The Slow Streets Program goes to City Council April 28. It has the right ambition but several structural flaws. We need safety action now, not another year of planning. Approve the program tonight with binding directives to staff to incorporate the fixes and launch a real pilot.
Send an email to CouncilWhat we are asking Council to do tonight
Below are five simple fixes to the program proposal that reflect clear and consistent resident voices (and don't require another year of drafting before action begins).
Fix 01
The current criteria qualify a street only with a documented injury crash or a measured-speed threshold. Critically, the speed gate is unreliable (see fix 02), making injury the only real qualifier. Fewer than 20% of Menlo Park streets qualify for help. Add sidewalk gaps, near-miss reports, and pedestrian-in-roadway exposure to the qualifying criteria. Streets known to be dangerous should get help before harm occurs, and our goal should be to say yes to safety concerns, not to turn people away for a decade.
Fix 02
The City's 2024 ground-truth measurement on College Avenue (27 mph) and a 2026 ground-truth sensor (29 mph) agree. The City's 2025 big-data product reads roughly 7 mph slower (20 mph) with no physical change to the street between readings — and that is the platform the program proposes to use as the disqualifying gate. Approving a framework gated by a measurement we know to be wrong is not in the community's best interest.
Fix 03
Neighborhoods are networks, and network-scale planning is the standard NACTO, Caltrans Safe System, and SFMTA recommend. Treating neighborhood networks together is critical and not reflected in the plan.
Fix 04
Residents on Partridge and Elder Avenues in Menlo Park asked for safety improvements before cyclists were struck on those streets. Their concerns predicted the collisions. People who know their streets best provide a useful signal, not an annoyance to be squashed and ignored. Allow documented near-misses to lead to action. Please stop treating residents like the problem when they advocate for a safe living environment for themselves, their families, and their neighbors.
Fix 05
Launch a 90-day quick-build pilot on College Avenue using the SFMTA Sanchez Street model. Apply exactly the low-cost toolkit SFMTA deployed and Caltrans holds up as a case study: gateway signs, flexible delineators, visual narrowing. No speed bumps. Sanchez has held a 50%+ vehicle reduction and a 36% collision reduction for five-plus years on a comparable residential bike corridor. We are asking to apply something that is already proven to work at low cost with high community-acceptance. Measure before-and-after, then scale citywide. See the College pilot ask →
Council does not need to send this back to staff to start over. The fixes above are clear and defensible, and they can be attached as binding directives to tonight's approval. Delay costs another year, which is absolutely unacceptable when safety is at stake and inaction is our pattern of record.
Why these fixes
Click any card to expand the detail.
The program qualifies streets only after harm. We do not wait for a fire to start before installing smoke detectors.
Reactive scoring; preventive evidence (sidewalk gaps, near-misses) ignored.
The scoring framework rewards streets that already have documented injury crashes and high-speed measurements. Streets without a recorded injury crash or measured speeding score lower and are unlikely to be selected for intervention.
This is a fail-first standard. It is the opposite of how public safety is supposed to work in every other context. We do not wait for a fire to start before installing smoke detectors. We do not wait for a child to drown before fencing a pool. The Vision Zero framework that the Slow Streets program claims to advance is explicitly built on the principle that safety improvements must be proactive. The current proposal is reactive.
The framework also has no data pipeline for the most common form of street-safety evidence: resident-reported near misses. A neighbor pulling their child away from a car at the last second leaves no trace in the City's data system. Under this program, that street is invisible until the day someone gets hit.
Two ground-truth measurements on College Avenue agree. The City's 2025 big-data product reads ~7-9 mph slower with no physical change to the street — and that's the platform the program proposes as the gate to eligibility for safety help.
85th percentile mph, College Ave, 2024 / 2025 / 2026
Eligibility scoring into Slow Streets is gated by 85th-percentile vehicle speeds drawn from "available data" sources. The program does not define how speed measurements are collected, how often, by whom, or how variation between sources is reconciled. Notably, the focus on 85% does not include the top 15%. On a street with an average of 800 vehicles per day and no sidewalks, that could be 120 cars speeding well above the speed limit.
