This corner is an abomination! I travel it every weekday to visit my husband and have dinner in downtown PA.
Earlier in the day or on weekends I will cut through the Ventura neighborhood to get onto Page Mill/Oregon towards the Bay as it is possible to use the cut from Park Blvd onto eastbound Oregon. In the afternoon this is impossible to do safely.
There should be a "Right Turn ONLY" designation to the right lane northbound on El Camino at this corner. All it takes is one car to want to go straight or a bus to block 10 or more who want to turn right. Add in a pedestrian or 2 and it freezes solid. (Why can't pedestrians get together and all cross at once? They amble and straggle along so that you can miss the entire green light for your direction.) Sometimes it takes me three light changes to get through this intersection.
This intersection would be helped by a traffic officer to ticket those who do not stop when the left turn signal from El Camino southbound turns red. Often there are 10 cars, sometimes more, who come through the intersection when northbound El Camino light is fully green, many having passed the stop line after the light has changed.
I am surprised that there have not been more serious accidents involving red light runners and/or pedestrians at this corner. Perhaps that is because it is perhaps the ONLY intersection or street area in PA where pedestrians and cyclists actually look at the light and traffic BEFORE they step off the curb and proceed to cross.

Palo Alto is becoming increasingly hostile to pedestrians, especially the southern part of the city. The recent redesign of Oregon Expressway removed several crosswalks and increased the delay for pedestrian lights at other crosswalks. The same is happening along El Camino Real.

I agree that the Page Mill & El Camino intersection is especially bad for pedestrians because so many cars run red lights to turn right without checking for pedestrians at most corners of that intersection. Also, the pedestrian lights are so unresponsive that you have to wait for several minutes watching cars running the red lights before the pedestrian lights actually turn on.

If car drivers want to experience less traffic, then they should support measures which turn more drivers into pedestrians. If walking and crossing major intersections was safer and more appealing more of us would walk our shirts trips rather than driving. This is a terrific thought exercise that Palo Alto Forward has engaged in and it's great that they're bringing this conversation to the neighbors. Seems like most of the neighbors DID find value in thinking not just of cars, but of pedestrians, too.

[[Blogger: This comment is a very good representation of the dominant view of the attendees at the meeting.
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In fear of being told I am off topic, once again, what about the pedestrian tunnel? It is, as far as I can see, still there outside Chipotle and near the soccer fields.

Using a tunnel would keep pedestrians much safer than any traffic light.

[[Blogger: I have been told that the official reason the tunnel was closed was that it was not ADA-compliant: it had stairs, but not a wheelchair ramp. But there were also major concerns about crime. The very narrow tunnel left potential victims little room to maneuver and escape. The stairs limited visibility of what was going on in the tunnel, both for people entering and passers-by who might provide assistance in the case of trouble. And the ambient noise of El Camino would obscure cries for help. The improvements in surveillance tech over the intervening decades may have reduced some of these problems.
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BTW, when the soccer fields were built, there was a place for a snack shop. I have been there for soccer games on many occasions, but not recently, and there was no snack shop open. It makes sense that if there was a means of buying a lunch while watching a game, there would be less need for pedestrians to cross the street there.

[[Blogger: Clarification: The discussion at the meeting was not about how best to provide snacks to the soccer players, but about how to encourage them to make additional pedestrian crossing of Page Mill or El Camino. Thus, putting a cafe/snack shop on the corner with the playing fields would have been contrary to the goal of the group.
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RE: "Palo Alto is becoming increasingly hostile to pedestrians, especially the southern part of the city." (comment #2)

I would encourage commenters to distinguish between problems of choice and those of necessity. "Choice" is a matter of bad design, whether inadvertent, negligent, or representing bias. "Necessity" is what arises from addressing tradeoffs.

I am not familiar enough with the situation cited by the commenter (Oregon Expressway) to make a judgment on it, but it offers an example of "necessity". Palo Alto has chosen to pursue development that was reasonably expected to increase traffic on Oregon Expressway, and thus some of those changes might have been necessitated by the increased volume of traffic. It is unhelpful to lump legitimate adjustments to accommodate those increases with situations that unnecessarily impede pedestrians.

