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Complete Streets Commission endorses Slow Streets program, urges staff to factor connectivity and nonlinear speed risk into scoring
Summary
The Commission voted unanimously to recommend a new Slow Streets program that removes the petition requirement and prioritizes projects via a point system based on speed, collisions and proximity to activity centers; commissioners urged staff to give added weight to network connectivity and to consider nonlinear weighting for higher speed differentials.
Menlo Park staff proposed a Slow Streets program to replace the older Neighborhood Traffic Management Program. Senior Transportation Planner Katrine Mackey said the new design removes the petition requirement, evaluates requests in batches, and ranks projects using a point system that emphasizes observed speeds (85th percentile), recent injury collisions (three‑year window), average daily traffic thresholds and adjacency to schools, parks and Community Activity Centers. Mackey said speed is central because of its nonlinear relationship to injury risk, citing Vision Zero evidence linking higher vehicle speeds to greater probability of fatal injuries.
The Commission's discussion was extensive. Commissioners and members of the public raised four recurring concerns: 1) collision data undercounts 'near misses' and may miss incidents that police do not report; 2) Streetlight vehicle data captures cars but not bicycle/pedestrian volumes, so low‑car streets used heavily by cyclists may not score highly; 3) the linear point allocation for every mile‑per‑hour over the speed limit may understate the extra risk at higher speeds; and 4) programming should take advantage of resurfacing schedules to implement quick builds.
Several commissioners urged staff to develop a method to account for high bike/ped usage on streets that do not show large vehicle counts—either via a separate connectivity layer, incorporation of Safe Routes/School routes, or other data sources such as Strava or local counts—and to adopt a nonlinear speed weighting that more closely tracks increased crash severity at higher speeds. Staff agreed to evaluate those suggestions and to include the Complete Streets Commission's feedback in the staff report to City Council.
The Commission moved and voted unanimously to recommend the Slow Streets program to City Council with instructions that staff consider connectivity and nonlinear speed weighting in the point system and report back on data sources and implementation timing. Staff said the program will be implemented through a mix of quick‑build CIP items and incorporation into the five‑year resurfacing plan, with $100,000 currently provisioned for quick builds.