Three independent measurements have been taken on College Avenue in recent years. They do not agree:
2024: City of Menlo Park direct measurement → 27 mph 85th percentile
2025: City switches to StreetLight probe-data product → 20 mph 85th percentile
2026: A ground-truth sensor on the street → 29 mph 85th percentile
The two real, on-the-street measurements agree with each other (27 and 29 mph) and agree with what residents who live on the street actually experience every day. The StreetLight number is the outlier, and it is the number the City has adopted to gate eligibility. There has been no physical change to College Avenue between 2024 and 2026 that would explain a 7-9 mph drop in driving speeds. The street did not change. The data source changed.
StreetLight is a probe-data analytics product that estimates speeds from cellular and connected-vehicle samples, potentially a small sample of the actual vehicles travelling College Avenue every day. It is a useful tool for some purposes, but not a substitute for direct measurement, and demonstrably out of agreement with both prior city measurement and current ground-truth sensor data on this corridor. The City has not published its measurement protocol, its sample sizes, its data-source comparisons, or its reconciliation methodology, and has not responded to requests to do so.
Beyond this specific corridor: the 85th-percentile statistic (the speed at or below which 85% of drivers travel) also tells you nothing about how fast the remaining 15% are going. Those fastest drivers are the actual safety problem on neighborhood streets. The FHWA, NACTO, and California's own AB 43 all point toward context-based speed management rather than reliance on the 85th percentile alone.
NACTO defines the "Survival" Factor: "Speed is the most critical variable. At 20 mph, pedestrian survival rates in a collision are very high (around 90%). At 30 mph, that survival rate drops significantly (closer to 50%)."
Per-segment scoring guarantees displaced traffic. Network-scale planning is the standard NACTO, Caltrans Safe System, and SFMTA hold their teams to.
Calm Street A. Push the traffic to Street B.
The proposed Menlo Park program scores resident requests on a per-segment basis. Each street is evaluated and ranked individually against the eligibility criteria.
Neighborhoods are networks, not lists of independent segments. Calming one block can simply push cut-through traffic to the next block. This is the "whack-a-mole" failure mode documented across many cities, and it is exactly what happened around Middle Avenue: improvements were made on the through-corridor without any companion intervention on the surrounding residential streets, and the predictable result is significantly more cut-through traffic on College, Partridge, and adjacent neighborhood streets, with an ever-greater increase in average speed on these residential streets without sidewalks.
The proposed program codifies that mistake. By scoring streets individually, it cannot capture network effects, and it cannot recommend the network-scale interventions (modal filters, diverters, gateway sequencing) that actually fix the problem rather than displacing it.
Resident concern is a leading indicator of injury collisions in Menlo Park. The program structures the entire process around screening it out.
Streets where resident requests preceded the cyclist collisions.
The intake process channels resident requests into a point-based scoring system. Requests below a threshold are not pursued. The eligibility criteria are set such that the great majority of streets will not qualify for safety attention even when residents repeatedly ask.
Municipal best practice in cities that take neighborhood safety requests seriously (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Portland, Seattle, NYC, Cambridge MA) is to treat persistent neighborhood concern as a strong signal that a street has a real problem worth investigating, even if a single statistical threshold isn't yet met.
SFMTA's Slow Streets Program was launched in response to resident requests during the early COVID period. It was not designed as a screen to disqualify those requests. It was designed to rapidly act on them with low-cost interventions. The Menlo Park program does the inverse: it structures the entire process around screening requests out.
Years of unanswered, well-organized resident concern is itself data. A program that interprets it as input noise to be filtered, rather than as evidence that something is wrong, has its incentives pointed in the wrong direction.
Federal traffic-control devices with proven outcomes are dismissed in the program text by being called "community art."
MUTCD-compliant traffic-control device, deployed by SFMTA across dozens of streets for years.
"Community art, such as neighborhood gateways, street painting, and signage not intended for traffic control… should not be relied upon as the primary tool for slowing traffic or improving safety."
The program bundles together two completely different things and dismisses both. Decorative pavement art is one thing. Gateway treatments are something else entirely. They are explicitly defined as a traffic-control device, not "art."