Aside: Example: The Stanford Hospital Expansion project acknowledged that the housing pattern of the additional employees would largely be in the East Bay and would not be served by existing or anticipated public transit. The project approval was conditioned on Stanford providing some transit to serve those areas, similar to what companies such as Google and Facebook are doing with private buses. However, much Palo Alto's development had no such remediation.

On red-light running:

There are two basic categories of rule-breaking:
1. to gain individual advantage
2. to cope with a malfunctioning/dysfunctional/broken system.

In designing and maintaining a system, you want to avoid creating circumstances where the user is encourage, even obligated, to break/ignore the rules. It has frequently been observed that one of the easiest ways for a bureaucrat to stop anything from getting done is to insist upon strict observance of the rules.

For example, at an intersection, you don't want to effectively force motorists to give pedestrians less of a cushion than that motorist would normally choose. Yet when you reach certain levels of congestion, this is what inevitably, and predictably, happens.

Yet the speaker advocated, to the approval of most of those still present, that pedestrians engage in highly visible obstruction of intersections such as El Camino/Page Mill. His example was pedestrians with shopping carts forming a line across the length of the crosswalk, thereby preventing turns (from the street with the green light and right-turn-on-red).

Doug, thanks for being part of event brainstorming session this week. Page Mill and El Camino is a complex and busy intersection. I think there were at least three separate issues (possibly more) being discussed about this one intersection in this group/event, including safe, accessible ways for pedestrians to cross. Great to hear all views though.

I've never felt safe riding a bicycle along the major streets in Palo Alto. And separated bikeways may be difficult to implement if we don't plan for them. I do walk whenever possible. With more dense housing and businesses being added along El Camino (and more people who will (and won't) have cars), it's great we're looking at pedestrian-friendly elements that include safety. I think other cities have found ways to have both safe and engaged areas; they don't need to be mutually exclusive. Thanks again.

Did anyone mention the carbon footprint implications of piling up traffic?

RE: "Did anyone mention the carbon footprint implications of piling up traffic?"

No. The advocates of measures that would create more congestion reject this argument because they believe that more congestion will force people to switch to mass transit. Don't ask whether transit is a viable option for many of these advocates--that is, would driving still be their best option--because they believe that this will cause viable transit options to be created (no implementation path: timescale, steps, details, funding).

And the advocates reject the possibility that increasing congestion on major streets diverts traffic onto neighborhood streets (I did raise this problem). This despite Palo Alto's experience: Cut-through traffic was so bad in multiple neighborhoods that streets were barricaded to make it impractical (College Terrace, Evergreen Park and Ventura are primary examples).

A question: was part of the consideration for this intersection the housing units going up on El Camino/California Ave? Last I heard there were to be ~250 housing units built, which might greatly increase pedestrian traffic in the area.

I personally think the El Camino/Page Mill/Oregon intersection is terrible enough already and unsafe for pedestrians with a big red light running problem. In my opinion foot traffic ought to be encouraged to use Park, and/or build a footpath on the back side of the soccer fields, right by where the new housing will be.

Who were the staff that were present? And why were these quick changes?

RE "Interesting (again)"

The focus was on what on the card (image above), that is, what the attendees thought "geographic center of the city" should be and attracting "more people". That brief discussion did not include the actual and projected needs of the various classes of people (Why did the pedestrian cross the street? and How many?).

RE: "Curious"

I am not identifying individual staff members who said they were participating in an unofficial manner to honor that distinction. However, since the attitudes displayed would have an influence on how staff approached these issues, I decided that a summary would be legitimate public information.

"Why ... quick change?" That was the approach advocated by the talk: Quick & cheap implementation followed by a short test and evaluation that leads to another cycle (analogous to a methodology often used in software development).

Many of the examples of "quick" involved a small group, or individual, implementing changes that they thought appropriate without consideration/involvement of other community stakeholders. Sometimes done in the dead of night. The philosophy was that if the experiment didn't work or got opposition, it could easily be undone (little money having been spent on implementation).

Aside: One member of the audience raised concerns about liability should the City encourage this approach. Some of the examples presented involved individuals making their own changes to intersections. Others involved converting parking spaces along the street to "community use". There didn't seem to be an awareness that on major streets that curb-side parking provides protection for pedestrians (separation space plus the parked cars themselves are barriers).