Neighborhood residents let Los Altos City Council members know last week they were far from satisfied with final traffic configuration plans for busy Jardin Drive, even as council members signed off on those plans.
“Jardin’s a mess,” Distel Drive resident Bill Bassett told council members at their June 25 meeting. “Yesterday, I saw a car going westbound in the eastbound lane. … We’re going to get sued – there’s going to be an accident.”
Jardin, running parallel to the back of the Los Altos High School campus, has been at the center of a long-running controversy over traffic and parking. In an attempt to generate more pedestrian and cyclist trips to school, the city employed a range of traffic calming options on relatively narrow Jardin that included parallel parking spaces and a cycle track. The results left some residents confused and concerned that the city made traffic even worse.
A new plan, signed off by the council and the city’s Complete Streets Commission, ditches the cycle track and has bike lanes on both sides of the street. There are widened curbs planned for the intersections of Jardin, Valencia and Panchita drives. The 11 parallel street parking places remain, offset from the south edge of Jardin. New stop and no parking signs are set for installation at the Valencia and Panchita intersections.
Council members had not planned to discuss this summer’s proposed Jardin work, which was part of a $1.3 million citywide repaving contract for O’Grady Paving. The contract approval was on the June 25 consent calendar, meaning there was no scheduled council discussion. But several residents showed up to object to the new Jardin traffic plan going forward.
The biggest concern was the addition of a right-turn only from Casita Way onto Jardin, which speakers thought would make traffic worse. In addition, the new plan did not change parking allowances north of Jardin or the restrictions on streets at the south.
David Sauerhaft noted his Distel neighborhood is “bearing the burden” for the reduction of student parking at the high school, down to 62 spaces. The parallel parking space on Jardin, he said, forces parked cars to open doors directly into a bike lane.
“You can’t get out of my driveway in the morning during dropoff,” added Distel neighbor Jeff Cuppett. He added that “putting a buffer on one side of (Jardin) and no buffer on the other side of the street doesn’t make sense.”
The city held eight public meetings and selected the latest plan from among four options. But neighbors felt the city wasn’t listening to them.
“We are being gaslit, ignored,” Sauerhaft told council.
He felt a sit-down with city, school and neighborhood representatives would reach a solution, but that hasn’t happened.
Resident Lynn Emmick pointed to the lack of fairness on streets where parking was allowed versus those with restrictions.
“If parking restrictions are not implemented (north of Jardin), then parking restrictions should be lifted on all streets surrounding the school to spread out the congestion,” she said. “Preferably, all streets surrounding the school should have parking restrictions for at least the same distance as that of the current streets with parking.”
Councilmember Lynette Lee Eng wondered if there were options for changing the timeline for repaving Jardin so that a better solution could be found.
But City Attorney Jolie Houston noted: “Unless you want to reject all bids and start all over again, I’m really concerned about trying to revise this contract from the dais – it’s a public works contract that has been bid.”
Aida Fairman, the city’s environmental services director, said Jardin is one of the first streets in line for repaving work because of the urgency to complete work prior to the first day of school, Aug. 12.
“I understand the frustration,” said Councilmember Sally Meadows. “That said, we have this contract that covers all the paving in the entire city this year. We cannot change the contract as a whole in a massive way. The worst thing we can do is miss this timeline and have this situation that you are living with right now continue throughout until the end of next school year.”
Councilmember Neysa Fligor addressed residents: “We do hear you. Everything may not get incorporated at this stage, but we appreciate your feedback.”
“I am very concerned how we are being told we can’t have an opportunity to have a discussion with the bidder and the bid has to be accepted as is,” Lee Eng said. “It’s our job to look out after the best interests that need to be done on certain streets. If the attitude is all or nothing, it’s problematic.”
Bassett offered a simple solution for council to consider: “We take a black coat of paint and we black out everything that happened, and we put down the center two yellow lines.”
The city council voted to proceed with the repaving contract 4-0-1, with Lee Eng abstaining.