Per the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide (the federally and state-recognized standard reference), gateway treatments combine in-street US Department of Transportation Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) signs (R1-6, R1-6a, R1-6d, R1-6e), physical vertical elements such as flexible delineators, and pavement markings to "create a prominent crossing point for people walking and biking. This configuration increases yielding and achieves notable reductions in motor vehicle speeds at the crossing point."
The same MUTCD that the program cites as the standard for traffic control also explicitly permits the use of these devices and allows engineering judgment for minor modifications. SFMTA, the agency behind San Francisco's Slow Streets program, has deployed exactly this configuration successfully across dozens of streets, for years, with measurable safety outcomes.
The program excludes shared-street designs by definition. Caltrans's own 2023 Safe System report holds them up as a model.
Sanchez St speed and collision reductions, Caltrans 2023 Case Study #12.
"Per California Vehicle Code Section 590, 'a street is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel.'… The Program is consistent with the primary design and legal function of streets and is not intended to create shared streets."
The Vehicle Code definition cited here is a narrow legal construction for vehicle-code purposes, not a design or policy directive.
The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) states a target of 20 mph or less for shared spaces where the absence of sidewalks forces pedestrians and cyclists to share the space with vehicles, and further states that "When a street lacks dedicated infrastructure for people walking or biking, it functions as a 'shared street.' For these spaces to be safe for all ages and abilities, the goal is to keep vehicle interaction low enough that people feel comfortable using the street as they would a park or path."
California's own Complete Streets Act (AB 1358, 2008) is explicitly multimodal: it requires cities to plan for "all users of streets, roads, and highways." The state's transportation agency has been even more direct.
The Caltrans 2023 report on Safe System Approaches to Speed Limit Setting includes San Francisco Slow Streets as a positive case study (Case Study #12). The measured outcomes:
14% decrease in median vehicle speeds.
36% decrease in collisions.
Caltrans describes the approach as "quickly and easily implementable".
Cities across California and the country have implemented shared/slow streets and measured the safety improvements. This is mainstream transportation policy. The proposed Menlo Park program excludes it by definition rather than by evidence.
The program cites the Bloomberg Asphalt Art Safety Study to dismiss the very intervention the study positively validated.
Crash reduction for pedestrians and vulnerable users — what Bloomberg actually found.
"…studies such as the Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Safety Study and FHWA Vision Zero Implementation Toolkit have shown that art alone is not an effective substitute for traffic calming measures."
The Bloomberg Asphalt Art Safety Study (April 2022) the program cites does not support that claim. It found the opposite. Across 17 study sites, the report measured:
50% decrease in crashes involving pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.
37% decrease in crashes leading to injuries.
17% decrease in total crash rate.
The study's actual conclusion is that asphalt art is associated with significant reductions in crashes, particularly for pedestrians and bicyclists. The program cites this study to dismiss the very intervention type the study positively validated.
The program funnels nearly every request toward speed humps. NACTO's full toolkit — diverters, gateways, modal filters — is largely absent.
SFMTA's Slow Streets toolkit, hundreds per device, not millions.
The proposed Menlo Park program's preferred countermeasures lean heavily on speed humps, conventional pavement markings, and signage. NACTO-standard cost-effective and fast-to-implement interventions like flexible delineator posts, hardened centerlines, and gateway treatments are largely absent or are placed behind the "case-by-case" art-evaluation gate.
The NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide documents dozens of evidence-based interventions for residential street calming. The full toolkit includes hardened centerlines, gateway treatments, modal filters, traffic diverters, chicanes, raised crosswalks, painted curb extensions, neckdowns, and more. Most are quick-build, reversible, and inexpensive.
SFMTA's Slow Streets program implemented its full citywide network primarily with paint, signage, traffic diverters, and gateways. Cost per device: hundreds of dollars, not millions. Implementation: weeks, not years. Outcomes (per Caltrans, above): 14% speed reduction, 36% collision reduction.
By contrast, the Menlo Park program funnels nearly every request toward conventional countermeasures that take years and large capital budgets to deliver, when they get delivered at all. The result is a very small number of streets getting support over the next few years instead of many streets and at least hundreds of residents being safer in a matter of weeks.
