it if you would save or recreate the tunnel of flowers, ground level between E and F wings. .

Margaret Fruth
Geographer

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Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs Received on Tue Mar 18 23:40:32 2008