City Planner Tim Wong released two City staff documents pertaining to the proposed Maybell Homes and Clemo Senior Housing project.
The first document is the ‘Mitigated Negative Declaration” for the environmental review. The second is a revised Traffic Study. You can download them at the links below.
Traffic issues are discussed in this post. If you have comments about the traffic study or traffic issues in the environmental review, contact Rafael Ruis, the City staff traffic engineer working on this project.
His number is 329-2305.
His email address is <
Rafael.Rius@CityofPaloAlto.org>
1)
Maybell-Clemo Mitigated Negative Declaration: Environmental Review. The review period ends May 30th. This document, as does the updated Traffic Report, assumes as a baseline that the project only has a entrance/exit via the Clemo driveway. This report identifies this as an issue and suggests ‘mitigation’ measures that need to be adopted.
On page 44..
“Potential Impacts: If the Clemo Avenue driveway is the only access to the site and the access barriers on Clemo are not relocated, the stop-controlled Clemo Avenue approach at Arastradero Road would incur a substantial increase in delay and deterioration in the level of service during the AM peak hour. This would result in a potential significant effect on traffic operations at this intersection. If the access easement is obtained and there is site access from both Clemo and Maybell Avenues, there would be no significant adverse traffic impacts expected from the project. Or alternatively, if the Clemo barrier could be relocated east of the project driveway so that all project trips would access Clemo Avenue via Maybell Avenue, there would be no significant adverse traffic impacts expected from the project.
Mitigation Measures:
- In order to ensure that there are no adverse impacts to traffic circulation, one of the following mitigation measures shall be required.
- The project sponsor shall obtain an access easement through the adjacent Arastradero Park Apartment Complex to connect the site access aisle to the existing driveway for APAC on Maybell Avenue.
- If an access easement cannot be obtained and access is from a single driveway on Clemo Avenue, the access barriers on Clemo Avenue shall be reolocated from the intersection of Maybell Avenue to east of the project driveway on Clemo Avenue.”
2) The revised traffic study,
Maybell Traffic Report 042313 , now uses as a baseline only the entrance/exit on Clemo, which matches the approach taken in the Environmental Review.
Here are some questions I asked Tim Wong about the revised study and (in red) is his response.
1. The revised proposal uses only the Clemo access and that the other two (Arastadero easement, Clemo barrier move) are options that the City requested the consultant to study. Is this correct? Can you tell me if there anything new, any new data ? Yes, the change in the traffic study was to reflect the Clemo via Arastradero access. There were some additional comments to the Existing Site Observations (Pg. 8), Existing Plus Project Conditions Intersection Analysis (pg. 10) and Neighborhood Traffic Volume (Pg. 23). But no new data was introduced.
2. From what I can see, there is still no consideration in the study of the amount of pedestrian and bicycle traffic, nor any reference to Safe Routes to School maps. I understand, from the consultant’s presentation at the meeting last week, this is a formulaic approach, it answers some questions. In my mind, as a document that ought to provide insight and consideration of neighborhood concerns, particularly safety in a neighborhood with so many schools and so many bicyclists and young pedestrians, it does not examine those issues and so it does not satisfy nor respond to some of the community’s critical questions. The impacts of the proposed project on pedestrian and bicycle circulation were reviewed. However, based on the size of the project and the amount of traffic generated by the project, the impacts on pedestrian and bicycle traffic were determined to be less than significant. If you would like to discuss this in greater detail, you can also contact Rafael Rius, Traffic Engineer. His number is 329-2305.