Lingering questions on the status of a two-lane underpass below San Antonio Road have city officials concerned about the Mayfield project’s accessibility to pedestrians and bicyclists.
The narrow two-lane underpass, which runs from Hewlett Packard’s vacant offices on the Mayfield site to a frontage road in Palo Alto called San Antonio Way, is designed for autos but is rarely used by them. This makes it a convenient access point for walkers and bikers — but that status is likely to change when hundreds of homes are built in Mayfield, increasing car traffic to and from the area.
The road will need upgrades to handle increased traffic and continue to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists safely. But while everyone else believes the city of Palo Alto owns and maintains that section of road, officials there have yet to acknowledge that they are responsible for it.
“It seems to me that a whole lot of the project’s viability hinges on whether this tunnel is available, usable and safe. And we don’t have answers to any of that,” said Mountain View planning commission chair Laura Brown.
Toll Brothers is planning to meet with Palo Alto city planners in the next few weeks to sort out those questions. The underpass is one of a number of unresolved issues relating to bicycle and pedestrian access at Mayfield. Others include the lack of a bicycle crossing at San Antonio Road and Nita Avenue and a safe and convenient pedestrian route from the new development to the San Antonio Caltrain station.
Jerri-Ann Meyer, who chairs the Mountain View bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee, said in a letter to city staff that the project site “provides a critical linkage between the Palo Alto bike route across San Antonio Road and the future Mountain View bicycle boulevard.”
— Jon Wiener<$>
