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Honorable Councilmembers,
I've just read a letter addressed to council by a transportation commissioner who opposes the Willows Traffic Study. Although his opinion on the issue was again made clear in a tedious monologue at a recent commission meeting, his latest remarks call even more loudly for rebuttal.
Sadly, all too frequently those who cannot muster fact to support an argument resort instead to emotion. Now, the commissioner equates the traffic study to a prelude of 'ghettoization' and 'ethnic cleansing', and appeals to the 'morality' of the council -- far-fetched claims indeed, since the sole purpose of the study is to quantify traffic volumes and composition.
The writer and other objectors to the traffic study continue to harp back to 1993. In the fifteen years since 1993, a newborn baby would have advanced nearly to college age; and personal computer CPU speeds increased from <100MHz to the 4GHz realm. In this interval, development on all sides of the Willows has greatly increased -- and is still increasing -- inundating our neighborhood with traffic. As many other writers have observed, Willows demographics have drastically changed since then, and a large influx of families and children has occurred. Neighborhood safety and quality of life are therefore far more important than in 1993.
I would also like to remind the commissioner and council that the 2003 cut-through traffic measurements were not fully analyzed by staff under the prior council: this effort was cut short, with no demurrer from the transportation commission of which the commissioner was then also a member. Instead, on their own time and expense, a concerned group of Willows residents undertook to analyze the data.
The outcome of the proposed study is unknown to all. The ultimate goal is to quantify the traffic problem (if indeed there is one). Only after this determination is made will remedial measures (again, if warranted) be suggested and subjected to public scrutiny. The link between traffic and crime, and neighborhood deterioration, is well known. Please vote to approve the study.
Sincerely,
Ross Wilson
Woodland Avenue, Menlo Park
Received on Mon Mar 31 11:09:18 2008
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