For South Palo Alto residents, it's traffic, traffic traffic

Technically speaking, Cubberly is a school site that is leased out to the city at this time. The city has chosen to use the site for community center activities and leases out some spaces to non-profits, artists, etc. But make no mistake - it is a school site first.

To bring back a HS or perhaps a middle school would be utilizing the site for its originally intended purpose. Cubberly would be *reverting* back to use as a school site - not converting.

Sorry to those who worry about traffic, but the *school* site has been there for decades and PAUSD has always reserved the right to revert the campus back to a daily operating academic environment.

That's weird, the article points out that there increased traffic from the high density development. Could have sworn the local urbanization advocates claim that density is the solution, not the source of the problem.

The solution to traffic is maximizing the density of BOTH jobs and housing in the same area. It's simple mathematics. With housing located close to jobs, the outbound commute trips to jobs throughout the region are canceled by the regional inbound commute trips. Therefore, regardless of how many trips may occur, the net total commute traffic is always near zero.

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San Antonio was improved and trees removed is to usher more traffic thru 101 to Mountain View.

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"The solution to traffic is maximizing the density of BOTH jobs and housing in the same area."

Which in reality never lies, because people change jobs, have to take their kids to school, drive to shop somewhere. Explain when the corner of San Antonio and El Camino will reach critical mass such that net traffic declines? Never, it will get worse until people complain enough to stop new development.

The miserable reality PAF is pushing Palo Alto towards is the Los Angeles model. A bunch of overdeveloped interconnected small towns with horrible traffic, and overpriced but mediocre public transit.

Do cities _need_ to grow? (Honest question). What are the benefits (besides to developers, obviously), and what bad things happen to cities that don't grow?

I kind of like how traffic was, say, 5-10 years ago. Not looking forward to 20-30% more traffic in 5-10 years.

Anyone know the pros and cons? Thanks!

@Palo Alto

Do you really believe that any majority of people work in the same town that they live in? Do you think any of the startups wanting to be in Palo Alto expect their employees to live here? Do you think any significant amount of people working off of Page Mill, Porter, etc live in Palo Alto? Do you expect Facebook to staff itself from people living in Menlo Park?

The idea of people living and working in the same town is a relic of rural living. Do you think it is relevant today?

/marc

Commuters of all types are definitely causing traffic but it isn't just people going from city to city. It is parents driving kids to school, picking them up, taking them to after school activities, etc. It is people who work driving to go to lunch or do other errands on their lunch break. It is people who use Caltrain who are being driven to stations and picked up from stations.

For these reasons, we need to improve public transportation for regular trips and also improve amenities near to where people work.

Every time someone is taken to a Caltrain station and then picked up, that is four car trips. If we could improve shuttles to the stations, it would eliminate some of the need for that.

Every time a kid is driven to school and picked up, that's potentially another 4 car trips. Getting shuttles to get kids to secondary schools, particularly those in the south of Oregon get to Paly, it would help.

Every time someone working on Bayshore/Fabian/Charleston/E.Meadow circle, needs to get in a car to go to lunch, that's two car trips. There are no walkable lunch places, coffee shops in that strange area of town.

Also a couple of dinner places near where people live so that they can walk to dinner and if they have wine or beer with dinner they don't need to drive home. Better dining options in Midtown, Charleston Plaza, and other neighborhood shopping areas would help also.

Also, as the article says, stop treating San Antonio as a Berlin Wall. People cross from Palo Alto to Mountain View all the time, sometimes a couple of times a day. Get shuttles to cross this artery.

Get more coffee shops, lunch places, near where people work.

@Resident "...People cross from Palo Alto to Mountain View all the time..."

How can that be? The general attitude is that Palo Alto is an island. We don't want anyone coming into our community and residents surely don't leave to go to Mountain View and other declasse environments.

We are totally self contained. We expect everyone to be born here, grow up here, work here, shop here and die here. Every child that grows up here is expected to buy a home here, work here and retire here. The only time anyone leaves Palo Alto is to go to school at Stanford or (heaven forbid) cross the bay to UCB.

:S

/marc

Palo Alto is a small town, at most, a very small city. Do small towns/cities need to grow? Woodside, Los Altos Hills, Atherton, Portola Valley, Mill Valley, Hillsborough, Bolinas. Just a short list of small towns/cities in the SF area that curb, sometime don't allow any growth. What is common to these places is that they all enjoy an incredibly high level of quality of life, livability and also a low crime rate. The reality is that density and urbanism in small towns/cities, benefits only developers, their investors and their lobbyists, the rest suffer.

@mauricio The difference between the cities you mention and Palo Alto is that they are not as hypocritical as Palo Alto.

I have no problem with the decision to limit or ban growth in Palo Alto if that is what people want. Just be honest about it. Don't claim that we need more/affordable housing and then ban any attempt to build it or try to build high density ghettos along El Camino Real.

Don't claim we need more stores and then never shop at them because their prices are too high and then complain when they go out of business.

Many years ago I lived in a town in Massachusetts that banned all fast food restaurants. If was fine, all the chains build their restaurants right on the edge of town and they were busy but the town could claim no fast food. Just be upfront and honest that Palo Alto really doesn't want to grow.

/marc

@Growth,
It's kind of made me wonder why Palo Alto doesnt put out a proposal to "adopt" a sister town somewhere that wants to develop, along with Stanford University (with a satellite campus plan). There could be really nice comminications set up, and reasonable standard of living, at a place where kids can roam the streets on their bokes and employees can walk to work. I'd go.

"Just be honest about it. Don't claim that we need more/affordable housing and then ban any attempt to build it or try to build high density ghettos along El Camino Real."

Hear, hear.

Cubberley is owned by the City and the School district w payments currently from the city to the district to maintain it. Future plans for the site need to include new buildings that support both uses. So many great community services happen at Cubberley today. We must find a way to preserve that while building a new school on that site. Ideally, some of the new buildings will be shared use acting as both school and community areas, as many progressive communities are doing.

@ Marc - Absolutely, but the urbanists need to be honest too. More housing and density will mean more traffic, more people, more pollution, more crime. And if it is awesome as they claim, it isn't going to make living here more affordable, because people will want to live here.