Request for Traffic Calming on Matadero Avenue

Street section

Petition signed by 25 percent of the households

Five of the residences are currently unoccupied:

• being remodeling: 3
• unrented: 1
• recently sold, but not yet occupied: 1

There were 5 (11%) households that declined to sign (two did not perceive speeding to be a serious enough problem to warrant any special treatment, one was a renter in the process of moving out of the neighborhood, and two did not state their reasons).

For the remaining residences (6), I did not manage to catch the residents when they were home.

Qualifying critera

Note: Matadero is scheduled for a long-overdue resurfacing in 2002, and the estimated increase in speeds (5-10 mph) should be factored into the assessment, allowing the process to get started before the problem fully manifests itself.

At least two of the following five criteria:

• Minimum 85th percentile speed of 32 mph for local streets and 35 mph for collector streets
  Matadero is official designated a collector street, but its design is not that of a collector street. The criteria developed for conventional collector streets dramatically understate the severity of the problem on Matadero.

  The term "conveyor" is probably more appropriate than "collector" for this section of Matadero because there are no intervening entry points in this 0.4 mile segment. On conventional collectors, traffic entering and exiting on such side streets tends to moderate the speed of the through traffic.

  The safety issue of speeding should not be based on just on the 85th percentile, but also take into account the "outliers." Although number of vehicles traveling at 35 mph are a significant concern for residents, it is the not insignificant number of vehicles traveling at 45 mph, 50 mph and more that have a grossly disproportionate effect on the threat posed by speeders.

• Minimum volume of 1200 vehicles per day (vpd) for local streets and 4000 vpd for collector streets
  The last numbers that I could find were for 1993: 3400 vpd.
  Extrapolating, it is probable that the VPD is now over 4000.

• Location within 1000 feet walking distance of a school, senior citizen facility, facility for the disabled, park, community center, or other site of significant pedestrian activity
  • Bol Park is at the west end of this street segment.
  • Because Matadero does not have sidewalks, speeding has a substantially greater impact on pedestrians and should be evaluated with modified criteria that takes into account that people are walking along the street rather than crossing it at corners.
    Sources of pedestrian traffic:
    • VA patients in wheelchairs going to restaurants, stores, and buses on El Camino.
    • Children walking/bicycling to Barron Park Elementary School.
    • Gunn High School Students
    • Local residents walking to bus stop and to businesses on El Camino.
    • Local residents "out for a stroll" (including people walking and jogging for exercise, walking dogs, ...)
    • Employees from Stanford Research Park walking to restaurants on El Camino at lunchtime.
  • Matadero has significant bicycle traffic:
    • Local Origin
    • Connector between the bike path through Bol Park (Gunn HS and Los Altos Hills at one end and Stanford University and Stanford Research Park at the other) and the Park Blvd bike route and to the Bryant Street bike boulevard (via the California Avenue underpass).
      Superior to other connection points in terms of traffic lights on El Camino and traffic hazards on the streets traversed (speaking as one who commuted by bike to Menlo Park for many years)

• Evidence of significant cut-through (i.e., through or non-neighborhood) traffic
  The majority of the traffic on this segment is traveling its full length and this contributes to the problem of speeding: many accelerate for substantial distances down the street.

• Unusual accident history ...
  Vehicles exceeding 50 mph on this segment are not rare. Because these violators do not have a predictable schedule, enforcement has been of limited effectiveness.