Mayor Cohen and Memebrs of the Menlo Park City Council:

On March 3, 1993 Paul Collacchi stated his views on the nascent Willows Traffic Plan in a letter to Menlo Park's City Engineer "the plan is little more than a poorly disguised attempt to prevent the residents of EPA from entering Menlo Park. That was the idée fixe of the plan and has become the unalterable, unspoken value underlying it since its inception."  

This is true today as it was in 1993. Anyone taking the effort to review the history of brouhaha over Willows traffic, crime and property values would come to the same conclusion.  

The Transportation Staff apparently still agrees with TJKM Transportation Consultants who reported (2/3/92) on their work with a focus group of Willows activists "There is little or no sense of community with neighbors in the University Circle area of EPA . traffic with an origin in EPA is considered through traffic." Thus, when Staff reported new cut-through traffic measurements made in 2003, they reported only the data set utilizing the assumption that EPA residents were outsiders. They withheld the data set which treated EPA/Willows residents as insiders and which therefore resulted in much lower cut-through traffic volumes. On some of the problem streets, 80% of the alleged cut-through traffic consisted of EPA residents.  

I believe that EPA Willows residents have a legitimate right to use Menlo Park streets as they have for decades. On this basis, the cut-through volume is so small you have to ask "What's the problem?" To deter this small amount of real cut through traffic concentrated in a few minutes at rush hour, we'll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and push the Willows into chaos again for three years only to discover that most residents don't want a maze or a wall and are happy to share their streets with law-abiding residents of our next door city? I hope not.  

Whatever you feel about the morality of isolating a neighborhood of 2400 people (largely hard working immigrants) in a walled ghetto with only one entry/exit route (at University Ave) you can probably see it would generate bad publicity for Menlo Park. And yet you encourage the Willows activists to pursue their dream of barring EPA residents fromWillows streets.

I suggest that if crime is the problem, it should be addressd by law enforcement. Barriers between communities are tools of ethnic cleansing not crime prevention. Don't give your seal of approval to this poorly disguised attempt to prevent residents of EPA from entering Menlo Park.

The "study" has a predefined outcome: "potential closure of certain roadways" and a "maze like experience" for the Willows. It's all been done before, and rejected. The outcome of either scenario will be bad for the Willows and bad for Menlo Park. Please step back from this Willows Area-Wide Traffic Study and give us all a chance to take a few deep breaths. Do not include the Willows Study in your priorities this year.

Thank you,

Eric Doyle Received on Sun Mar 30 23:03:17 2008