Parking Restrictions Being Considered

Parents who drop off their children at l may find themselves forced to drive through the half circle in front of the school next academic year, if City Council approves parking restriction signs on Altschul Avenue.

The Menlo Park Transportation Commission unanimously approved a motion Wednesday to recommend that the city place signs on the road which forbid drivers from parking their cars there during peak student drop off and pick up hours.

Rene Baile, Menlo Park city staff liaison to the commission, said the Las Lomitas School District requested this method of traffic control to enable school buses to pass through the road more easily than they currently can.

“Parked cars encroach the travel way," Baile said. "And if you have cars parked there, there’s no room for kids to bike on the street, or for the school buses to pass through Altschul,” he added.

Half of the roughly 700 students who attend La Entrada Middle School get there via a school bus, according to Sonya Dineen, assistant principal at La Entrada. The rest either cycle to school or are dropped off by parents.

“What we’re looking for is the ability to be able to extend the queue of parents who are waiting to get into the half circle where they drop off/pick up students,” Dineen said, noting that it takes about 30 minutes to get through the queue.

Some commissioners expressed concern that people would continue to park on the street in spite of the signs, if they are pressed for time, or circumvent the parking restrictions by parking further down the road. City staffers said that parking officials that patrol the downtown area could be dispatched to monitor the situation in West Menlo Park, if the need arose.

The signs would be limit parking on a 140 foot stretch of Altschul Avenue north of Sharon Road.  Transportation Commission Chair Penelope Huang motioned to recommend that City Council approve the signs, with Vice Chair Charlie Bourne seconding the motion.

“If it gets approved, we should give it a three month trial to see how it goes, “ Huang said. “If it creates some unforeseen problem, then we’ll bring it back and rethink it.”

A date has not been set for City Council to hear the recommendation.