The Barron Park Association

Matadero Avenue – Bike Boulevard and/or Collector Street?

 Streets  2 Responses »
Oct 242012
 

The City Council passed the new Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan a few months ago and design work on one of the recommendations, the “Matadero Ave Bike Boulevard” is planned to start within the next few months.

http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/7293

 The objective  is to create a bike network that connects Matadero Ave and Margarita on the other side of El Camino, the Bol Park bike path and the proposed “Castilleja/Park/Wilkie Way Bike Boulevard.” Also in the plan is the recommendation for an “El Camino Way/Maybell Avenue/Donald Drive Bike Boulevard.”

The Transportation Division, part of City’s  Planning Department, is now gearing up to design the “Matadero Ave Bike Boulevard.” Chief Transportation Official Jaime Rodriguez said the City intends to hold meetings with the Barron Park community within the next few months in preparation for starting design work on this Bike Boulevard project in early 2013, with implementation scheduled for 2014.

 What is a Bike Boulevard?

According to the Comprehensive Plan, a bicycle boulevard is a low volume through street where bicycles have priority over automobiles, conflicts between bicycles and automobiles are minimized and bicycle travel time is reduced by the removal of stop signs and other impediments to bicycle travel. The removal of STOP signs is especially important in Palo Alto due to the large number of stop signs on local and collector streets.

 The key words in this description are “a low volume through street where bicycles have priority over automobiles.” 

Matadero Avenue is a collector street, one of only a few in Barron Park that provide entrance and egress from the neighborhood. There are a few questions that come to my mind.

–  How would the Matadero Avenue roadway be changed to create a street where bicycles have priority over automobiles ? How would this affect traffic flow?  Mr. Rodriguez mentioned adding some traffic calming measures,  such as a “rubberized median island at Josina Avenue and Matadero Avenue.”  This suggestion is on the  ” Draft Barron Park Recommendations ” map  that is on the city’s website : http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/31613

–  Is this bicycle boulevard concept appropriate for such a narrow collector street in our neighborhood? Matadero has no space for bike lanes, no space for pedestrians. White lines along the edges help motorists stay on the route but some say they endanger pedestrian safety and bicyclists are wary of utility poles that are in or very near valley gutters.

Stay tuned and stay involved. We’d like to hear your thoughts.

 

Barron Park will be seeing green along Matadero

 City Actions and Activities in Barron Park, Public Works and Utilities Info  No Responses »
Jul 302012
 

The old Matadero water well site has been getting a complete makeover thanks to the City’s decision to use this well as part of the system that would provide emergency water to the public in the event of a natural disaster and a cutoff of the Hetch Hetchy supply. The project has required the BPA to put on hold its plan to beautify the area adjacent to the well site that included placing some benches.

The site along Matadero, near the intersection with Josina, is currently an eyesore. A photo taken today shows some very large white pipes and associated plumbing systems, surrounded by construction forms where a concrete pad is about to be poured.  Once in place, the pad will support a number of large electrical control cabinets, and the entire site will be enclosed by a new wire fence.

Matadero Well Site – July 30, 2012

However, the  appearance of the pipes and pumps and cabinets will be enhanced once all equipment is in place, thanks a group of determined BPA Board members, led by President Lynnie Melena. Continue reading »

AT&T’s proposed DAS cell phone antennas in Barron Park

 City Actions and Activities in Barron Park, Public Works and Utilities Info  No Responses »
Jul 302012
 

A report by Doug Moran..with his updated Map of Proposed Towers (July 2012)

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=209482381320120716761.0004a3aa50f14ecb36fa0&msa=0

Report from the AT&T Open House June 20 on proposed DAS cell phone antennas for Barron Park (and elsewhere). Barron Park attendees included me, Art Liberman and Bob Moss (and possibly others).

AT&T had two engineers there who could answer the sorts of questions mentioned in the earlier messages (one that we had asked over a year ago). The engineer we were talking to said that this was the first time anyone had asked him about these sort of details, so apparently Barron Park _is_ different. Below is the info gathered.

1. The City’s database of cell towers had multiple errors. The relevant one was that it didn’t show AT&T using the tower at the VA Hospital (I have updated my map to reflect this).  This tower provides coverage for much of western Barron Park. The proposed DAS antennas in BP follow the contour of the limits of the coverage of that antenna. EXCEPT, the antenna at the top of Matadero is intended to provide coverage for the nearby section of the Research Park. For the small coverage areas that DAS is intended for, AT&T prefers to put the antennas on telephone poles because those poles already have the high capacity link (optical fiber) to their network node, whereas adding an antenna to the roof of a commercial building involves significant costs for the additional cabling. I didn’t get an explanation for the Chimalus site (because we had already monopolized the engineer too much).

Continue reading »

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