Approving the framework as written walks the City closer to liability under multiple statutes.
Gov. Code § 835 + Vehicle Code §§ 21101 / 22352 / 21351, plus Tansavatdi (Cal. Sup. Ct. 2023).
The program creates structured procedures that disqualify the great majority of resident safety requests, even on streets where residents have provided documented evidence of dangerous conditions over months or years. The scoring framework explicitly preserves a record of City notice and inaction.
California has a clear legal framework for municipal duty of care on streets. Four statutes and a recent California Supreme Court decision are directly relevant. The proposed program walks the City closer to liability under each one, not further away.
Government Code § 835: Dangerous Condition of Public Property. A public entity is liable for injuries caused by a dangerous condition of public property if it had actual or constructive notice of the condition and reasonable time to take protective measures. Ground-truth sensor data, repeated formal complaints, and documented near-misses all constitute notice. Once notice has been given and the City has elected not to act under the program's criteria, the City's legal posture changes.
Vehicle Code § 21101: Local Regulation of Traffic. The City Council has the explicit statutory authority to adopt rules and ordinances to close or divert traffic, or to implement traffic-calming measures, "in the interests of public safety." The Council does not need state-level approval. The authority is already there.
Vehicle Code § 22352 and § 21351. § 22352 establishes the 25 mph prima facie speed limit for residential districts. § 21351 places a corresponding duty on the City to "place and maintain" traffic control devices to give effect to lawful speed limits. The City is not free to recognize a 25 mph limit on paper and then take no action when documented vehicle behavior contradicts it.
Tansavatdi v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes (Cal. Supreme Court, 2023). The Court held that "Design Immunity" does not permanently shield a city from liability once it is on notice that an existing design has produced dangerous outcomes. Even on a previously approved design, the city retains a duty to warn of or mitigate the known danger.
A program that creates a structured procedure for filtering out documented safety concerns, and that by its own logic leaves a paper trail showing exactly which streets were on notice and disqualified, does not reduce the City's exposure. It increases it.
AB 43 lets the City reduce posted limits on residential streets today, without an engineering study or this program.
AB 43 lets cities cut posted speed limits on residential streets today. Menlo Park has barely used it.
The proposed program does not address the City's existing authority under California Assembly Bill 43 (AB 43) to lower speed limits on neighborhood streets without a traditional traffic engineering study. The eighteen months spent drafting this program were eighteen months in which the City could have designated Safety Corridors and High Pedestrian or Bicyclist Areas under AB 43 and immediately reduced posted limits where they were needed most.
California Assembly Bill 43 (effective 2022) gives cities a new set of tools to lower speed limits on neighborhood streets without waiting on a traditional 85th-percentile traffic survey. Specifically:
Menlo Park has used the Business Activity Districts authority for downtown (Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Avenue, Oak Grove). The City has also designated a handful of arterials and collectors as Safety Corridors: Middle Avenue, Ravenswood Avenue, Bay Road, Valparaiso Avenue, and Sand Hill Road, all reduced to 25 mph in the 2024 ordinance. What the City has not done is extend Safety Corridor designation to the residential neighborhood streets where the actual residential safety problem lives. AB 43 lets a city designate up to 20% of its street network. What Menlo Park has designated so far is a small fraction of that. The High Pedestrian or Bicyclist Areas authority appears to be unused.
The Council can lower speed limits on the most dangerous neighborhood streets without an engineering study, without the proposed Slow Streets Program, and without further delay. The authority already exists. The Council is choosing not to use it.
The stakes here are real and getting worse. Waymo and other autonomous vehicles operating on Menlo Park residential streets accelerate immediately to the posted speed limit. A vehicle that always drives the limit is only as safe as the limit itself. As cited in concern #2 above, NACTO's Survival Factor identifies the difference between 20 mph and 30 mph as roughly the difference between 90% and 50% pedestrian survival in a collision. On a residential street with no sidewalks where children walk and bike, the posted speed limit is the safety policy. AB 43 lets the Council change it.
Pick the angle that matches your concern. Add your name and neighborhood. Hit send. Council clerks log every email in the meeting record, so your message lands on every Councilmember's desk before they vote.
Sources cited.